Maung Maung Myint Thein (University of Technology) - Marketing Essentials (10)

Introduction

The state of marketing today

Marketing is in a bad state. It is not a theory of marketing. It is the practice of marketing. Every new product (or) | service needs to be supported by a marketing plan. This plan brings a positive response that compensates for the investment of time and money and communication. But why do 75% of new products, new services, and new businesses fail? All businesses undergo market research, concept development and testing, business analysis, product development and testing, market testing, and business launch, but these failures happen.

Marketing is considered to be the driving force behind business strategy. The job of marketers is to research new opportunities for the company and carefully apply STP ( Segmentation, Targeting , and Positioning ) to guide a new business in the right direction . Marketers then fill in the 4Ps: Product / Price / Place/ Promotion . Of course, the 4Ps are consistent with each other and with the STP strategy. Then marketers implement the plan and monitor the results. When results deviate from the plan, the problem is whether it is poor implementation, a confusing marketing mix, or a lack of focus. Marketers must decide whether it is misguided STP or ultimately incompetent market research.

But today, many marketing departments don’t handle the whole business. The process is handled by a mix of marketers, strategists, finance people, and operations people. In other words, a new product (or service) comes out and is thought up by other things in the company called selling and promotion, leaving the true vision of marketing behind. Most marketing is reduced to one P called promotion. It’s not a 4P job anymore. Because the company ends up producing a product that doesn’t sell well. Most of the marketing work is to clean up the mess through hard selling and advertising.

Below is an example of one-P marketing. Marketing expert Philip Kotler asked the vice president of marketing at a major European airline:

" Do you have any influence on the food served on the airline?"

“ No, the caterer does that.”

“ Do you have a say in setting standards for hiring airline attendants?”

“ I won’t tell you, that’s handled by the Human Resources Department.”

" What about the cleanliness of airplanes?"

"That's the maintenance department's job."

“So what do you do?”

“I manage advertising and sales.”

Clearly, the airline is being marketed as a one-P business.

Worse, marketing doesn't handle advertising and sales well. Just ask any CEO who gets a quick shock when sales are down and gets an advertising bill.

" What has advertising done for us?"

Philip Kotler asked the vice president of marketing. The best answer was that if there was no advertising, sales would be worse.

“ But what did we get back as an investment?”

There is no good answer.

CEOs are growing, and rightly so, impatient with marketing.

They feel accountable for their investments in finance, manufacturing, information technology, and purchasing. But they don’t know how to use their marketing to succeed. What helps is that marketing is about a more complex chain of events that makes it harder to trace cause and effect. But some progress has been made in theory, and other companies are struggling to put it into practice. Why can’t it be done in their company?

Signs suggest that marketing will become more challenging in the future. Consider the following.

National brands are finding it increasingly difficult to get a premium enough to offset their brand building. Why? If suppliers want Wal-Mart’s business, Wal-Mart and its imitators are pushing lower prices on suppliers. And the big retailers are increasingly introducing their own store brands. These brands are reaching the same level of quality as national brands. The big store brands don’t have to spend money on research, advertising, and marketing. Generation Y is also said to be more distrustful of advertising. Naomi Klein and her book No Logo make us wonder how much more people should pay for brands that are advertised. And how growing brands are costing society.

Companies have embraced customer relationship management (CRM) as the latest cure for their poor performance. It involves collecting personal information about each customer to better predict when they will make a purchase. But opposition to the collection of personal information is growing. And people are increasingly uncomfortable with unsolicited advertising in the mail, emails, and phone calls.

Loyalty schemes seem like a good idea . They work well for early adopters. However, their competitors have no choice but to introduce frequent buyer schemes. Today, most businesses accept Visa, MasterCard and American Express cards.

It doesn’t matter how cheaply a company can produce its goods domestically. It can produce as cheaply as China. China can produce everything more cheaply and is starting to do it better. China will have the power to replicate the Japanese game of “lower prices and better quality.” This has led to the collapse of countries like Latin America and Eastern Europe that advertise low labor costs.

Therefore, automobile and other factories