Coming at the tale end of an interview with Mashable, Southwest Chief Marketing Officer, Kevin Krone, on the future of the airline industry:
[T]here are three or four [macro trends], in my opinion. One is that people will want companies to learn more about them so that they can help them more efficiently; and again, companies have to do this in a way that’s not creepy. Secondly, I think that things that are optional today — tools and techniques that companies offer to people — will become mandates in the future. There will just be a higher bar that customers demand of us as companies and as marketers. Thirdly, I think that results for marketers should become better and more efficient. We’ll know more about the customer, we’ll be better able to tailor messages and send them at the right time. The marketing work should become more efficient. And then lastly, I think that the amount of data we can get — managing it, learning to use it — all that will add to the industry’s complexity.
It’s all about data, data, data. The more they can collect, the more they can market things to you. Let’s hope that manifests itself as something useful to the consumer.
