The advent of the internet age and mobile technology - Essay Example

The world is most definitely coming closer together. The advent of the internet age and mobile technology has made time and space virtually irrelevant when it comes to interpersonal communications and business transactions. Huge physical distances are now all but meaningless, as are regular business hours. A person could shop for goods and services, handle banking transactions, pay bills, and research product information all from the comfort of their living room sofa, twenty-four hours per day, seven days a week.

It is as easy, if not easier, to conduct business or interact with someone oceans away as it is to do so with someone who is in the same town.With this virtual shrinking of distances between people comes the ability to be much more customized in terms of solutions and marketing. To be sure, the ability of companies to remain competitive in today's global business climate depends on their ability to anticipate and meet the personal needs of each individual with whom they conduct transactions. Technology enables businesses to detect various degrees of individual interest in various subjects, and then match marketing campaigns in a way that is most likely to resonate with various categories of people.

A more standardized approach may have been necessary back in the day when companies depended on a certain amount of business within a particular defined geography and set of hours in order to deliver goods and services most efficiently within those constraints. Standardization was also a marketing tool designed to reassure potential consumers of a particular product or service that the purchase were making was identical in quality to those of other who are making the same purchase. In the pre-internet age, when product information and research was not as readily available as it is today, such an assurance would have been very important to consumers who would otherwise have little reason to be confident that their purchases would meet their needs.

Today, however, potential consumers have such ready access to product information that they are capable of assuring themselves of a product's quality and attributes regardless of whether or not other purchasers receive the same product with the exact same attributes. Modern consumers expect businesses to leverage technology to understand their unique needs and to market in a way that provides the best information about how solutions can be customized and tailored to meet those needs. Failure to anticipate and speak to personalized needs and interests is a recipe for competitive disaster in today's global business climate.

If one company does not do it, then another will quickly step up and fill the gap. At the end of the day, that will be the company that wins.Apple's iPod is a prime example of the importance of customization in global marketing. The iPod series has become wildly successful largely because of Apple's master marketing campaign that focused on potential consumers' sense of fashion, their need for an individualized and highly portable music solution, and the easy usability and functionality of what, at the time, was relatively new MP3 technology.

Focusing on customization rather than standardization is largely the reason why Apple's marketing campaign has been as successful as it has been. Had Apple taken a standardization approach, it would not have been able to differentiate itself as effectively from the other players in the MP3 market, such as Dell and Sony.