"It is clear that the forces defining 21st century are leading businesses into a new set of beliefs and values. Today's marketers best recognize the need to have a more complete, cohesive approach that goes beyond the traditional applications of marketing concepts." The lines given in Marketing Management by Kotler and co. I couldn't think of a better introduction to this post than this. I am writing about a few amazing concepts, which I found are the amazingly relevant in todays world.
The meaning of the word "latent" is "potentially existing but not presently evident or realized". Latent demand is the demand which the industry does not know it exists. A good example is the ready mix masala. People never knew that ready made masala could make such a big market. Though masala had been used always, it was prepared at home with a lot of effort. But tapping such a big need just of no where was amazing. The other examples could be camera in a mobile phone, trolley suit cases etc. Though it might take a genius to invent a new product, all it takes is a good thinker/strategist to identify a latent need and with so many inventions already done, latent demand marketing is a wonderful way forward.
Gone are the days when the market segmentation, for promotion of any product, was done on the basis of age, gender, region etc. Though demographic segmentation is still a powerful tool, it is not conclusive. Consider the following example given by our prof yesterday, the real ages of a retired army person and a bank manager might not be the same. So here comes psychographic segmentation, which uses the psychology of customers along with the demographics to narrow in on a market segment. A simple example could be McDonald's which altered its global menu to match the Indian appetite. We also see several ads like mountain dew, where the spirit of adventure or cadbury's diary milk where the spirit of celebration is marketed.
Holistic marketing recognizes that everything matters in marketing. It is based on development of processes and activities which recognize their interdependencies. It has four main concepts, out which integrated marketing is a beautiful concept. It explains that the 4 P's of marketing i.e. product, price, place, promotion, should communicate and deliver the same value for customers. An example could be cadbury's celebrations. Here the only idea is celebration, which is clearly reflected in all possible ways.
Our marketing classes have begun from the last week of September and it was a different story altogether. Thanks to our prof, there were so many assignments and submissions from day 1, and this added to our misery as we were already flooded with company presentations, filling up applications etc. The good part was, there was never this amount of exposure to the industry, ground realities, which ideally should have been major part of the curriculum in an MBA. After two weeks of data overload, we had a market survey project on our plate, the first of the many to come. Our topic was book buying patterns of children and the location was an on going book fare in Lucknow. So we, as a team of 5, had done a good job in interviewing at least 20 children. The findings were common, like the books recommended by teachers or parents sold the most, books with lots of pictures had higher sales etc. One thing was a most interesting factor, we found among students of age group 10 - 12, the maturity or at least trying to look mature by flaunting books like the Oliver twists and Tom sawyers. The experience as a whole was enjoyable.
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