Marketing: Strategic Innovation in Globally Diverse Markets

Praxis II: Marketing in the 21st Century

by

Veola Bryant-Wallace

Marketing: Strategic Innovation in Globally Diverse Markets

Walden University

April 24, 2016

                                                        Executive Summary/Abstract

Marketers must react by having personalize online world meet their personalize offline world, bringing the two worlds together ensuring each complement each other (Chandra, 2014). A good example is Gatorade. Gatorade marketing is for runners, tennis, players, gymnast, basketball players, football players, and just about any other athlete or would be athlete. Gatorade makes sure they connect with high schools, colleges, and just about any sports arena to ensure athletes are drinking their drinks, which causes others to make sure their athletes are drinking Gatorade as well. Amazon is a huge user of personalization. They personalize their books and music then recommend other books and music using previous data (Halimi, Chavosh, and Choshali, 2011). Online stores are designing their websites to capture individual shopper’s personal style so that later they can suggest products that might interest the individual shopper. When I login to my email I see ads from websites I previously visited that day or the day before.  Personalize marketing is targeting individual shoppers to close the gap between might buy to buying. The challenge of personalize marketing is the fear of reinventing mass marketing however, the need to reinvent to better know the consumers that purchase your products and how often is mandatory these days.  

Personalized Marketing

Personalized marketing is ensuring the brand and its marketing is individually related to as many consumers as possible, keeping in mind there are no two customers the same (Kotler & Keller, 2016). Companies take previous data and create a marketing mix just for that individual. Today’s businesses are using whatever they can to meet the individual needs of customers instead of mass marketing used in times past. Consumers are receiving frequent calls from call centers, many emails that capture the desire of the consumer, and website tracking just to name a few. Personalized Marketing is important more so today because consumers no longer have the desire to sit through lengthy commercials. Personalization today is easier than pre-internet. Markets will need to reinvent themselves to stay abreast of the real meaning of personalized marketing, they will need to reach the offline consumers as well as their digital counterparts (Chandra, 2014).

Creating a one-to-one relationship takes companies away from the traditional way advertising too many with hopes that some shopper will purchase the items on display. One-to-one allows the seller to establish a relationship with the user by collecting information about the user to better initiative the relationship (Mussi, 2003). Getting to know a user via a one-to-one relationship creates a customer/buyer relationship one increases trust, user gratification, and ultimately loyalty (Mussi, 2003). An example would be shopping for a house realtors find out what the buyer desires and set out to find that house because they know any other house would not satisfy the buyer. Realtors have understood this from the beginning of time whereas retailers are finding out there is a better way than the old 30 second television ads. Over the years many businesses notice that something is wrong with marketing its apparent rock-hard safe practicalities are not secure and the concentration is wavering on the edge of a crisis due to shoppers and the way they view purchasing today (Palmer & Ponsonby, 2002). In 2002 many believe the mass marketing was behind times and was in need of an update.

The role of personalize marketing or one-to-one marketing is to increase sales and bring the brand back into a competitive playing field. Take Coke for instance with many years of declining consumptions and sales. Coke personalize Coke by putting over 200 names on the label along with creating the “Share a Coke” campaign, this reverse Cokes decade long slump. Take a look at unopen emails in any given email inbox there are over 200 unread emails many say in the email if they were personalize. Over 50 percent of consumers believe that brand messages are spam messages (Wegert, 2014). Consumer believe that when emails or ads are personalize there is more trust and they feel confident that they are not being scammed or taken advantage of at any given time. Much like going online shopping for a certain type of shoes the next time they log into their email the ads will be from the website they spent the most time selecting their shoes or the store they purchase the shoes.

Companies like airlines have for quite some time been adjusting their prices based on inventory or their frequent flyers discounts this is what most refers to as dynamic pricing (Aydin & Ziya, 2009). Companies will also adjust their prices based on customer’s information sometimes increasing or lowering prices dependent on the information. Companies will sometime increase their price when they suspect the purchase is for a company vice individual, for instance sometimes airlines will raise their prices for their frequent flyer because they believe the ticket is work related (Petro, 2015). It was proven some retailers send different prices in their catalog to people who live in different zip codes this is called geographical price discrimination. Victoria Secret was sued because their prices were different in the catalogs they sent to men vice women (Aydin & Ziya, 2009).

Never is discrimination of any type good for business. I remember shopping at a Wal-Mart closer to my church and realize there is a huge different in weekly ads and prices. Speaking to the Manager of that Wal-Mart to find out why the sodas at my Wal-Mart were at least $3.50 less than the ones on sale here I was told because they paid extra because of the high crime rate in the area. Unbelievable is all I can say this will cause more customers to drive into our neighborhood to get better prices and it also explains why on Sunday our Wal-Mart triple in customers. Because it is not illegal for marketers to have different prices in different areas or different prices for individual sales many marketers do so. The truth is and contrary to popular belief price customization does exist and it is very legal (Aydin & Ziya, 2009). Marketers will need to control price discrimination because it can cause customers to hoover ill feelings and could cause a few value customers to take their business elsewhere (Aydin & Ziya, 2009). 90 percent of customers do agree with personalization prices or prices being charged based on their information. Then others do not care one way or another as long as they perceive the pricing is fair in the long run a great example is senior citizen discounts. Many customers do not care if Wednesday is ladies day or before 4:00 p.m. is senior citizens time, yet this pricing comes about because of personalized marketing (Aydin & Ziya, 2009). Sam’s Club and Costco’s use dynamic pricing. In order to shop there you must have a loyalty card, today I got a discount at Macy’s because I am one of their elite card holders. It is hard not to give special pricing to certain individuals but giving one should be the exception not the norm. Although for many retail stores I am a platinum or elite card holder I still believe marketers should follow a consistent pricing for all customers.