Navigating the Nuances: A Dive into Marketing Principles

Marketing is one of the most premier disciplines of business. It concerns itself with business management exchange strategies and tactics. It is the main tool that is used to balance the market’s demand and supply interplay to equilibrium. Customer retention strategies and mitigation of churn and customer defection enables business to create a good enabling environment to attract other potential customers, hence maintaining a firm’s positive image and increasing its volume of sales. Therefore, establishing a good business customer relationship with consumers is an advantageous undertaking to both the firm and the customers. Customers become free to ask questions regarding the products, raise their concerns, comments or complaints about the products or services offered. As such, they get to understand the market trends and dynamics better and have an insight of what products to consume and why. On the other hand, sellers get to market and sell their new products in the market by persuading and convincing buyers to buy, hence increasing sales and simultaneously realizing increased profit margins.

Fundamental Concepts in Marketing

Marketing concepts or orientations encompasses the strategies adopted, executed and implemented by business firms to minimize input cost while simultaneously maximizing output per head and thereby making a profit. They are the philosophies that dictate and seek to identify the type of cost-effective, economical and efficient tools that a business can employ to counter possible inhibitors like competitors, for it to achieve its stated goals and objectives. Production, product, selling, marketing and societal marketing concepts are the main five examples of marketing concepts description, as discussed below.

Production concept is one of the oldest marketing approaches employed by most firms and corporations. It is an approach that is based on a French Says Law, which states that ‘supply creates its own demand. ‘As such it supposes that if products are produced or manufactured, they will attract consumers automatically. It is an orientation that is mostly applicable in developing countries, where most buyers go for the readily available and relatively cheap products. Much focus rests on the affordability rather than on the effectiveness or durability of the product in question. This assumption is according to a famous French economist, Jean Baptiste Say. The concept revolves around the availability, accessibility, and affordability of products in the market. It asserts that customers’ preference mostly falls in favour of the readily available and most affordable products (Kotler, Shaw, FitzRoy & Chandler, 1983).  . Firms that apply this approach focus on high production at low cost and massive distribution and dispensation of the produced products. On the other hand, product concept focuses on the products’ features, quality and performance. It is based on the idea that customers’ preference mostly lies on products of best quality, good features, and excellent performance. To showcase these features, proper informed product research must be conducted. The research helps in understanding the dynamics of products including their nature, makeup, efficiency and effectiveness, and also enables the seller to attend to the customers’ possible questions, complaints or comments.

 Equally the societal marketing orientation, is founded claiming that apart from availing products to satisfy consumer wants, firms have a greater responsibility in the environmental conservation and building a good enabling environment with the society and other local communities. As such, building good customer value relationship is the key to business profitability explained by the increased volumes of sales by constant customers. Peter Alexander sleepwear enterprise embraced and adopted this business orientation in identifying the main target customers as women, and their demand as the classic, chic and sexy nightwear (Alexander, 2018). Furthermore, this enterprising entrepreneur ever seeks and samples opinions from different customers about his unique themes in his designed pyjamas inspired from his trips to Paris, African Safaris and other places around the world’s globe. He ensures that he retains his customers, draw potential customers and establish a long-term good customer value and relationship with them (Roering & Seibert, 1973). This is what has made him keep improving his volume of sales and increasing his profit margins perpetually.

Customer Value Relations and its Importance.

The evolution and development of Customer relationship management can be traced back to the corporate complaint department, which noted and sought the customer’s negated experiences, opinions, and comments about products. For instance, Peter Alexander, The pyjamas King of Australia, confesses that his late father Joe advised him to treat his customer’s right, as an iconic aspect of in his sleepwear enterprise and he would do well. He adds that he has lived by that advice, and that to date, it is the reason for the success of his sleepwear championship in Australia. Customer retention strategies can thereby be defined as the actions and undertakings carried out by businesses and firms to mitigate and eliminate possible attrition and defection by customers and potential consumers. Customers, in every firm are attracted and retained not majorly by the products in the firm, but mainly by the brand loyal initiatives and good customer service and relationship offered. Studies from stock market metrics evaluate customer retention as the most cited determiner and success predictor of a firm.

It is apparent that Pete Alexander Sleepwear meets all the customer value relations elements proposed by Smith and Colgate (2007). One of these elements is functional/ instrumental value. Functional value expects that any given product is designed to meet customer’s desired goals. A closer look at Pete Alexander Sleepwear shows that the products are designed to meet customer’s desired goals. Peter Alexander have been striving to ensure that the products meet customer’s needs since he was advised by his late father to treat his customer’s right.

Another element is experiential/hedonic value. This value expects that any given product creates appropriate experiences and feelings (Smith and Colgate 2007). Pete Alexander has perfected the experiential value of his products because he normally does enough research to find out exact needs of clients and then customize his products to meet such needs.

The third element is symbolic/expressive value. This value expects that any given product is designed so that it can elicit psychological impact on customers (Smith and Colgate 2007). A closer look at Pete Alexander Sleepwear reveals that any product must be customized to match the expectations of the client. For examples, names and symbols are designed to match what target clients know. A client is likely to be psychologically moved when he or she realize that a familiar name has been used in the clothe he or she wears.

The last element is cost/ sacrifice. This value expects that any given product is designed such that the cost reflects the value (Smith and Colgate 2007). The cost should not be too low or too high. According to the principle of ostentation, a product should not have extremely low cost because it will send a message that the quality may be low. Most of Pete Alexander Sleepwear products are of medium to high prices. These prices signify that the value of products is high.

Establishing customer’s loyalty, retaining them as frequent consumers and attracting potential customers as consumers are among the contents of good customer relations. It is a strategy build on customer, maintenance, retention, and satisfaction. To achieve this, a seller needs to understand the prevailing dynamics in the market to attend to any arising question, complaint or opinion from any customer (Smith & Colgate, 2007). Equally, sellers should adopt investment convergence philosophy to the most reliable and valuable customer’s. Such customers can be trusted to make and give an honest evaluation and feedback on new products, what needs to be improved and the opinion of other customers (Hostetter, 2017). Additionally, the well-attended customers recommend and refer other potential customers to the products’ seller hence increasing sales and profit margins of the firm. To realize this, corporations and other business organizations need to streamline their customer service through the provision of discounts, after sale services, free delivery of goods among other customer motivational offers.

However, failure to attract or retain customers in a firm is associated with negated implications of either voluntary or involuntary churn by customers. Voluntary churn takes place where customers choose to shift from one firm to another, following perceived poor handling of billing interactions between them and their respective service providers. These voluntary defections therefore are caused by the internal factors, for example no after sale services, no free delivery of products, and higher product prices that a firm has control over As such, constant customer shift and switch leads to low customer turnover, reduced volume of sales hence perpetual loss making which may eventually lead to insolvency or firms closure. Consequently, a firm has very little or no control over the customers’ involuntary churn. This is because the causative agents of this churn are the external factors that include migration, relocation or death of pillar consumers.

Conclusion

Marketing, marketing concepts, and customer value relations are major pillars of economic growth and job creation throughout the world. This, in return, raises Gross Domestic Product, GDP of a state. Marketing seeks to establish a good customer relation ground, avail customers with quality effective products according to their tastes and preferences with an aim of satisfying their needs and simultaneously earning a profit(Smith & Colgate, 2007).Colgate, particularly in his research attempts to empirically establish the effect of service quality on  purchasing decisions. The inference to this subject study is that good customer value and relationship in all firms is a major profitability and success determiner. A good customer value and relation can therefore be inference as a staircase to customers’ meditating role on purchasing decisions.

However, marketing, its approaches and strategies have faced economic criticism from most economic practitioners including Philip Kotler, internationally known as ‘father of modern marketing.’ This American commentator argues that, besides the worldwide celebrated advantages attributed to marketing; marketing has been challenged by several drawbacks. First is the motivation behind marketers marketing anything for customers with very less or no consideration of the harmful (health) consumption impacts. For instance, cigars were sold with no notification of the dangers of smoking on the smokers’ health for a long time until legal reforms of warning took effect. This practice is dismissed as unethical and an inconsiderate greed for profit. Secondly, marketers do not pay attention to the poor and low-income earners since they operate under the slogan of the more you buy the more you earn(discount and after sale services). Contrarily, the poor are exploited since small units of packaged products are more expensive than their respective larger lots. Thirdly, there is little emphasis on the environmental pollution in the production and marketing processes.

References

Alexander, p. (2018). Peter Alexander - Shop Pyjamas, Personalised Gifts & Glasshouse Candles. Retrieved from https://www.peteralexander.com.au/

Hostetter, L. (2017). Teaching Innovations in Marketing: A Brand-Based Student-Led Inquiry ofMarketing Concepts and Practices. Marketing Education Review, 27(2), 66-71. doi: 10.1080/10528008.2016.1274633

Kotler, P. (2014). Kotler on marketing. [Place of publication not identified]: Free Press.

Kotler, P., Shaw, R., FitzRoy, P.& Chandler, P. (1983). Marketing in Australia. Sydney: Prentice-Hall. Chapter 1, 3-27.

Roering, K., & Seibert, J. (1973). Concepts of Marketing Management. Journal Of Marketing, 37(4), 119. doi: 10.2307/1250367

Smith, J.B.& Colgate, M. (2007). Customer Value Creation. A practical framework, Journal of Marketing  Theory and Practice, 15(1), 7-23