Marketing Thinking
About Consumer Behavior
This notes are to help understand ourselves and people. How our behavior is influenced by society and other factors. How do we use the different things to market…socially and psychologically. We will try to understand the different theories of sociology, psychology, etc and see the strategic application of that into the marketing sphere.
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In books that you may have read and classes you make have taken, the instructor may have tried to convey to you “what is marketing” but may have never really stepped back to ask “what is marketing thinking”?
What are you doing on this blog and why are you here? Perhaps you’re here to think like a marketer. Acquire the mindset, which is different from that of someone who is in operations, management, engineering, etc. When you go to school, what you are really doing is acquiring a certain type of thinking. Another mindset is to learn how to DO something.
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What is marketing thinking?
Something about competition perhaps? Analyzing data? Thinking how others think? Psychology? Come up ways to create demand?
If someone were to ask “What is thinking?” and you were to answer in one word, what would that word be? – “Questioning!” So if you stop questioning, do you stop thinking?
A lot of things we do minimize the need to think, thus we think less and less. We become “cognitive misers”. When we go to work or school every day we tend to do the same thing the same way every time. Why?
Marketing thinking involves a particular type of question. Marketing thinking “occurs when someone is questioning how to compete through a targeted market. It is an active, cognitive engagement centering on out thinking the competition (strategically) through the means of marketing” – Hill, McGinnis, & Cromartie 2006
You are actually engaging in marketing thinking when you ask yourself if its high involvement, low involvement, how you can compete and engage the target market. You are competing through a group of people to what you call the target market.
What are you doing and what are you engaging in?
The target market is always a moving target because the target is always changing and you are always changing thus you are always going though this questioning stuff to get good at it.
Additionally, the questioning could involve the generation of alternatives (creative thinking), or can be about the evaluation of an alternative (critical thinking), or evaluating the outcomes of one’s actions (reflective thinking). In all case, questioning (thinking) is involved through the marketer’s curiosity when the questioning stops so does the thinking.
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What is marketing?
Depending on how you define it, it will determine how you engage in it. If you have a narrow definition, you engagement will be very constrictive. If you define it in a deeper and broader way, your thinking and engagement will be far broader than that of your competitors.
Every so many years people would realize that certain things aren’t working any more, thus they step back and see what would work and what wouldn’t work again. Some will say that marketing has something to do with relationships. What is it about relationships that its of great interest to marketers? When there is a relationship, people will defend it in the face of attacks.
Marketing is about relationships, facilitating them, internally and externally. To do this the organization needs to be structured in such a way that their internal relationships drives them to building relationships outside of the organization.
Ultimately as marketers were trying to persuade. We would be learning the art of persuasion through consumer behavior. We take from what we’ve learned from our trials and errors and look onto the marketplace and see what’s going on with consumers. When you look into the marketplace, what do you see? The marketplace isn’t homogeneous. It’s made up of individuals, groups of people who have different interests and likings. (*note…sociology is for the society, psychology is for the individual).
When looking into a marketplace, there are a set of marketing logics. What do you do first, second, third? In this case what do you do first? If as a graduate some junior comes to you and asks, “What do I need to do first?”…what do you tell them? When you’re looking at the marketing place what do you look for first? – Who should we market to…and…why should we market to them?
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Segmentation Analysis
You’re looking over at the market place, you see the different groups of people, you want to decide which one of those groups you want to market to. You do what is called segmentation analysis. From this comes your target market.
There are four criteria in a segmentation analysis:
- Measurability – Demographics…the ease at which you can identify one segment from another. This may pertain to gender, age, where they life, etc.
- Accessibility – What media do they consume? The ease in which you can communicate to one segment over another. Say you have one segment that gets info via newspapers, and another segment via email.
- Substantiality – What is the return of going after one segment versus another? This is also determinant on how much you put into it.
- Unique Responsiveness – As you look out into the market place you are finding how receptive one segement is to another based on what you have to offer them? You may want to see the different attitudes that one segment may have over another.
Logic Step #1 - DO that segmentation and analyze it! — What criteria do you start your analysis with? Which of the four do you start with first? The best one to start off with is “Unique Responsiveness.” See which segments respond positively and negatively. Then you ask “WHY do they respond to it that way?” When you see the unique responses, maybe you will look at why a certain group responds positive as opposed to another group that is a triple negative. — Segmentation analysis is used to identify the most attractive segment from the organization’s perspective. This segment then becomes known as the target market.
Logic Step #2 - Once a target market has been chosen, positioning can be conducted which includes identifying the relative perceptual positions of products/services within the minds of the target market. This type of analysis also provides competitive information from the target market’s perspective.
Logic Step #3 - With the positioning information at hand, a marketer has information available to determine what the marketing mix needs to do. In other words, it is at this point a marketer has the information to start thinking about developing an appropriate marketing mix. In this context, the marketer can also assess the likelihood of achieving certain marketing objectives. What does a Marketing Strategy consist of in terms of its components?
- Target Market – once this is identified we setup our…
- Offering – this is the marketing mix. (4 Ps). Price, place, product, and positioning. This strategy is then used to meet the objectives…that is your…
- Plan - You begin to ask questions on how to compete in that target market.
After you have that you being to position your stuff. This is via advertising and promotions. POSITIONING. Only when you have the target market, can you begin to position your brand. If I’m going to engage in positioning, I need to see things via the consumer’s prepsective. Take the marketing mix and turn it into the consumer’s meal:
- Product >> Customer Value
- Price >> Cost
- Place >> Convenience
- Promotion >> Communication
Logic Step #4 - Relationship and competitive advantage. By developing particular types of relationships with our target market (ie; brand loyalty), we have the potential to develop a competitive advantage by which the target market would be resistant to competitive actions.
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Review
Marketing Logic Steps #1-$4 — to build a marketing strategy you need to
- Do the segmentation and analyze it to find out target market
- Positioning the product
- Load up the marketing mix
- Build and keep a relationship with the customer and hold a competitive advantage
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An Analogy
Imagine there were seven blind scientists touching an elephant. Each one had a different part of the elephant. One had the feet and would be describing it as hard and rough. Another had the tails and is describing it as always moving around and thin. Another has the tusk and describes it as smooth, hard, and curvy.
When it comes to all the different perspectives of consumer behavior, each theory is like a different scientist. The different theories hit upon areas of psychology, anthropology, philosophy, sociology, statistics, etc…each on is a blind scientists that we use to describe consumer behavior (elephant).
Each one is trying to describe the same thing but from a different area. In essence were trying to describe human behavior, which is a very challenging thing. Even understanding ourselves can be a challenge. A lot of the research is on incomplete information.
Go ahead leave your comments. Give me your thoughts.
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