Introduction
The idea of marketing is thought of as just selling and advertising because we are bombarded with people, posters and ads selling and promoting products and services. However, both functions are only part of the elaborate concept of marketing and they are often not the most important ones but they are, obviously, the most tangible factors.
Marketing supersedes any business function because it deals with the understanding, creating and communicating with the consumer. There are many definitions for marketing. Kotler & Armstrong (2001) defined marketing as “a social and managerial process whereby individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others.” This definition requires a discussion of terms such as needs, wants, demands, products, services, value, satisfaction and quality to be able to integrate the concept of marketing in our daily life.
The world today has created many needs and wants for a person that’s why demands emerge to satisfy these elements. Needs are necessary while wants come from human needs which are influenced by society and culture. Demands, on the other hand, are wants which have the support of buying power. Marketing plays a big role in satisfying these needs, wants and demands and placing products and services effectively to create a niche in whatever category that will give maximum profit.
Discussions
In business and marketing, the concepts of customer value and satisfaction are important. These are two different terms because customer value refers to the difference of the benefits of buying a product/service to the cost while customer satisfaction is “the extent to which a product’s perceived performance matches a buyer’s expectations” (Kotler & Armstrong, 2001). These are the elements which directly affect consumer behaviour patterns. But in today’s business behaviour, the so-called Technology becomes a buzz-word in the advances when it comes to marketing and business progress. As for today, consumers are currently relying and looking for products and services that are enhanced by new technologies. In response to this, business organisations are now creating ways to become technology-based businesses and most them are currently using the new technologies as part of their marketing approaches including their marketing researches.
Marketing research as defined by Kotler & Armstrong (2001) is the “systematic design, collection, analysis and reporting of data relevant to a specific marketing situation” (p. 138) of the organisation. Clearly, marketing research is engaged in various activities from market potential to market share studies as well as customer satisfaction and product improvement. The information which results from the marketing research is pivotal to the formation of effective strategic marketing plans of the company because acquiring the right information can lead to successfully addressing the needs of organisation.
Many companies have invested in employing information technology in their market researches as it has considerably organised data efficiently. According to Gillenson, Sherrell & Chen (1999), information technology has enabled companies to optimise its marketing research functions because it has given them unprecedented access to consumers all over the world along with their preferences and several other factors which can be used by the companies in their marketing efforts. There is a trend today of developing a database of consumers of the company and it has yielded good results for companies like Amazon.com which has effectively used the information filed by their clients regarding preferences in marketing their other products (Kraemer & Dedrick, 2001). Another company which was able to develop its consumer database with success is Netflix and they have developed a sophisticated database which recommends other movie titles to consumers according to past rentals and filed preferences. Maddox (2005) added that the recommendation system has considerably increased the sales of the company. Moreover, the improvement in data storage and other technologies provide the companies with the means to file information which can be restored should there arise a need for it. This saves time and financial resources for the company.
Another effect of information technology on marketing is embodied in the online databases and Internet Data Resources which offers secondary data sources, usually free, to the consumers. Almost every industry; government agency and other publications offer free information which can be used in market researches (Kotler & Armstrong, 2001).
The prevalence of employing IT in marketing encourages the practice of one-to-one marketing or the ability of the company to sell targeted goods to an individual consumer using information gathered about either known or perceived needs (Gillenson, Sherrell & Chen, 1999). This is different from segment markets which focus on groups of people with similar interests. The personalised touch of one-to-one marketing is actively pursued by some companies after recent successes reported by other firms such as Amazon.com and Netflix. Some of the methods used aside from database management systems are e-mail which helps to facilitate better communication between the company and the client; computer graphics; which are used to personalise the shopping experience and finally, the recommendation system which presents to the consumer several suggestions of what he/she could buy based on indicated preferences and other data categories (Gillenson, Sherrell & Chen, 1999).
Conclusion
There is no existing relevant literature focused on the effect of technology/information technology as a marketing tool that is specific for the business industry. The general discussion conducted above is deemed applicable to the business industry as well. However, a discussion on one sub-sector in the vast business industry can also be applied to give an overview of possible effects of IT as a marketing tool in the said sector. The sub-sector discussed is the packaged foods and beverages sold at supermarkets. Little (1994) claims that the main information technology activity concerning packaged goods is to use the abundant information easily accessible to the company in being able to gauge market response towards the product. This has already been discussed in the preceding section about marketing research as consumer perception and response as well as consumer behaviour are among the various topics being studied.
Studying the impact of information technology on marketing is a very broad topic indeed. The overview on marketing has provided a background on the essential principles on this important business function whereas the overview on information technology has concentrated on the emergence of the Internet as a major technological innovation which has affected almost every aspect of life including business. The analysis of the demographics of current Internet users presents the attractiveness of said group of people so that many companies have considered it a good market which needs to be developed.
Further evidence to the effects of IT on marketing was shown in the integrated discussion of the changes brought on by the employment of information technology in marketing. It was necessary to analyse some effects of information technology in terms of marketing mix because the latter represents the important components considered by companies in forming their strategic marketing plans. Each component showed specific changes which have resulted to new marketing techniques and other trends employed by companies nowadays. Although there is little research on the effects of IT as a marketing tool from the manufacturing industry’s perspective, the general discussion of the effects can be applied to manufacturing companies as well.
References:
Gillenson, ML, Sherrell, DL & Chen, LD 1999, ‘Information technology as the enabler of one-to-one marketing’, Communications for Association for Information Systems, vol. 2, no. 18, viewed 16 July, 2010, <http://cais.isworld.org/articles/2-18>.
Kotler, P & Armstrong, G 2001, Principles of Marketing, 9th edn, Prentice Hall, London.
Kraemer, KL & Dedrick, J 2001, ‘Dell Computer: using e-commerce to support the virtual company’, Center for Research for Information Technology and Organizations, PhD thesis, University of California.
Little, JDC 1994, ‘Information technology in marketing’, In TJ Allen & MS Scott Morton (eds.), Information technology and the corporation of the 1990s, Oxford University Press, New York.
Maddox, B 2005, ‘Netflix’, In AA Thompson, AJ Strickland & J Gamble (eds.), Crafting and executing strategy, (14th edn.), McGraw-Hill, New York, pp. C-3
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