Marketing in Transition

Introduction

Marketing is the management process that identifies, anticipates and satisfies customer requirements profitably. In pre-modern economies, the predominance of small enterprise and there was monopoly and there was no recognition of marketing as a separate field of expertise. Marketing emerged as a separate technical field only in the late 19th century.

In the present scenario, the changing needs and wants or taste and preferences among the customers leads to paradigm shift in marketing. This is due to changing attitude and behaviour of the customers, globalization, increasing purchasing power and changing life style of the customers.

Causes for Marketing in Transition

• Globalization - Globalization has brought changes in technology, quality, service, work culture and undoubtedly fierce competition.
• Emerging Middle-Class Consumers - the increasing Purchasing Power of the Middle-Class consumers creates the MNC's to seek opportunity in the emerging market.
• Changing Lifestyle and attitude of Consumers - since there is a change in the customers lifestyle due to western influence the customer's needs and expectations has increased.
• Increasing literacy rate
• Children influence in buying decision making
• Changing perspective of rural marketing in India
• Increasing penetration of mass media
• Consumer awareness
• Information revolution
• An Enormous growth in international business

Formation of marketing concepts and practices
• 1905 - the University of Pennsylvania offered a course in "The Marketing of Products"
• 1908 - Harvard Business School opens
• 1940s - electronic computers developed
• 1980s - emergence of relationship marketing
• 1984 - introduction of guerilla marketing
• 1995-2001 - the Dot-com bubble temporarily re-defines the future of marketing
• 1996 - identification of viral marketing

Emerging New Marketing Practices

Due to increased competition the companies had necessity to enhance additional features to their products to promote the sale of their products. Many companies followed different marketing practices to attract their customers.

Winning concepts and marketing practices are
• Relationship marketing
• Co-branding
• Viral Marketing
• Sachet Marketing
• Green marketing
• Rural marketing
• Destination marketing
• Online marketing
• Cause related marketing

MARKETING IN TRANSITION

A transition from a product oriented approach to a resource oriented approach

Transaction marketing Relationship marketing
Focus on Obtaining new customers Customer retention
Orientation to Service features Customer benefits
Timescale shorts long
Customer service Little emphasis High emphasis
Customer commitment Limited High
Customer contact Limited High

Quality

Primarily an operations concern

The concern to all

Nowadays many companies are practicing the new marketing concepts and practices. Some of the examples are as follows.

Relationship marketing:

The domain of relationship marketing extends into many areas of marketing and strategic decision making. In the phenomenon of cooperation and collaboration with customers becomes the dominant paradigm of marketing practices. Relationship marketing has the potential to emerge as the predominance perspective in the paradigm of marketing.

In the fierce competitive market customer relationship management is emerging as the core marketing activity in companies. For that to maintain companies practices customer retention strategies and having good relation with the customers.

Example:
HSBC bank sent greeting cards to the customers on their birthdays to have good relationship
Whirlpool do very good post sale service to the customers.

Sachet Marketing

In India, Unilever successfully markets Sunsil and Lux shampoo sachets sold in units of 2-4 dollar cents; Clinic All Clear anti-dandruff shampoo sachets at 2.5 rupees each; and 16 cent Rexona deodorant sticks.

Idhayam gingili oil available for Rs 4/- package.
To capture the BOTTOM OF PYRAMID also

Green Marketing

It refers to the process of selling products and/or services based on their environmental benefits. Such a product or service may be environmentally friendly in itself or produced and/or packaged in an environmentally friendly way.

Green marketing can be a very powerful marketing strategy though when it's done right. Nowadays all companies are trying to produce eco-friendly products. And many companies have got ISO 14001 awards and strive to get.
Examples are ITC products, in the note books, it is environment friendly notebook.

Changing Perspective Of Rural Marketing In India

The great Indian rural market is characterized by huge untapped potential and opportunities. It is estimated that almost 70% of Indian consumers live in rural areas, which generate almost half of the national income. The number of middle income households in rural India is growing to above 111 million by 2007. There are almost twice as many lower middle income households in rural areas as in the urban areas.

A large number of corporate are excited about tapping the potential of rural areas. The recent entry of some corporate like Bharti, ITC, DCM shriram consolidated, EID parry and Amul etc. proved their fascination towards this sector. These corporates tried to develop successful model of integrating information-technology in rural transformation in a profitable way.

The tamilnadu based EID parry has developed an agro-portal [http://www.indiaagrline.com] to cater the specific needs of the rural farming community. It is an endeavor to catalyze e-commerce in agricultural and non-farms products by offering a network of partnerships. The content is available in local tamil language.

The Anand, Gurajat based Amuls DISK dairy information system KIOSK project is yet another milestone of integrating corporate sector and information technology. These kiosk serve valuable information related to dairying, breeding and rearing cattle .

ITC e-choupal has emerged as one of the most ambitious project integrating information technology and corporate sector for rural transformation. ITC e-choupal network has already covered approximately 3.1 million farmers through 5050 choupal in 29,500 villages. The company has ambitious plan to reach 1,00,000 villages covering 10 million farmers by 2010 with whopping approximately 1,000 crore. It is opening 5-6 e-choupals everyday in six different states of India.

Pepsi rural marketing

Pepsi company India has entered into rural market by having joint programme with the Punjab agriculture university in ludiana and Punjab agro industries corporation in chandigarh. The programme focuses on evolving agricultural practices to help Punjab farmers produce crops that would make Indian products internationally competitive. To cultivate a range of sweet oranges for its Tropicana range.

Apart from that, they have given advertisement to attract the rural people with the celebrity of Amitabh bachchan and star cricketer sachin tendulkar.

Coca-cola rural marketing

With the help of Isha foundation coca-cola released the CD of the coca-cola tamil CSR film "NESA KARANGAL" and also acknowledged and appreciated coca-cola's efforts in promoting social cohesiveness and sportsmanship with an aim to transform rural lives,

Advertisements to attract the rural customers are maasa-actress Rani Mukherji acted in this advertisement and says "masti ka chataka" , Satis shah's maaza ad is also based on village background.

Aamir khan acted in the advertisement which showcases a beautiful village background with the punch line "thanda ka matlab cocacola" and also ad title "soni kudi" targeted the villagers.

Destination marketing:

Destination marketing is all about selling the experience. To sell the experience is far more difficult. In destination marketing media plays a major role . word of mouth plays a vital role in destination marketing . people love to discuss their tour, infact they feel proud in telling their experiences, they bring gifts for their close ones they show their photographs and purchases to their relatives and neighbours

Eg . kerala has implemented the destination marketing very successfully and emerged as the most acclaimed tourist destination of the country in the recent past. Because of this destination marketing kerala has achieved remarkable success in generating revenue and employment in state through tourism. It is estimated nearly $100 million which generate the employment opportunity in kerala.

In the recent past all the successful stories of destination marketing that is Malaysia, Goa, Kerala, Singapore etc.

Emergence of theme parks such as ADHISAYAM, MGM , BLACK THUNDER,- all are examples of destination marketing.

Transition from kirana stores to modern organized retail outlets:

Modern retailing in India is growing rapidly. Although it commands just 3% of the overall retail market share, changing demographics and consumer taste are driving the growth of more than 30% of the modern retail formats. It is expected to grow another 9% in the year of 2010. India is more attractive than ever to global retailers.

Major players in India are:

Pantaloon retail India limited or future group, RPG group, Tata group, k.Raheja corp. group of companies, RRL (Reliance retail limited), A.B.Birla group, Gati, Calvin klein,murjani group, Disney artist stores, Vishal group (vishal megamart)
Foreign players in India are
Wal-mart stores, Carrefour, Tesco, Rosy blue group, LVMH Group, Metro
This transition makes the marketing in transition

Transition in Segmentation:
Transition from demographic based segmentation to psychographic based segmentation . since 1950's market segmentation has been referred to as a process of identifying groups of individuals who are similar in attitudes etc. and the segmentation is of demographic segmentation . after 1970s it is psychographic segmentation , know about the customer taste and preferences and collect at the real time point of purchase data. And now it is need based segmentation is using for different marketing functions like advertising and new product development .

Cause related marketing

Cause related marketing is practiced on the rationale that consumers are human beings are kind hearted. The customer pay the amount with some satisfaction that the specific amount is to for relevant social cause.

Example

A sanitary napkin brand "whisper" announced a contribution o Re.1 on every pack of sales for blind relief society. This helps in improving whisper's market share.

HLL announced a contribution of Rs 0.50 on the sale of each of its brand of lifebuoy brand soap to a diarrhea project.

Co-branding

Co-branding is when two companies form an alliance to work together, creating marketing synergy. This co-branding is innovative in the marketing practices.

Examples:
• Andhra bank and ICFAI university are using the strategy of co-branding.
• Andhra bank and Hindustan petroleum also launched their co-branded card
• SBI card and LG electronics India launched the LG-SBI card. This is the country's first co-branded credit card for the consumer appliances industry and can be used at more than 2 lakh outlets in India.
• Idea cellular and HDFC Bank launched two co-branded cards providing multiple benefits to customers of both.
• Pillsbury Brownies with Nestle Chocolate
• Dell Computers with Intel Processors

Online marketing

Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing, Internet advertising, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. Internet marketing also includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (E-CRM) systems.

Samsung marketing practices

Viral marketing , interactive marketing

Samsung created its "Fun Club" as a way to engage with Samsung mobile phone owners to help them get the most from their phones. Samsung provides content such as games, ringers, and wallpapers that are designed specifically for Samsung mobile phone models. Hearing about new mobile content is one of the benefits of joining the "Fun Club." Samsung was looking for a new way to use rich multimedia to promote the game, Skipping Stone, to its customers. Samsung engaged Enpocket to create a mobile marketing campaign promoting Skipping Stone using the graphically rich MMS channel.

Conclusion

In the present competitive scenario, there should be transition in marketing practices in order to survive in the market. Since "change in the only thing which never change" in the world, companies have to adapt themselves according to the changing environment. The best emerging practices in the corporate world is win-win concept to be the leader in the market.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Archana_Amalarajan