How Marketing has changed because of the development of technology - Essay Example

Change of Marketing due to Technological Advances Prepared by Submitted to Word Count 1731 words (excluding content and references pages Introduction In the present situation of ever advancing technology, a focus on marketing is needed. The identification of best plans to acquire market share and defeating competitors also should be included in marketing strategy. The creation of essential components of the product and market strategy is needed. Making a product nearer to the customer is also a compulsion in the competitive market. 1 After the advent of information technology, the marketing took new turn and the clients are being contacted through internet or the network of the companies. The marketing strategy inherent in the internet or web based services is making the customer’s work easy to contact the vendor, manufacturer or service provider. This makes the producer or the service provider’s work easy of searching a customer. For example, Cisco Systems and Bay networks turned into a billion dollar networks or companies within a short span of time. Similarly Sony company has shipped ten million CD players in sever years before 1992 and after that they have shipped same number in 7 months by the advent of internet or web services in marketing. This induced speed in the marketing strategies, by establishing a contact between customer and the manufacturer or the service provider.2 2. Research Topic (question) The advances in technology are offering the wireless and internet marketing technologies. What is the feasibility of these techniques being adopted in marketing strategies? 3. Literature Review According to Sanjit sen Gupta, in Marketing, high technology products and innovations, the technological advances provide a frame work for making marketing decisions. This is being done in high tech environment. The industries like telecommunications, information technology (both hardware and software), and biotechnology and consumer electronics are highly covered by it. Market orientation and R&D marketing interaction, marketing research tools, understanding customers, product development and management issues, distribution channels and supply chain management, pricing considerations, advertising and promotion and high technology marketing and internet are the ones that are included in the changing strategies of marketing. Business to Business marketing, new product development, E-commerce and internet marketing are designed according to the need. It was observed that the economy has gone from the state of technology as a panacea state to the major source of economic downturn in 2000-02. In that period the companies tightened their spending on technology. Even at this state, the pace of innovation in offering multiplicity of new products for customers continued. This is due to the fact that the business has widely adopted electronic business in the arena of internet. This is due to the reason that the customers are using the internet for wide range of activities. These activities include searching, shopping and joining virtual companies. The reason for this is the adoption of broadband technologies that allowed the sharing of extensive data. This resulted in the offering of more services online and the marketing of services has grown faster than the marketing of products. When company wants to thrive in high tech market place, the mastery of a diverse set of skills and capabilities are required.3 The practices of all the companies were reviewed in ‘Marketing practices of UK high technology firms’. The significant differences were observed between the high technology and low tech companies. It has concluded the presence of increasing awareness of the salience of marketing by UK high technology companies. Though they are not market oriented as low tech ones, the awareness has been increased. The results are a replicate to the findings in US high technology firms. The significant difference is that though the British companies possess the latest technology, the price competition is less than the US organizations.4 4. Analysis of Internet Marketing 4.1 Applying technology and handling competition It can be termed as little competition is necessary for a healthy growth. The handling of the competition can be termed as a direct link to the success or the failure of any company. The competitive edge can be achieved through strategic planning. For this purpose, one has to ask about the products sold and the persons or organizations contacted to sell the product. Before applying the technology to marketing, the listing of the companies adopting and selling strategies and products is necessary. The strengths and weaknesses of the competitors must be estimated. After getting a competitive edge, the technology and internet based facilities will make the company to maintain it. The web services help in continuous tracking of the competitors’ strategies. Technology changes all the time. The crucial thing is to keep in line with it. The company that depends on the internet marketing, need the viable new technology in the market. This should be done if that technology is useful in making innovative strategies about marketing. The facilities you offer to the customers online will attract more number of customers to the company. This can be made possible by attending new technology trade shows and conventions.5 The technology must give the company full range of dissemination and communication activities with cost effective methods. The technology/business risk assessment can be identified as an important factor to proceed further in marketing strategies based on technology. The risks and their probability of their occurrences need to be estimated. The impact of risk on the companies, the probability of their occurrence can be estimated. 6 4.2 Wireless and mobile technology The advances in wireless and mobile technology have created a number of new opportunities and even challenges for marketing in industry. The potential impact is about the relationship between customers and producers or providers of goods and services. The e commerce and mobile commerce are the new technological advances that are used by different companies to market their products and services. The advent of e commerce extended the scope of the companies while the introduction of mobile commerce has added new customers to the companies marketing strategy. The person who have mobile is a part of the marketing network of the companies. The blend of e commerce and M commerce can be a strategy of future. The communication information and payment device can be developed using a mobile phone. This will make possible to exchange products, ideas and services between mobile users and providers. It is assumed that the characteristics of Mobile commerce have the potential of influencing the basic marketing orientation. These can alter the general dynamics of the market. The characteristics of mobile commerce can be understood when the fact that mobile and wireless are not termed as synonyms. Though the user was mobile, there is no usage of wireless communication technology. A user sitting before his computer can be a part of the wireless communication network with an internet connection is not a mobile user. This example will clarify between mobile and wireless facilities users. The mobile commerce may be of different types and can be used as a strategy that is independent of marketing done by wireless communication. Unlike wireless communication the mobile network is characterized by two main capabilities. The ability to maintain communication between two non static locations and the other one is capacity to keep track about the location. The mobile technologies that have above two features are being developed very fast. This is in the form of wireless local area networks that are different from the wireless communication network. Though the wireless communication network user can access these networks, using these networks, the wireless communication is not possible. The mobile commerce applications not only have the ability to achieve high standard of personalization, it also interact with the customer, thus minimizing the use of wireless communication network. By adding to web database, the Mobile commerce engine can have a real time personalization engine. This contains the personal profile fo the user thus can identify him. The preferences, location marks for home or office and secure online payments can be done with this identification. 7 5. Analysis applicable to the data While analyzing the data received for the marketing strategies, there is a need to have quantitative and qualitative analysis. In case of quantitative analysis, the statistical methods that can be employed may be quartile deviation, standard deviation and variance. By employing these methods the company can know how many customers are present for each quartile of the year and for each quartile of the total turnover. The standard deviation by taking variable as the increase in the number of customers in each month and the number of months in an year as the total to divide the deviations. This gives the number to which the rate of increase or decrease of the customers will be nearer to. In case of qualitative analysis, the responses of the customers that made them adopted to the products to the company and the methods of the company that affected them can be taken into consideration. This gives an idea about the success of the methods adopted for the marketing strategies. In the case of internet marketing, the company can ask for the customer’s opinion on a given scale of satisfaction when he/she will order or purchase products or services from the company. 6. Action Plan and Time Table The time table for the implementation of the action plan requires 3 years period. In the first half of the first year collection of data regarding the strategy framing for marketing can be done. In the second half of the first year, the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data can be done and the strategy can be framed. The identification of the marketing strategies can be done in the first of the second year and in the second half the relevant internet and wireless marketing strategies can be adopted. In the third year of the of the action plan, the identification of the hardware and software for the new marketing strategies can be done in the first half of the year. In the second half of the year, the purchase of the hardware and software along with installation and implementation can be done. Type of work Time estimated to be taken Total time Collection of data and framing a marketing strategy 6 months 6 months Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data collected 6 months 1 year Identification of marketing strategies 6 months 1.5 year Adoption of relevant internet and marketing strategies 6 months 2 years Identification of hardware and software 6 months 2.5 years Installation of hardware and software and then implementation 6 months 3 years References 1. SSM, 2007, Features are not enough to sell technology. You must have a strategy to acquire and defend your market, Silicon Strategies Marketing, , electronic, 4-4-07, http://www.siliconstrat.com/ 2. Geoffrey A. Moore, 2004, Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valleys Cutting Edge, Amazon.com . ,electronic, 4-4-07, http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Tornado-Marketing-Strategies-Silicon/dp/0887308244 3. Jakki J Mohr, Sanjit Sengupta, 2007, Marketing of High-Technology Products and Innovations, amazon.ca, ,electronic, 4-4-07, http://www.amazon.ca/Marketing-High-Technology-Products-Innovations-Jakki/dp/product-description/0131411683 4.Sangeet Dhanani et al, 2007, Marketing practices of UK high technology firms, Emerald, ,electronic, 4-4-07, http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do?contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkhtml&contentId=852016 5. Virtual advisor, 2002, Creating a Competitive Advantage, va-interactive.com, ,electronic, 5-4-07, http://www.va-interactive.com/inbusiness/editorial/sales/ibt/competitive_edge.html#top 6. http://www.sapienzastudies.com/technology-analysis.html 7. Abhishek Sharma et al, 2002, M-Commerce: Analysis of Impact on Marketing Orientation, B.net, ,electronic, 5-4-07, http://sba.luc.edu/research/wpapers/011020.pdf Read More