THE NEW MARKETING REALITIES
The marketplace is dramatically different from even 10 years
ago, with new marketing behaviors, opportunities, and
challenges emerging.
1. TECHNOLOGY
With the rapid rise of e-commerce, the mobile Internet, and
Web penetration in emerging markets, the Boston Consulting
Group believes brand marketers must enhance their “digital
balance sheets.” Massive amounts of information and data
about almost everything are now available to consumers and
marketers. Even traditional marketing activities are
profoundly affected by technology.
2. GLOBALIZATION
The world has become a smaller place. New transportation,
shipping, and communication technologies have made it easier
for us to know the rest of the world, to travel, to buy and sell
anywhere. By 2025, annual consumption in emerging markets
will total $30 trillion and contribute more than 70 percent of
global GDP growth.
A staggering 56 percent of global financial services
consumption is forecast to come from emerging markets by
2050, up from 18 percent in 2010. Demographic trends favor
developing markets such as India, Pakistan, and Egypt, with
populations whose median age is below 25.
In terms of growth of the middle class, defined as earning
more than $3,000 per year, the Philippines, China, and Peru
are the three fastest-growing countries. Globalization has
made countries increasingly multicultural. Globalization
changes innovation and product development as companies
take ideas and lessons from one country and apply them to
another.
3. SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Poverty, pollution, water shortages, climate change, wars, and
wealth concentration demand our attention. The private sector
is taking some responsibility for improving living conditions,
and firms all over the world have elevated the role of
corporate social responsibility.
The organization’s task is to determine the needs, wants, and
interests of target markets and satisfy them more effectively
and efficiently than competitors, while preserving or
enhancing consumers’ and society’s long-term well-being.
As goods become more commoditized and consumers grow
more socially conscious, some companies incorporate social
responsibility as a way to differentiate themselves from
competitors, build consumer preference, and achieve notable
sales and profit gains.
A DRAMATICALLY CHANGED MARKETPLACE :
These 3 forces (technology, globalization, and social
responsibility) have strongly changed the marketplace,
bringing consumers and companies new capabilities. The
marketplace is also being transformed by changes in channel
structure and heightened competition.
NEW CONSUMER CAPABILITIES
Social media is an explosive worldwide phenomenon.
Empowerment is not just about technology, though. Consumers
are willing to move to another brand if they think they are not
being treated right or do not like what they are seeing. Expanded
information, communication, and mobility enable customers to
make better choices and share their preferences and opinions with
others around the world.
Consumers can use the internet as a powerful information and
purchasing aid
Consumers can search, communicate, and purchase on the move
Consumers can tap into social media to share opinions and
express loyalty
Consumers can actively interact with companies
Consumers can reject marketing they find inappropriate
NEW COMPANY CAPABILITIES
Companies can use the internet as a powerful information and
sales channel, including for individually differentiated goods
Companies can collect fuller and richer information about
markets, customers, prospects, and competitors
Companies can reach customers quickly and efficiently via
social media and mobile marketing, sending targeted ads, coupons,
and information
Companies can improve purchasing, recruiting, training, and
internal and external communications
Companies can improve cost efficiency
CHANGING CHANNELS
One of the reasons consumers have more choices is that channels
of distribution have changed as a result of retail transformation and
disintermediation.
-Retail transformation → Store-based retailers face competition
from catalog houses; direct-mail firms; newspaper, magazine, and
TV direct-tocustomer ads; home shopping TV; and e-commerce. In
response, entrepreneurial retailers are building entertainment into
their stores with coffee bars, demonstrations, and performances,
marketing an “experience” rather than a product assortment.
-- Disintermediation → Early dot-coms such as Amazon.com,
E*TRADE, and others successfully created disintermediation in the
delivery of products and services by intervening in the traditional
flow of goods.
-In response, traditional companies engaged in reintermediation
and became “brick-and-click” retailers, adding online services to
their offerings. Some with plentiful resources and established
brand names became stronger contenders than pure-click firms.
HEIGHTENED COMPETITION:
The rise of private labels and mega-brands and a trend toward
deregulation and privatization have also increased competition.
-Private labels → Brand manufacturers are further buffeted by
powerful retailers that market their own store brands, increasingly
indistinguishable from any other type of brand.
-- Mega-brands → Many strong brands have become mega-brands
and extended into related product categories, including new
opportunities at the intersection of two or more industries.
-- Deregulation → Many countries have deregulated industries to
create greater competition and growth opportunities.
-- Privatization → Many countries have converted public
companies to private ownership and management to increase their
efficiency
MARKETING IN PRACTICE:
Given the new marketing realities, organizations are challenging
their marketers to find the best balance of old and new and to
provide demonstrable evidence of success.
Marketing balance
Marketing accountability
Marketing in the organization
MARKETING BALANCE
Companies must always move forward, innovating products and
services, staying in touch with customer needs, and seeking new
advantages, rather than relying on past strengths.
Marketers must balance increased spending on search advertising,
social media, e-mails, and text messages with appropriate spending
on traditional marketing communications.
The ideal is retaining winning practices from the past while adding
fresh approaches that reflect the new marketing realities.
MARKETING ACCOUNTABILITY
Marketers are increasingly asked to justify their investments in
financial and profitability terms, as well as in terms of building the
brand and growing the customer base.
They are thus applying more metrics—brand equity, customer
lifetime value, return on marketing investment (ROMI)—to
understand and measure their marketing and business performance
and a broader variety of financial measures to assess the direct and
indirect value their marketing efforts create.
MARKETING IN THE ORGANIZATION
Marketing is not done only by the marketing department; every
employee has an impact on the customer. Marketers now must
properly manage all possible touch points: store layouts, package
designs, product functions, employee training, and shipping and
logistics.
To create a strong marketing organization, marketers must think
like executives in other departments, and executives in other
departments must think more like marketers.
