Marketing Library and Information Services - Essay Example

Marketing of Library and Information Services INTRODUCTION Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes used to create, communicate and deliver values to customers and to manage customer relationships in a way that is beneficial to the organization and the stakeholders (Kurtz, 2008). Marketing of Library and Information Services (MLIS) primarily deals with the planning, pricing, promoting and distribution of resources that merge together to provide customer satisfaction and serves in the best interests of both the library and the customer. In MLIS, marketing is targeted to recognize potential customers and promote exchanges with them that address their needs in the best possible way. In order to provide MLIS, understanding of the working of a library and its purpose and ideology is of great importance. Marketing has played a crucial role in the Australian academic libraries. Accelerating rates of change has become the marketing reality in current times (Kotler & Caslione, 2009). ROLE OF MARKETING IN MLIS The scope of marketing in MLIS has seen increase in the recent years. This is partly due to technological advancement and partly due to changes in the educational requirements that the library aims to meet. In addition to that, new marketing methods have evolved that make it necessary for libraries to incorporate effective marketing into the delivery of resources to customers. The library needs to be speaking the language of the buyer in order to market well (Scott, 2007). Also marketing serves as a useful tool in promoting and advertising the resources of the library; this can have mutual benefits for both the library and its customers: to the library since it can attract more number of customers and to its customers in easily locating and accessing the services that they need. In Australian academic libraries, the role of marketing has received a lot of attention since educational advances and technological developments along with limited budgets have made students demand more in return for the membership fees that they are paying for libraries. NEED FOR MARKETING IN LIS One of the most significant contributions of marketing to LIS is that it helps in fostering a healthy marketing relationship with its customers. A good marketing strategy aims to identify potential customers and identifying their needs. It further requires the designing of products that meet these needs. Organizations are seeing the benefits of customer loyalty and are taking a customer-centric approach to strategy (Jain & Singh, 2010). If marketing is customer-focused, it helps to assert the importance of the customer over all other elements that are part of the power play that revolves around LIS. By being customer-focused, marketing facilitates the library in being relevant and resources and time is not wasted in the provision of services that are not needed by the customers. Therefore, focused mentality is necessary for customer satisfaction. Moreover, organizational success depends on maximizing the usage of resources and customer satisfaction. Libraries are built on mutual customer-library interaction and this idea has been used by Australian academic libraries to market resources in order to achieve better resources delivery and service satisfaction. The need for MLIS also becomes multi-fold considering the scarcity of resources and in using these resources in the best possible way. Marketing also serves to improve the image of the library and creates awareness amongst customers regarding the range of services that the library offers. The thinking that library provides indispensable tools for knowledge and that customers would be attracted naturally has changed; the contemporary world necessitates the need for marketing in order to attract customers. BARRIERS TO MLIS One of the barriers to effective marketing has been financial limitations. The low amount of budgets set for libraries by institutions makes it difficult for librarians to devise a cost-effective plan that markets products effectively. In Australian academic libraries, direct funding from the government as a percentage is decreasing; the higher education is under increasing pressure and universities are seeking non-government based resources to fund their disciplines (Gupta, 2006). Also there needs to be a change in the attitudes of the librarians in order to appreciate the importance of marketing in LIS (Ravichandran & Babu, 2008). Professionals often underestimate the role marketing plays in customer satisfaction and this lack of awareness often becomes a hindrance in the provision of MLIS. Marketing is not an easy task and construing a management plan for the marketing of library resources requires professional expertise in the marketing. Marketing know-how is also important for professionals in building good customer interactions and in advertising the resources of the library; thus if librarians are not well-trained to deal with marketing strategies, they will not be able to deliver the services appropriately. What a lot of library professionals do not understand is the extent to which marketing goes. Marketing is often considered apropos to advertising and publicizing the resources; however it involves marketing research, pricing and other elements of marketing that come into play before the product is placed on the shelf. WHAT PRODUCTS ARE MARKETED? The library is an educational department and therefore the products that are marketed are academic in nature. The library can market any unique and historical text that it has acquired and which other libraries do not have. Also, with technological advances, there is a paradigm shift from the manual searching of databases to everything being stored in information systems and accessed electronically. Australian academic libraries aim to market their vast collections. This can include online patent databases or a set of electronic medical journals. The libraries also market online versions of examination papers, development of an e-print archive of research papers, the use of plagiarism detecting software and online thesis submission amongst many other services that seek to attract a wide range of customers (Gupta, 2006). MARKETING STRATEGIES There are multiple marketing approaches that can be used to market LIS. Two of these are the strategic marketing and the tactical marketing. According to Chris Allen (2009), the key difference between tactical and strategic marketing is the focus on meshing overall customer situations with the overall company direction. Strategic marketing has a more customer-oriented approach and it depends on two environments which include that marketing should be in line with the organizational aims and that marketing decisions are made by higher authorities. Australian academic libraries have embraced the ideology of relationship marketing, which encompasses the interests of both the library and the customers (Gupta, 2006). Procedures of strategic marketing To be effective, a strategic marketing system must be goal-oriented (Wilson & Gilligan, 2005). Marketing strategies need to consider the needs of the customers and assess the improvements that can be made to the services provided by the library. Furthermore, strategic marketing needs to assess the nature if customers, and the changing trends in customer preferences in order to devise an effective marketing strategy. The strategic marketing plan process has three main steps. The first includes segmenting the market according to the geography of the market and the demography of the market as well as the psychographic and behavioral trends rife in the market (Allen, 2009). Australian academic libraries provide services to an assortment of clients coming with varying preferences. They are segmented using marketing research strategies by age, discipline of study, origin, ability, and differential services that have been developed by libraries to cater to the large market (Gupta, 2006). The next step in strategic marketing involves profiling the marketing segments according to the financial expenditure and the gains that can be expected from the marketing. It also included analyzing the market for that specific product. Third step of strategic marketing includes marketing the products according to their demand as assessed in the second step. Australian libraries have done this by unique selling propositions, which define the marketing technique in reference to the product being marketed. The last step in strategic marketing is monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of the marketing strategy. Australian academic libraries believe in the importance of evaluation of services. They have implemented evaluation of the services as part of their marketing strategy. According to the libraries, it is essential that the librarians know the views of the clients, otherwise they can wrongly presume that the customers require the service that they have marketed although they do not. The Australian academic libraries have put into practice two main methods of evaluating the service delivery. The first one is asking the staff about the views of the customers; this is relevant because staff has the most interaction with the customers and is subsequently more in touch with the complaints and problems faced by the customers. The second method is to observe what clients do and this is accomplished by many ways including door counts (Gupta, 2006). These libraries have also used flowcharts that track the movements of the customers in the library and assess the areas of the library which are used the most. That way the library can make an analysis of the resources that are in demand and focus on the development of marketing strategies that promote these resources. THE SEVEN Ps OF THE MARKETING MIX The marketing concept stresses the understanding of the benefits that customers seek and developing shared notions of these values (Rowley, 2006). Marketing specialists are in charge of the development of marketing techniques that promote the interests of the organization as well as the service users. For any marketing technique, identification of the needs of the customers is integral to the marketing process. The products that are designed need to meet the expectations of the clients and the marketing techniques should be clear and unambiguous enough to communicate the information to potential service users. The pricing of the services should be reasonable and the service should be easily accessible by prospective customers. In the end, a customer satisfaction evaluation should be done to ensure that the product has met the standards the customer was expecting. These techniques need to be done in an organized fashion and the seven Ps of the marketing mix not only assesses the potential of these techniques in terms of market share and profitability, but also provide the framework for their application. The seven Ps of the marketing mix are as follows: 1. Product This part of the marketing mix includes the products and services that are offered by the library such as information services, as well as secondary services that the customers require. The library should know what the customer wants and should have an in-depth knowledge of the product/service in question. One needs to make an assessment of the awareness amongst the clients regarding the particular service or product and the range of similar products offered by competitors. The Australian academic libraries have adopted the strategy of bringing awareness amongst their clients about the services offered and of establishing the appropriateness of the services. In order to win over customers, the library needs to sound authoritative and convincing with regard to the uniqueness of the product it offers and be able to have an understanding of how the product relates to the need of the customers and the organizational strategies. 2. Place The place of marketing primarily depends on the knowledge of the location of the market and what needs that the consumers are expecting to be fulfilled. Place is no longer defined by the physical location. Even virtual learning environments are considered places where the market demand for services is high. Thus libraries need to ensure that all high-demand areas of services are assessed in order to satisfy demands regardless of the nature of the place. The library also needs to consider the impracticability of location choice in an area where customer demand is not high, while ignoring the areas that project a high demand. The library should not ignore the fact that consumers may feel more comfortable on home territory and face to face communication might be important in many areas of marketing. The Australian academic libraries ensure this by teaching their staff effective communication skills in places of high consumer demand and by visiting important clients. They use access workstations for quick service, specialist study places for students and access to computers amongst many other services to provide a convenient place for the delivery of services for the customers. 3. Promotion Promotion involves the utilization of coercive and customer-attracting information for publicizing a product/service in a market. Promotion should be cost-effective and realistic. Libraries should not promote services that they do not deliver; neither should they overstate the services being delivered. The kind of promotion can include sales promotion, publicity and advertisements. Effective promotional strategies emphasize on the value of the service being delivered and aim to target mainly potential customers. The role of media is important in promoting products; moreover being opportunistic and seizing any opportunity that helps promote the services can increase the efficacy of the marketing strategies. The Australian academic libraries have increased their promotional efficiency by training their staff in promoting the services. Induction programs in customer service techniques have enabled librarians to be more apt at promoting he service or product. Furthermore, these libraries have appointed library staff to specific departments and this liaison role facilitates in the promotion of specific services and products to students and faculty according to their particular needs. 4. Pricing Pricing is concerned with both base prices of the products and discounts (Pride, Hughes & Kapoor, 2009). Libraries need to pay due attention to the reasonable pricing of the services that they deliver. If the services are over-priced, it will tend to decrease demand for that service, as customers would flock to other cheap competitors. It is important to maintain customer loyalty since it can add up to financial success of the organization (Humby, Hunt & Phillips, 2007). Pricing for a customer in a library would include the cost of traveling to the library and the membership fees for the utilization of the services. Many Australian academic libraries are working for the provision of services that meet the standards of the students and faculty in terms of the financial investment they have done in return for the library services. 5. People It is important to consider people when devising a marketing plan since the customers are not only using the service but also deriving an experience. Companies that have adopted customer relationship management are successful in their relationships with customers (Yamaguchi, 2009). Staff should be customer-focused and responsive to their needs. For this purpose The Australian academic libraries have trained the staff in having effective communicational skills to interact with the customers on professional yet friendly basis. They have used name badges for their staff so that the customers can identify them and converse with them in a better way. These libraries have employed people who are hardworking and focus on their work. 6. Process Processes refer to the procedures and activities through which the customer can access the information. If the service provided is good, the customer will not have any problems in the processes. However, if the customer does face problems, then research has indicated that it will share about it with seven other people, thus the image of the library will go down. The Australian academic libraries have adopted the strategy of Sorry-Glad-Sure that focuses more about showing consideration to the customer rather than asserting knowledge about the processes. 7. Physical evidence This refers to the environment in which the services are delivered that aids in the better performance and delivery of the products and services. The Australian academic libraries ahs done this through various methods; one of such methods is branding. This has made the color, layout and design of different sections of the library same so that customers can differentiate easily between them. Furthermore, these libraries have enforced badging techniques and have given colors to different parts of the library according to the theme. The Australian academic libraries also operate a website that makes access to information about the services easier. The use of these seven Ps of the marketing mix helps libraries in managing their resources better and marketing them in a cost-effective way that intersperses the interests of both the clients and the organization. CONCLUSION Thus in conclusion, marketing approaches are important in ensuring that the needs of the clients are met. MLIS should seek to organize resource such that information access and retrieval is easy (Flaten, 2006). In order to do so, knowledge of the philosophy of the library and its operational environment, along with knowledge about customer expectations as well as effective marketing strategies is necessary. The marketing plan helps identify the target market for the firm’s product (Kurtz, MacKenzie & Snow, 2009). However, the value of feedback is very integral to the marketing process since that would help determine the effectiveness of the process. The Australian academic libraries have placed great importance on it and use questionnaires and surveys in establishing the efficacy of the marketing strategies. REFERENCE LIST Allen, C., 2009. What is Strategic Marketing Planning? [Online] Available at: http://www.allen.com/cgi-bin/gt/tpl.h,content=125 [Accessed 14 May 2010]. Flaten, T., K., 2006. Management, marketing and promotion of library services based on statistics, analyses and evaluation. Munchen: Walter de Gruyter. Gupta, D. K., 2006. Marketing library and information services: international perspectives. Germany: Walter de Gruyter. Humby, C., Hunt, T. & Phillips, T., 2007. Scoring points: how Tesco continues to win customer loyalty. 2nd ed. London: Kogan Page Publishers. Jain, D. & Singh, S. S., 2010. Customer lifetime value research in marketing: a review and future directions. Journal of Interactive Marketing, [Online]. 16 (2), Available at: http://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=6250879 [Accessed 14 May 2010]. 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