There are many ways of organizing a business. The best known draws inspiration from the military strategy: conquering the territory, identifying target-clients, defeating competitors/enemies, managing resources/people, developing a chain of command complete with ranks and orders.

Management and marketing processes owe a lot to the organization of the army and to its operating procedures.

There is no doubt that for a long time this approach has borne fruit, however in the post-crisis era things have changed.

Clients are seen as people again, and so are employees, suppliers, shareholders and all the other stakeholders or interest bearers.

If with all these actors we want to maintain a fruitful long-lasting relationship, that creates shared value over time, we need to build strong bonds founded on positive emotions and feelings.

We just have to look at all the advertisements to realize that more and more companies have understood the importance of triggering the spark of love to be successful on the markets.

Loving Business Model. Designed by Alice Alessandri and Alberto Aleo.
Copyright Alice Alessandri and Alberto Aleo – Franco Angeli. All rights reserved.

According to the traditional economic theories there are two types of market approach: the product oriented one – which focuses on improving production processes and ensuring constant innovation paying attention to the  coherence of each activity – and the market oriented one. Companies that adopt this second approach are more compliant and alert to the market, less self-referential and more diligent in taking every opportunity to meet customer demands.

Our independent research, which involved hundreds of companies and thousands of market participants and covered 12 different sectors with the contribution of international researchers and experts, has revealed a new type of company: the value oriented one, which focuses on what it believes in and on its essence, and offers not only products and services but also, and above all, meanings.

While studying this kind of organization we developed the Loving Business Model, a business model that redesigns all the aspects of the life of a company: from brand strategies to the selection of target customers, from price positioning to the definition of the offer. A model that shapes all our consultancy and training activities.

Doing marketing according to this approach means starting from ourselves, then bringing out all we can offer in terms of products, services, communication and experience, and finally collecting results that go beyond the mere short-term turnover. An integral vision of economy, in accordance with the law of reciprocity that reads: first of all being, then giving, and finally receiving.