EMERGING TRENDS IN MARKETING

Submitted By: Miss Swati Panwar Student, MBA Part II, Govt. College of
Engineering and Technology, Bikaner, Rajasthan.
E-mail –swatipanwar04@gmail.com
Marketing is everywhere. Formally or informally, people and organizations
engage in a vast number of activities that we could call marketing. Good
marketing has become an increasingly vital ingredient for business success
and marketing profoundly affects our day-today life. It is embedded in
everything we do – from clothes we wear to the websites we click on, to the
ads we see.
In India, market continues to remain upwardly mobile albeit at a slower pace
agree the global financial crisis hot the Indian market in the later half of 2008.
A large number of Indian exporting companies had order cancellation and
demand slowed down in India for all products and services.
Nonetheless, as one looks at the Indian market, through the prism of time, one
cannot but conclude the Indian consumer today is economically far better off
than his earlier generations. The coming years will bring full of high-return
marketing opportunities. By closely watching the hottest trends, a marketer
can make smart choices that let him step ahead of his slower-moving
competitors.
In these terms, marketers nationwide are setting their plans for future by
adopting new ways of marketing. Thus an entrepreneur can use some of these
tactics to reach its customers in the coming years.
Corporate rivalry has grown manifold. For example: - Telecom
Industryearlier had monopoly that increased to six players per circle that lead
to multiple product options and competitive pricing. This is also true for all
other sectors like airlines, search engines, Television channels, Automobiles
and FMCGetc.
Retail market is one of the few mass advertising media that can convey the
same overall strategic message in differing languages, to varying audiences in
the same village, city or region. Today’s Point of Purchase (P-O-P) displays
are easily assembled, maintained and at the same time, more powerful in
entertaining and informing in the retail environment. The examples are Big
Bazaar, Reliance Fresh, Subhiksha, Spencers, Wal-Mart, Vishal Mega Mart
and Home Town etc.
To stay in the market for long-term, product innovation is also necessary.
Consistently, the marketer has been pushed to innovate on process or both.
Likewise innovations were visible in other sectors like financial services and
consumer durables. Such as most of the banks are also offering online bill
payments, insurance policies, demat accounts and pension plans to its
customers other than banking. If we see the innovation in
products, Cadburyintroduced “Celebrations” as gift packed chocolates for
festive seasons to its customers that was highly acceptable in the market.
Convergence of technology was yet another major development that offered
the opportunity to the marketer to engage the customer on a continuing basis.
Here, companies now reached to the customer through physical media
likeprint, outdoor hoardings, interactive kiosks, electronic media like TV
and Radio, Internet and mobile phones. All these were now used
simultaneously thereby creating a new and forceful thrust. These were used to
communicate and seed feedback and even involving the customer in product
design. CNN IBN was the first news channel in India to use this strategy and
involved viewers not only in chat shows and debates but also in creating
news terming such viewers as “Citizen Journalist”. The channel actively
promoted this concept of co-production by recognizing all such news feeds
and even awarding them.
In product customization, BMW’s technology now allows buyers to design
their own models from among 350 variations with 500 options, 90 exterior
colors and 170 trims. The company claims that 80% of the cats bought by
individuals in Europe and up to 30% bought in US are built to order.
Another tools of marketing used by marketers today is Consumer
GeneratedAdvertising (CGA) i.e. customers not only be Promoters for the
company, but actually make advertising for them. As this advertising will
always be based on what they REALLY love about product, it’s sure to strike
home with other consumers. For example: - Harpic Cleaner, Jaago Re by Tata
Tea. In this aspect, somebody has also highlighted with the saying,
“Never underestimate the extent to which people want to be involved in
advertising.”
The most common tech products used are cell phones and sms facilities
offered by cell phones providers. Companies can reach customers on the
move with mobile marketing using GPS (Global Positioning Service)
technology for instance consumer can download company logos so they can
spot brand such asBaskin Robbins when they are on the road. Firms can also
advertise on video iPods and reach consumers on their cell phones
through mobile marketing.
DTH (Direct to Home Telecast Service) just introduced in India was used by
145 of the urbanities. This characteristic only facilitates the launch of savvy
gadgets and companies using all technologies to engage their customers 24x7.
A major problem of Indian Market has been that access to products and
services was restricted mainly due to infrastructure constraints and lack of
distribution network. Outsourcing further enables firms to overcome the
access problem.For example: - Universities and management schools today
have multiple campuses and use a range of internet technologies to reach out
to their target markets. IIMs tied up with NIIT to offer multiple diploma
programmes to working executives. ICFAI has campuses all over the country
including smaller towns like Dehradun to offer MBA Programme.
The customer today is empowered with more information about brands
andtheir ambassadors. Brands have a much bigger task cut out for them. For
example: They have to mange their credibility on an ongoing basis. They
cannot afford to sit on their laurels earned in the past. Any adverse news
about them in some media vehicle can impact their image. For example: The
land controversy surrounding Amitabh Bacchhan impacted his image and
perhaps his credibility as Brand Ambassador. When the Indian cricket team
lost badly in 2007 World Cup, almost all brands withdrew their contracts with
Saurav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar and others in the team. The advertising
rates on World cup telecast also declined. New Icons therefore need not be
celebrities, but they need to be credible. Despite of this, new icons are adding
revenues to their companies by attracting their fan followings.
In addition to it, the era of Indian Global Brands has also arrived. Whether it
is Arcelor Mittal (L. N. Mittal Group), Tata Corus, Infosys, Ranbaxy,
Wipro, Barista, Taj or Haldiram or Kitchens of India or IITs and IIMs,
Indian brands are new making waves in the world market. Though, all these
brands have a long way to go to be Coca-Cola or Microsoft, they are now
redefining the marketing rules in their product category in foreign markets.
Thus one of the challenges for the marketers is to create strong Indian global
brands.
The new term Green marketing is also introduced in the series of marketing
trends. As defined by American Marketing Association, green marketing is
the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe. Thus
green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product
modification, changes to the production process, packaging changes, as well
as modifying advertising.
Green marketing has continued to gain adherents, particularly in light of
growing global concern about climate change. This concern has led more
companies to advertise their commitment to reduce their climate impacts, and
the effect this is having on their products and services.
Due to Ecology Sensitivity, more and more products and services are going
turn green. New Delhi, capital of India, was being polluted at a very fast
pace until Supreme Court of India forced a change to alternative fuels. In
2002, a directive was issued to completely adopt CNG in all public transport
systems to curb pollution and it has gone green.
Samsung and others market their refrigerators as an environmentally safe.
Hotels like Leela, Orchid and Taj claim they provide services which are
environmentally safe. All this has implications for product design and
communication.
Social challenges play a significant role in product diffusion and adoption in
all markets but much more in Indian market which is high on social
networking. The classical case is that of Biotique products which have never
been advertised. Rather it followed the route of placing the product in
customer’s hands through presentations in five star hotel guest rooms.
Frequented by the opinion leaders and affluent customers, it did not take long
for these products to enter their homes and through them to others. Likewise
there are several websites like buyandselloldbooks.com, mouthshut.com
which have never used the high cost media to advertise. Yet these are known
websites in their target market segments. Internet marketing also referred to
as i-marketing, web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the
marketing of products or services over the Internet.
The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, one of which
being lower costs for the distribution of information and media to a global
audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of
providing instant response and eliciting responses, is a unique quality of the
medium. Internet marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope
because it not only refers to digital media such as the Internet, e-mail, and
wireless media; however, Internet marketing also includes management of
digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management
(ECRM) systems.
Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages
of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM),
search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail
marketing. Internet marketing is also associated with several business models
like e-commerce in which goods are sold directly to consumers (B2C) or
businesses (B2B), publishing like the sale of advertising and lead-based
websites.
Geo marketing places an emphasis on marketing that appeal to a specific
behaviour or interest, rather than reaching out to a broadly-defined
demographic. "Onand Off-line" marketers typically segment their markets
according to age group, gender, geography, and other general factors.
Marketers have the luxury of targeting by activity and geolocation. For
example, a kayak company can post advertisements on kayaking and canoing
websites with the full knowledge that the audience has a related interest.
Marketers can also use the internet as powerful information and
saleschannel augmenting their geographical reach to inform customers and
promote their business and product worldwide. By establishing one or more
websites, they can list their products and services, history, its business
philosophy, job opportunities and other information of interest to visitors.
Researcher can collect fuller and richer information about market, customers,
prospects and competitors. They can also conduct fresh marketing research
using the interest to arrange for focus groups, send out questionnaires and
gather primary data in several other ways.
Manager can facilitate and speed internal communication among their
employees by using the internet as a private intranet. Employees can query
one another, seek advice and download or upload needed information from
and to the company’s computer.
Companies can also facilitate and speed external communication by creating
an online and offline buzz through brand advocates and user communities.
The virtual communities are also created customers come together or share
their experiences about the products and brands. For example: The virtual
community for young girls called gang of girls (www.gangofgirls.com) was
promoted by Sunsilk brand of shampoo.
To support continues flow of information as exchange of internal company
records, marketing intelligence activities and marketing
research, MarketingInformation System (MIS) is used by mangers.
Now-a-days, customers favor firms that can promise timely delivery, that is
why companies need to perform these steps quickly and accurately. An
increasingly number of companies is using Intranet and Extranet to improve
the speed, accuracy and efficiency of the order to payment cycle. For
example: - CISCO Connection Online allows the computer networking
leader to connect with all its suppliers, manufacturers and customers and
resellers online. By reducing payment cycles for suppliers, eliminating paper
based purchasing, reducing inventory levels CISCO save more than $24
million in material cost and $51 million in labor cost annually in the first year
of the program’s operations.
Sales Information System is also a new term as emerging technology in
marketing as marketing managers need timely and accurate reports on
current sales. Wal-Mart operates a sales and inventory data warehouse that
captures data on every item, for every customer, for every store, every day
and refreshes it every hour. For example: - the IT staff at headquarters tapped
into the data warehouse the morning after Thanksgiving and noticed the East
Coast sales of a computer-monitor holiday special were far below
expectations. Marketing staff contacted stores and learned the computers and
monitors weren’t being displayed together, so potential buyers couldn’t see
what they were getting for the posted price. Calls went out to Wal-Mart stores
across the country to rearrange the displays. By 9:30 that morning, the pace of
sales could be seen picking up in the company’s database. Wal-Mart also
transmits nightly orders to its many suppliers for new shipments of
replacement of its inventory. And companies that make good use of
“cookies”, records of Web site usage stored on personal browsers, are smart
users to targeted marketing. Although the perception is that most people
delete cookies out of concern for their privacy, the numbers tell a different
story. A recent survey showed that only 8% of people very frequently delete
cookies, down from 18% in 2004, and 24% of respondents said they never
delete cookies. Not only do customers not delete cookies, but they also expect
customized marketing appeals and deals once they accept cookies.
Today companies use techniques like Databases, Data Warehousing andData
Mining and organize their information into databases – customer database,
product databases and salesperson databases – and then combine data from
the different databases. For example: - the customer database will contain
every customer’s name, address, past transactions and sometimes even
demographics and psychographics (activities, interests and opinions). Instead
of sending a mass “carpet bombing” mailing of a new offer to every customer
in its database, a company will rank its customers according to purchase
recency, frequency and monetary value (RFM) and send the offer to only the
highest – scoring customers. Besides saving on mailing expenses, this
manipulation of data can often achieve a double-digit response rate.
The Marketing Intelligence System is also a helpful tool. A marketing
intelligence system of a set of procedures and sources, managers use to obtain
everyday information about developments in the marketing environment.
Marketing managers collect marketing intelligence by reading books,
newspapers and trade publications, talking to customers, suppliers and
distributors, monitoring “social media” on the Internet via online discussion
groups, e-mailing lists and blogs and meeting with other company managers.
Recently, Ambush marketing has received a lot of publicity in the Indian and
international marketing arena. The term "Ambush Marketing" was created by
Jerry Welsh when he worked for American Express. Welsh said the original
justification for ambush marketing was the high cost of sponsorship. Thus,
Ambush marketing occurs when a company signs on to sponsor an event as
official sponsor, and a rival hijacks the mind space through backdoor means.
It is a concept that describes the actions of companies who seek to associate
themselves with a sponsored event without paying the organizers. The
ambush consists of giving the impression to consumers that the ambusher is
somehow affiliated with the event. Such a marketing act is known
as “Ambush Marketing” and the brand which does so is known as “Ambush
Marketer”.This is also known as Parasitic
Marketing or Guerilla Marketing. Ambush marketing can provide some of
the benefits of a legitimate, paidfor sponsorship at relatively little cost. For
example: - In 1996, soft drinks giant Coke paid a fortune for the right to call
itself the official sponsor of the World Cup. Rival Pepsi promptly launched a
massive advertising blitz, based on the catch-line:“Nothing Official About
It”. The Pepsi campaign captured the public imagination and Coke, the
official sponsor, lost out. Another example: - During December 2003 when
Rahul Dravid scored 200 against Australia, Airtel had paid Times of India Rs
25,00,000/- just to have their logo underneath Rahul Dravid’s picture printed
on the first page knowing the fact that Rahul Dravid is an Orange
ambassador.
In case of IPL, Both PepsiCo's 'Youngistaan' brand ambassadors - Virender
Sehwag, captain of Delhi Daredevils, and Ishant Sharma, member of Kolkata
Knight Riders have been formally present at various promotional activities for
arch-rival Coca-Cola India, simply because Coca-Cola is the associate sponsor
and the official pouring partner for both Delhi Daredevils and Kolkata Knight
Riders.
Sehwag, for instance, attended a special send-off ceremony for Delhi
Daredevils organised by Coca-Cola India. At the event, Sehwag, along with
Coke brand ambassador Gautam Gambhir, unveiled a limited edition bottle of
Coca-Cola for IPL.
If we talk about Political Marketing, for the first time in the history of the US
Presidential Elections, the Internet was used widely and effectively for both
campaigning and fund raising purposes. Obama also used the traditional
methods of marketing which accounted for 50% of his fund raising. He
carefully tailored his campaign by targeting people of different age groups,
communities and professionals systematically to achieve success in the
elections. He tapped the growing community of people who preferred the
Internet and mobile phones to television. In this way, he could be able to get
attention of American people by having a personal touch with them via
internet and finally his labor had borne fruit in the form of his victory.
The sum and substance of all the above discussions is that for Indian
business firms, marketing is now emerging as the most vital function. On
their capacity for learning marketing anew will depend whether, and to what
extent they will succeed.
In earlier regulated regime, there was no great need for top class marketing.
Indian firms operating as they were in the smug comfort of a protected
economy could prosper despite their shoddy marketing. That era, however, is
now decisively over. They have to now necessarily compete with global firms
at global level. And, that means, the time for scientific marketing has arrived
in India.