Relevant Marketing Technologies - Essay Example

? Mid-Term Exam Definition of Brand Equity Brand equity is a term referring to the value quality realized by a company from product through a prominent name compared to generic equivalent products or services (Kotler & Keller, 2012). Brand equity is acquired through outstanding products offered by a company, which are recognized for its superiority in terms of value and consistency. Brand equity is also created through marketing campaigns, and the brand’s value and strength is determined by its worth. Moreover, it is also defined as influence of knowledge concerning the response of the consumers to the brand marketing. Therefore, brand equity is a function regarding to the choice of consumers in a target market. In fact, the concept of the brand equity occurs though the choices made by customers concerning the products and services, and familiarization of customers with the brands, whereby they have a favorable perception towards distinction of the brand. Maintaining Brand Equity The effort of maintaining the brand equity involves focusing on brand awareness in order to increase the probability of customers familiarizing with the availability of products. In fact, this increases the degree of consumer association with the commodities offer by a certain company. Moreover, there is need to measure the ratio of the marketing niche, which relates to former knowledge concerning the brands. Therefore, creating brand awareness is a substantial way of maintaining the brand equity and brand recall. The other effort is to facilitate brand recognition of the products by consumers through their prior knowledge. Moreover, there the brand is associated with the deep customer mind concerning the brand, whereby establishing a positive perception about the brand. The other initiative related to the effort to foster brand loyalty, whereby the customer has fear of consuming commodities from other brands, thus they end up remaining loyal to a specific brand which contributes to maintenance of brand equity. Product Life Cycle Concept Introduction stage: this stage involves introduction of the product into the market with an aim of building a clarified identity though promotion to create awareness (Kotler & Keller, 2012). This is the stage before the products are offered to the customers, whereby the product undergoes development process that entails prototyping and various tests. Substantial cost is incurred in at this stage due to the additional distribution expenses. Moreover, there are few customers with the awareness of the products; thus, the sales volumes are low and the profits might have a low or negative figure due to the high cost and the low sales. Growth Stage: at this stage, the sales volume and profitability commences to increase due the appropriate organization of the products, whereby customers from a habit of consuming the products. The company focuses on brand preference the attaining the set objective that involve a set market share. Competition increases at this stage forcing the company to focus on advertisements in order to ensure that customer are convinced to buy the products, though the profits reduces at the end of the growth stage. Maturity stage: there is a continued increase in sales, though there is a decreased rate compare to the past due to competitors offering the same products in the same market. Therefore, the business focuses on maintaining their market share through an extension of the product life cycle, instead of focusing on profits. Decline stage: At this stage, there is a reduction of the sales volume and an alteration of trends due to the inauspicious of economic conditions. There are reduced sales volumes, while market saturation increases due the technical obsolescence and chances in customer tastes and preferences. Profitability is maintained when there is development of brand loyalty, though there are increases in the unit costs and reduced production resulting to constant profits. Innovations in Interactive Television and Online Services Expanding the Strategies and Tactics of Marketers Marketers are aware of the millions television around the world and they focus on using the linear TV in the moments when people are watching their favorite shows, whereby they are intercepted for a period of few minutes by adverts. Therefore, the television sets are contributing substantially to the efforts of marketing and changing the way goods and service are purchased by customers. There are other customers seeking to watch their TV shows through the online services, which have become a target for marketers seeking to advertise by taking advantage of the modern trends of innovative dimensional concepts. There are online interactive advertisements applying innovations that enable customers to scroll using the cursor, while watching actors in a way that they can identify the products being consumed and the cost. Ecommerce has undergone a substantial evolution, whereby the customers are able to purchase commodities via interactive TV, whereby the marketers offer a platform to the customers can order commodities using their remote control into a payment device. Therefore, marketers are offering a chance to the customers to watch TV and shop online at the same time, and this is resulting to a substantial expansion of the strategies and tactics applied by the marketers. On the other hand, marketers are investing in retail, whereby they seek to understand channels used to access their target customers. In addition, the demand and opportunities of revenues, marketers invest on making the TV interactive way of advertising by facilitating online shopping. Therefore, the expansion of the marketing strategies has been facilitated by integration through technology advancement focusing on interactive online service and television marketing. Personal and Business-Related Privacy Issues Associated with the Growth in Database Marketing There are private issues regarding the customer relationship management, which is a database that require a business to develop isolated databases on the customers using their personal information and the business database that involve information about the employees, products, suppliers and distributors. In fact, these databases facilitate the development of necessary offering to the marketers for the individuals’ customers. Organizations are developing databases focusing on the efficiency of the marketing and improvement of customer services. Nevertheless, there has been a raising concern in the process of gathering information for developing these databases in relation to violation of privacy. Consequently, this has raised the interest in focusing on the privacy issues in the perception of the consumer and the business perspective. The perspective of the business and consumer, have facilitated the focus of various companies to focus on implementation of the privacy protection procedures. These measures involve notification of the customer and business concerning the gathering the relevant information and an indication of the application of the information, thereby acquiring necessary permission to use the information. In this case, the development of marketing database involves protection of the customer and business privacy, since the organizations developing the databases using their direct internal resource are expected to maintain the privacy of the customers. Moreover, the builders of the databases focus on the mechanism to improve communication concerning the privacy issues with the consumers and other businesses. However, there is no pervasive understanding of the practices regarding the privacy issues in the marketing industry. Direct marketing There has been a form of controversy in relation to the sales method through the approaches of the marketers using their approaches to target customers directly using their commodities. Marketers use telephone sales, emails, coupons, catalogues, leaflets and brochures as a direct marketing to target customers. Direct marketing entails the effort of compiling and maintain large database containing the personal information concerning prospectus customers, and these databases are sold and shared among different companies who engage in direct marketing companies. There are companies offering services that involve conventional types of advertising such as radio, newspaper and television, though they are not considered as the best promotional strategies. For example, a business dealing with cosmetic products need to seek a radio station using a format that is appealing to younger female listeners, who are interested in enhancing their beauty. Nevertheless, there are no guarantee involves in reaching this group of people in at exact period when they a company is broadcasting their advertisement. Therefore, numerous companies can spend a lot of money in advertisements though the radio and television and fail to reach the target consumers, who might be interested in buying their products. Direct marketing has become attractive compared to a scattershot way of reaching the target customers through advertisements, whereby companies focus on certain types of potential customers. Moreover, direct marketing engages in sending emails to the target customers, who are classified in terms of their age, level of income and their preferences. Therefore, direct marketing is applicable in situation when the companies have personal information about the target customers and the information is used for marketing purposes. References Kotler, P. & Keller, K. L. (2012). Marketing Management. (14. E d) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall . Read More