Changes in Marketing - Literature review Example

Introduction Marketing is a quite interesting discipline as it focuses on the consumer psychology and tastes and subsequently helps organizations to design and develop strategies to continue to serve their customers. However, due to the changing nature of the customer preferences as well as choices, there is a constant change in the way organization tailor their strategies and marketing campaigns to serve their customers. Marketing in 21st century is now more based on the relationship marketing due to changing consumer needs and a new emphasis on the rise of consumerism. (Phillips, 2005). With the advent of new technology it has now become possible to launch global marketing campaigns and increase the overall reach to the international customers. What is also significant to note that with the rise of the new trends, new marketing ethics emerged too thus it has become more challenging for the organizations to actually manage their marketing campaigns more successfully.( Nias, 2010). This is therefore an era of uncertainty for the marketers and marketers have to cope with the difficult and challenging situations wherein they need to strike a balance between the organizational needs as well as fulfilling and satisfying their customers at the same time. Thus there are many factors which marketers of today has to look into and manage the risk while at the same time ensuring that they are meeting the new challenges.( Whitehead 2OO7). This paper will therefore discuss as to what is changing in the marketing, how the consumers have changed over the period of time and how the overall future will look like for marketing. What is changing in marketing? The new era has expanded the types of media available for advertising purposes and consumers now have diverse range of choices duly supported by the technology. As such it has been argued that the new marketing approaches require a sense of financial IT to overcome the challenges which it is currently facing. (Reynard, 2010). There are different variables or parameters which are causing this shift in the marketing and the changing consumer needs. Environment is one of the most important variables which is causing much of the change in the way organizations tend to market their products. Today’s customers have become relatively more concerned about the environment and therefore require organizations to basically design and develop their products in such a manner which are environmental friendly and focusing on providing sustainable products.( Harrison, Newholm, &, Shaw, 2005). The term of the sustainable business therefore is one of the terms which are used to denote to the changing paradigm in which businesses work and offer their products and services. Environment specially plays greater role in offerings made by the automobile companies as they not only have to comply with the tough environmental regulations but will also have to design their marketing campaigns in such a manner which can provide appeal to the customers. (Dibb, 1996). For example, hybrid cars are targeted for those customers who are willing to drive environmental friendly cars which not remain fuel efficient but also provide the same level comfort and luxury to the customers.( Austerberry, 2010). Personalized Communication Traditional marketing focused on the quantity viewership with emphasis on the commercials as the main media vehicle to reach to their customers. However, the trends seem to be changing as now customers require a relatively higher quality of engagement rather than mass media commercials. This also means that the marketing relies heavily upon the word of mouth as the major source of advertisement for the firms.( Neff,2009). A person to people communication rather than the use of mass commercials is the way marketing is being done nowadays. Relaying ads through small computer apps on smartphones is just one example of how the firms are exploiting this opportunity and coming closer to their customers and offering them unique perspective on the way marketing is being done now. Changing Consumer Needs There are different influences which are changing the overall consumer needs in the current market environment. New technology has played a great role in creating different niche markets wherein the overall consumer needs have become more fluid. The emergence of social media as well as the dominance of smartphones as the main mediums of entertainment, firms now focus on the changing needs of the customers. For example, Apple’s IPAD is a new phenomenon in the market however, it is strongly supported by the development of other ancillary products such as small apps which relay the advertising messages. (Johnson, 2010). Thus the overall product offering and essentially the bundling of the products is changing at the great speeds and firms have to compete fiercely to gain the market space. How consumers changed? The basic shift which has occurred in the way consumers have changed is basically they have became more smarter in their choices and rely less on organizations to actually tell them what to purchase and what to not. As discussed above that the word of mouth is now becoming a predominant way of marketing the products and therefore new consumers rely on word of mouth more than anything else. It has therefore become more significant for the firms to actually create the necessary goodwill and publicity which can easily allow them to tap into this new opportunity of word of mouth marketing.( McCann, 1995). It is also important to note that the consumers have become savvier in the sense that they require different treatment from the organizations. As such organizations now have to design their offerings in such a manner which can fulfill the changing and peculiar needs of their customers. The fluid nature of the consumer behavior therefore indicates that the consumers have continued to evolve and develop unique tastes and preferences which are often difficult to fulfill. (Dutta, 2010). It is also important to note that the employment has now became uncertain and consumers, specially in West prefer not to consume so lavishly as they were used to do in the past. The future uncertainty therefore is one the biggest elements as to how the consumers are going to behave in future. The recent economic downturn in major developed markets of the world witnessed a gradual decline in the consumer spending owing to the overall uncertainty related with the job prospects and the future of the economy. Such uncertainties will remain in future also and as such consumers have already started to behave in relatively more cautious manner. This reduction in the consumer spending have hurt many firms however, firms like Tesco were successful in overcoming that situation also by employing innovative marketing techniques. During the recent times, Tesco doubled the reward points on its loyalty cards and thus was able to retain its customers and achieve its targets as compared to its competitors such as ASDA. Further consumers have become more ethical in nature and therefore expect the organizations to behave and act accordingly. Ethical considerations, as discussed above, are therefore dear to the customers and customers require the organizations to not only develop their products in ethical manner but advertise them accordingly too. (Paliwoda & Slater 2009). For example, there has been a constant debate regarding the Nike and its contract factories located at different developing countries of the world. Similarly, consumers seem to have reacted differently to the oil and exploration companies because of their role in the exploitation of resources. Thus the customers are now focusing on the issues like recyclability of the products and packages, development of organic products etc. Demographics is also one of the key reasons in the way consumer needs have changed over the period of time. Population is ageing in major markets of the world therefore there is a gradual shift and inclination towards a particular set of products to suit the ageing population. Healthcare services as well as the insurance and pension services are some of the examples of the services which are going to be used heavily in the future because of the current shift in the demographics and the overall choices made by the firms. The current explosion of digital goods and social media such as facebook has also radically altered the needs of the consumers as consumers now focus more on products which help them to remain connected with each others. It is because of this reason that there is a continuous explosion of new products in the market most specifically on the Information technology and social media side. What does the future holds? It has been suggested that in future firms have to focus on the brand building because essential all products are same. The focus on the brand building therefore will involve the integrated marketing approaches as well as the consumer behavior therefore the focus will be less on the traditional 4P’s of the marketing and more the development and building of an effective brand in the market. Brand building also seems to be more promising because ultimately it will replace the traditional concepts of marketing and only those products and services will be successful which have a better brand story to tell. Big seed marketing is also a relatively new concept which is being advocated as the future of marketing as under this most of marketing the message is actually passed on through mass media however, social networks are subsequently used to pass the idea to others and as such a chain of word of mouth. This type of marketing is powerful in the sense that it offers organizations a wider choice an access to large number of customers without potential restrictions of traditional boundaries. Further, the access to different segments of the market is easier too. Neural networks allow organizations to basically map various factors such as spending patterns, family and peer groups etc and as such neural networks will than allow the organizations to develop the kind of strategies which mostly suit the consumers and meet their needs. (Potharst, et al 2001) Marketing also seems to take a new turn with the use of technology and neural networks is not just one technology which is taking charge. The augmented reality is one of the most explosive technologies which marketing will readily use to advertise and target its products in an entirely different manner. Organizations such as Apple are already using Augmented reality and have integrated the same into their products such as Apple IPhone where applications are being developed in order to support the Augmented Reality marketing efforts of the organizations.( Shaw, 2010). Recently, the movie Avatar was screened through 3D Viewing at premium prices as the producers utilized the augmented reality techniques to enhance the overall appeal of the product and made it relatively more appealing to the customers. (Brooks, 2009). As such this will certainly help the organizations to better offer their products and target them accordingly. Finally social media and marketing is considered as the key to the future of the marketing as future marketing will be based upon how the organizations actually utilize and exploit the space provided by social media. This is because of the fact that social media tend to exploit and probe different behaviors and trends and accurately following these trends can allow the organizations to actually better design their marketing efforts.( Evans, 2008). Overall, future of marketing is quite challenging as the use of technology may increase the challenges of increasing the right kind of customers. Since social media is quite open chances are that the advertising message may not reach the targeted customers of the organization. Conclusion Today’s consumer is entirely different than the customer of past decade and organizations now increasingly find it difficult to meet the changing consumer needs and demands. As a result of these changes, marketing as a concept has changed radically as old concepts of focusing on 4Ps has now changed. Companies now focus on the brand building which is slowly overtaking the traditional manners in which organizations use to market their products. It has been argued that the gradually organizations are adapting to this new change and are adapting different methods and tools to cope with this change. Organizations are now tailoring their messages in more personalized manner and using word of mouth as one of the most potent sources of advertising and creating goodwill for the organizations. Advertising has become more personalized and unique methods such as advertising through small smart phone applications is a reality of the time. Future for the marketing is quite challenging as the overall competition has increased and the traditional vehicles of marketing have been replaced with other media. Social media marketing holds the key to success in future for the organization as concepts like seed marketing are taking firm roots to dominate the future landscape of marketing. Conclusion 1. Austerberry, D (2010). Times are changing. Broadcast Engineering. 52 (11), pp.6. 2. Brooks, X (2009). Is James Camerons 3D movie Avatar the shape of cinema to come? [online]. [Accessed 23rd November 2010]. Available from: . 3. Dibb, S (1996). The impact of the changing marketing environment in the Pacific Rim: four case studies. International Journal of Retail . 24 (11), pp.16-29. 4. Dutta, S (2010). Whats Your Personal Social Media Strategy?. 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