Core concepts of Marketing: Markets

Core concepts of Marketing: Relationships

Core concepts of Marketing: Exchanges

Services Marketing notes

Introduction to Services marketing

Services are intangible products produced and consumed simultaneously in a short period Infosys, an Indian technology company offers Information Technology solution to ANZ Grindlays Bank those are intangible in nature. Here, a customer ANZ cannot touch the product but can perform banking tasks using software. Infosys offers Consulting Services, Cloud Solutions, enterprise resource planning software, block chain technology, and other services. These Solutions may have a software product, website, software manual, and a report in the tangible format, but clients like ANZ do not see coding testing and executing part of the solution. Apart from this, business meetings follow-up calls and annual maintenance are series of actions and performances in an intangible format executed on a particular time and place.

Services Marketing characteristics. 

Intangibility

Services are employee actions and performances based on company procedures and are not a physical goods. Thus one cannot touch, feel, see or inventoried like goods. For example Apollo hospitals performance actions like medical examination, diagnosis, treatment, and surgery on patients that cannot be seen or touched. In many situations, patients don’t know how surgery has been done. Due to this characteristic of Intangibility, managers find it difficult to forecast and execute the demand. For example Taj Vivanta, Panaji, Goa, experiences huge demand in March, April, and May. Conversely the demand goes down in July. Yet, Taj Vivanta, has similar number of rooms to book throughout the year. 

Further Services cannot be patented; Hence these are copied easily by competitors. Services cannot be easily demonstrated like goods.  Though, Metro rail carries passengers from one destination to another it cannot show how exactly a rail was driven. So this is quality measurement is another hurdle for marketers and consumers. A customer finds it difficult to assess the service quality of restaurants like Saravanan's,V asudeva adigas, and Adyars. In addition to these Services marketers has a hurdle of deciding about what to include in advertising and other marketing communications. Indian Institute of Management Bangalore can communicate about courses but cannot advertise the pricing. The unit of service cost is complex and difficult to determine. Lakme saloons have different beauty solutions at different price points. This difference leads to the evolution of price quality relationships that vary from customers to customers.

Heterogeneity:

Services are performed by people. Therefore, services performed by different people are not the same. Even the same person's service performance on different days varies.  Further, a customer who avail services may have different perceptions and satisfactions. These characteristics exhibit services heterogeneity.  For example ,  Kesari travels may provide two different packages to two different customers on the same day depending upon a customer's affordability and acceptability. Keasri travel desk executives may provide maximum offers to customers in the morning when they are fresh to work. However, same executives may offer less packages to customers in the late evening when they are tired. These variations in services  based on people's  time and the organization pose a big challenge for maintaining the service quality. Apart from this, other customers at a service location also influence customers' purchase. A few customers like crowded service outlets and a few do not. Added to this, employees behaviour also determines customers purchasing. In addition to this, if a service is given by the third party, it increases the service heterogeneity. For instance, Airtel customer queries are answered by IBM executives who are not part of the organization. However, customers think that they have called Airtel executives.

Simultaneous production and consumption

 The major distinguishing feature between goods and services is goods are produced first and sold later. Whereas services are sold in the beginning and production takes place later. To illustrate, Hero motocorp produces the two-wheelers at Kolar plant in Karnataka, dispatched to Bengaluru, sold over months and used by customers over the years. But OYO has to sell its rooms first and customer experience the stay and dining later. Here, customers of OYO is a part of the production and consumption by asking room boy for facility adjustments or modifications.  Customers can ask for sugarless tea or spicy dishes with a dining staff. A notable thing in this entire process is a customer interacts with the service employees regularly in a production and consumption process. Therefore, a customer may be happy or happy with the room service. In a travel industry company like VRL do not allocate seats next to the female passenger to any strange male passenger. If seats are not reserved like that a female customer may not experience the service properly. This services characteristics of simultaneous production and consumption often makes service providers take the role as a part of the product. Shahrukh Khan, a film actor from India, actively takes part in the production and marketing of his red chillies entertainment products. 

As service production consumption is simultaneous, scaling it to the masses is a daunting task. More than that, customers’ satisfaction depends on employee services and his interactions with the firm in real time. A customer who walks into State Bank of India will be either happy or unhappy after his interaction with a clerk or cashier.  Due to this feature of production and consumption simultaneously, a few companies are decentralizing their operations to localize services. McDonald's restaurants in the different countries have adopted local sourcing; It reduces the cost of importing and also provides local Cuisine. McDonald India, do not sell beef burgers due to religious sentiments but sell veg burgers in a large quantity. Another problem of production consumption simultaneously is irritated customers.  As they are part of a production and consumption process, they expressed their happiness or unhappiness on the process itself. Wonderla and excel amusement parks must have secure yet fun facilities in their premises otherwise customers express their opinion on the location also on social media. 

Perishability 

Services cannot be stored, saved or returned or resold. A journey in Indian railways by a customer cannot be stored or saved. Here, customers would experience a service in a given time. If a customer is unhappy about the train facility in the journey, can he return it? No, because they are perishable in nature. Today with Advent of mobile phones and internet-based movie technologies, movie theatres in India are facing occupancy rate issues. One cannot inventory the seats of a particular show. Hence, PVR should make proper demand forecasting for the capacity utilization. Services cannot be returned or resold. Flipkart in their first Bill Billion Day Sale did not anticipate technology problems. Customers on that day could not buy anything. Later, Flipkart had apologized in the public for the service failure.

Services marketing mix

People

Employees of the organization who are part of a service delivery influence buyer behavior. They create awareness about services. Reliance Trends executives provide new arrival information to customers 

Employees grooming and their behaviors have a direct impact on  customers satisfaction. Hence,air hostesses in the Indian Indigo Airlines  should be wearing company uniforms and have a cordial relationship with customers while serving in an airline industry. 

In certain services like education and career counseling, service providers themselves act as a service. The success of an education institution solely depends on teachers. However, in certain services like house maintenance plumber has a relatively less significance in the service delivery though they are very critical for the organizational performance. In a few services, customers' timely information or requirements have a significant role in the service delivery. If requirements are not specified or information not given when required it affects the service quality. For example, a customer books an apartment with a Godrej property without specifying his requirements in the beginning has to accept later whatever the property built by the Godrej. A customer who goes to the indica saloon should tell about a haircut style in the beginning. Otherwise, he cannot modify it later. Social media has allowed customers to share their opinions and recommendations to other colleagues or customers.  When The War like a situation has broken up between India and China many have asked  the customers and colleagues and friends to boycott the China mobile applications like Tick Tock and sharechat. 

Parle-G positioning strategies- Review of advertisements

Parle-G Advertisement evaluations

The value of marketing

The company's growth depends on its marketing ability. 

HDFC, a private bank in India consistently clocks better performance in the banking and investment sector due to their marketing abilities. The company clocks 30% profit growth year on year even in difficult times. This growth is a result of their change in marketing strategy. HDFC reduced its corporate loans and increased the retail loans lending such as automobile, commercial vehicles, business banking, home loans, and personal loans to maintain the growth. 

 

A good marketing strategy creates demand for products and services and in turn increases employability.

 Bindu, is an aerated beverage brand in India. It is a mix of traditional jeera drink with a soda. The Shankar group from Mangalore that owns the brand moved to the third position after Pepsi and Coca-Cola in South India. In the beginning Bindu had made shopkeepers to taste the soda free of cost and asked them to spread the message. The company employs strength has increased from 8 in 2008 to 250 in 2012. Today,the traditional drink market in India is not only limited to jeera, but extended to Kokum aamras, Jaljeera etc…

The marketing builds value of a form by creating loyal customers and strong Brands 

Parle-G, Indian biscuit in confectionery manufacturer, began its journey in the year 1929. The company was incorporated by Mohan Lal Dayal. Since then the company's marketing efforts have made it to reach the tag of world's largest selling biscuit company. Today, the company's persuasiveness helped it to build the image of a quality nutrition and superior taste brand among consumers. Its value for money positioning strategy created a loyal customer base. Further, It's health and taste benefits created trust among customers and who in turn created a global brand.

Blog Marketing

Marketing Management ppts

Job opportunities in the Marketing field

Job opportunities in the field of marketing

Jobs in sales domain

• Sales Manager

• Field Marketing executive.

Jobs in Public relations domain

• Public Relation Manager

• Public relation account coordinator.

• PR consultant.

• Government PR consultant

Jobs in Market research domain

• Market research director

• Market research Manager

• Market research supervisor

• Market Research analyst

• Event Manager

Jobs in Advertisement domain

• Promotions Manager

• Advertisement manager

• Account planner

• Media coordinator

• Media director

• Media Buyer

• Art director

• Copywriter.

Jobs in Product domain

• Product Manager

• Brand Manager

• Product development manager

• Brand assistant

• Brand strategist.

• Brand activation Manager

Jobs In digital marketing

• Social Media Manager

• Digital Marketing Manager

• Search Engine optimization specialist. 

• Email Marketer.

• Growth Marketer

• Content marketer.

• Graphic designer.

• Database marketer.

• Operations assistant

Jobs in retail sector

• Store manager

• Category manager

• Merchandise planner

• Visual merchandiser

• Retail buyer

• Loss prevention manager

Best and Bekar advertisement during lockdown

(These are online focus group responses and thoughts of experts in the discussions)

Best advertisements

Airtel: 

The recent unique advertisement that I found interesting was the airtel advertisement

The 0 complaint advertisement- the advertisement begins with showing the negative side of the company ( the number of complaints in different states)

The company uses this point to differentiate itself from its competitors

LifeBuoy

The best advertisement I found that

 Lifebuoy in which they showed wash your hands regularly by using any company hand wash.

Uber cars

Best advertisement I found was about Uber cars , how the drivers followed the safety and took all the cautions so that the virus would not spread.

Brooke Bond red Label

Best : Brooke Bond red Label (Portrays Positive attitude towards Covid patient).

Amazon Pantry

Best advertisement was of Amazon pantry which showed selling of groceries online. This was the best one as amazon sells grocery online with home delivery as it is best during present conditions.

Udemy

Best ad is about udemy giving online courses at some discounted percentages

Women Horlicks

The best ad that I came across during this lock down period was of women's horlicks. In this ad it is shown that husband is doing work from home due to covid situation and his wife is nurse at hospital hence he tells how his and her work is different as she is risking her life daily by serving patients and he can't meet her due to that. He positively says that even though I can't meet her in person I can send my care to her. He send her hot milk with horlicks powder to her hospital. She receives it and feels happy. Here the positive attitude of both husband and wife is shown towards the whole covid situation.

Worst advertisements

My Gate

Worst advertisement I found was My Gate application advertisement

Rummy Circle

Rummyculture- kheloge to khelte reh jaoge.

Hamam

Bekaar : Hamam Soap (No link between the product and the advertisement)

Lizol

And worst ad is lizol and other ad like that they are showing that the product can kill the corona bacteria

Cadbury

The worst ad that I came across was of Cadbury 5 star one old women is sitting under one building and accidentally her stick falls so she asks the boy nearby to lift it on the other hand he is busy in eating 5 star finally she only picks up her stick and the building roof falls on the place she was sitting she thanks that boy for not helping her as if she would have sat der den the building would have fallen on her. And at the end of it is shown that sometimes it's good by not doing anything .I feel it gives the wrong message to the viewers as just sitting and not doing anything is never good one should always keep hustling towards the goals.

Slice

Bekaar Ad: Slice :Thickest mango juice. So there is a hype why it is the thickest mango juice and then one character answers "Kyunki isme antigravity formula Hai" And then the next character says "Isme 24 Chariot Aam Hai" And the other character says "Iske aam kisi mote party ke lagte hai" And then finally katrina comes and says "Try karo aur khud jaan jao"

which was kind of funny but the script content was irrelevant to the product!

MPL

Bekar ad: MPL advertisement which says you could play in the app and earn and an engineer comes in the ad and says I have done mech engineering and earned to help my family, fooling the customers at the time of pandemic to waste their money.

Audience segmentation

Introduction

Marketing is in a  transition stage. Today, marketers are mass customizing their products and also personalizing their communications. One of the characteristics of segmentation i.e. size has become less relevant in the modern day marketing. Hence, marketers are now looking for micro-segmentation and hyper targeting. Thus, it has become imperative for marketers to know the process of audience segmentation and later offering their solutions to meet the customer needs.

What do you mean by audience segmentation?

Audience segmentation is the process of divining customer groups into subgroups based on homogeneous characteristics such as

• Demographics
• Psycho-graphics
• Media usage
• communication behaviors

Homogeneity

Let me take an example and illustrate the homogeneity. Assume a bike dealer gets 1000 footfalls in a month. The  sample details of customers are as follows:

Name of the customer	Age	Income of the family per month	occupation	city
A	24	Rs 60000	Call center executive	Bengaluru
B	26	Rs 40000	Marketing executive	Bengaluru
C	29	Rs 60000	Govt salaried	Bengaluru
D	35	Rs 65000	IT executive	Mysore
E	26	Rs 15000	Security	Bengaluru
F	28	Rs 55000	Production Manager	Bengaluru.

Now obvious question is how do we find the homogeneity if a bike dealer wants to sell his Rs 2,80,000 bike. First, we will filter the data from the thumb rule of 50% of the salary assuming that other part will go to house hold expenses. The person E  earning Rs 15000 per month may not be a right suit for high end bike The Person D might have come to Bengaluru and might have done window shopping at the bike dealer retail outlet.Hence his name may be omitted. Most of the finance company gives the car /bike loan for threee years. Hence EMI for three years will be around Rs 10,000. Thus , B may not be the right person to buy the product at this stage of his life. Hence only A, C, and F are having the potential to buy the product. However, The person F is having only two years of service. Looking at all this the dealer will target only A and C.

 If we go back and analyze the data now both A and C are in the age bracket of 23-30 years. That's the homogeneity.

Looks tedious! thus, data science come into the picture to find the homogeneity of crores of customers profiles through cluster analysis.

Modes of customer data collections

A customer group's  data may be collected from

a. Qualitative approach

In this method, a customer data collected via secondary data, qualitative data analysis techniques such as focus groups, Delphi techniques, projective techniques and depth interviews. However, a customer data have serious issues as relevance, currency, representatives of the data, suitability of qualitative interview panel members

b. Quantitative approach

Quantitative data collected from survey and observation for the first time by the researcher using either personal interview, mail interview, telephonic interview, or online interview.

Segmentation decisions:

Strategy 1: Allocating resources equal to all segments.

Strategy 2: Differentiating the amount to each segment.

Strategy 3: Identify one or a few segments and allocate the resources.

References

         

1. Audience segmentation. (2010). Retrieved 15 June 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_segmentation#:~:text=Audience%20segmentation%20is%20a%20process, communication%20behaviors%20and%20media%20use.
2. Maibach, E. W., & Parrott, R. (1995). Designing health messages: Approaches from communication theory and public health practice. Sage.
3. Weinreich, N. K. (2010). Hands-on social marketing: a step-by-step guide to designing change for good. Sage Publications.