Marketing Myopia
Marketing is the act of consciously inducing sales of goods and/or services; including range of a target market; identification of certain characteristics or attributes of a product or service and creating awareness of these attributes by communicating them to the public. Marketing is an important aspect of business life and contributes to the success or failure of any venture. Marketing is defined as “the process by which goods are marketed and the audiences are made aware of the existence of products”.
Marketing, therefore, encompasses a variety of activities aimed at the public to promote products and services. Marketing activities should be capable of predicting the current behaviour of consumers and understanding the taste, attitude and purchasing behavior of consumers. It includes advertising and promotional activities. The marketing of products and services is conducted through mass media. Marketing has become one of the most effective communication channels today. Marketing involves communication in all its forms, including printed media, websites, television, radio, films, and mobile phone applications.
The term “marketing research” is widely used to define the process by which companies test their products and develop marketing strategies based on the results of the marketing research. The marketing concept can be divided into different concepts such as concept formulation, concept exploration, market research, market sizing, and concept implementation. The concept formulation involves the process by which marketing research is conducted to understand consumer needs and the corresponding needs of the target market.
Market research is conducted to understand the factors which influence the buying decisions of consumers. These include the prices and promotions of similar products in the same category, their features and usage, target customers and competition. The marketing research also determines the market potential of the product, taking into account the features, quality, performance and usefulness of the product among target customers. This is known as the product development process. It is the stage in which innovative features of the product are developed so that they can meet the expectations and requirements of the customers.
Social marketing or the promotion of products through social marketing activities is an additional component of the production concept consumers’ behavior towards a particular product are considered. Social marketing involves various techniques to build awareness of the product among consumers and the various stakeholders. Examples of such steps include, advertising campaigns in the mass media, web marketing and distribution of pamphlets, brochures and handbills. Consumer marketing also involves market research which is conducted by companies for determining the marketing goals and the methods to achieve them. One example is research done by the Mercedes Benz automobile company to determine what their consumers need and want, and then designing their marketing campaigns to meet these needs effectively.
Marketing concept in contemporary society is largely dependent on the Internet, and consequently on the search engines. Online marketing myopia refers to the tendency of marketers to neglect the importance of the Internet in marketing decisions. This is because many marketers have a short attention span when it comes to marketing online, and are often preoccupied by the design elements of the websites they design, or the graphics, colors and messages which are contained in them. The main problem with this approach is that a website is only as good as the traffic which is visiting it, and consequently, the amount of time which it takes for them to convert the visitors into clients.