Marketing in the 21st Century - Essay Example

? MARKETING IN THE 21ST CENTURY Word count: 2479 …………………. College/ ………….. …………. Introduction Effective marketing strategies have recently gained significant attention from marketing management in order to help companies respond to customers’ on-demand expectations and satisfy their varying and rather specific requirements. A marketer is expected of responding to an increasingly dynamic business environment as he has to consider needs, demands and influences of different groups like customers, competitors, suppliers and intermediaries. Marketers are those who don’t seek just a response in the form of attention, purchase, vote or donation from another party, but stimulate demand for a company’s products as well (Kotler and Keller, 2006, p. 10) through a number of marketing strategies and techniques. This piece of research work presents a brief report based on various marketing concepts like marketing mix, segmentation, advertising agency and positioning from the view points of a marketing consultant who works for Hotel Verta, situated in Battersea, London. Marketing mix and Marketing Orientation Marketing mix is an extremely important step in marketing planning once the company has decided the overall marketing strategy. Marketing mix is a set of tactical marketing tools that the company or precisely the marketing management wants to produce a response in its targeted market (Armstrong and Kotler, 2005, p. 57). Marketing Mix consists of four significant marketing elements, namely Product, Price, Place and Promotion and they are generally termed as 4Ps of marketing. As Belch and Belch (2007, p. 9) observed, an effective marketing occurs when and where there is an exchange process and business relation by examining customers’ needs and wants, designing, manufacturing and developing products accordingly, distributing them to customers, offering them to customers for an affordable price and arranging certain programs that can promote customers to make them aware and interested of the products. As and when there is a careful and effective combination between these elements, and especially there is an integrated approach to these elements, the marketer will be able to influence the demand in the market and thus to bring greater competitive advantages. In recent years, markers have been giving greater emphasis to devise marketing activities to assemble fully integrated marketing programs so that the company can create, communicate and deliver value to the customers (Kotler and Keller, 2006, p. 19). The ultimate goal of the effective marketing mix strategy is to create and deliver values to the customers. Integrated Marketing Communication approach, that attempts to build strategic combination between marketing elements, has been considered to be an easy system approach to achieve the marketing goal. When it comes to the Hospitality industry, the main product mix is mostly of Service in nature. As far as Hotel Verta is concerned, various multicultural and organic food and drinks it prepares and makes them available to customers along with superior services it offers inside the hotel are the major portions of its Product element. Quality of the foods, varieties available, wedding specials, Spa verta, different designs and organic characters along with attractive packaging are some of the important variables of the product mix. Price is simply the amount that the products are offered for sale. But when it comes to Hotel Verta, discounts, free-food corner, credit allowances etc help the company create more values to its customers. Place normally indicates marketer’s activities that make the product available to the targeted customers for an affordable price. Highly attractive rooms, eco-friendly environments, the spa and rest rooms, and other infrastructures are helpful to retain customers and convert them to be loyal and therefore are some of the significant factors that add values to customers. As far as the Promotion element is concerned, apart from the normal advertising and sales promotion, the online booking and room-availability tracking are some of the promotion mix elements that help the company promote more customers to it. As Belch and Belch (2007) argued, a proper marketing mix is not something that just happens, but the marketer who is in duty to design and develop the strategy must be well-knowledgeable, aware and keen to understand the key elements of each of the main components (p. 9). The combination among product, price, place and promotion may just happen, even with no much efforts from the marketer, but identifying and discovering sub-elements from the 4Ps, developing them and converting them to create more values to customers are highly critical to marketing success. Market orientation has been considered to be a vital factor in an ethical business environment. It refers to designing and developing an organizational culture that would be able to promote the necessary behaviors for creating and delivering superior values to the customers (Ferrell and Hartline, 2008, P. 77). There are many different stakeholders for a business, but market orientation gives greater emphasis on customers interests, requirements and needs and place the interests of other stakeholders just after to it. For a Hotel or any other firm in the Hospitality industry to retain its customers and make them very loyal in today’s very competitive market environment, market orientation has become an essentially important component to be added to its strategic initiatives. Hotel Verta may have to concentrate on fostering a sense of cooperation, customer relationship activities and open information exchange so that the company can have more accurate, closer and clearer view on customers’ needs and wants. Advertising Agency and Roles of different people within the agency Effective, useful and result-oriented communication is critical to successful marketing. Marketing communication and related functions in very recent years have been carried out by advertising agencies. These agencies perform various functions for their clients, including designing and developing creative advertising design, evaluating the targeted and the segmented market and accordingly choosing best fit advertising medium and ensuring maximum possible quality in marketing communication (Duncan, 2004, p. 35). Using an advertising agency has been found to be beneficial mainly because of that it helps integrate marketing communication and achieve sustainable competitive advantages through it. A full-service advertising agency offers wide range of advertising services, comprised of sales promotion, marketing research, strategic planning, public relation, event marketing etc. Benefits of Using an Advertising agency Advertising agency is more expert and experienced in the field of advertising than the marketing department within the firm and is therefore expected of ensuring greater efficiency in the advertising campaign that the firm plans. Since the advertising and marketing research work have been assigned to the agency, a big burden of complicated marketing communication will be performed by the agency. Advertising agency provides the client with highly skilled individuals who are very specialists in their specific areas. The advertising agency would also be able to provide an objective viewpoint of the target market and the business opportunities. It can draw on the broad range of experience that it has gained while working on diverse set of markets (Belch and Belch, 2007, p. 82). There are large numbers of different advertising agencies, either full-service as detailed above or partly-serving agency and each of them may be specialized in a number of different marketing communicative areas. The agency to be chosen should be one that can meet company’s communicative objective and help it achieve its goals. It is therefore very important for the company to evaluate and analyze the basic elements such as agency’s specific area, targeted audience, cost, medium available etc. Roles of Account director, media director and account planner: Account director or account management acts as a link between the advertising agency and its clients. One or may be more account directors are to be there depending on the size of the client and its advertising budget. The account director is a responsible person for understanding the marketing as well as promotion requirements of the advertiser and for interpreting them to the agency people. He is thus expected to coordinate and supervise agency efforts in planning, creating, designing and developing the advertisements (Belch and Belch, 2007, p. 82). A media director or media executive is a responsible person or groups of persons within the advertising agency who analyzes, selects and contracts for space as well as time in different media like print or broadcasting media, in order to use the time or space to deliver the client’s advertising message. His main roles include a) developing media plan, b) evaluate what audiences the media can reach, and c) reviewing the information on demographics, magazine or newspaper readership, radio listenership etc (Belch and Belch, 2007, p. 83). The account planner is an individual within some large advertising agencies who is responsible to gather information that are relevant to the client’s product and can be used as better techniques in forming marketing strategy. Account planner works with client and agency to gather information about the target audience and their specific requirements (Belch and Belch, 2007, p. 83). Segmentation and Positioning Almost all the companies are going for segmenting its markets, by breaking down the total market of the product or service in to different sub-groups such as Geographical (region, population density), demographic (age, sex, marital status, socio-economic status), psychographic and behavioral (life-style, self image and personality) (Lancaster and Reynolds, 2001, p. 68, Stone and Desmond, 2007, p. 175). A marketer generally prefers his market to be segmented in to distinct sub-groups so that he can study each group in detail and evaluate the specific requirements or individual needs of those who belong to that sub-segment. People have very different set of needs and wants. For any marketer, it is highly important to know people’s want and needs in detail. As Kerin, Hartley and Berkowitz (2005, p. 233) described, market segmentation, therefore, involves aggregating prospective buyers in to groups that have common needs and will respond similarly to a market action. Market segments are relatively homogenous groups of prospective buyers that are grouped or identified through a market segmentation process. When it comes to the case of Hotel Verta, its total market can be segmented to different sub-segments. According to the type of wants customers visit the Hotel, they may be for Room, for Spa, for Wedding requirements, Food and Drink or Sports and business events etc. The market can also be segmented to local customers, national and international customers who come to London for short or seasonal-visits. Similarly, segmentation can be held based on age groups and preferences that its customers have differently while visiting the hotel. Approximate numbers of the customers falling in each sub-segment, the very specific need and want that they approach the Hotel, their level of satisfaction, their responding and feedback and more importantly their level of spending are critical factors that the marketer is required to analyze, assess and evaluate for exploring the opportunities in its marketing landscape. Positioning Strategy A brand that has been communicated to customers must be positioned in their minds in order it make customers retain and thus create brand loyalty. For any firm in the hospitality industry, creating brand loyalty and brand equity and thus to retain customers are extremely significant factors that determine business success. They are critical to achieving sustainable competitive advantage as well. Kotler and Keller (2006, p. 310) pointed out that positioning is an act of designing a company’s offerings and images in order to occupy a very distinctive place among the minds of the targeted customers. The ultimate goal behind positioning is to locate the brand name, image or brand message in customers’ mind in order to maximize the potential benefits to them. Many large businesses tend to have its very own positioning strategy, with certain positioning view, mission and vision. As far as Hotel Verta is concerned, the name Verta is expected to create and add more values to customers’ expectation of organic, multicultural food and drinks at various needs like wedding, sports or business events etc. ‘Superior Quality Organic food for affordable price at Green-environment’ can be considered to be the value proposition that is aligned with its positioning strategy. Market Trends within the Hospitality Industry Consumer spending in Hospitality Industry is generally expected to rise unless financial crisis or international political incidents affect customers worldwide. Consumer spending is expected to soar by ?750 m during London’s Olympic Games in the next summer in 2012. The new economic study forecasts a sustained boost to the British economy of a total ?5.1 billion over the next four years (hotel-industry.co.uk, July 2011). According to a very basic Economic theory, when income increases, spending on leisure, luxury and advanced facilities will be more likely to increase. Current economic analysis of UK shows that there will be a boom in the British economy and this will surely cause positive impact on Hotels and other hospitality industry firms. As London attracts millions of international visitors a year, Hotel Verta should facilitate more convenient and highly sophisticated Online-room booking, room availability tracking, room and Spa-customization etc so that it can meet even very specific wants and needs of foreign customers. Though the company already facilitated Online- Booking as depicted below, the company still can seize wider opportunities, especially to grab the slice of the estimated boom in the UK economy, by providing more convenient room-tracking and customization facilities through its website. Hotels face major threats from terrorists and criminals. Benson (13 July 2011) reports that many hotels are seen as terrorists targets and therefore hoteliers require to take all possible measures to avoid risks associated with terrorism. Benson (25 July 2011) also found that Guest Identification technology should be developed in each hotel in order to avoid risks associated with terrorists and criminals. Hotel Verta requires to launch customer security measure with help of Radio Frequency Identification so that major threats can be avoided. Customers are becoming increasingly aware of Fair trade, ethics and social responsibility in almost all industries. Being quite different from other industries and firms, Hotel’s customers are the guests and they consume the products within its premises itself. As people become more concerned of quality foods, fair trade marks in the packages, harm of some chemical food ingredients etc, hotels are required to give strict rules and instructions to the chefs and other staff to ensure fair trade and social responsibility factors. It is thus one of the responsibilities of Hotel Verta to make sure of cent percent fair trade and ethical considerations in all the dealings with customers. Conclusion Marketers today are giving much emphasis on designing and developing effective marketing strategies based on marketing concepts and ideologies. This piece of research paper has presented a brief report on marketing activities and strategic marketing aspects in relation to Hotel Verta, London. Various marketing concepts including segmentation, positioning, marketing mix and relevance of using advertising agency have been detailed in this paper. References Armstrong, G and Kotler, P, 2005, Marketing: An Introduction, Seventh Edition, Prentice-Hall. Pearson Education, Inc. Belch, G E & Belch, M A 2007, Advertising and Promotion, An integrated marketing Perspective, McGraw Hill Irwin Benson, P (2011), Terrorist Threat: Hotels Dealing with Terrorist Threats, Hotel-industry.co.uk, Retrieved from http://www.hotel-industry.co.uk/2011/07/terrorist-threat/ Duncan, T 2005, Principles of Advertising and IMC, Second Edition, The McGraw Hill Companies, Irwin Ferrell, OC & Hartline, MD, 2008, Marketing Strategy, Fourth Illustrated edition, Cengage Learning hotel-industry.co.uk, (July 2011), 2012 Olympic Games: Consumer Spending To Soar During 2012 Olympic Games, hotel-industry.co.uk, powered by the Guardian.co.uk, Retrieved from http://www.hotel-industry.co.uk/2011/07/2012-olympic-games-consumer-spending/ Kotler, P & Keller, K.L 2006, Marketing Management, Twelfth Edition, Prentice- Hall, Pearson Education Inc Lancaster, G and Reynolds, P ( 2001), Marketing: the one-semester introduction, Illustrated edition, Butterworth-Heinemann Stone, M. A and Desmond, J (2007), Fundamentals of Markets: A Critical Evaluation, Illustrated edition, Taylor & Francis Read More