The Nature and Needs of the Customers - Assignment Example

? Take home exam Question The critics of marketing often claimed that the marketers make s buy goods or services that the people do not actually want. Here it needs to be mentioned that customers are people that buy the goods or services from other individuals or companies. Therefore, what the customers think or feel about the products is a key aspect of the success of the business. The attitudes of the customers are shaped by experience of the products and the opinions of the reference groups such as peers, family and friends. The attitude of the customers also gets influenced by the promotional activities carried out by the company such as advertisement. Irrespective of the nature of the customers, it is the duty of the marketers to properly understand the needs of the customers. In doing so the marketers would be able to develop goods or services which would meet the need of the customers a lot more precisely than the competitors, The main problem is that the consumer decision making process is a complex on and understanding the mindset of the consumers correctly is quite difficult. The customers do not actually make purchases without thinking carefully about the needs. Wherever there is a presence of the choice, decisions are also usually involved and these decisions are most of the times influenced by changing motives. The organization that can understand why customers make decisions such as who buys the products; how they buy; where they buy; why they buy; would have more chances to become successful. The philosophy that guides all the marketing activities is the core concept of marketing. The idea that an organization should look to try to satisfy the needs of the customers through coordinated activities that allows the marketers to achieve the marketing objectives; The marketing concept states that a business should first understand the needs of the customers and then develop the products accordingly. However, the business must also look to improvise, adapt and develop or modify products to cope up with the ever changing needs of the customers. There are no doubts over the fact that the main objective of marketing is satisfied the needs and the demands of the marketers. However, simultaneously the organizations should look to achieve other business objectives such as the cost reduction, increasing productivity or achieving a specific percentage of the market share. To implement the marketing concept a company must have good information regarding the needs and demands of the customers to develop a customer oriented strategy (Pride and Ferrel 4). As far the topic of forcing the customers to buy products that the customer may not is concerned; it can be said that the core concept of marketing actually puts the customers at the very beginning of the marketing process. Before developing any products the marketers usually go for a market research to understand the need and demand of the customers and then only the products as per the needs of the customers are developed. Any great innovation including the launch of the smart phones is actually a result of the understanding the customer demand through he market research. Addition of mp3 players of cameras are actually augmentation. The core product of a cell phone remains to be the on the go telecommunication facility provided by the phone. But features such as cameras or mps players actually were loved by the customers. Hence the marketers realized that the customers are actually looking for total package in a cell phone and hence the marketers such as Apple and Samsung decided to launch smart phones. The same principles can be applied in case of automobile manufactures also, in the initial days, very few automobile manufacturers used to provide financing and hence the customers had to look for other means to go for financing. But now all most all the companies provide the facility of car financing. This again shows the importance of understanding the customer demand. To conclude things it can be said that the marketers do not force the customers but the products; because most of the products developed by the marketers is based on the customer demand. On the contrary the marketers actually sometimes look to generate demand among the customers or look to capitalize upon the demand present among the customers. Also, today the marketers are looking to become a lot more socially responsible corporate bodies. This is mainly because the customers now like to do business with marketers that are a lot more socially responsible and ethical in nature. One of the most effective ways to be ethical for the marketers is to focus on customer demand, rather than persuading the customers to buy products that have been produced by the marketers. Such approach has therefore, reduced the criticism that marketers look to pursue people to buy products that they may not actually require. Question-2 Why Twitter is appealing to the companies? Twitter is a great means to get instant public messages to the target audience. Twitter is increasingly becoming an important platform from digital communication and conversation. Twitter can be used as a media outlet. The marketers are looking to use Twitter to post news or updates about the company or the products. Twitter is also used to post industry updates. It is a great promotional place. It is most certainly not uncommon for the companies to post sales promotional or other special promotional offers on Twitter. One off such examples would most certainly be Dell. It is quite important for the marketers to remember that Twitter is about conversation and live updates and hence the marketers should be sure that the promotional info posted on Twitter is recent and can be made personal and conversational. Twitter helps the marketers to create character in the brand. It happens to be a great tool that provides the brand a personality and voice. At last but not the least Twitter is heavily used by the marketers as a platform for customers service. It is all about talking and interacting with the prospective customers. Add to this the Twitter provides limited number of characters and hence the issues or complaints to be posted by the customers is going to be short and hence the marketers can get to the root cause of the problem quite easily. And most importantly all the conversations are happening live and hence it provides a great platform to the marketers to put up an image of trust and transparency. Twitter as a customer service tool Social media channels have significantly become an effective two communication tool between brands and companies. The main reason for such happenings can be summarized as the frustration with the call centers, immediate gratification and most importantly an opportunity to show the dissatisfaction publically. Twitter provides 140 characters word limit and hence this makes the customers to post complaints or any other issues in a concise form and in this way allows the marketers to understand the problem quickly. Secondly, Twitter is always live and hence the people can see the Twits made by the company and the customers 24/7 and 365. At last but not the least it provides an opportunity to the brands to respond the customer problems directly and quickly. In this way high degree of responsiveness and transparency is also a major reason. Cons of using twitter a marketing tool One of the major drawbacks of using Twitter as marketing tool is the fact that it generates almost 340 million per day and most of the users follow hundreds of profiles. Also Twitter word limit is 140 characters only and hence one may find it difficult to express the thoughts in such limited words. Twitter is mostly text based and hence is not the ideal platform for visual content. And at least but not the least, in Twitter everyone cannot go for advertising. Despite of such criticism Twitter is still used by the marketers to effectively as a marketing tool. References Pride, M. William and Oddies. C. Ferrel,, Marketing. USA: Cengage Learning, 2011. Print. Read More