Digital Revolutions and Changes in Global Marketing - Essay Example

Digital Revolutions and Changes in Global Marketing Table of Content Contents Table of Content 2 Introduction 3 Communication Technology and Marketing 3 Interaction on Social Media 4 Reviews and Feedback Systems 4 The Internet Consumer 5 Consumers Segmentation 5 The Globalized Market 5 Identifying Promoters 6 The Power with the People 6 Conclusion 7 References 8 Introduction The most important part of any organization or business is the consumer section of the stakeholders. This is the section where the entire organization’s efforts are directed. The satisfaction of the consumers is a major target of any marketing strategy and hence a study of the consumers’ needs always focus on improving the strategy. Digital revolution assists corporations and organization to be in the virtual environment of their consumer. This ensures that the study of the market is effected in a rather cheap and easy method. When involved in social marketing, organizations and businesses secure a position within the market which the consumers can identify with. To understand the consumers, organizations have historically employed a market research strategy. This traditional method involves deploying marketing representatives to the ground to identify the consumers’ needs and advise the business on the best approach to addressing these needs. Advancement of technology has however changed the situation. The invention of the internet, mobile phones, and other technological devices have revolutionized marketing. Today, human beings are connected to one another regardless of the distance. This implies that the physical interaction of the marketer and the target audience is no longer necessary. The interaction and market study happens online and through the technological devices. This has changed the global marketing environment. This paper is a research report on the changes in global marketing that have resulted from the digital revolution. The paper addresses these changes from the perspective of technology and globalization. Communication Technology and Marketing Marketing involves a great deal of communication. Technologies such as the web, mobile phones, social media, and customer relationship management systems greatly affect modern marketing. The marketing representatives of any company or specific product must communicate with the consumers. The communication helps them to learn and identify the consumers’ needs and requirements. Further, this also helps them to identify the challenges that the product may face in the market and hence adjust their strategies accordingly. In the past, communicating with the consumers demanded costly travels and promotions to issue questionnaires or conduct interviews (Glance et al. 2005). However, with the digital revolution communication technology has made it possible to interact and communicate with consumers in a more effective and cost effective way. Interaction on Social Media Marketers are now targeting social media and the internet. These new methods provide more innovative safer and faster means of implementing marketing strategies. Besides reducing the cost of traveling and manual interaction, the virtual promotions, advertisements and postings make it easier to market in the current age (Spacecast Business 2013). Mobile devices are responsible for bringing products information to people in a faster and easier method. This makes more people more aware of the existence of certain products as compared to the traditional method where the expenses were prohibitive of a similar success. Reviews and Feedback Systems In addition, the feedback system in these devices gives the consumer an avenue to voice their compliments or complaints through reviews. The feedback is necessary for adjusting the product or the marketing strategy (Kiang et al. 2000). This helps the company to focus on providing the consumers with a product that is acceptable to them. This also assists marketers to recognize the feedback that consumers have concerning a rival brand or a competing product. With such information, a manufacturer may easily know what their competitors are doing better and hence copy, or where they are failing so that they can capitalize on that to expand their market share. Therefore, in communications technology, the digital revolution has revolutionized marketing strategies and increased competitiveness of many industries to the benefit of both the consumer and the organizations. The Internet Consumer Traditionally, the search for consumers on whom to impose a product trial was a challenge. It required expensive travels and searching for the ideal change agents in the society. This has been drastically changed by the digital revolution. The current situation is that many people are connected to the internet. In fact, studies have shown that at least 70% of people between the ages of 20 and 40 years in America cannot go a day without accessing the internet. This age group also represent the largest population in the whole world who are the main target for the producers and marketers. This also implies that marketers have access to the target market at each time of the day. The internet consumer is easier to convince through psychology targeting strategies. Consumers Segmentation However, the marketer must be wary of the consumer segmentation on the internet just as in traditional marketing. What makes the internet a better avenue is that it makes it easier for the marketer to study the consumers’ behavior and attitude towards a certain kind of content. This helps the marketer to speculate the response that a product may face in the segment and hence make a decision on whether to abort or proceed with the strategy. The emergence of the internet consumer makes it easier for marketers to easily access the market and study it ( Gurau 2008). The segmentation also allows the marketer to align the products or strategy with the consumer subset. The Globalized Market The technological revolution has been termed as the third industrial revolution in the world. It has had such a great impact in that although the industrial reputation has remained in the hands of a few people, the information is at the fingertips of a wider population. Many people can access all the information regarding an industry, a service or a product (Kiang et al. 2000). On the surface, the expanding market environment can be thought to provide a new challenge to marketers. This is because the marketers would be thought have more people to convince. However, this is not the case. Globalization has been largely attributed to the development of technology and the advancement of the information system. What this means is that marketers have a new opportunity of using easier and cheaper means of marketing to communicate to a larger crowd. With a large population, however, the marketers have a challenge related to emerging markets. In the markets where their products or those of their competitors have not accessed, it is difficult to engage the population. Identifying Promoters However, the same technology offers a solution to the problem. Through the internet, marketer can access change agents who the population can identify with and who are easily convinced to participate in the products promotion in the new markets. The global interaction helps the marketer to access the target market and identify promoters and change agents. Digital revolution, therefore, has a positive impact on marketing. It has changed the size of the market and contributed new marketing strategies to access the new market. The global interactions further assist in expanding the market by making the new market focal points for further publicity and product promotion. Having a digital entry into a new market is easy and cheap as the enthusiasm of the new consumer makes them promote the product deeper into the market. The Power with the People With the digital revolution, the power rests with the people. The extent to which a product become popular among a target consumer segment depends directly on the entry behavior and strategy. When the consumers and their identifiable figures are adequately used and respected, the entry is easy and the people become not just consumers but also potential marketers of the product. This is different from the traditional marketing strategies where trial and error was more common as a strategy (Glance et al. 2005). With technology, losses related to consumers’ negative responses are minimized. The consumers are given the power to decide what type of products can access their doors and this power and information is easily accessible such that the marketers are aware of the requirements of the population before getting into the market (wsidigitalmarketing.com). Conclusion Digital revolution has greatly revolutionized the marketing industry. The effects of this revolution are clearly visible in a variety of concepts. First, with technology the production cost has greatly reduced. This makes the market be flooded with many cheap products. This gives the consumers worthy options and it is a challenge to the marketers (Zysman 2006). However, the same revolution provides solutions to the marketers’ challenges. They are, with technology, able to focus on wider market for their products and also learn what their competitors are doing. In this way, the marketers can now align products with their consumers’ needs with less hustle and in a cost effective way. Adjustment of marketing strategies to the new market needs have been witnessed. Many companies and producers are focusing on internet marketing. With the audience more readily available, this revolution has helped the marketers to segment their consumers and are thus able to identify their main focus in the marketing (Andriole 2005). Besides, the digital revolution has changed the ownership of brand power. Whereas the producers and the marketers have the original focus of the product, the power of access to information and hence making choices is on the people who can view the product. The feedback from the consumers also happens to be easily accessible by the marketers giving them a chance to respond before getting into the market. This has changed the long process of market research and made it economical and time-saving. References Andriole, S. J. (2005). The 2nd digital revolution. Hershey, Pa, IRM Press. http://www.books24x7.com/marc.asp?bookid=10319. Glance, N. et al., 2005. Deriving marketing intelligence from online discussion. Proceeding of the eleventh ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery in data mining KDD 05, 05pp, pp.419–428. Available at: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1081870.1081919. Gurau, C., 2008. Integrated online marketing communication: implementation and management. Journal of Communication Management, 12, pp.169–184. Kiang, M.Y., Raghu, T.S. & Shang, K.H.M., 2000. Marketing on the Internet - who can benefit from an online marketing approach? Decision Support Systems, 27, pp.383–393. Spacecast Business (Fri, Apr 26 2013). How the Digital Revolution Has Changed Marketing. http://www.spacecoastbusiness.com/how-the-digital-revolution-has-changed-marketing/ WSI Digital Marketing. The Digital Revolution. http://www.wsidigitalmarketing.com/the-digital-revolutionaspx.aspx Zysman, J. (2006). How revolutionary was the digital revolution: national responses, market transitions, and global technology. 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