Conceptual Marketing Structures That Are Being Strained - Coursework Example

Conceptual structures that are being strained s Submitted by s: Introduction An accurate understanding of marketing concept is required to appreciate the modern marketing where concept can be said to be a philosophy or attitude, a course of thinking or an idea that is connected to any aspect of divine and human creations. Marketing concept can be perceived to be a manner of thinking which determines the course of action that is associated with marketing procedures which therefore makes marketing concept a philosophy that guides marketing activities. Marketing in its traditional sense offers a mechanism that enables understanding, communication and the development of products as solutions to definite customer needs by developing a link between the provider and the customers. It is a process that looks to facilitate exchanges where the exchanges must be mutually beneficial to make them sustainable (Drummond and Ensor, 2005, p. 1). Concepts of marketing Contemporary marketing has taken on new dimensions through a number of management techniques. In history, marketing has been defined the exchange mechanism which had been conceptualized as a function of selling where the efficacy that was associated with marketing was greatly linked to the personal salesmanship through advertisement approaches for consumer and industrial products. Conversely, when the difference between marketing and selling was recognized, the concept evolved to be more scientific and analytical. It can now be defined as a combination of behavioural and management science that is driven by originality, instinct, innovation and motivation (Rajagopal., 2000, p. 1). Marketing needs scientific transformation in the coming up with new products, recognizing and recapitulating effective channels as well as developing a media exposure that is powerful that is aimed at setting a market environment that is challenging (Skolnikoff, 1993, p. 31). The application of methods that are scientific in market needs a high degree of conceptual clarity and the ability to translate it into action, combined with innovativeness and a careful analysis of the product market environment. It also boosts of a philosophical dimension over the scientific consideration, which explains the myths, and realities that are associated with business enterprise in it can be seen that these enterprises have the likelihood of being more successful when the business logistics are guided by a strong marketing philosophy. These philosophies are supposed to respond to close association with the customer, a value driven technique that is founded on customer satisfaction rather than on profit dynamics, experimentation of products and providing autonomy to enterprise. Modern marketing Conceptual structures There are two forces that mainly contribute to changes in the modern human history, which are extraordinary development in a number of technologies and break point transformations that occur in culture. The transformations that are associated with culture have always been typified as a shift from the contemporary to post modern. The electronic methods of communicating and making transactions that are driven by technology are greatly assisting and speeding up the transformations that are ongoing as well as being impacted by them. The remarkable success that is attributed to modern marketing cannot be overstated since marketing has developed to be the principal means that modern business relationships are established and consequently the mode of all the links that all the institutions have with their markets. This success is because in the marketing concept, the contemporary marketing was able to capture the fundamental nature of contemporary culture and of democracy which contemporary culture’s most treasured institution. Philosophical challenges to modern marketing The nature of the consumer Social networks that exist among customers are receiving a lot of attention from managers and researchers in the recent times. Although this is happening, the current practice does not take advantage of the existing networks theories and the research that has been developed outside marketing. However, there are advancements in customer networking that are ahead of empirical research and several are also ahead of accepted theory. The network trend that is at the centre of the marketing researchers’ focus today is the effect of the connections that among customers on word of mouth which is the information that is shared and the influence concerning products and brands. This process can be equated to the spread of a virus within a population; this has made researchers to refer to it as social contagion (Wuyts, 2010). The environment of the human being and the environment of consumption went through changes and it is therefore rational that the environment of the consumer will also evolve. The contemporary consumer developed privileged circumstances and a good life and aimed at amassing and acquiring material goods. The relationship that the consumer has to these goods is from a perspective that is separate were one had the ability to make a decision whether these products were needed and whether they enhanced a person’s wealth. It was also important to note whether they provided more control over the burden of nature, enhanced comfort and also improved the conditions of life and happiness. In some instances, the consumer lost control since emotions took over but this was considered an abnormality. The model modern consumer was one who took full advantage of his or substance expenditure through a detached way of thinking about the worth of the possessions. Conversely, the postmodern consumer is seen to be less bothered about material value and more interested in the value of the experiences from these activities. The postmodern sensibility encourages an interest in the meaning of the present experiences rather than the wealth that is determined by the acquisitions and their value that promises a great future. The postmodern consumer therefore prefers an experience that is textual and textured and the themes associated with culture the intricate text and texture that is needed to allow adoption of these experiences. Innovation that is pushed by culture requires the presence of a community of participants as it cannot be called upon on an individual basis and it is not an individual experience. These consumers are active in the constructs that exist in the community in practice and virtually. The postmodern consumers also tend to become active in the constructs through being involved in consumer communities or their individual deconstruction of consumption texts. The aim of the consumer is mainly to explore and come up with probable alternative meaningful modes of being therefore enhancing the living process. These changes in quality that an increasing number of consumers are after signify important changes in the nature of the consumers. These changes have a major impact on marketing theory and practice. Some marketing tendencies and practices have already predicted the future making the customer to have a very little chance of being an active orchestrator of decisions related to marketing. Marketing therefore is required to become a process that is characterized by partnership instead of being a staged performance of tasks on behalf of the consumers. Information technology that is constantly changing and evolving will play a vital role in the reformation of marketing. Nature of the organization and business The consumers and consumption have drastically changed which in turn has necessitated a change in the nature of firms and businesses making a specific separation between the firm entity and the consumers. The main aim of organizations is the provision of its customers’ needs and the contemporary, social, political and legal structures developed the boundaries and provided liberties to these organizational entities. The organizations were required to satisfy a range of human heeds in response to this and this meant serving a societal purpose. The business was considered an organizational entity with a legal attribute that made a separation with boundaries that were clear from the others in the society (F\Irat and Dholakia, 2006, p. 143). This evolution will lead to the re-examination of the modern concept of a firm and its consumers and the boundaries that come with it. Consumers developed to become producers of their identities, experiences, and life meanings and this has made them seek an active role in coming up with characteristics of the products which they are supposed to interact with so achieve the symbolic and experiential production. This makes them develop a strong will that pushes them to be a part of the process that construct this products instead of being simply choice makers after the products have been developed. This access that the consumers have makes the demarcation between where the consumers end and where the organization begins an issue to be addressed. In actual sense, the boundaries are no longer there and the organizational nature has changed. Firms are no longer in business with the aim of satisfying customers; it can be considered that the consumers are in business as a result of the processes and resources that are corralled by the organizations. The new life experiences and identities that the consumers seek push the organizations to change even more with new types of organizations being required to develop the new or alternative lifestyles as well as the identities that the consumers wish to steer. Firms have to develop agility to enable then to keep up with rate of changes taking place that more and more become the ends for all the productions of richer meanings and substance that the customers demand in their lives. The post-modern organization has to develop models of life that can be experimented with (Weisbord and Janoff, 2010, p. 81), sampled and production terminated in order to come up with a better one in the event that the customers reject it or want it improved. The sequential marketing process that generally entails the organization gathering information on the consumer needs before trying to produce products that will satisfy them is no longer the manner in which the process operates. The organizations are forced to become real time partners of the consumers as well as being facilitators as the consumers come up with new and alternative needs and wants. This means that the organizations will work with the consumers in developing these new needs and wants instead of remaining to be providers. Since the consumer has evolved to be a postmodern consumer, the means of exchange of information between the customer and the organization are expected to evolve too. In view of market research, the markets are expected to assume a facilitator role in research leaving behind the observer role. The market researchers will be the facilitators for consumers instead of having them go out in the field to find out what the customers prefer in terms of wants and needs. The ideas that the organizations will developed are likely to be sampled by the post consumer communities, which would be constructing and experimenting with them. Communication Communication is a very important aspect of modernization and it has a significant effect on modern culture through information and communication technologies (Siskin and Warner, 2010, p. 221). The changes that have occurred in the communications environment and the part it plays in the contemporary society are more important than the technological innovations that come up every so often. Communication has all along served to purposes that are very important to modernity which are information and entertainment. In spite of the importance placed on response loops, modern communication was characteristically in one direction where communication encoded a programmed a message meant for transmittal by combining a prearranged set of signs that are to undergo transmission through a prearranged set of media. Response meant that the person receiving this message would do the same thing in reverse after the message has been decoded. The responsibility and mandate to determine the meaning of the message sent lay with the sender. A response would be issued solely for programming the message with exceptional knowledge and insight about the receiver so that the results that came out of this would portray exactly what the sender wanted to communicate. Discussions, which are ongoing, perceive this contemporary communication model as one, which is misleading in both theory and practice since communication, is seen to be more than a means of conveying messages to others. It is perceived to be process that is characterized by constructing and recognizing the self and the meaning of a message that is communicated is more often than not a matter of negotiation and contention among the sender, the receiver and the culture. This means that communication has to be appreciated as the common construction of symbolic meanings, which develops a process of partnership between the marketer and the consumer. The transformation that has taken place in the nature of the consumer from being a choice maker existing among products to a producer vigorously involved in production, changes what is to be communicated (Koritz, 2009, p. 50). This kind of post producer becomes central to coming up with meanings that are important and symbolic in constructing meanings of identity and life experiences as well as registering and making a recognition of the value accorded to the products to the products of production. In this situation, brand equity is seen as a mutual asset between the organization and the post consumers and in the area of political marketing, this is by now manifested in the creation and constant adaptation of the presidential candidate brands. In the post-modern awareness, communication and the experience of life exist mutually. Communication is not an action that is separated for relating information on which customers have experiences that come up with meanings and substance. Communication is seen as a central and indivisible part of the experiences in life. In the conventional contemporary structure, an advertisement is meant to communicate information that pertains to a product and this is very separate from the consumers purchasing and consuming advertised products. For the advertisement to be successful, the consumer has to use the advertised products and when the consumer uses the product, then the experience that comes out of it will be the information that is received from the advertisement. Response to the challenges Conceptualizing marketing is the process of inquiring what the consumer’s need, while organizing resources and coming up with products that fits the requirements of the needs, communicating its presence and making it available to the consumers (Kimmel, 2013, p.5). This makes the modern marketing ideas cease to be viable idea and therefore the concept of embedded marketing comes up. This where the organization is a part of the community to assist the efforts of the consumer community to come up with products and desires that are the result of mutual constructs. The arrival-embedded marketing is tasked with the re-empowerment of the consumer and the citizen in a manner that would go beyond the contemporary experience of democracy therefore lacking in limitations, natural in the representational form. The embedded marketing that is based on the postmodern concept, marketing re-emerges at the tool for empowerment of the postmodern consumer while re-establishing democracy in a practical form that is founded on the constitution of the new orders that come from the consumer communities. The contemporary marketing reinforced the beginning of management and efficiency in catering to the needs of the consumer was a difficult issue, which needed a balanced, ordered, and systematic approach rather than unregulated delegation of the tasks that were to be performed to the performers of these tasks. The acts of marketing had to be directed by management to make them efficient, visible and understandable. Unplanned acts would end up in the inefficient utilization of time and other resources as well as the consumers losing interest in the whole idea. Marketing therefore has to come up with a collaborative rather than a managerial role through collaborating as a partner the post consumer communities in the construction of their modes of life. The role of marketing will therefore be the facilitation and coordination of efforts that come from the community members, which makes it a co-performer role. This kind of collaborative marketing is in its emerging stage especially in the areas that are aided by technology. Postmodern marketing continues to become a preserve of the post consumer communities and not the organizations where there are escalating exchanges between the marketers and the post consumer communities to the point that they actually unite into one. Marketing has been taken up by everyone and the consumer can be considered to be a marketer who is encompassed in the imagination creation and development of desires that reflect a mode of living. This has made marketing to become an omnipresent in the transactional and the exchange oriented human activities where it unfolds in a dramatic way. Conclusion The whole process of future gazing is filled with difficulties and the only certainty that is there is that there will be differences that will be significant where some will be based on the current understanding of the important features that are in the industry and the new technologies that influence the ways that business is conducted. The prediction of these new ways can be done with a reasonable level of certainty in the short term but other changes will be difficult to forecast. What will follow will be a consideration of the vital issues which the communications industry faces and these are based on an approximation of the current trends (Yeshin, 1998). Bibliography Drummond, G. and Ensor, J. 2005. Introduction to marketing concepts. Elsevier/Butterworth Heinemann. Oxford. F\Irat, A. F. and Dholakia, N. 2006. Theoretical and philosophical implications of postmodern debates: some challenges to modern marketing. Marketing theory, 6 (2), pp. 123--162. Kimmel, A. J. 2013. Psychological foundations of marketing. Routledge. New York, NY. Koritz, A. 2009. Culture makers. University of Illinois Press. Urbana. Rajagopal. 2000. Marketing. New Age International Publishers. New Delhi. Siskin, C. and Warner, W. 2010. This is enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Skolnikoff, E. B. 1993. The elusive transformation. Princeton University Press. Princeton, N.J. Weisbord, M. R. and Janoff, S. 2010. Future search. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Wuyts, S. 2010. The connected customer. Routledge. New York. Yeshin, T. 1998. Integrated marketing communications. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann. Oxford. Read More