Marketing and Strategy - Essay Example

? MARKETING AND STRATEGY Month, Year Emerging Trends in Marketing and the Changing Consumer’s Needs Adaptation is essential to an organization's survival in today’s unreceptive business environment. Marketers need to understand what is at the heart of their consumer offering and stay one-step ahead of the competition in terms of delivering it. It is quite evident that with increased globalization and improved technology, there are constant key emerging trends in marketing which are also changing various consumer needs. Marketing is defined as the conceptualization ad delivery of great customer satisfaction. According to Kaplan and Michael (2010), customers are no longer viewed as members of passive audiences rather they are now active participants in marketing processes. Marketing and marketing communication are changing daily. These changes offer a new wave of communication channels to both new and existing markets, which were not evident in the past decade within organizations. Clearly, there have been significant evidence on shift of focus and budget resources allocation into interactive online marketing which is facilitated with increase use of internet. Based on organizational changes across the globe, new theories of marketing have been largely developed such as electronic, social, and environmental and network marketing. These changes in marketing presume changes within consumers’ behaviors and transition towards electronic marketing (Kaplan and Michael 2010). Technology is changing the world past acknowledgment and consumer potential are evolving with it. No industry can afford to rest on its success. In this tough economic climate, small changes are not always enough to sustain a competitive advantage. New marketing models and fresh approaches to customer problems need to emerge rapidly to stay ahead of the competition. Today, the internet is considered one of the biggest forums. Kaplan and Michael (2010) assert that, there is a new change in marketing where marketers have turned to internet to facilitate their marketing processes. Many marketers have resulted to internet marketing for their business regardless of the kind of business being operated. Internet allows customers to review and purchases an organization product and services regardless on which part of the world they are in. customers are able to access company’s website purchase a commodity or service as well as refer a company to other at the comfort of their homes. Anderson and Narus (2004) maintain that, the use of internet is viewed as a holistic marketing, which has become today platform. Here, holistic marketing widely combines traditional marketing with new computer and digital capabilities to build long term and mutual satisfying relationship between the company and its customers. A good example in the adaptation of a holistic marketing process is in Japan where the country engages in u-Japan where information flows freely which facilitated by a network which can be accessed anytime from anywhere. The letter u represents ubiquitous which indicates a time where internet communication plays a major role in marketing linking both consumers and company (Anderson and Narus 2004). Further, based on online marketing marketers have engaged the use of email newsletters to keep in touch with their customers as opposed to traditional method of designing catalogues and brochures. Dwyer and Tanner (2006) assert that, email newsletters are considered as the method, which displays return on investment (ROI) in internet marketing. For example, markets are using full service providers, which are known to create content as well as designing the marketing layout and later send out organizational newsletters. In addition, online marketing have resulted to two new kinds of resellers namely; infomediaries and metamediaries (Dwyer and Tanner 2006). Infomediaries are web pages such as Google and Yahoo that acts as brokers in today’s marketing world. Metamediaries are companies that possess robust internet sites which furnish customers with multiproduct and multiservice market space in return for commission on every sale made. When companies want to enter into social marketing one is required to create a persona whereby company information is given and constantly keep constant communication between the organization and its customers (Doyle 2008). Organization uses their persona displayed in their social media profile to brand company product and it is important to separate your company persona from individual persona so that to avoid comments that are not related to company service and products. It is quite evident that social media users are largely influenced by purchases made by their friends. Based on social marketing organization should focus on using viral campaign as opposed to advertising. Further it is clear that through proper understanding of social media users, organization are in a better position to influence customers both regionally and across the globe(Doyle 2008). According to Kotler et al (2002), social marketing is a common strategy that both large and small corporations are currently engaging to communicate their brand to customers. Marketer reaches users of Facebook, Cyworld, and MySpace through two choices namely advertising and initializing on viral campaign. Organizations are adapting social media marketing since the social media platform is easily accessible to ay customer with internet. This has increased communication, which increasingly foster brand awareness, which in return improves customer service. Ulwick (2005) maintain that, with increase of mobile technology, more consumers spend a lot of time connecting to the internet via portable devices like mobile devices. For marketers such devices are considerably a dominant ways to interact with other brands so as to reach out to a number of customers. Today, more customers are interacting with many organizations on various brands on a small screen displayed in a mobile device. Evidently, marketing through mobile technology widely concentrate on reaching out to customers where they are thus optimizing the experience issued regardless on the screen size (Ulwick 2005). In addition, marketers are constantly becoming software developers increasing brand awareness. Organizational marketing departments transform apps into a main predominant channel, which allows consumer to engage with their brands (Hart 2003). Neef (1999) maintain that, a consumer is largely considered as an ultimate user of product and services with a great need to understand how their needs are changing especially with increase in globalization and improved technology. It is quite evident that consumer trends are changing with today changing marketing strategies (Hart 2003). With increased technology, consumers need not to travel to go for window-shopping rather they are involved in searching through their laptops, PCs and cell phone for information displayed by marketers regarding products and services. It is evident that where people shop, how much customers intend to spend and how they shop have widely changed especially with today marketing strategies. De Mooij (1998) asserts that, it is therefore important for organizations learn how to anticipate changing consumer needs through understanding their shopping habits to adapt a competitive advantage over its competitors (Richardson 2010). Understanding changing customers need widely assists consumers to improve on their marketing strategies. Today consumers’ needs should be focused in a manner that is delighting to attract and retain potential buyers. Shift in consumer needs have been widely be influenced by household downsizing, managing shift in demographics, literate consumers, strategic outsourcing and new marketing strategies (Richardson 2010). Matthing et al (2004) asserts that, consumer needs require marketers that are educating and empowering them regarding various choices on products and services. Today, consumers are actively involved in matching up their choices on shopping with green value as a way of being environmental friendly. Further, consumer needs actively seeks out information so as to make informed purchasing decision not forgetting the on how to use and dispose packages and products responsibly. In addition, consumers today need to be engaged. According to Kandampully and Duddy (1999), currently, consumers have generally become distrustful of various advertising and they trust on information found in web sources. Evidently, as most new products fail, there is need to focus on preferences and needs of consumers especially in new product development (Matthing et al 2004). Consumer needs are increasingly recognized largely as essential co-developers of innovation as well as marketing processes, which often develop various functions of technology, demands innovative solution, and solving of unseen problems. Consumer needs need to be therefore understood with special focus on today changing marketing trends. Choice for consumer need today can appear to be random whereby each decision made regarding to these needs has some meaning. Today purchases of consumer needs largely depend on social situations, values, goals, and personal emotions (Goffin and Lemke 2004). Today, most customers vary widely in how they determine the kind of need needed to be satisfied when purchasing a service or product. With economic strain and financial crisis across the globe, customers are more concern in meeting basic needs as opposed to luxurious necessity. Therefore, they are engaged in finding the best price offered by companies via the internet. Goffin and Lemke (2004) maintain that, consumer needs are considered to be the drivers of marketing decisions. Marketers need to realize that any marketing strategy is pursued until it largely passes the test of various consumer researches. It is important to understand that every aspect displayed in a market research including the nature of a service or product it is widely driven by the wants of potential customers (Cooper 1998). Organization need to realize the starting point of any strategies is consumers’ needs. Further, it is important to understand that taking great customer focus needs to be considered as a subset of corporate strategy as opposed to sole driving factor. This implies that companies need to look beyond current customer focus as a way of predicting future consumer needs (Easterby-Smith et al 2008). Dev and Don (2005) maintain that, with tremendous changes in the field of marketing, it is very important to analyze what the future of marketing holds. This is important in that companies will be able to achieve a competitive advantage especially through embracing new techniques, tools and strategies of marketing. Technology is growing at a very fast rate therefore the future of marketing will continue to grow as it adapts to new technology (Sanderson 1998). Evidently, social media will continue to grow and in the future this media will be the easiest platform to facilitate online marketing as well as establishing positive relationship with customers. For companies who do not make connection with other markers of potential customer on social media then it is important that they rethink on their future marketing (Sanderson 1998). In future, social marketing website will give marketers a central location for potential buyers and marketers to interact which in turn improve customer service relationship and company’s performance. Mobile marketing is going to shape up the field of marketing. It is quite evident that using mobile phones to buy products and services is a trend that will grow further with increase in mobile technology. Therefore, companies need to take into account especially in designing their niche websites for marketing purposes (Svensson 2002). According to Svensson (2002), even with the increase of internet marketing, it is evident that customers’ people do not only want to know about product or services a company is selling rather they need to know also about the marketer. In future, marketers should avoid sitting behind the computer without engaging with potential buyers but instead it is important that they engage in blogging. People want to make sure they have developed a trustful relationship with the marketer before they are able to purchase their products and services. Therefore, the only way that people are going to trust a marketer is ensuring that the marketer display information about the marketer information or profile and what one stands for (Perry 1999). In conclusion, marketing departments need to become a fast learning organization in today world where technology and society is evolving at a very accelerating rate changing the consumer landscape. Evidently, management intuitions, which are largely based on past marketing behaviors’ as well as preferences, are increasingly becoming inaccurate predictors of the future. Therefore, companies need to realize that the world is changing and so is marketing therefore, there should adopt a future focused marketing approach to reach out to various potential buyers not only regionally but across the globe. Today marketing research need not only measure but also use full range related tools which guides organizational marketing mainly based on anticipatory insights. Evidently, as the values of societies change, both product and service marketers as well as retailers need to stay in rhythm with today changing society. Trends towards aging population, wellness and environmental concern References Anderson, J and Narus, J. 2004 Business Market Management: Understanding, Creating, and Delivering Value. Pearson Education, Inc Cooper, Robert, 1998. "Benchmarking new product performance:: Results of the best practices study," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 1-17 De Mooij, M. 1998. 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