The growing competition in the business industry has made it necessary for any company to stay in competition or have a competitive advantage over its competitors, adequate and relevant information about the competitors need to be received or known at the right time in other to make a good strategic business decision. Competitive intelligence is defined as a systematic process that transforms random bits and pieces of data into strategic knowledge. This information comprises about competitors, customers, technological, environmental, product and market in. other to make a good strategic decision. Competitive intelligence is described as those activities a company undertake in determining and understanding its industry as well as identifying and understanding the competitors, also determine and understand their weaknesses and strength and anticipate their next move(s). This definition of competitive intelligence tends to identify/determine, understand and anticipate industry and competitors. Furthermore competitive intelligence is a process of monitoring the Continue reading
Modern Marketing Concepts
Advantages and Disadvantages of Sales Force Automation (SFA)
Sales person use sale forces as a step to enhance their marketing strategy. The improvements of technology helped sales person able to structure their customers’ data managements well. Sales force automation is a system that being develop to helps companies to organize their customer relationship management with confidentiality. Besides automatically computerized customers data into computer, it helps enable sales person to plan and structures their selling in the most effective way as well. It makes work easier and organized as well as more reliable for sales person. In short, sales force automation system is a good “assistant” for sales person. However, sales force automation system also brings some disadvantages where sales force automation system is complicated system involving digitalized figure yet new for older sales people. Anyhow, it is still easier for younger sales people to learn and function with it. In order to manage relationship between customers professionally, sales Continue reading
Multinational Marketing Information System (MMIS)
In general, marketing research is the process wherein vital information pertaining to the market is gathered thru data acquisition and is analysed in order to help the senior management reduce the risk associated with decision-making thru the means of an effective information dissemination system. Because of this, the marketing research tool plays a vital role in the overall process of management information systems. With the expansion of countries into the global market, multinational marketing research has taken flight. Multinational marketing research is the systematic and objective acquisition of data pertaining to the market in which the company wishes to penetrate. It is a support tool for the decision makers in order to reach a sound decision that involves the proper identification and implementation of their multinational marketing strategies and programs targeting the identified market. Marketing research as part of the multinational marketing information system should be able to be utilized Continue reading
Relationship Marketing – Relationship Based Marketing Strategy
Relationship marketing is the philosophy of doing business, a strategic orientation that focuses on keeping and improving current costumers, rather than acquiring new costumers. This philosophy assumes that the costumers prefer to have an ongoing relationship with one organization than to switch continually among providers in their search for value. Relationship Marketing refers to all marketing activities directed towards establishing, developing, and maintaining successful relational exchanges. From these to definition it can be see that the overall objective of relationship marketing is to create long lasting relationships with consumers instead of focusing on the point of sale approach (which is to attract new consumers each sale). The firm must create a unique relationship with the consumer which cannot be replicated by their competitors and thus give them a long lasting competitive advantage. It can also be argued that it is cheaper to retain a consumer than to attract a new Continue reading
What is Relationship Marketing?
The concept of Traditional Marketing which was mainly based on customer satisfaction has now totally shifted to Relationship building with the customers, customer retention and managing the relationships. Now the businesses are not only focused on developing a marketing mix in accordance with the consumer’s demand but they need to sell their products and services in such a way that consumer should satisfy and return for making the next purchase which means maintaining relations with your customers and managing it in such a way tending the customers to stay with the business for a longer period. Relationship Marketing was first defined as a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a dominant focus on sales transactions. As a practice, Relationship Marketing differs from other forms of marketing in that it recognizes the long term value of customer relationships and extends Continue reading
Differences between Traditional Marketing and Guerrilla Marketing
Simply looking at the definition of Guerrilla Marketing, we can be sure that it has a lot to do with creativeness and a lot of innovations should be made to traditional way of thinking that has been applied to marketing. Differences from traditional marketing and Guerrilla Marketing are several-fold. Within the context of this article, however, only some remarkable differences are chosen for analysis and illustrated with simple examples for better comparison. Let’s start analyzing the differences of traditional marketing from Guerrilla Marketing by a funny bookstores story, which is as following: A small bookstore was located on a beautiful street with quite a lot of pedestrians, commuters, and other people crossing the street every day. Unfortunately, that small big store, “Books For Every One” — that’s how it was named, was positioned right in the middle of the two other huge stores which were also selling books. Bad enough, Continue reading