Marketing: An Introduction Second Edition on Amazon

Here is a direct link to the second edition of Marketing: An Introduction on Amazon

2e on Amazon

Good luck to all students embarking on their studies this October.

Is Marketing Hard to Study?

I posted on this topic last year, but the issue comes around every September - so here we go again.

Here is a question you might not have asked yourself before you signed up to take a class in marketing:

Is marketing a hard subject to study?

My answer – as you might have already come to expect from an academic - is that it depends.

What can make it hard? Having observed thousands of marketing students over the years I have noted that there are three things that can commonly cause a problem – even for bright students – over and above issues that apply to all new students:

1. Information overload. A thing that often surprises new university students is that whilst the general complexity of ideas they must engage with is something that is not beyond them, the sheer quantity of information – pages to read, A/V materials to watch, lecturers to listen to – is an order of magnitude higher than anything they have encountered before. As a subject, marketing throws ideas at you from all directions over and above the general problem for new students.

2. Subject diversity. One of the descriptions I give of university marketing education [as opposed to professional training] is as a subject that pinches the shiny bits from social sciences and applies them in a commercial context. One day learning about marketing might require you to be a psychologist [consumer behaviour], the next might require you to be a sociologist [cultures of consumption] or an anthropologist [market segmentation]. Alongside these social science hats, marketing students must sometimes be technologists, economists, statisticians and so on. Some people have a genuine and deep talent in a narrow area – the maths wizard who can’t tie his own shoelaces. Marketing students that do well tend to have a wider knowledge and skill set. Jack-of-all-trades. Of course, the second half of that saying is master-of-none, and we’ll talk about that in the next blog post

3. Hierarchy of knowledge. That is a very posh phrase – what can it mean? Do you remember how you started studying mathematics? 2+2=4. After you mastered simple addition you would have moved onto subtraction, then multiplication and finally division. Years later and you might have been capable of second-order partial differentiation whilst picking your nose – but each and every intervening stage would have been built on the knowledge and skills you gained in the last. Marketing isn’t  like that most of the time. The way forward isn’t always clear and even selecting a starting point can be difficult.

Each of those can represent a real problem. Taken together, they can be a real killer. In the next post I’ll talk about you can manage these difficulties and outline the positives of being a marketing student.

Retro chic takes the kids to school?

“Mini has lost its cool” ran the blog headline, and I was hooked. This was at the #socialvoices blog on MSN. The reason I was hooked is that I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing myself for some time now but, as is the way, had never mentioned it to anyone in case I was the only one thinking it. But the blogger at #socialvoices came to the same conclusion. The BMW Mini was a brilliant marketing conception combined with high quality design and engineering. Chic retro is probably always in fashion, and certainly has been a great success story in the last decade. The BMW Mini was chic retro writ large, and a fantastic success story, but by 2012 it began to look as though a good idea had been pushed beyond its reasonably limits.

The issue here is line extension and brand extension, both of which are discussed in Marketing: An Introduction on pages 245-246. The original BMW Mini was extended to a clubman estate, which was still recognisably, essentially, the same car. The problem has arisen with more recent variants sharing the Mini name. The prime example: the Mini Countryman SUV, which at over four metres long is mini in name only. Is this a line extension or a brand extension? MAI tells us that a line extension is where new products are added within the same product category under the same brand name, while a brand extension is the use of a successful brand name to launch new or modified products in a new category.

Is the Mini Countryman SUV in the same product category as the Mini One (line extension), or is it in a different product category (brand extension)? Well, let’s leave that for our students to ponder over. The key point here is that MAI mentions a number of drawbacks to line and brand extensions: an overextended brand might lose its specific meaning, heavily extended brands can cause consumer confusion, and the damage might even affect the integrity of the underlying brand. Not very likely, one would think, when we are dealing with a sub-brand of the mighty BMW, and a sub-brand—Mini—that has carried all before it in recent years. On top of that, surely, putting two cool things together, the Mini brand and the SUV product category, has to work, doesn’t it?

Clearly I have my doubts, as does the #socialvoices blogger. The original BMW Mini was cool, retro chic which shouted “youthful fun” at you. The Mini Countryman SUV is designed to take the kids to school. Something isn’t quite right. The brand is being pulled a little too far. And, on my side, count Dan Neil of the Wall Street Journal Online, who calls the Mini Countryman “ridiculous … absurd … (resembling) an orthotic shoe” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704615504576172832123217962.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_editorsPicks_2#articleTabs%3Darticle).

They’ll sell some cars. Will they damage the brand?

Marketing in a crisis

One of my favourite case studies in Marketing: An Introduction is “The boycott of Arla Foods in the Middle East” by Dr Ibrahim Abosag of Manchester Business School. I can’t remember how many times I have used it as an example in the classroom, or just in everyday conversation. It is an example of how things can go badly wrong for a good company through no fault of its own. In the case study, Arla Foods gets caught in the cross-fire after a Danish newspaper publishes satirical cartoons featuring images considered offensive by many Muslims. It turns out that Arla, a Danish dairy products company, is very big in the Middle East, and loses out dramatically when Muslim customers decide to boycott Danish products. The case study then explains the processes that Arla went through to re-build their brand and their sales in these important markets.

As the second edition of Marketing: An Introduction hit the bookshops, another company was suffering a major hit to its brand name—G4S. Oddly enough, G4S also has a considerable amount of Danish in its past, tracing its roots to a Danish company founded in 1901 (http://www.g4s.com/en/Who%20we%20are/History/). Well-known brand names like Securicor and Group 4 have been incorporated into what is now G4S: “the world’s leading provider of security solutions” (http://www.g4s.com/en/Who%20we%20are/Our%20Business/). The G4S brand has run into difficulties because the company has been unable to fulfil commitments that it made as the provider of private security services to the London Olympic Games 2012. This has resulted in the G4S name being dragged through the mud across a wide range of media, with videos at YouTube, blogs, online and traditional news channels all sticking the boot in.

My question is: does the Arla Foods case study have any lessons that could help with the G4S situation? At first sight the answer seems to be “no”, because the crisis at Arla was clearly no fault of its own, and Arla is a marketer of consumer branded products (such as Lurpak, Anchor and Cravendale). The G4S crisis is perceived by the public as the company’s own fault, and G4S is a marketer of B2B security services. Totally different, right? Well, maybe.

The key lesson from the Arla case study is that a company dealing with this kind of crisis has to put in place a carefully planned process to restore the credibility of the brand. What not to do is simply to respond with a communications campaign designed to tell everyone how great you are. Just getting out there and selling the message is something that marketers might reasonably be accused of, on occasion. But when you are facing this kind of crisis it is definitely the wrong thing to do. Sure, a communications campaign is going to happen, later on in the process. Before that happens, however, all of the stakeholders affected have to be researched, consulted and involved in the planning process, and the problem needs to be resolved. As we keep emphasising in Marketing: An Introduction, marketing is about more than telling people how great you are and selling your message. Never more so than when you are dealing with a crisis that has turned customers against you.     

LinkedIn and the marketing student

In the 2nd edition of Marketing: An Introduction we have included a lot of coverage of digital marketing and social media in marketing. Obviously we had to do that ...  although, I think an important question for marketers right now is how to strike the right balance between offline and online marketing, and just how much to rely on social media as part of the marketing mix. The notion that marketing is "all about digital now" or "all about social media now" is clearly wrong. That is just hype. I mean, if that was true, then why are the TV programmes I watch and the newspapers I read full of ads?

Still, digital is really important, and social media must be embraced. Something that may confuse the marketing student, however, is the role of LinkedIn. We are all (by which I mean all of us who read blogs like this and teach or study marketing) familiar with Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube and probably a few other social media applications. But just what is LinkedIn for? I think this is a useful question for the marketing student to reflect on.

At first sight LinkedIn is just, and I hesitate to say this, but it's just boring. In comparison to FB it makes a pretty poor visual impression. In my experience the average student when asked to scope out LinkedIn comes away with a "what's it all about?" kind of expression. In the short term this is probably not a problem. If you are a new marketing student who still has a long way to go until you start thinking seriously about getting into a long-term marketing career, then the immediate value of LinkedIn to you is limited.

But here are three suggestions for you to think about for the future. Firstly, LinkedIn is becoming an increasingly useful tool for generating B2B marketing lists for direct marketing purposes, and this is only going to grow in importance. Secondly, LinkedIn is the location where a lot of specialist marketing forums get together to network and to exhange the latest information about marketing theory and practice. Thirdly, and possibly the most important to you in the near future, LinkedIn is increasingly the place where potential employees go to advertise their skills and employers go to find new talent.

So, dull it may seem. But keep a close eye on LinkedIn. It could be very useful in your future marketing career.

Cupcakes, Carousels and Covers

Here is the cover of the second edition

We negotiated this one after not being thrilled with the designs originally sent to us. Here are a few examples.

Discussing these led to a memorable if surreal exchange:

'Why cupcakes?'
'Cupcakes are HUGE right now!'

Twits

Obviously you have found this blog. Also be advised that there is a Twitter feed in support of the book, to be found at:

@IntrotoMKT

Normally we don't follow students back - for your privacy rather than disinterest. Be sure to look after your own privacy settings in any case.

Revenue - eBay and Paypal

It is quite likely that you have bought or sold something via eBay. Did you know that Paypal belonged to the same organisation? Below we have a chart from Venturebeat - a website that reports on stories and issues in E-Marketing - to show how the revenues from one correlate to the other. If this surprises you, try and make your next eBay deal without using Paypal.

Retronaut - Ads from Long Ago

One of my personal favourite websites is Retronaut - http://www.retronaut.co/
This site houses images from yesteryear collected by enthusiasts. Many categories for the collections, but one of the ones that appeals most to me are the collections of adverts.

Here are a couple of examples:

1. Radioactive cosmetics: http://www.retronaut.co/2012/07/radioactive-beauty-products-1930s/

2. The wondrous new product of cellophane: http://www.retronaut.co/2012/06/cellophane-ads-c-1930s-1950s/

2e Published

According to our publishers, the second edition of Marketing: An Introduction is now available for purchase from all good bookshops, and frankly quite a few mediocre ones as well.

Second Edition - Publication Date

We now have a publication date for the second edition.

26th July.

More info about the book here: http://catalogue.pearsoned.co.uk/educator/product/Marketing-An-Introduction/0273762605.page#

And here is a picture of the cover

Doubleplusgood Market Research

The term social media is one that has become very popular in recent years. What it means depends upon whom you ask, but many would describe it in terms of software and applications like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Google +. Functionality varies, but users are able to post messages publicly to specific groups, upload files like pictures or video and note or indicate approval of the latest lolcat mash-up.

Stories about social media abound in the news – the number of users in a network, the online petition influencing government policy, the social and economic implications of these networks and communities.  One very popular category of story is based on estimates of market value of the leading social media companies. At the time of writing, Twitter has been valued at $8bn. If this is accurate – and it probably isn’t – it has a market value equivalent to Marks and Spencer ^A. These values can go down as well as up. Myspace, which was bought in 2005 for $600m was sold on in mid-2011 for just $35m ^B.

Many of the reasons that these companies are valued so highly are marketing related. Brand building, customer relations and advertising are all activities for which social media has a very significant impact – Facebook alone expected advertising revenue of $4bn in 2011 ^C. The same is true - doubly true - of market research. Why is this? Almost regardless of what the users think the social media platform is for – keeping in contact with friends, sharing holiday snaps etc – these are, when considered objectively giant machines for harvesting and processing data about the millions of people that use them.

So, if you are a user of [say] Facebook, exactly what sort of information are you voluntarily handing over? Obviously your name, a contact email address, a list of friends and acquaintances which you helpfully build up. You probably comment on things that you did or did not enjoy – and many of those will be product or service related. You can even ‘like’ brands, companies or organisations that you feel you have an affinity with. Images of you and your friends in your native environment. You might take part in opinion polling or an online game. For all of these and more your actions and contributions are watched, recorded and analysed. Other social media platforms, like Foursquare, even have you sharing your location and route.

This is a level of detail and precision that is extra-ordinary in market research terms. The volume and quality of data being handed over – free of charge no less – to these companies is staggering.

No less significant are the social and cultural implications of these machines. Many of these focus around the topics of privacy and ownership of data. Here is something you might not have thought about. When you upload an image of yourself to share with friends, to whom does it belong?  You might assume that it belonged to you. You’d be wrong. That box you ticked a couple of years ago to indicate your agreement with the terms and conditions? That was you agreeing that the ownership of all content you entered or uploaded is transferred away from you and towards the company supporting the platform. 

Here is a portion of the information section on privacy and use of information from the Facebook help-pages ^D – read and think about the implications:

·         We receive data about you whenever you interact with Facebook, such as when you look at another person's profile, search for a friend or a Page, click on advert or purchase Facebook Credits.

·         When you post things like photos or videos on Facebook, we may receive additional related data (or metadata), such as the time, date and place you took the photo or video.

·         We receive data from the computer, mobile phone or other device you use to access Facebook. This may include your IP address, location, the type of browser you use or the pages you visit.

·         We receive data whenever you visit a game, application or website that uses Facebook Platform or visit a site with a Facebook feature (such as a social plugin). This may include the date and time you visit the site, the web address, or URL, you're on, technical information about the IP address, browser and the operating system you use and, if you are logged in to Facebook, Your User ID.

·         Sometimes we get data from our advertising partners and customers that helps us deliver better adverts. For example, an advertiser may tell us how you responded to an advert on Facebook or on another site in order to measure the effectiveness of - and improve the quality of - those adverts.

We also put together data from the information we already have about you and your friends. For example, we may put together data about you to determine which friends we should show you in your News Feed or suggest you tag in the photos you post. We may also put together data about you to serve you adverts that might be more relevant to you.

When we receive data about you from our advertising partners and customers, we keep the data for 180 days. After that, we combine the data with other people's data in a way that it is no longer associated with you.

These companies know a lot about you, and one of the ways they make money is by packaging vast quantities of personal data together and selling it. The advertising revenue is so great because the people paying for the advertising feel they have a much better customer insight into the people that will see the advert. Certainly much better than the equivalent advert on TV. This is the essence of the how and why of market research – collecting and processing information about your markets so that you can make better and more accurate decisions. The value of Myspace collapsed because the number of users – and hence the flow of data – was rapidly dwindling.

Worried yet? Even if you are blasé about the transfer of data from you to commercial organisations, there are perhaps issues you might not have thought about. Google – who I think we can agree know a thing or two about collecting and interpreting information – have what is called a Chief Information Officer, whom I think we can agree knows a lot about collecting and processing information even by the standards of Google’s workforce. His name is Eric Schmittt, and he recently suggested that young people would – in the not too distant future – be offered by their respective governments the chance to change their name when reaching adulthood in order to create a disconnect between their adult selves and all the stupid things they had done and made public in their youth ^E.  

We might call that rebranding. Indeed, one of the reasons that social media is so popular is that it allows users to define, express and brand themselves. Choices of colour, design, content - such as pictures selected – these are all branding choices, and they all tell the machine about you and your preferences.  It should be noted that Google itself is getting into this lucrative game with a platform called Google +, and by the time you read this you might have an extensive profile there. That profile will be under your own name, as Google isn’t allowing online pseudonyms to be used – that would pollute the data as far as they are concerned ^F

 The title of this section comes from George Orwell’s book – 1984, and Orwellian is a term some have associated with this combined technological and social trend. The most famous phrase from that book is of course ‘Big Brother is watching you’.

To conclude, one example of how this impacts on you and your future. Microsoft recently surveyed HR managers globally, asking them what use they made of social media in assessing candidates for jobs with their organisation. Their findings? The vast majority of HR recruiters are including information obtained about you from social media sources in your evaluation ^G. Still think that photo of you in your underwear and wearing a stolen traffic cone was a good idea? Oops!

A This particular news story by Dominic Rushe can be found on the Guardian - www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/02/twitter-valued-8bn-large-investment there will be a similar story in the next week made available on the news-media platform of your choice

B A summary of the life-history of Myplace, and analysis of the reasons behind the collapse in value are available in the story by Andy Fixmer at www.businessweek.com/news/2011-06-29/news-corp-calls-quits-on-myspace-with-specific-media-sale.html

C A full report on revenue streams for social media platforms is available at great expense from the eMarketer website. A summary is free to view at www.emarketer.com/Reports/All/Emarketer_2000757.aspx

D Facebook provides extensive information on privacy related topics. This is continually updated as legislation and technology evolve. The top of the section can be found at https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq

E The story first appeared in the Wall St Journal, but a more accessible version is available from the BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11009700

F  For an amusing and insightful take on the creation and maintenance of online identity, see the Guardian at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2011/jul/28/google-open-letter-google

G The report covers a great many issues on or about privacy can be obtained free from www.microsoft.com/privacy/

The market share of web browsers

In different classes recently, I have ended up talking about market share and intermediaries.

Traditional intermediaries might include wholesalers and retailers, but many firms are now finding that companies like Google [search] and even web browsers [Internet Explorer] are acting as intermediaries between them and their markets.

Without working well and effectively with these new categories of intermediary, an organisation may fail to meet its marketing objectives - in a similar way that making a bad retailing, logistics or banking decision might have a negative impact.

As an Old Person, I have habitually used Internet Explorer for a decade and more. A highly unscientific poll of students suggested that Chrome from Google was very popular.

I thought I'd see what hard data could say.

A nice webbie with some geeky online toys is http://gs.statcounter.com - you can vary time period, geographic focus and the tech that is charted - browsers, search engines, operating systems etc.

Below is a chart of the market share at a global level of web browsers in the last 4+ years

Look at the converging lines for IE and Chrome. If these trends continue, in the very near future IE will no longer be the market leader and Chrome will have taken over. This may surprise people who automatically assume Microsoft is the leader in markets within which it operates.

Transcript - Customer service with O2

Here is a transcript of a customer service encounter/'moment of truth' I just had with 'Brad' from O2. Only slightly edited for reasons of personal information security.

Welcome to O2. Someone will be with you soon.

You're through to Brad.

Brad: Hi I'm O2 : Brad. How can I help?

Michael Harker: Hi, I received a replacement SIM for my iPhone 4S. SIM isn't connecting to O2 network.

Brad: No worries.

Brad: I'll help you with that.

Brad: Please can you tell me the first and third character of the answer to your security question?

Michael Harker: *_*

Brad: Thanks for the information. Please give me a few minutes while I check this for you.

Brad: Can I've the full answer to your security question please?

Michael Harker: ****

Brad: Thanks for the info.

Brad: Now can you help me with the 19 digit sim serial number which is on the back of the sim?

Michael Harker: Ok - 89441100**********

Brad: Thanks for the info.

Brad: Just a few minutes.

Michael Harker: tumtetum

Brad: Yes, just a few more minutes.

Brad: It's in process.

Brad: Thanks for waiting.

Brad: I've activated the new sim for you and you'll be able to use the services within a few hours from now (maximum 24 hours).

Michael Harker: Ok. Do I need to reset network settings or anything or just leave the phone alone?

Brad: Just leave the phone alone ans switch off and switch on the phone periodically until you get the O2 logo on the screen.

Brad: *and

Michael Harker: Ok. Thanks for your help. Bye...

Brad: You're most welcome.

Brad: It was nice chatting with you.

Brad: Bye and take care.

Brad: Have a nice day.

Michael Harker: I hope you have all those on macros

Brad: Yes, these chats are saved on your account.

Why 'Brad'? That isn't his/her real name. For a combination of reasons the operators are slotted into an artificial persona, rather than using their own. Next time I use this service it won't be Brad, and even if it was, Brad would almost certainly be someone else.

What can we infer about the real human behind Brad? Probably a native English speaker - note the recognition of tumtetum as a typed sign of impatience. The responses to my questions were a mix of macro'd responses - 'have a nice day' - and actual human input - note the corrected spelling. Also note that the word macro wasn't recognised.

Probably a Liberal Arts student! Only mostly joking.

In the last post we noted some of the new cases that will appear in the second edition - due late June 2012.

Here are the others to complete the list:

Tom's Shoes
General Electric - building business to business connections
Google - improving and speeding up innovation
Rolex - management of luxury brands
Zara - managing supply chains in the fashion sector
Movers and Shakers - leaders and innovators in European retail
Narrowcasting - creating bespoke communications
McDonald's in Russia - dealing with a different environment.

M.

Second Edition

The second edition of Armstrong, Kotler, Harker and Brennan - An Introduction to Marketing will be published by Peason Prentice-Hall late June 2012.

Available at all good bookshops, and quite a few mediocre ones!

The changes in content is a topic we'll save for later, but here are a few* of the new cases that replace material from the first edition:

British Telecom - corporate strategy in the long term.
Yourcompanysucks.com - customer complaint and company responses in the internet age
Doubleplusgood Market research - market research using social media
Steam Powered marketing - digital distribution of computer games
Angry Birds - the marketing of software applications


* In total there will be 14 new cases in the 2e.