Marketing,Concepts,and,Techniq marketing Marketing Concepts and Techniques Challenged

Automation technologies represent a fundamental aspect of any modern industry. The major types of industrial automation solutions, such as DCS, PLC, SCADA, and MES, are used on a large-scale in process and discrete industries.DCS technologie Awhile ago, I got an email from one of the "gurus" I follow and it shocked me. The gist of it was this person wanted to trade services for a household item.To say it floored me would be an understatement.What was worse was a few days later t

The major marketing concept of customer orientation still seemsto be a valid reference point. In the contemporary over-informed,over-stressed and hedonistic consumer society the customer is the onewho decides to purchase a product, to be loyal to a brand or to switchto a competitor. We may agree, therefore, that "the need for such a[customer] focus has not changed" (Holland and Baker, 2001:44). Theexchange value concept, however, might have been rendered obsolete bythe "postmodern manoeuvre in marketing and consumer research" (Brown,in Baker, 2003:25). Let us assume that value may be created "duringconsumption, in sign-value" and not in "exchange-value, as moderneconomists claimed" (Baudrillard, in Firat and Venkatesh, 1993:235). Insuch a way the emphasis is on the customer's personal experience and onthe view, that "the value of consumption comes from the consumerexperience" (Addis and Podesta, 2005:404). According to the traditional theory, consumers are identified,targeted and acquired through a set of strategic tools such assegmentation, targeting and positioning. Different techniques andapproaches based on statistical, "psychological, sociological, andeconomic principles and models" (Addis and Podesta, 2005:389) have beenemployed in service of these concepts. While these techniques are stillin use, a number of processes and mainly the fragmentation of marketswill gradually render the traditional bases of segmentation(demographics and psychographics) questionable and "even the morerecent typologies" like VALS will be "less and less useful" (Firat andShultz II, 1997:196).Additional challenges faced by marketing research specialistsposes the fact that "within the field of qualitative research it iswidely recognised that there is no single uniform manner forrepresenting consumer experiences" in postmodern, consumer society(Goulding, 2003:152). The typical roles of researcher and respondenthave also changed and the research process is characterised byincreased collaboration. Furthermore, the Internet demands thatresearchers adjust to the new forms of communication by adopting newmethods such as "lurking", "online community", "netnography" and others(Cova and Pace, 2006:1092).As a result, in today's fragmented markets reality where "segmentsare breaking up into individual customers" (Firat and Shultz II,1997:196), "the modern tools of sociological analysis" become outdated(Cova 1996:19). While quantitative research is still widely in use, anarray of qualitative techniques are been preferred to "fill the gap" inthe knowledge about the postmodern consumer. Among the most frequentlymentioned are ethnography, fiction, discourse analysis, personalintrospection, and in-depth interviewing (Addis and Podesta, 2005:406).Since purchases, branding and communications are all movingonline, scholars have begun defining the Internet MarketingSegmentation (IMS). One such definition follows:"IMS is the use of current information technology to classifypotential or actual online customers into groups in which the consumershave similar requirements and characteristics" (Lin et al., 2004:602).Definitions of that sort, alluring as they may look, are simplyold concepts in new clothes and some make-up. More important is thatnew approaches like online ethnography, or netnography are beingincreasingly used as appropriate research methods (Cova and Pace, 2006;Maclaran and Catterall, 2002). Companies would need to resort toguerrilla tactics and employ people proficient in areas such as onlinecommunity engineering. Phenomena like brand hijack (Cova and Pace,2006:1094) and decisions on how much power should be given to consumerswill eventually speed up the trends that shape contemporary research.The marketing communication concepts of mass marketing and massadvertising have also been a subject to considerable revision. Theso-called mass customisation has been boosted by the use of emailmarketing, database marketing, RSS and others. The processes offragmentation and post-consolidation have given birth to new conceptslike tribal marketing (Cova, 1996:21). Mass advertising and theone-to-many, one-way linear communications have given way toone-to-one, many-to-many, two-way, non-linear communication flow (Holt,2002; Maclaran and Catterall, 2002). The Internet has brought also theidea of suck as opposed to the traditional push and pull (Travis,2001:16). The levels of interactivity have changed "the nature ofadvertising from persuasion to relationships" (Philport and Arbittier,1997:75) and the efficacy of advertising itself has been questioned.The title of the article "Stop Advertising - Start Staging MarketingExperiences" by Pine II and Gilmore (Strategic Horizons LLP, accessed10th January 2009) is self-explanatory.Schmitt (1999:53) argues that three trends in the broad commercialenvironment have caused a paradigm shift from traditional"features-and-benefits" marketing toward "experiential marketing":- The omnipresence of information technology; - The supremacy of the brand; - The ubiquity of communications and entertainment.While agreeing with Schmitt's ideas I would also add to the framethe influence of postmodern consumer behaviour. Therefore, referencepoints for future research are:- Postmodern condition; - Experiential marketing; - Internet as a new branding tool; - Customer-based brand equity.Addis, M. and Podesta, S.(2005). Long Life to Marketing Research: A Postmodern View, EuropeanJournal of Marketing, Vol. 39. No. 3/4, pp. 386-412.Brown, S.(2003). Postmodern Marketing: Everything Must Go!, in Baker, M. (ed.),Marketing Book, Oxford: Buterworth-Heinemann, 2005, pp. 16-31.Cova, B. (1996). The Postmodern Explained to Managers: Implications for Marketing, Business Horizons, Vol. 39. No. 6, pp. 15-23.Cova,B. and Pace, S. (2006). Brand Community of Convenience Products: NewForms of Customer Empowerment - The Case "my Nutella The Community",European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 40, No. 9/10, pp. 1087-1105.Firat,F. and Shultz II, C.J. (1997). From Segmentation to Fragmentation:Markets And Marketing Strategy In The Postmodern Era, European Journalof Marketing, Vol. 31. No. 3/4, pp. 183-207.Firat, A.F. andVenkatesh, A. (1993). Postmodernity: The Age of Marketing,International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp.227-249.Holland, J. and Baker, S.M. (2001). CustomerParticipation In Creating Site Brand Loyalty, Journal Of InteractiveMarketing, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 34-45.Holt, D.B. (2002). Why DoBrands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory of Consumer Culture andBranding, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 29. No. 1, pp. 70-90.Goulding,C. (2003). Issues in Representing the Postmodern Consumer, QualitativeMarket Research: An International Journal, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 152-159.Lin,T.M.Y., Luarn, P. and Lo, P.K.Y. (2004). Internet Market Segmentation -An Exploratory Study of Critical Success Factors, MarketingIntelligence & Planning, Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 601-622.Maclaran,P. and Catterall, M. (2002). Researching The Social Web: MarketingInformation From Virtual Communities, Marketing Intelligence &Planning, Vol. 20, No. 6, pp. 319-326.Philport, J.C. andArbitter, J. (1997). Advertising: Brand Communication Styles inEstablished Media and the Internet, Journal of Advertising Research,Vol. 37 No.2, pp. 68-77.Strategic Horizons LLP, 'StopAdvertising - Start Staging Marketing Experiences' by Pine II, B.J. andGilmore, J. H. Online. Available at:http://directory.leadmaverick.com/Strategic-Horizons-LLP/Akron/OH/10/943/index.aspx(accessed 10th January 2009).Travis, D. (2001). Branding in the Digital Age, Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 14-18.Schmitt, B. (1999). Experiential Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 15, No. 1-3, pp. 53-67.BoyanYordanof is in the tourism business since 1996. His main interests arein Internet Marketing and more specifically Branding in the HospitalityIndustry. Boyan is an Internet Marketing Executive at RIU Seabank HotelMaltaPersonal URL: http://www.yordanof.com Article Tags: Postmodern Consumer, Internet Marketing, Experiential Marketing, European Journal