Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Annotated Working Draft of Final Project/Hot Spots in Marketing & Market Research

Component Assignments:
1.    Communication and Persuasion in Market Research
The most important takeaway from this initial post about market research is the power of the consumer to dictate how companies act. Another important theme is that it is up to the market research staff to engender communication and begin the conversation with the consumer, asking the right questions along the way. Without them, companies are left in the dark, and nobody benefits.
2.     Storytelling in Market Research
In this post, I used the story of the New Coke fiasco to illustrate company reliance on consumers. While it is important to have hard numbers, marketing is still an art, one in which the numbers should back up a marketer’s gut feeling about consumer wants, and not the other way around.
3.     Marketing Within the History of Civilization
Marketing has existed ever since people began to buy and sell. It is the language of trade, the passage of information from the consumer to the seller. When a consumer buys something, he imparts a little bit of his preferences in that purchase, which gives the seller the information he needs to sell better products. And with the evolution of communication has come the evolution of marketing.
4.     Institutional Authority and Communication in Marketing
In this post, the most important theme is marketing’s constancy of change. Stewardship of that change is in any and all marketers’ hands; they all have the power to improve communication with consumers and to create products that will help society.

Hotspots:
Hotspot #1 (in the field): Marketing’s sole purpose is not to push product. Marketing’s purpose is to create a dialogue with the consumer, using hard data collected by asking the right questions, and coupling that with the marketer’s gut-instinct. Marketing is communication.
Hotspot #2 (History): Marketing strategy has changed with how people communicate. With every new medium, marketers have used communication to reach consumers. This is because trade has always been a tacit conversation between merchant and consumer, even in ancient days.

Hotspot #3 (storytelling): The story of New Coke is the perfect example of how marketers get it wrong. It’s a case study in what not to do.

1 comment:

  1. I liked the theme of marketers creating a conversation with consumers. It makes it feel less like they are trying to manipulate people and more that they want to learn from them. I would add a hotspot that focuses more on your personal relationship with and feelings about your field.

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