“Darwinism” on Customers needs.

Homo-sapiens sapiens are the most developed creatures on the Earth, the evolution of human developed from their needs. Everything in this world has developed because of the primary need, and that was the need to live, there is nothing that gives a standard definition to the need of life, everybody decides for himself the purpose of his life.

But anyway, from the need of life evolved other primary needs like, food and sex. Humans always were striving to satisfy their needs, and when a person have a need but he doesn’t have the thing that satisfy this need he is looking for that particular thing that will satisfy it. This is when commerce kicks in. Before people invented money, to make the exchange and to get the satisfaction they needed, people were using barter (exchanging products/services instead of other products and services). But which one of them was the customer and who was the seller, well, back then, they didn’t have this terms so it didn’t matter, anyway in my opinion for a better understanding of the term “customer” I will be better to indentify him, and do that I will use the definition of the term: ”Customer - entity that receives or consumes products (goods or services) and has the ability to choose between different products and suppliers”[source]. So person who was the first to ask for an exchange was the customer because he was the one that had the need to consume the product that the other person had.

Well, after money entered the field, the difference between customer and seller became clear. After that, people’s needs started to become bigger and bigger, because now people could offer a standard product that anyone would accept and that was money. Money made humans hungrier for a better life. At the beginning of the XX^th century a new era in customer needs started. The producers and sellers got more control over the peoples needs, after the big market collapse in 1929 which was caused by the overproduction, producers felt that they depend to much from customers and they took the initiative in their hands. They developed Marketing which made people to want the products that they made. Since then, the power of producers became tremendous, now people need what they are told that they need. And this needs started to grow exponentially.

As regular person I hate marketing for creating this “need machine” but as a marketer I think that without it the desire for a better life that moved humans all along will be finished.

Let’s face it, we always want the best for ourselves and it is almost impossible to fight it.

Hurricane money

My parents have been living in Florida for more then 10 years already, and not that long ago I moved here too. Florida is popular for its beautiful beaches, hot weather, flamingos and of course Disney Land. But there is steal one thing that scares people out of Florida and it is: permanent hurricane danger.

A hurricane is like King Kong, it destroys everything that gets in its way and the consequences stay for some period. That is why when it comes you have to be prepared.

So what people buy to prepare for a hurricane? Well first of all canned food, dry food and water. Next is: camp gas-stove, extra fuel, batteries, candles, flashlights, medical kits, even rope and rubber boats, etc.

So now think how often do you buy camp stoves, flashlights or rope on a normal day? Well I am sure not often almost never. How about during a hurricane warning? Yeah. This companies makes their biggest revenues during hurricane season (of course I mean only in the hurricane zone).

So the point I am making is that when the “weather King Kong” is striking someone loses and someone gains, the bad thing is that small people are always those who are losing and the big corporate guys are the ones that are gaining.

Extra: How to prepare for a hurricane!

To big to fail

I think everybody in US know about Wachovia Bank, this is one of the biggest banks in US. People like their service, there products and their beautiful promotional material.

Well now Bloomberg report tells us that Wachovia services not only law abiding citizens but also drug smugglers, and the most outrageous thing is that Wachovia helped move money to Mexico in a quantity of $378.4 billion between 2004-2007, this money helped drug dealers to buy 4 plains with which they transported around 22 tons of cocaine.

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.

Over the years Wachovia was not the only bank that helped move drug dealers dirty money, other banks like: Bank of America, HSBC Holding (in Europe), Citigroup and others.

Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory. That’s like having a “Permanent-get-out-of-jail” card in Monopoly Game.

Well of course all those banks that were caught with the stinky socks paid a lot of money to their government. American Express Bank paid $14 mil for money laundering in 1994, but looks like money laundering is like a drug because in 2007 they had to pay again a $65 million check to US government. Now Wachovia’s new owner Wells Fargo (they bought Wachovia in 2008) will have to pay $160 millions in penalties and fines and nobody goes to jail, now that looks fair (sarcasm) .

In my opinion, this is the smallest price that Wachovia could pay for their dirty profits from $378.4 billion of Mexican cartels money, $160 million is like 0.042% out of that money that they laundered for Mexican drug dealers. Once again we can see that the ones who control the money controls everything and even government can’t do anything without hurting those who gave away the control over their money.

Source: [www.bloomberg.com]