Week 9

This week’s lecture was about Social Marketing which was presented by a guest speaker called Arlene Newbigging Grady. Arlene gave us an introduction on what marketing is and highlighted the 5ps of marketing and then went on to discuss how and why companies use social marketing. This weeks lecture was very interesting because she discussed the topic very well with good backup of examples. It was also good to discuss a different topic and get a guest to come from outside and tell us how Heineken the company that she works with uses social marketing.

Marketing is a philosophy called the marketing concept which simply means that the organisation puts the consumer at the heart of the business.

Some benefits of marketing include the following:

·         Consumers get up to date products they need and want

·         Organisations achieve revenue, profit and survival objectives

·         Organisations can compete more effectively and efficiently

·         Prosperity for individuals, organisations and nation

The 4ps of the marketing mix are:

·         Price

In the marketing mix it is very important to choose the right price for the market conditions.

·         Place

This usually refers to how the product is distributed via chain of intermediaries.

·         Product

This may be a crucial element for many functional products since people buy things for what they can do.

·         Promotion

This aspect is about how the company communicates with its market and is crucial in certain markets.

Example of a successful company that uses the marketing mix is Ben Sherman.

Ben Sherman

Ben Sherman is a globally recognised lifestyle brand which established in 1963. They sell their brand in 35 countries around the world.

Product

Ben Sherman has to decide whether to create a product and then market it to target customers or find out what the market wants and then provide it.

To achieve both, the company produces a wide product range that appeals to all its target market segments. The range includes casual clothes, formal wear, denim, footwear, and lifestyle acces

Price

The price of a product relates to it’s perceived value. Lower priced items will expect a higher volume of sales, whilst fewer sales of ;luxury products may achieve the same revenue through higher pricing. Ben Sherman has to assess which markets its products are aimed at and set a price to match. Therefore they mostly produce medium price range products.

Place

This refers both to the places where Ben Sherman products may be bought and to the channels of distribution used to deliver the products to these places.

Ben Sherman use three traditional distribution channels such as their own stores where the brand is the strongest, independent fashion stores and department stores.

Promotion

Ben Sherman use independent media to reach a wide audience easily and also reach customers by direct mailing.

Many companies are using social marketing to promote their products to reach a wider range of customers. Social marketing is when companies use a network to link consumers with computers and mobile technology.

Arlene showed us two examples of companies that used viral marketing campaigns and looking at their campaigns it was so difficult to even imagine that they were Volkswagen and Samsung campaigns. This was because it was hard to understand what message these companies were actually trying to put forward to their customers. There was no meaning to these campaigns because most people in the lecture did not actually understand them.

Companies use social marketing:

·         To adapt to ever changing needs and to adapt objectives in a rapidly moving environment.

·         To engage the brands with consumers and to fit with their consumers and to fit with their lifestyle and social needs.

I had a look at the 5 semantic search engines by asking different questions and I felt that Hakia and Google were the fastest and gave answers which could be understood. I did not like Powerset because it had a lot of responses therefore it took time to actually filter through and find the actual answer.

This lecture could definitely become useful in the future because every company uses marketing tactics in order to reach potential customers. Therefore if we are aware of different things that companies then we are more likely to bring success to the company. I really enjoyed discussing this topic because it is something that I would enjoy doing in my future career.

In this week’s lab we were presenting our presentations. It was good to see other peoples presentations and compare it against my own as it allowed me to notice my strengths and weaknesses of my presentation. I think that my presentation was good even though my group did not work well as a team we still managed to deliver our presentation well. I wish that we could have used some kind of media to enhance our presentation but because the rest of the members in my team did not want this then I had to agree with them. Overall the presentation went well and I was happy with it.

sories.