Book Title: Contemporary Issues in Marketing
Author(s): Martin Evans, Luiz Moutinho (auth.)
Publisher: Macmillan Education UK, Year: 1999
Category: BBA & MBA
ISBN: 978-0-333-67774-2,978-1-349-14299-6
Book Descriptions:
Contemporary Issues in Marketing. In this first part, we have selected some clippings that reflect developments and trends in several areas. First, in Chapter 1 we examine the marketing concept itself, via two clippings that not only discuss the concept but also challenge the status quo. Another aspect of marketing explored in this part is what might be described as ‘the marketing environment’ (Chapter 2). Contemporary issues here include changes in market behaviour in terms of ethical consumerism and
the increasingly important – but often ignored – environmental constraint, posed by the law.
The next group of clippings in Chapter 2 are based on the market. This is at the heart of marketing – indeed marketing takes its direction from the market, so we don’t need to spell out the importance of understanding those market events which do or might affect our particular marketing operation. Essentially, marketing is concerned with understanding
the needs and requirements of consumers and providing them with what they want – and in a way that is both profitable to the marketer and satisfying to the purchaser. To put it more formally, the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the U.K. defines marketing as follows: ‘Marketing is the management process that identifies, anticipates and supplies customer requirements efficiently and profitably. In this way, marketing matches what the market wants with what the organisation offers. The marketing concept requires market or consumer orientation
as opposed to product or production orientation. One obvious way of summarising this is to think in terms of a customer orientation that leads us to ‘make what we can sell, rather than sell what we can make’. But we can go a little further and try to discover what it is that people do buy. A Revlon cosmetics executive is reported as saying: ‘In the factory we make soap; in the
market we sell hope.’ On this basis Chapter, 3 includes a number of clippings
on the theme of consumer behaviour and addresses some contemporary developments, including changes in consumer profiling – demographics and psychographies in particular. The use by marketers of psychological peripheral cues to influence consumer perceptions and
behaviour, sometimes without them being aware of being influenced, is also explored. Other groups of clippings delve into age segmentation, especially the increasing importance of the over the fifties and, at the other end of the age scale, the growing targeting of ‘pester power. More topical segmentation and targeting dimensions are examined through a group of clippings
on gender stereotypes. The role of marketing research and information is also
clear with regard to the implications of the marketing concept. Chapter 4, therefore, includes clippings that explore some contemporary issues in market research and information. These include the increasing use of technology, the nature of ‘panel’ research and debates on
survey research, and also the move towards increasingly personalised consumer data – even ‘biographic’ data.