Technological Advancements and Communication - Research Paper Example

? Project 7. The world in the 21st century is evolving at a very first pace. It is important to mention that the rapid pace of evolution is happeningbecause of first change and tremendous development. The emergence of various kinds of technological advancements has played a major and catalytic role in the process of communication as well as the methods of doing business all over the world. Talking in a detailed manner, the development of the internet powered communication technology along with the factor of rapid rise and faster acceptance of various kinds of technological gadgets has resulted in the process of a massive global technological revolution. As a result of this revolution, the world has been automatically transformed into a single well connected global entity. It needs special highlighting of the fact that the technological revolution that has affected both the developed as well as the developing markets has brought a tremendous change in the nature and behaviour of the masses around the world. The consumers and masses of the present day increasingly prefer to live a dual life. This dual life promotes physical presence in the real world as well as virtual presence in the internet connected world. In order to stay connected to their virtual selves in the virtual world, the masses prefer to use various smart technology devices like Smartphones, I-pads, tablets. It is highly interesting to mention that the intense acceptance and usage of the technological devices has resulted in enormous acceptance of the multiple social networking sites. From the marketing point of view, it has to be said that for the purpose of better communication of value to the customers as well as the target audience, creation of relevant product which will satisfy the needs existing in the market is of tremendous importance. For the purpose of acquiring knowledge and needs of the masses, it becomes highly essential on the part of the marketers to engage in the process of market research. Recognizing the trend of the young consumers to stay online for a considerable part of the day as well as night, marketers entitled with the responsibility of communicating the values of various kinds of products and services, are focusing on the process of engaging with their customers through the online platform. The online marketers in order to attract more and more of the online target audience are designing various kinds of interesting web enabled applications which automatically collects and tracks the users data as well as various other relevant specification. Needless to mention that in the bid to browse the highly interesting applications, the online community of consumers ends up revealing a considerable amount of personal data. This essential data is being mined by the data scientists and data experts using the technology of Big Data. However, it has to be mentioned that the needs and demand related to normal products and services is highly different as compared to products and services that belongs to the health care sector. It has to be stated that for the purpose of significant understanding of the attitudes of the public as well as the trends of the consumers in regards to various healthcare products and services, a much specialised kind of research and market survey has to be conducted. While discussing about the various kinds of research data that is often considered by the private as well as government organizations belonging to the healthcare sector, the focus and importance has to be given on health survey data, general consumer based information as well as administrative data which is resulted from multiple health care delivery systems (Goodby and et.al, 15). For the purpose of generation of relevant data, organizations belonging to the healthcare category often collect a lot of data which are generated as a possible by product of various operations of the organization. Now with the fast changing consumer needs and demands, the organizations providing services and products of the health care sector has learnt to adapt to become more market driven in nature. This has triggered a shift towards the need for more effective marketing planning as well as reliable external data sources. In most cases, the health care sector have started collecting more relevant market based consumer usage data so that they can effectively use them in the process of new product development (Thomas, 33). Now for the purpose of providing substantiating examples which denotes the usage of marketing data in the health care sector, the issue of Thompson Pulse Survey can be stated. The Thompson Pulse survey creates a model for tracking the usage of healthcare while using a function of household as well as neighbourhood characteristics. The model concentrates on tracking around 10,000 random households on an annual basis. The data and the findings that are generated as a result of this execution of the model helps in a great way in the process of making planning decision as well as driving and concentrating healthcare marketing (Goodby and et.al, 15). Another example that can be provided talks about the support that is often provided by the government of the developed nations in encouraging the use of data related to marketing for the growth of healthcare. Government of the well established nations are lending big support to the new technology of market research commonly known as big data. Because of Government support, the Italian Medicines Agency focuses on collection and analysis of clinical data of new and expensive medicines so as to test the national cost effectiveness of the program. Also, the powerful nation of the United States is making significant amount of policy based changes and initiatives in regards to better usage of the healthcare data. The government of the United States feel that the usage of data related to the health care sector of the nation will help in a great way in the field of marketing, especially in the connection to cost and quality (Groves and et.al, 5). 13. It is utterly important to state that the domain of marketing is largely dependent on the four variables of the marketing mix. The product factor talks about the concept of value creation. The place variable talks about value distribution. The promotion talks about value communication, while price discusses the point of value capture. For a business to attain success in the market, it is very important to create or render a strong product or service to the consumers or the target audience. For the development of a product or service, it is very critical to base the idea of development and modification on a strong concept. In the open and highly competitive digitally enabled market, the success of a product or service is largely judged from the customer’s point of view. The customer’s perception of value generation ability of the product is directly proportional to the generation of customer satisfaction. Failure or loss of ability of a product to deliver the promised values as well as customer satisfaction results in drawing strong criticism as well as negative publicity for a product. Also, in some cases, products generate a lot of negative publicity and criticism, if the delivery of values results in harmful effects on the customers. However, while evaluating the impact of a criticism on a product or brand, it has been found that the negative publicity often creates a highly damaging impression for a product, brand or organization’s reputation. This greatly impacts the business abilities as well as revenue generation prospects of an organization. Now talking about a suitable instance which describes the criticism of a product, the focus can be given on the energy drinks. It has been already mentioned above that the products which affect the wellbeing of the consumers and the target audience are bound to draw criticism in the marketplace. Talking in regards to that, it can be said that various reports in the United States has revealed that the energy drinks that are available in the markets contains a high amount of caffeine as well as vitamins. Reports have confirmed that the high consumption of vitamins as well as caffeine can draw dangerous health impacts for the consumers (Horwich, “Energy drink draws criticism”). A report released last year by Food and Drug Administration of the United States linked that the popular energy drink brand is associated and responsible for the death of five people in the last three years (Meier, “Monster Energy Drink Cited in Deaths”). As a probable negative impact of the criticism faced by the popular energy drink brand Monster, in the connection of ill impacts on the health of the consumers of its products, the company’s shares witnessed a sharp fall in the market (CNBC, “Energy Drinks Linked to Adverse Health Effects”). Thus, it can be said the criticism of the product of the brand Monster has resulted in the impacting of the prospects of the consumer based organization in the market. 17. The price factor constitutes a very important variable in the entire marketing mix. From the marketing perspective, the price factor talks about the issues of value capture. It needs to be mentioned that the determining the proper price point for a product is very important as it plays a major role in the process of delivering values to the customers as well as generating customer satisfaction. For the purpose of understanding the logic related to pricing aspects of products, an elaborate and one to one interview was taken from an expert marketer. In the initial stages of the interview process, the marketer was asked to provide his viewpoints in regards to the importance of pricing of products in today’s markets. The marketer pointed out the fact that the markets of today are very much interconnected in nature. The fast diffusion of technology in various markets around the world has transformed the world in to a single and connected global entity. So, naturally for the process of expansion of business prospects, organization increasingly try to enter the new markets while using their existing or new product line-ups as possible armaments required to enter the new markets. This automatically makes their products international in nature. Thus, while opting for product pricing, organizations have to decide and take into account, the multiple points of influence that influences the pricing of a product for an international market. The marketer during the course of conduction of one to one interview was also asked to cite his view points about the various factors that he believes has a significant influence in the pricing of a product. It was interesting to find that the marketer drew his references to the basic factors associated with the fundamental price determination and price fixing for a particular product. The expert marketer who has significant amount of experience in regards to handling the multiple variables of the marketing mix referred to the point that both the internal as well as the external factors play a tremendous role in process of price setting. While discussing the internal factors, the issues of costs, pricing strategy has to be considered. On a more detailed note, the marketer said that the cost of production, promotion, distribution as well as selling has to be factored while considering the cost aspect. The pricing strategy is comprised of pricing policy, pricing objectives as well as marketing strategy. The pricing strategy talks about the level of price that can be charged from the target audience for rendering a particular product. The pricing policy is calculate and estimates the points of discounts, rebates, price reductions etc while the pricing objective and marketing strategy together decides the point to which the marketer should use price as a tool to make the product compete in the market (Jayachandran, 228). Amongst the external factors, the marketer listed the multiple stakeholders of external nature like the suppliers, customers, channel members, competitors as well as government agencies. It is very important to mention that while discussing the external factors, the marketer provided a significant importance to the customers. As per his point of view, customers are highly influential in creating the demand for a particular product in the market. So, while determining and fixing the price of a product, the relative price elasticity of the customers has to be evaluated for the specific product. During the course of the interview, the marketer was also probed about the strategies that can be possibly applied in regards to pricing, in case the product is supposed to be made available in multiple international markets. The marketer of the expert cadre provided three key strategies that can be applied. The first one talks about the idea of price skimming, while the second and the third one talks about market pricing and penetration pricing. The marketer however point out that each of the strategies is applicable under a complete new kind of a scenario. The price skimming strategy can be applied only if the product is extremely is high class in nature and has been targeted mostly to the rich and upper class consumers. Market based pricing of a product needs to be done in case an alternative product of homogeneous nature, which is marketed by the competitors is already present in the market (Hollensen and Banerjee, 488). Finally, the marketer pointed out that the penetration pricing is only applicable in case the marketer of the particular product wants to stimulate market growth for the product for the purpose of gaining market share. Additionally, the marketer also revealed some very interesting facts in regards to the three key strategies for pricing. He highlighted that the tactic of price skimming can be only applied in the scenario when the product is completely new in the market and no other product of similar nature or with similar feature exists in the same market. The product that is most suitable for the application of a price skimming strategy is usually a very high end concept based product. He also highlighted that the advantage of using a penetration pricing is that it helps in discouraging competitors to enter the markets due to possibility of gaining low profit margins. In case of market based pricing, his views was that the marketer has to be an excellent judge of the perceived market price as well as the real market price. The marketer was also asked during the final stages of the interview to provide relevant examples for the above discussed three kinds of strategies related to pricing of products for the international markets. As a relevant example for price skimming strategy as well as penetration pricing, he mentioned the case of newly invented drugs. During the early days of the product launch, the pharmaceutical companies apply the price skimming tactic is followed. However, once the patent for the drug expires, the companies apply the tactics of penetration pricing. As a relevant example for the market based pricing, the marketer discussed the rental car pricing tactic that exists in the United States. He further highlighted that to attract more customers, the company often implemented a new kind of pricing plan, while either including or discounting various relevant variables that enhances the experience of the customer in regards to the consumption of the company’s specific auto rental service. 27. Big Box Retailers mainly represents the large scale retailers whose product portfolio comprises of a wide range of products that are targeted towards multiple groups of consumers segments. From the academic point of view, big box retailers are retailers whose outlets occupies vast amount of physical space as well as boasts of a broad offering of product mix. Almost all of the big box retailers’ focus on the process of generating profits from the products by concentrating on driving volume based sales. In the United States, the big box retailers often comprises of retail brands like Wal Mart, Best Buy, Target, Office Depot, as well as JC Penny. It is interesting to mention that in the developed markets of the West, the Big Box retailers are often viewed as a source of convenience when it comes to handling of shopping related activities by the consumers as all of the desired items and merchandise are available under one roof. However, as a result of evolving change in connection to consumer behaviour, new trends are arising in the marketplace in regards to the Big Box retailers. Move To smaller speciality store formats It is very important to mention that as per the latest trend, the big box retailers that are present in the developed markets are increasingly focusing on the process of moving from their bigger and larger formats to smaller and better segmented formats. Talking in details about this particular big box trend, it can be said that extensive study of the customers has revealed that the smaller stores get more preference among the consumers as they provide a larger degree of convenience coupled with the issues of consistency and familiarity of brand names. For the purpose of providing relevant amount of support in connection to the happening and existence of this particular trend, the case of Wal Mart in the United States can be used as a relevant example. In the year 2011, the US based retail store focused on the process of rolling out multiple speciality based stores under the brand name of Walmart. These stores whose product offering mainly comprises of fresh produce, dry grocery goods as well as food deserts helps in boosting the convenience factor of the consumers in a great way, who previously had to travel a considerable amount of distance to acquire the same products from an out of town big box retailer. Also, it has been noticed that in order to be successful in the new format, the big box retailer Walmart tries to deliver value to the consumers by using the strategy of everyday low pricing technique as well as high product quality (Deale, “Big Box Retailers Shrink to Grow”). Shift to Urban centres It is important to acknowledge that the big box format of retailing gained tremendous growth since the early 90s’. Driven by the desire to acquire products at the most competitive prices as well as from a very broad and diverse range of product portfolio, most of the American population at that particular time period preferred to drive long distance to the suburban regions, where the big box retailers mainly operated their discount stores. However, with the aging of the baby boomers in the current days, the focus has shifted from the suburban and rural locations to urban locations, where the factor of convenience and comfort is high. Coupled with this particular issue, the pressure coming from deep discounters as well as the growing opposition from neighbourhoods to opening and existence of chain based stores are triggering a shift among the big box retailers to return to the urban zone (Rangwala, 1). Trends of show rooming It is very important to mention that the growth of online retail trends has resulted in the evolution of a new kind of consumer behaviour which is popularly known as show rooming. Talking in a detailed manner about this particular trend, it can be said that the consumers visit the physical store for checking out a particular item or merchandise but often prefer to opt for the purchase through the online medium (Sprague, “The Era of Big Box Retail Dominance Is Coming to an End”). Because of the prompt service provided by the popular online retailers like Amazon, this behaviour of the consumers helps in generating consumer satisfaction, while impacting the financial prospects for the big box retailers. 31. It is very important to mention that the entire concept of marketing is largely dependent on the framework of the AIDA model. From the theoretical point of view, the AIDA model talks and highlights the issues of awareness, interest, desire and action. It is highly important to acknowledge that with the passage of time, various factors are continuously emerging from various regions of the world which are having a strong influence in the economy of a particular market as well as that of the entire world. These influences of various trends and issues are automatically bringing in a significant amount of change in regards to the consumer behaviour of the masses. With the shift in consumer behaviour, the needs, wants and desires of the consumers are also changing. The changing needs of the consumers along with the presence of multiple homogenous substitute products in the market are resulting in the process of increase in competition in the marketplace. The rise of marketplace competition is forcing organization to focus more and more on the process of value communication of their products through the process of conduction of successful marketing campaigns. It is relevant to mention that a successful marketing campaign is largely dependent on its ability to focus on the four variables of marketing mix along with the strategy and method that is chosen to execute it. In this particular case, the focus is on viral marketing. While explaining viral marketing from the very basic angle, it has to be highlighted that the concept talks about concentrating on connecting personal experience of the brand along with the aspect of the consumers’ power. Generally, it is a basic strategy that motivates people to pass on a message of marketing to their connected and preferred ones, thereby creating the opportunities for exponential growth in terms of message exposure as well as influence. Viral marketing is comparatively more appealing than other traditional as well as new forms of marketing since it helps in a great way in the process of enabling of smooth communication among the consumers. Also, it needs to be factored that the evolution as well as high level of penetration of the technology has resulted in the development of seamless value communication through the implementation of the tactic of viral marketing (Kirby and Marsden, Chap 6). The effectiveness as well as the power of viral marketing can be well demonstrated by elaborating two highly relevant examples of viral marketing. The first example of viral marketing talks about the strategy that was applied by Virgin Blue, which is the holding company responsible for owning and operating Virgin Australia. For the purpose of conducting a promotion to celebrate the company’s ninth birthday, the airline company of Australia sold domestic tickets from its twitter account for just around $9 (Virgin Australia, “Tweet Seats Release”). The viral campaign resulted in the generation of sales of around 1000 tickets in a time span of around 3 minutes. Though the sale of the tickets though the viral campaign resulted in loss in regards to the promotion, yet it greatly resulted in the increase of followers of the Twitter account of the airline company to a number of around 33,000 (Inc.com, “7 Great Viral Marketing Campaigns”). The second example that can be cited in connection to a successful viral marketing campaign is about a UK based liquor stores named Threshers. It is highly important to note that the company did not plan in any way to promote its product offerings in the form of a marketing campaign of viral nature. In reality, the UK based liquor store intended to provide suppliers with a discount of 40% on wine and champagne and as a result has sent out a relevant email. The discount that was supposed to be provided was only for the suppliers and not for the mass markets. However, the exposure of the news of the discount in various blogs and email resulted in creating a tremendous excitement and interest among the consumers in regards to this particular offer. The BBC reported that as a result and direct effect of this unwanted viral marketing based email, large queues formed up outside the store and the website of the UK based retailers crashed because of uncontrolled website traffic (Inc.com, “7 Great Viral Marketing Campaigns”). 36. In the arena of marketing, the existence of a strong brand greatly increases the value of the product or service for a particular organization. It is extremely critical to highlight that for the purpose of a building a strong brand, having good and effective public relations with the target audience is very essential. The public relations campaign of an organization is responsible for the generation of publicity for a particular brand, product or even an organization. From the theoretical point of view, publicity basically represents a series of well designed message having positive motivation that helps in a great way in communicating the values of the products or services for an organization or that of a brand. It is very important to consider that publicity generated through the execution of public relations campaign can result in either positive or negative publicity. Positive publicity plays a strong role in the development of the credibility of a brand or an organization. Also, apart from spreading awareness for an organization or for a particular brand of products, it plays a highly influential role in regards to the boosting of consumer confidence. In most cases, the generation of negative publicity creates a disastrous impact on the image as well as the business prospects of a company or a brand. It is utterly relevant to consider that the threat from negative publicity is very high in today’s date as anyone, who remains connected to the virtual medium all the time, can easily vent their negative perspectives for a particular product or service in the online media. The exposure of a negative feedback in the online medium can generate a string of negative criticisms for the same product or service from multiple disgruntled consumers in a very short time. In some cases, the sources responsible for the generation of negative publicity are not even directly related. A suitable example can be provided to highlight this particular issue. In the year 2004, the US based fast food chain was completely caught unaware over a string of negative publicity which was generated as an outcome of a release of a movie named Super size Me. The movie, which highlighted the detoriation of health of the film maker Morgan Spurlock as an outcome of his experiment with a food regime, which involved only McDonalds foods created a strong negative impact in regards to the reputation of the products of the fast food chain (Lamb and et.al, 527). It is important to say that in most cases, the existence of the open and free media which has access to various kinds of information is responsible for the generation of a negative feedback for a company or a brand. However, in some instances, negative publicity has its sources from word of mouth communication originating from customers, employees as well as individuals connected to a organization. Also, the existence of various online forums like blogs, social media as well as multiple consumer oriented websites strongly contributes to the generation of negative publicity for various brands and products. A very popular and recent example can be provided to highlight the amount of influence the online mediums has in regards to generation of negative publicity. In the year 2010, US based company GAP created a new logo. The new logo drew a strong amount of criticism from many of its loyal customers. The extent of the criticism was so powerful that consumers started building websites and micro blogging forums to criticise the poor image as well as impact of the logo. The counter strategy of Gap, which tried to generate new ideas for the logo by implementing the crowd sourcing technique also fell flat on its face and contributed in the generation of further negative publicity in the online media (Walker, “Good News, Bad News”). It is very interesting to mention that while negative publicity spells disaster for a well established brand, it however helps in creating awareness among the consumers for lesser known brands or products. A research for sales of 250 fictional books by professors of Ivey League business schools of the United States revealed that while negative reviews for popular authors resulted in deprecation of the sales of their books, the reverse happened for lesser known authors, whose books received a considerable spike in sales in connection to negative reviews from the readers (Osak, “Bad publicity can generate net benefit for lesser-known brands, products”) 40. 10 question psychographic questionnaire for sporting goods store. 1. What is the age of the respondent? Below 18 years - 19 to 25 yrs - 26 to 32 yrs - 33 to 39 yrs - 40 yrs and above 2. What is the sex of the respondent? Male - Female 3. Do you purchase sports accessories on the basis of their brand factor? Strongly Agree - Agree - Neither Agree Nor Disagree - Disagree Strongly Disagree 4. Do you purchase sports accessories on the basis of their quality? Strongly Agree - Agree - Neither Agree Nor Disagree - Disagree Strongly Disagree 5. Do you feel that the credibility of sports brand is linked with the brand ambassador? Strongly Agree - Agree - Neither Agree Nor Disagree - Disagree Strongly Disagree 6. Do you have a high level of loyalty towards any particular brand of any sports accessories? Strongly Agree - Agree - Neither Agree Nor Disagree - Disagree Strongly Disagree 7. Do you feel that the brand ambassador of the sporting accessories influence your shopping preference? Strongly Agree - Agree - Neither Agree Nor Disagree - Disagree Strongly Disagree 8. Do you feel that the brand ambassador of the sporting accessories influence your brand preference? Strongly Agree - Agree - Neither Agree Nor Disagree - Disagree Strongly Disagree 9. Do you share a strong fan following for the brand ambassador of your most preferred sports brand? Strongly Agree - Agree - Neither Agree Nor Disagree - Disagree Strongly Disagree 10. Do you feel that the brand factor of a sporting accessory has more importance than other variables like quality and durability of a product? Strongly Agree - Agree - Neither Agree Nor Disagree - Disagree Strongly Disagree Works cited Goodby, Alex. W. and et.al. Clinical Data as the Basic Staple of Health Learning: Creating and Protecting a Public Good. USA: Institute of Medicine. 2010. Print. Thomas, Richard. K. Health Services Marketing: A Practitioner's Guide. USA: Springer. 2008. Print. Lamb, Charles. W. and et.al. Marketing.USA: Cengage Learning. 2009. Print. Hollensen, Svend and Banerjee, Madhumita. Global Marketing. India: Dorling Kindersley (I) Pvt. Ltd. 2010. Print. Jayachandran, S. Marketing Management. India: Excel Books. 2004. Print. Kirby, Justin and Marsden, Paul. Connected Marketing. UK: Elsevier Ltd. 2006. Print. Groves, Peter and et.al. The big data revolution in healthcare. US: Mckinsey & Company. 2013. Print. Horwich, Jeff. Energy drink draws criticism. 28 Aug. 2012. Web. 3 July 2013 Sprague, Era. The Era of Big Box Retail Dominance Is Coming to an End. 2 Nov. 2012. Web. 3 July. 2013. Osak, Mitchell. Bad publicity can generate net benefit for lesser-known brands, products. 12 Dec. 2012. Web. 3 July. 2012. Walker, Rob. Good News, Bad News. 29 Oct. 2010. Web. 3 July 2012. Meier, Barry. Monster Energy Drink Cited in Deaths. 22 Oct. 2012. Web. 3 July 2013. Inc.com. 7 Great Viral Marketing Campaigns. N.d. Web. 3 July 2013. Virgin Australia. Tweet Seats Release. 31 Aug. 2009. Web. 3 July 2013. CNBC. Energy Drinks Linked to Adverse Health Effects. 22 Mar. 2013. Web. 3 July, 2013. Deale, S. Big Box Retailers Shrink to Grow. 16 Nov. 2011. Web. 3 July 2013. Rangwala, K. Post-Great Recession Retail Trends. 2011. Web. 3 July. 2013. Read More