Marketing Failure #4 - Failed Product Differentiation a.k.a. “taking over where others have failed”

As a point of clarification, there has been some feedback that applying marketing principles to Buddhism seems silly or inappropriate. Keep in mind, it is not Buddhism that we are exploring – it is NKT. The principles could equally be applied to any of the other Buddhist schools, or Jewish or Muslim or Christian churches. In all of these instances the church is trying to gather followers (customers) in order to function (stay in business). The church relies upon those customers for money, and the money is provided in exchange for a service. Many of these spiritual businesses have many, many millions of dollars in assets, they have real-estate holdings, employees, vehicles, offices, publishing houses, and they distribute CD’s, T-shirts and statues. This is a business and the business must locate and then retain customers. The survival of the business is contingent upon the continued inflow of money that comes from individuals who feel they are benefiting from the service provided. So, as we can see, as with any service industry NKT needs to market itself (its services, its publishing house, and its retreats) in order to survive.

In keeping with this idea, we must now ask where the new customers have come from. Clearly they had to come from some prior spiritual service provider. Perhaps Christian, Jewish or another Buddhist tradition. Many that are acquaintance of this writer came from the Christian tradition. However, the Christian path – Catholic to be specific – seemed to not provide the services some were looking for. There was a lot of “in-fighting” between groups and some hypocritical stances that seemed disturbing. Also, many of the individuals in the clergy did not seem to be living up to the tradition or were sometimes found to be in violation of basic moral principles. Over time People saw the tradition engaged in bickering and actual war in order to spread the message of peace. The members of the congregation no longer felt connected to the church, and it seemed as if some fundamentalist groups sometimes took the steering wheel away from the more easy going church members. So, they broke away and looked for a different path.

Upon arriving at NKT from some prior tradition the potential customer (i.e. necessary source of capital) is given a message of peace and equanimity. Brotherly/Sisterly love and harmony with the Sangha, the new parish. Mindfulness, serenity and decent cookies.
Then, slowly, this new tradition morphs into the old tradition. The student is forced to take sides on the Shugden issue and other promotions of sectarianism. The student is asked to pick between the Dalai Lama or Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. The customer now feels as if she has returned to the same mindset she was trying to leave. Then the fundamentalist move in, the ones who are less dedicated to the spiritual path and more dedicated to promoting their fundamentalist beliefs. So, finally, the observing marketing minded person asks “what happened to product differentiation?” That is, the customer came to the new service provider after being disillusioned by his prior service provider, only to be met with the same disillusionments again.

If we were spiritually inclined we might blame the nature of samsara, that we cannot maintain pure objects in the desire realm. It may be our predicament that we morph all things into aggression and division. The psychologically minded might blame the individual who seems to “want” peace but keeps re-producing strife. The Buddhist might speculate that we will continue to impute division and disharmony on our world until we purify our mental afflictions. However, the marketing analysts would say that NKT needs to learn about product differentiation a.k.a. “taking over where others have failed” otherwise this will be another reason why the NKT tradition will not survive.

Next: Defensive Marketing Strategies as a way of life.
Followed by: NKT’s Failure to Control “Word of Mouth Marketing” and It’s Loss of Referral Sources