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So it is week three of
the eleven week graduate marketing class I am taking and therefore another
blog needs to be put up. We talked about all sorts of things from marketing
environment, income statements, market research, market analysis, and etc.
Basically the general theme of this week was there are a lot of different
components to marketing than just making a pretty advertisement for a product
or service.
A marketer and company for that matter, has to really look everything from
the market they are in or trying to penetrate, and their target market for
their product or service. When looking at a market for a company’s product or
service the company/marketer should think about their culture, values,
attitudes, and beliefs. These four factors greatly affect a consumer’s
behavior towards buying a product or service. To do a quick break down of
these factors, culture is the behavior and beliefs of a group. Values are the
basically beliefs or code of conduct for people. Attitudes are people’s
manner and behaviors towards products. Beliefs are what people believe in. So
if a company’s product is a green product, the company will then want to
market their product to people who care about the environment and want to do
their part in lessening their environmental impact.
Ok this is great information to know, but how does a company reach consumers?
Well they develop a strategy, and more specifically a Marketing Strategy. The
marketing strategy is a plan that a marketing department or company develops
that details how a company’s products or services will be marketed and/or
present to their consumers or potential consumers. There are several external
factors that impact this strategy. These are Social, Legal, Economic,
Political, and Technological factors or SLEPT for short.
It’s a very cute acronym that will help me, and hopefully you, remember these
factors better. So let’s define these SLEPT components better. Social is the
demographic information of an area. I was recently watching this bar rescue
show the other day and the rescuer talked about how in the area of one bar
there was 13,000 potential customers that would are in the age range of 21-34
that are single and like R&B music. It was an R&B bar that was not
drawing in a crowd. Clearly there was a market for it, but the bar wasn’t
bringing them in.
Legal means the state and
federal regulations on an industry or business. Such as with the bar, it can
only promote itself to 21+ year olds because it is illegal to sell to minors.
Economic influences circles around the state of the economy and its impact of
the consumer. If the economy is doing poor, then consumers are not going to
have disposable income to purchase the company’s products or services. In the
case of the bar rescue, there was 13,000 potential consumers that did have
the purchasing power to go the bar up to three times a week, but next to none
were coming. Political influence is the “P” of SLEPT. Meaning if a company
has political views that could make it appealing or not appealing to
potential consumers. Think of Chick-fil-a that has been recently in the news.
They are a Christian company that is not supportive of homosexuals. Because
of their views, certain consumers and groups for that matter will not eat at
a Chick-fil-a now since they have taken certain public political stances in
regards to peoples sexual orientation. The last of the SLEPT influences is
that of T or technological influences. Companies have to stay up with
technological changes especially considering how fast technology has changed
and is changing. This for second about your shopping experience maybe around
Christmas time. Say there is a product at a store that you want to buy for
that special someone, if you go to the clerk and ask them to see if it is at
a neighboring store they say they can’t look that up, how are you going
to feel? I know I would feel disappointed that they do not have the
technology to look this products availability up in other stores like most
stores now a day's can. What would make me feel even more disappointed as a
consumer is if the store I want to buy something from doesn’t even have a
website that I could try and order the product from. If the company doesn’t
have one or any of these options then the company isn’t staying up to
date with technological advances and would eventually go out of business.
Going back to the bar rescue show, one of the reasons the bar was doing so
bad was that it had not stayed up to date, and its sound system was really
bad which kept it from being a good bar/club site. Something that is not part
of SLEPT is that of competitive influences. A company has to research and
study its competitors to make sure they stay competitive. If they do not say
competitive then they run the risk of falling behind to their competition. If
another company is doing something to “steal” their customers, it should be
looked into because maybe those customers can be “stolen” back with a few
adjustments.
So
generally I talk about Drucker and his teachings with Cohen. Really this book
should be the bible of marketing, but I'm sure there other books that are
just as compelling. We only had to read two short chapters in Drucker this
week. Some of it was the same old same old that all the research in the world
can be done on a product and a market, but sometimes it is wrong. A marketer
has to keep a healthy balance of using both research and intuition. If a
marketer ignores their gut feelings, sometimes they miss out a major opportunity.
Beside market research, Drucker also talked about how a product needs to be
defined by the customer and not the marketer. This was definitely an eye
opening statement, as you sort of see the relation in real life but until the
statement is made you never realize that is what is happening. Kind of like
looking at a fuzzy picture and you sort of see what it is and then
someone says what the picture is and bam it comes into focus. Now Jen in
class talked about this in her discussion question. Her question was
"Drucker states that "A product or service is defined by the
customer, not the marketer". I can see (especially from the examples
used in the text) how this statement could certainly hold true for a product
and some services. However, I'm not quite sure how the customer would define
services provided in the healthcare field, since some of them are so specific
to certain health conditions/disease states." Now, I totally agree with
her that certain products or services lend themselves to be redefined
according the customer. I mean isn't that what pinterest is all about
redefining products (or just being crafty but stick with me I'm trying to
make a real life tie in). I will say though to Jen that although I think it
is harder for the health field, I do think it still happens, and my one
example that pop's out in my mind is Viagra. It was supposed to be heart
medication, and then people realized it could do some good for another area
of the body. Now it is a widely sold product for men. (If you don't know what
Viagra is Google it.) Also, people use certain medical creams to help with
certain beauty routines. I think I had a roommate once that used hemorrhoid
cream for the black bags under her eyes. Not my cup of tea, but she swore by
it.
Another thing we had to do
this week was look at two classmates’ blogs and comment about them. One
person's blog that I want to comment on is Brianna's. When I started reading
her blog I didn't realize it was the blog submission for week 3, but I am
glad it was because it was really helpful. In her blog she named another
student's blog that had been helpful to her when using PharmaSim. This is a
blog I will definitely be checking out. She also talked about how nervous she
was to use PharmSim, which was reassuring to hear because I have been rather
nervous to use PharmaSim, and have been sort of avoiding due to being so
nervous. Hearing about how someone else was so nervous and was able to
overcome that was reassuring.
The classmate that
Brianna found a lot of good information on PharmaSim was Randall's blog. It
was definitely a very helpful blog! First of he has run the program at least
twice...I have yet to move forward in the simulation. So that was very
reassuring to see. He talked about how it easy to run a company into
the ground, which is good to know for when I run the simulation as the first
go around I probably will. He also gave tips as to what to make sure to not
lose sight of when running the simulation. One example is that of inflation,
and market share. All very helpful tips as I go forward and try to overcome
my hesitation of using the PharmaSim.
So now that I am
about to embark on really diving into PharmaSim, if nothing else to figure
out what we need to for this blog which is…add up how much all the reports
will cost if you are to purchase them all. Which since I am so inexperienced
in this world of marketing I will have to heavily depend on. So I am of
course in period 1 because I am so nervous to go beyond that. But after I do
this requirement I will most likely start playing with it and be much further
along next week which I will then talk about. So I copy and pasted the report
purchases for period 1 here:
Report Purchases -
Period 1
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