The article "Recapturing Marketing’s Mission" by Leonard L. Berry and Ann M. Mirabito speaks about the change in the direction of marketing. According to the authors, marketing has gone from:
“Marketing has influenced the creation of myriad goods and services that have lessened the drudgery of house work, enhanced consumers’ self confidence and sense of style, and enables consumers to use their time a finite resource-in more productive and satisfying ways"
to
“Clever Products and promotions encourage consumers to over eat take on debt, and fritter their money away on lottery tickets.”
Due to the misuse of marketing and advertisements, consumers' trust in marketing has drastically declined. Marketers do want to satisfy the client’s needs but the rapid changes in the client’s desires makes it more challenging. In turn the firms become more reactive versus proactive with the products and services that are offered. Firms look for an easy fix and many times resort to something that will have a good outcome in the short term, having a product that satisfies a desire versus a need.
Marketing can be broken down into two types: customer need centered and customer desire centered. Need Centered marketing is a proactive approach and therefore leads the markets while desire centered marketing is reactive and as a result is led by the market. Need-Centered marketing will almost always be more effective and longer lasting then desire centered marketing, the customers will be following the proactive and reactive technique will never be able to keep up with the consumers ever changing wants and desires.
A few companies that were in the desire centered category are cigarette manufacturers and Mc Donald’s. Cigarettes were initially made as a relaxing source for the soldiers in WWII. When it was realized nicotine is very harmful no measures were taken to substitute this with a substance that would help relax with out causing damage. Instead they used marketing to attract new customers. McDonalds was created to have a clean, cheap, family friendly restaurant. When the awareness was made about the bad nutrition that was in these foods instead of changing the ingredients in them they relied heavy on the advertising and marketing to help lure the customers.
What has been forgotten by many of these companies is the true mission of Marketing and that is to improve the quality of life. Because this meaning has been forgotten by many firms, consumers do not trust marketers.
We need to get to a place where “Marketers and the organization they represent can use marketing to harness the power of social profit in pursuit of financial profit. Companies create social profit when their actions produce net benefit to the society.”
There are companies that are trying to do that. These companies fill both the needs and desires of their customers. Two such companies are Progressive and Chuck E Cheese. Progressive is an insurance company and they want to built the trust with their clients. They not only try to appeal to the clients needs, they also try to fill the clients desires by making their insurance experience more pleasing then what they are used to. They currently show the customers both their rates as well as those of their competitors even when the rates of the competitors are better. That is just one of the many services that they offer their customers.
Chuck E Cheese is doing the opposite by being a desire centered business but also having need centered purpose. It offers a place where parents can enjoy time chatting while their children are in a safe environment with food and entertainment. Kids are able to be separated from their parents in the venue because on order for them to leave they Chuck E Cheese premise they have to be with the people that they came in with. Everyone’s hands are stamped when they enter and that stamp shows exactly who they came in with, and that’s exactly who they should be leaving with.
In order to fully recapture the magic of marketing we need to start with the education that is provided to the future marketing managers and re educating the current managers who don’t comply with what marketing used to be and what it should once again be. They need to understand the difference between right and wrong marketing. Right marketing is enhancing people’s lives, creating value for the customer. Wrong Marketing seesk to persuade customers to buy things that they do not need, it is focused solely on the firm's needs and not caring about anyone else’s. Marketing a great tool for firms when used correctly, it can improve individual’s quality of life.
Julia London
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