EMERGING TRENDS IN MARKETING

Submitted By: -

Miss Swati PanwarStudent, MBA Part II,Govt. College of Engineering and Technology, Bikaner, Rajasthan.E-mail –swatipanwar04@gmail.com

Marketing is everywhere. Formally or informally, people and organizations

engage in a vast number of activities that we could call marketing. Good marketing

has become an increasingly vital ingredient for business success and marketing

profoundly affects our day-today life. It is embedded in everything we do – from

clothes we wear to the websites we click on, to the ads we see.

In India, market continues to remain upwardly mobile albeit at a slower pace

agree the global financial crisis hot the Indian market in the later half of 2008. A large

number of Indian exporting companies had order cancellation and demand slowed

down in India for all products and services.

Nonetheless, as one looks at the Indian market, through the prism of time, one

cannot but conclude the Indian consumer today is economically far better off than his

earlier generations. The coming years will bring full of high-return marketing

opportunities. By closely watching the hottest trends, a marketer can make smart

choices that let him step ahead of his slower-moving competitors.

In these terms, marketers nationwide are setting their plans for future by

adopting new ways of marketing. Thus an entrepreneur can use some of these tactics

to reach its customers in the coming years.

Corporate rivalry has grown manifold. For example: - Telecom Industry

earlier had monopoly that increased to six players per circle that lead to multiple

product options and competitive pricing. This is also true for all other sectors like

airlines, search engines, Television channels, Automobiles and FMCG etc.

Retail market is one of the few mass advertising media that can convey the

same overall strategic message in differing languages, to varying audiences in the

same village, city or region. Today’s Point of Purchase (P-O-P) displays are easily

assembled, maintained and at the same time, more powerful in entertaining and

informing in the retail environment. The examples are Big Bazaar, Reliance Fresh,

Subhiksha, Spencers, Wal-Mart, Vishal Mega Mart and Home Town etc.

To stay in the market for long-term, product innovation is also necessary.

Consistently, the marketer has been pushed to innovate on process or both. Likewise

innovations were visible in other sectors like financial services and consumer

durables. Such as most of the banks are also offering online bill payments,

insurance policies, demat accounts and pension plans to its customers other than

banking. If we see the innovation in products, Cadbury introduced “Celebrations”

as gift packed chocolates for festive seasons to its customers that was highly

acceptable in the market.

Convergence of technology was yet another major development that offered

the opportunity to the marketer to engage the customer on a continuing basis. Here,

companies now reached to the customer through physical media like print, outdoor

hoardings, interactive kiosks, electronic media like TV and Radio, Internet and

mobile phones. All these were now used simultaneously thereby creating a new and

forceful thrust. These were used to communicate and seed feedback and even

involving the customer in product design. CNN IBN was the first news channel in

India to use this strategy and involved viewers not only in chat shows and debates but

also in creating news terming such viewers as “Citizen Journalist”. The channel

actively promoted this concept of co-production by recognizing all such news feeds

and even awarding them.

In product customization, BMW’s technology now allows buyers to design

their own models from among 350 variations with 500 options, 90 exterior colors and

170 trims. The company claims that 80% of the cats bought by individuals in Europe

and up to 30% bought in US are built to order.

Another tools of marketing used by marketers today is Consumer Generated

Advertising (CGA) i.e. customers not only be Promoters for the company, but

actually make advertising for them. As this advertising will always be based on what

they REALLY love about product, it’s sure to strike home with other consumers. For

example: - Harpic Cleaner, Jaago Re by Tata Tea. In this aspect, somebody has

also highlighted with the saying,

“Never underestimate the extent to which people want to

be involved in advertising.”

The most common tech products used are cell phones and sms facilities

offered by cell phones providers. Companies can reach customers on the move with

mobile marketing using GPS (Global Positioning Service) technology for instance –

consumer can download company logos so they can spot brand such as Baskin

Robbins when they are on the road. Firms can also advertise on video iPods and

reach consumers on their cell phones through mobile marketing.

DTH (Direct to Home Telecast Service) just introduced in India was used by

145 of the urbanities. This characteristic only facilitates the launch of savvy gadgets

and companies using all technologies to engage their customers 24x7.

A major problem of Indian Market has been that access to products and

services was restricted mainly due to infrastructure constraints and lack of distribution

network. Outsourcing further enables firms to overcome the access problem. For

example: - Universities and management schools today have multiple campuses and

use a range of internet technologies to reach out to their target markets. IIMs tied up

with NIIT to offer multiple diploma programmes to working executives. ICFAI has

campuses all over the country including smaller towns like Dehradun to offer MBA

Programme.

The customer today is empowered with more information about brands and

their ambassadors. Brands have a much bigger task cut out for them. For example: -

They have to mange their credibility on an ongoing basis. They cannot afford to sit on

their laurels earned in the past. Any adverse news about them in some media vehicle

can impact their image. For example: The land controversy surrounding Amitabh

Bacchhan impacted his image and perhaps his credibility as Brand Ambassador.

When the Indian cricket team lost badly in 2007 World Cup, almost all brands

withdrew their contracts with Saurav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar and others in the

team. The advertising rates on World cup telecast also declined. New Icons therefore

need not be celebrities, but they need to be credible. Despite of this, new icons are

adding revenues to their companies by attracting their fan followings.

In addition to it, the era of Indian Global Brands has also arrived. Whether it

is Arcelor Mittal (L. N. Mittal Group), Tata Corus, Infosys, Ranbaxy, Wipro,

Barista, Taj or Haldiram or Kitchens of India or IITs and IIMs, Indian brands are

new making waves in the world market. Though, all these brands have a long way to

go to be Coca-Cola or Microsoft, they are now redefining the marketing rules in

their product category in foreign markets. Thus one of the challenges for the

marketers is to create strong Indian global brands.

The new term Green marketing is also introduced in the series of marketing

trends. As defined by American Marketing Association, green marketing is the

marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe. Thus green

marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product modification,

changes to the production process, packaging changes, as well as modifying

advertising.

Green marketing has continued to gain adherents, particularly in light of

growing global concern about climate change. This concern has led more companies

to advertise their commitment to reduce their climate impacts, and the effect this is

having on their products and services.

Due to Ecology Sensitivity, more and more products and services are going

turn green. New Delhi, capital of India, was being polluted at a very fast pace until

Supreme Court of India forced a change to alternative fuels. In 2002, a directive

was issued to completely adopt CNG in all public transport systems to curb

pollution and it has gone green.

Samsung and others market their refrigerators as an environmentally safe.

Hotels like Leela, Orchid and Taj claim they provide services which are

environmentally safe. All this has implications for product design and

communication.

Social challenges play a significant role in product diffusion and adoption in

all markets but much more in Indian market which is high on social networking. The

classical case is that of Biotique products which have never been advertised. Rather it

followed the route of placing the product in customer’s hands through presentations in

five star hotel guest rooms. Frequented by the opinion leaders and affluent customers,

it did not take long for these products to enter their homes and through them to others.

Likewise there are several websites like buyandselloldbooks.com, mouthshut.com

which have never used the high cost media to advertise. Yet these are known websites

in their target market segments.

Internet marketing also referred to as i-marketing, web marketing,

online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the

Internet.

The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, one of which

being lower costs for the distribution of information and media to a global audience.

The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of providing instant

response and eliciting responses, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet

marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope because it not only refers

to digital media such as the Internet, e-mail, and wireless media; however, Internet

marketing also includes management of digital customer data and electronic

customer relationship management (ECRM) systems.

Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages

of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search

engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing.

Internet marketing is also associated with several business models like e-commerce

in which goods are sold directly to consumers (B2C) or businesses (B2B), publishing

like the sale of advertising and lead-based websites.

Geo marketing places an emphasis on marketing that appeal to a specific

behaviour or interest, rather than reaching out to a broadly-defined demographic. "On-

and Off-line" marketers typically segment their markets according to age group,

gender, geography, and other general factors. Marketers have the luxury of targeting

by activity and geolocation. For example, a kayak company can post advertisements

on kayaking and canoing websites with the full knowledge that the audience has a

related interest.

Marketers can also use the internet as powerful information and sales

channel augmenting their geographical reach to inform customers and promote their

business and product worldwide. By establishing one or more websites, they can list

their products and services, history, its business philosophy, job opportunities and

other information of interest to visitors.

Researcher can collect fuller and richer information about market, customers,

prospects and competitors. They can also conduct fresh marketing research using the

interest to arrange for focus groups, send out questionnaires and gather primary data

in several other ways.

Manager can facilitate and speed internal communication among their

employees by using the internet as a private intranet. Employees can query one

another, seek advice and download or upload needed information from and to the

company’s computer.

Companies can also facilitate and speed external communication by creating

an online and offline buzz through brand advocates and user communities.

The virtual communities are also created customers come together or share

their experiences about the products and brands. For example: The virtual

community for young girls called gang of girls (www.gangofgirls.com) was

promoted by Sunsilk brand of shampoo.

To support continues flow of information as exchange of internal company

records, marketing intelligence activities and marketing research, Marketing

Information System (MIS) is used by mangers.

Now-a-days, customers favor firms that can promise timely delivery, that is

why companies need to perform these steps quickly and accurately. An increasingly

number of companies is using Intranet and Extranet to improve the speed, accuracy

and efficiency of the order to payment cycle. For example: - CISCO Connection

Online allows the computer networking leader to connect with all its suppliers,

manufacturers and customers and resellers online. By reducing payment cycles for

suppliers, eliminating paper based purchasing, reducing inventory levels CISCO save

more than $24 million in material cost and $51 million in labor cost annually in the

first year of the program’s operations.

Sales Information System is also a new term as emerging technology in

marketing as marketing managers need timely and accurate reports on current sales.

Wal-Mart operates a sales and inventory data warehouse that captures data on every

item, for every customer, for every store, every day and refreshes it every hour. For

example: - the IT staff at headquarters tapped into the data warehouse the morning

after Thanksgiving and noticed the East Coast sales of a computer-monitor holiday

special were far below expectations. Marketing staff contacted stores and learned the

computers and monitors weren’t being displayed together, so potential buyers

couldn’t see what they were getting for the posted price. Calls went out to Wal-Mart

stores across the country to rearrange the displays. By 9:30 that morning, the pace of

sales could be seen picking up in the company’s database. Wal-Mart also transmits

nightly orders to its many suppliers for new shipments of replacement of its inventory.

And companies that make good use of “cookies”, records of Web site usage

stored on personal browsers, are smart users to targeted marketing. Although the

perception is that most people delete cookies out of concern for their privacy, the

numbers tell a different story. A recent survey showed that only 8% of people very

frequently delete cookies, down from 18% in 2004, and 24% of respondents said they

never delete cookies. Not only do customers not delete cookies, but they also expect

customized marketing appeals and deals once they accept cookies.

Today companies use techniques like Databases, Data Warehousing and

Data Mining and organize their information into databases – customer database,

product databases and salesperson databases – and then combine data from the

different databases. For example: - the customer database will contain every

customer’s name, address, past transactions and sometimes even demographics and

psychographics (activities, interests and opinions). Instead of sending a mass “carpet

bombing” mailing of a new offer to every customer in its database, a company will

rank its customers according to purchase recency, frequency and monetary value

(RFM) and send the offer to only the highest – scoring customers. Besides saving on

mailing expenses, this manipulation of data can often achieve a double-digit response

rate.

The Marketing Intelligence System is also a helpful tool. A marketing

intelligence system of a set of procedures and sources, managers use to obtain

everyday information about developments in the marketing environment. Marketing

managers collect marketing intelligence by reading books, newspapers and trade

publications, talking to customers, suppliers and distributors, monitoring “social

media” on the Internet via online discussion groups, e-mailing lists and blogs and

meeting with other company managers.

Recently, Ambush marketing has received a lot of publicity in the Indian and

international marketing arena. The term "Ambush Marketing" was created by Jerry

Welsh when he worked for American Express. Welsh said the original justification

for ambush marketing was the high cost of sponsorship. Thus, Ambush marketing

occurs when a company signs on to sponsor an event as official sponsor, and a rival

hijacks the mind space through backdoor means. It is a concept that describes the

actions of companies who seek to associate themselves with a sponsored event

without paying the organizers. The ambush consists of giving the impression to

consumers that the ambusher is somehow affiliated with the event. Such a marketing

act is known as “Ambush Marketing” and the brand which does so is known as

“Ambush Marketer”. This is also known as Parasitic Marketing or Guerilla

Marketing. Ambush marketing can provide some of the benefits of a legitimate, paid-

for sponsorship at relatively little cost. For example: - In 1996, soft drinks giant Coke

paid a fortune for the right to call itself the official sponsor of the World Cup. Rival

Pepsi promptly launched a massive advertising blitz, based on the catch-line:

“Nothing Official About It”. The Pepsi campaign captured the public imagination -

and Coke, the official sponsor, lost out. Another example: - During December 2003

when Rahul Dravid scored 200 against Australia, Airtel had paid Times of India Rs

25,00,000/- just to have their logo underneath Rahul Dravid’s picture printed on the

first page knowing the fact that Rahul Dravid is an Orange ambassador. 

In case of IPL, Both PepsiCo's 'Youngistaan' brand ambassadors - Virender

Sehwag, captain of Delhi Daredevils, and Ishant Sharma, member of Kolkata Knight

Riders have been formally present at various promotional activities for arch-rival

Coca-Cola India, simply because Coca-Cola is the associate sponsor and the official

pouring partner for both Delhi Daredevils and Kolkata Knight Riders.

Sehwag, for instance, attended a special send-off ceremony for Delhi

Daredevils organised by Coca-Cola India. At the event, Sehwag, along with Coke

brand ambassador Gautam Gambhir, unveiled a limited edition bottle of Coca-Cola

for IPL.

If we talk about Political Marketing, for the first time in the history of the US

Presidential Elections, the Internet was used widely and effectively for both

campaigning and fund raising purposes. Obama also used the traditional methods of

marketing which accounted for 50% of his fund raising. He carefully tailored his

campaign by targeting people of different age groups, communities and professionals

systematically to achieve success in the elections. He tapped the growing community

of people who preferred the Internet and mobile phones to television. In this way, he

could be able to get attention of American people by having a personal touch with

them via internet and finally his labor had borne fruit in the form of his victory.

The sum and substance of all the above discussions is that for Indian

business firms, marketing is now emerging as the most vital function. On their

capacity for learning marketing anew will depend whether, and to what extent they

will succeed.

In earlier regulated regime, there was no great need for top class marketing.

Indian firms operating as they were in the smug comfort of a protected economy

could prosper despite their shoddy marketing. That era, however, is now decisively

over. They have to now necessarily compete with global firms at global level. And,

that means, the time for scientific marketing has arrived in India.