Market research is about understanding the broader marketplace in which we intend to compete. Marketing research, on the other hand, is about understanding what ‘package’ of marketing elements (i.e. the product, price, promotion and distribution factors) the country will need to put together in order to meet customer needs and to succeed in the marketplace. Market research is the more encompassing/broader concept of understanding the market environment in which you will be competing, while marketing research is the more specific/focused view of consumer needs and behavior. In its role as the foundation of marketing, marketing research is arguably marketing’s most important task. Today marketers not only view research as a key ingredient in making marketing decisions they also consider information to be a critical factor in gaining advantage over competitors. Because organizations recognize the power information has in helping create and maintain products that offer value, there is Continue reading
Marketing Management
Marketing management combines the fields of marketing and management. Marketing consists of discovering consumer needs and wants, creating the goods and services that meet those needs and wants; and pricing, promoting, and delivering those goods and services. Doing so requires attention to six major areas – markets, products, prices, places, promotion, and people. Management is getting things done through other people. Managers engage in five key activities – planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. Marketing management implies the integration of these concepts.
The Gap Model of Service Quality
The Gap Model of Service Quality has been developed by Parasuraman and his colleagues which helps to identify the gaps between the perceived service qualities that customers receive and what they expect. Read More: Service Quality The Gap Model of Service Quality identifies five gaps: Consumer expectation — management perception gap. Management perception — service quality expectation gap. Service quality specifications — service delivery gap. Service delivery — external communications to consumer’s gap. Expected service — perceived service gap. Gap — 5 is the service quality shortfall as seen by the customers, and gaps 1-4 are shortfalls within the service organization. Thus gaps 1-4 contribute to gap — 5. These gaps are given in the following figure: The first gap is the difference between consumer expectations and management perceptions of consumer expectations. Research shows that financial service organizations often treat issues of privacy as relatively unimportant, whilst consumers consider them Continue reading
Advergaming – New Trend in Marketing Strategy
The question of what advergaming is can be approximated in different ways. In the manner of linguistic portmanteau it is of advertising and gaming. Technically, it is the practice of using video games to advertise a product, organization or viewpoint. As a term, it was coined by Anthony Giallourakis. Later on it was mentioned by Wired’s “Jargon Watch” column in 2001. An advergame is an online video game that has brand related images and/or themes embedded within it. As marketers have begun to catch on to the idea, websites containing advergames have been published by a diverse variety of corporations and non-profit organizations. Besides the usages of product placement within a game, a more effective and innovative way of designing a game only for the purpose of advertising a brand or a product is recently being used by advertiser in order to reach to targets on an online platform. Continue reading
Stages of New Product Development
New products are the lifeblood of the organization but they are extremely vulnerable and the majority never reach commercialization. In competitive markets, the best and strongest firms sustain growth through the introduction of new products and services to meet the changing needs of the consumers. All products have a finite life span and this is influenced by the type of product, its innovativeness, the management of the product through its life cycle, as well as the markets in which it is sold. All products will eventually decline and need to be replaced by new ones and companies need to be adept at adapting marketing strategies to respond to the dynamics of the environment, so as to manage the product through its life cycle effectively. New product development is the process of developing a product from initial stage of Design to Physical Reality using concept of Designing, manufacturing processes and other Continue reading
Application of Nostalgia Concept in Marketing
The historical term of nostalgia, initially started as a medical term. The term was coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer (1669–1752) in his Basel dissertation to refer on ‘homesickness’. Homesickness was one of the most serious sickness during that time. The term of “nostos” which means return and “algos” which means pain, were introduced to described people that suffering pain because of being far away from home and have needs to return to their home. Subsequently, the term ‘nostalgia’ evolved, and moved away from being a disease. Nostalgia known as a term that refer to time: past, present and future. In order to be classified as nostalgia, there are four factors that need to be fulfilled: An emotional feeling of being lost in space and time. An emotional feeling due to loss of values and references of civilization. A personal loss feeling occurred because of less freedom. Insecurity on a mass consumption culture Continue reading
Why Marketing Strategies of Global Companies Sometimes Fail
‘The world today is a global village’ it’s a fact. But the global village still has some tribes and it is very important to keep all the tribes happy if we need to have good relationship with all of them. Since the globe is accessible to everyone, it is also vital to design the marketing strategy and develop it in the perspective of variations in the culture, traditions, taste, weather and norms of a country. One of the most striking trends in business has been growing internationalization of the business. Companies are going global but they have to keep their customers satisfied domestically and internationally. The internationalization affected the business strategies and the companies are in the rethinking process to counter the problems in the global marketing strategies. Marketing is no exception to this. Attitude of the customers in this regard is very important for designing the marketing strategy, especially Continue reading