Posted on : 2023-04-30 20:48:10
Article : Good morning management solution for the TASK 239- Although new skills are required to enter blocked markets, marketing professionals need not be specially trained in the additional skills. Rather, they need to broaden their view of what it takes to enter these markets and to coordinate various specialists to achieve the desired goals.
In this solution part of this TASK 239 article, we discuss marketing situations that call for mega marketing strategies and shows how companies can organize their power and public relations resources to achieve entry and operating success in blocked markets. Although companies face a growing number of blocked markets, they are rarely organized to develop or execute mega marketing strategies.
Marketers routinely deal with several parties: customers, suppliers, distributors, dealers, advertising agencies, market research firms, and others. Mega marketing situations involve even more parties: legislators, government agencies, political parties, public-interest groups, unions, among others. Each party has an interest in the company’s activity and must be sold on supporting, or at least not blocking the company. Mega marketing is thus a greater multiparty marketing problem than marketing though this marketing involves the normal tools of marketing (the four Ps) plus two others: power and public relations.
The following two examples help illustrate mega-marketing problems and the skills needed to cope successfully. Sometimes successful marketing is increasingly becoming a political exercise, as two episodes one international and the other domestic illustrate:.
Pepsi-Cola outwitted its arch rival, Coca-Cola, by striking a deal to gain entry into India’s huge consumer market of 730 million people. Coca-Cola had dominated the Indian soft drink market until it abruptly withdrew from India in 1978 in protest over Indian government policies. Coca-Cola, along with Seven-Up, tried to re-enter, but hard work and effective political marketing gave Pepsi the prize..
Pepsi worked with an Indian group to form a joint venture with terms designed to win government approval over the opposition of both domestic soft drink companies and anti-MNC legislators. Pepsi offered to help India export its agro-based products in a volume that would more than cover the cost of importing soft drink concentrate. Furthermore, Pepsi promised to focus considerable selling effort on rural areas as well as major urban markets. Pepsi also offered to bring new food processing, packaging, and water treatment technology to India. Clearly, Pepsi-Cola orchestrated a set of benefits that would win over various interest groups in India..
Citicorp, the U.S. banking giant, had been trying for years to start full-service banking in Maryland. It had only credit card and small service operations in the state. Under Maryland law, out-of-state banks could provide only certain services and were barred from advertising, setting up branches, and other types of marketing efforts. In March 1985, Citicorp offered to build a major credit card centre in Maryland that would create 1,000 white-collar jobs and further offered the state $1 million in cash for the property where it would locate. By imaginatively designing a proposal to benefit Maryland, Citicorp will become the first out-of-state bank to provide full banking services there..
These two instances demonstrate the growing need for companies that want to operate in certain markets to master the art of supplying benefits to parties other than target consumers. This need extends beyond the requirements to serve and satisfy normal intermediaries like agents, distributors, and dealers. I am talking about third parties governments, labor unions, and other interest groups that, singly or collectively can block profitable entry into a market. These groups act as gatekeepers, and they are growing in importance..
End point-Some may oppose the enlarged view of marketing proposed here. After all, mega marketing impinges on the responsibilities of some nonmarketing executives and argues that marketers should feel comfortable using power to accomplish their purposes. Marketers normally deal with other parties in the most courteous manner; many will suffer image shock in adopting the mega marketing approach. Yet this innocence has led companies to fail in both international and home markets where transactions are marked by tough bargaining, side payments, and various complexities..
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