Do your values matter?

Our values are drawn from ourselves and our culture. A well defined set of values could be a "moral code". Do these matter in business and more specifically marketing?

There is a sweet point for your business - where your market opportunity matches some of your values and some of your resources.

Some of your values will not match your resources and some of your values will not match your market opportunity.

For instance someone with strong religious beliefs may find that including all of their beliefs does get an amount of business. Religions are networks and this may have a good or a not so good match with the market.

Having the religious beliefs in the first place has little to do with business, but the decision of including it as a focal part of how you target people in your market is.

The difficulty with values are that they are very personal. It is therefore difficult to make decisions about which personal values are and which are not included in your business. Without values your business may lack personality. If you choose the values that the largest part of the market has - but you do not actually share in, then you may appear false.

Some individuals have issues with including some of their values but ignoring others. A selective moral code may be dangerous, but this is a business, not an individual.

Plugging into your market is not just about market analysis. It is also about people and how they can be involved in taking the opportunity to market.