Informative Speech on Current Marketing - Case Study Example

Informative Speech on Current Marketing Due to the coming up of up-to-the-minute competing channels along with store formats, retailers are finding themselves faced with great challenges that call for innovation. Coupled with the fact that consumers themselves now have a different, ever-changing behavior and needs structure. This implies that retailers must undertake research much more frequently and come up with effective ways of predicting consumer behavior and meeting their needs; where predicting behavior also includes interpreting the multi-channel shopping behaviors of consumers. Researchers have found that shopping habits are ingrained in consumers and they are often characterized by collecting certain items from one store and other items from a different store, that is, consumers will go to a toy store to get toys and go to a supermarket to get basic household commodities. Retailers must therefore place themselves in a position that allows them to take advantage of this complex environment (Krafft and Mantrala 7). Having been in existence for over a century, the Target Corporation an American retailing company has proved to be up to the challenge and has subsequently thrived in the retail industry. Through one of its employees, Target was able to create a model that allows the store to predict human behavior and thus preempt their competitors by meeting the individual needs of their customers. The challenge the store was facing was convincing their customers that they could shop for all they need at their store as opposed to getting specific items only where mostly it has been toiletries, cleaning supplies and socks. The biggest constraint was that consumers’ having their shopping habits ingrained which makes it difficult to convince them to adopt new ones. This restraint was presented by the marketers to one of the employees at the store that is a statistician. They explained that in every person’s life time there was a point at which their loyalties could be shifted. One such point is when expecting a baby where expectant mothers will look to brands offering them the best deals and in the past companies had caught up on this and resulted to sending them coupons. This was because companies can access birth records as they are made public. The challenge was now to preempt these companies by identifying a way to reach the expectant mothers while still in their early stages of pregnancy (Duhigg). The company already had a medium for collecting information but what they needed now was a way of predicting behavior. These two would then be integrated to allow the store capture customers as the data collected would be analyzed and be used to establish patterns that dictate shopping habits. This trend has been identified as predictive analytics and has been supported by a study that showed our thinking on issues such as dieting are influenced by habits rather than conscious decision-making which has allowed doctors to conjure up treatments for addictions, depression among other illnesses. Target tasked Andrew Pole the statistician employee with identifying when their customers’ shopping habits are particularly flexible so as to design suitable advertisements or coupons, which would lead the customers to have new, large spending habits. In essence, the store was striving to push psychological buttons after establishing a cue-routine-reward loop using a calculator designed by Pole. However, the issue of privacy came up as customers were bound to become worried about how Target was finding out such information. The company then decided to camouflage their intentions by sending ads for items that expectant mothers would need alongside other unrelated items so as to eliminate the fear of intrusion on privacy. Their most impressive story was where the company was able to determine a girl was pregnant even before her own father knew, leading them to send her coupons for expectant mothers (Duhigg). Predictive analytics raises the concept of shopper marketing as opposed to traditional marketing where companies are focusing on customers as points of advertising strategies. Previously, companies directed their marketing efforts at both intermediaries for example wholesalers and retailers, and consumers which is referred to as traditional marketing. Shopper marketing, in contrast, focuses solely on consumers by targeting them as they shop. Through recent technologies for instance social media, companies are able to design advertisements and other marketing strategies to the specific needs of the customers. Facebook has been seen to propagate this effort where they have been cited as selling user information to companies to help them better reach their target markets through tailor-made advertisements. This is further enhanced by the ability to pinpoint the location of users through their mobile phones, enabling companies to have more demographic information. Once again the issue of privacy is raised to which Facebook responded by creating privacy options which users may or may not pay attention to (Shankar et al 30-32). Other than predictive analytics, pervasive marketing and retail duration are other marketing strategies being employed by companies. The former alludes to providing customers with the opportunity to shop from anywhere that is provision of multiple channels, through their mobile phones, tablets, ipads and smart devices. For instance, with retail companies the idea would be to rethink the convenience store shopping experience by enabling customers to do more than just shopping where checking one’s health can be an additional service, using one’s phone or infrastructure set up at the retail stores. The latter refers to creating more value for the customer through personalized shopping experiences that they can willingly share to their friends and family as it allows them to narrow down their choices. This is related to use of predictive analytics as companies are able to provide relevant products to the consumers based on their previous shopping experiences. Since the products offered are authentic and influential to the customers, they will spread the word on the company. For instance, Amazon has been able to leverage this trend by offering its customers an online shopping platform in addition to books which was their initial and sole product (Krafft and Mantrala 85). These trends are only conceivable to marketing managers through situation analysis which allows them to remain aware of current trends while managing the available resources. Situation analysis entails acquiring data and information and analyzing it to make meaningful, beneficial decisions. At any one time, the collection of data and information through research activities should not outweigh the benefits received where the challenge usually is quantifying the benefits. In addition, marketing managers have to deal with the dynamic nature of internal as well as external environment while undertaking a situation analysis. Resources available to a company are not only financial, human and knowledge, but include relationships that have been forged with suppliers and more importantly customers. The marketing manager should be able to determine the level along with availability of these resources in the near future. Similarly, any additional resources should be put into taking advantage of opportunities in the market that will enable the company to meet its customers’ needs and preferences (Ferrell and Hartline 90-94). In conclusion, companies should strive to remain abreast with current trends while maintaining an optimal budget; as well as ensuring they fulfill their ethical responsibilities that include respecting consumer privacy. Works Cited Krafft, Manfred and Mantrala, Murali. Retailing in the 21st Century: Current and Future Trends. 2nd Edition. New York City. Springer Publishers. 2009. Print. Duhigg, Charles. “How Companies Learn your Secrets”. New York Times. 2012. Web. 23 July 2013 Shankar, Venkatesh.,et al. “Innovations in shopper marketing: Current insights and future research issues”. Journal of Retailing, 87, 2011, S29-S42. Ferrell, O., Hartline, M. Marketing Strategy. 5th Edition. Stamford: Cengage Learning. 2011. Read More