There are two ways of reaching customers
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Written by Atila on October 24, 2008 – 12:42 am
In the recent past, the concept of marketing, or rather of the market, has extended dramatically. The market is a potent idea, with wide meanings. Goods, services, commodities exist within markets and are subject to the laws of supply and demand. And central to the concept of the market is the idea of the customer.
Goods, services, markets exist to supply and satisfy customers. That is the rationale of industry: to identify, obtain, supply and retain a customer.
The force that relates an organisation to its customers is the force of marketing. The marketing function is central to the whole task of servicing and retaining customers. And this seemingly simple idea has spread far out, from consumer goods, to services, to local authority operation, to financial institutions, to health care and education.
Most people are at one and the same time customers themselves, and also professionally seeking to deal with customers in one way or another. Along with the idea of the customer has grown the idea of the brand.
Markets have grown from the commodity stage, selling generic or undifferentiated commodities (apples, oranges, gas stoves, houses) to the branded stage, selling separate, specific, unique, distinctive and individual concepts – the brand. The brand is not just a physical product. It has indeed a physical shape, but beyond that it has an image, a tradition, a general meaning for the customer. Soap powder means washing clothes. Persil means something more – effectiveness, reliability and care. The idea of the brand has extended far, from consumer packaged goods to durables, to services, to industrial products and raw materials, to business products, to finance, to public authorities, to public utilities. Persil is a brand. So are Massey-Ferguson tractors.
Or IBM computers. Or Parcel Force delivery. Or the American Express Card. Or Job Centres. The key element is the brand value – that the brand has a positive benefit for the customer and a distinctive identity against its competitors. It is true that in one sense the high-water mark of the brand concept may be receding. With the surge of retail multiples, own label and retail buying power, manufactured brands are sometimes on the defensive. But there, too, branding persists.
Marks & Spencer is a retail brand with all the classic brand values associated with hitherto consumer products. Marks & Spencer is in itself a consumer product and so joins in the fortunes of a brand profile – advancing where brand values are strong, receding when brand values weaken. Akey factor in this marketing process and in the development of brands is advertising, or rather, marketing communications in general. Organisations must build themselves around customers.
With a wide and dispersed customer base, there are two ways of reaching customers:
1. via an intermediary, or distributor
2. via the media of communication.
The link with the intermediary may be through a primary sales representative, but here too communication can be influential. Communication works throughout the process.
Although it is particularly a key factor in the marketing process, communication can work in other spheres too:
- Marketing communication: to help promote products, services and ideas and to help achieve commercial/business goals.
- Corporate communication: to help inform about an organisation, so as to build up a strong relationship with its network of publics.
Most advertising expenditure springs from marketing needs. But an increasing volume reflects corporate or organisational communication purposes – local authority signs on building sites extolling the work of the council seem to be corporate communication in tone. Or is there a marketing intent here, too?
