Retailing Mantra

Retail is a big word in today's consumer driven market. Big brands like walmart, Big Bazar, Reliance are some of the examples of the stronger and growing retail market. The brick and mortar trade contributes to a majority of GDP and for various brands. It is the present and the future.

This all makes Retail a big name, but retail is not about winning big battles. It is winning the small battles- the consumers and trade. Exploring the new avenues and creating a regular contact with the existing ones.

Retail is about winning the confidence of consumers and making them delighted through the products and services.

To make Retail successful for any brand it is must that all the analysis are done from Retail perspective: Market Analysis, customer analysis, internal manpower analysis, competition analysis, product offering analysis, existing distribution analysis and cost benefit analysis.

The brand needs to have a clear understanding of the market they are willing to enter. The customer who is king needs to be understood in detailed and accordingly the actions  are required which invoke him to purchase the product and make decisions.

Retail requires legs, the manpower is an important factor to make the retail successful. Retail is about creating big and small trade points for raching to customers and it require lot of leg work with patience. The employees need to be trained to channelise the retail chain and serve them.

A successful retail business requires clear understanding of customer expectations and their demands. The customer delight is the key to success in retail market. The happy customer experience is the secret of long run success in the market.

The retail requires correct product mix. The product offering needs to meet all the customer requirements and their expectations.

The brands also needs to establish a clear distribution channel for the successful retail business. In retail the products flow through the retail chain which involves CFA/Super Stockist/ Stockist/Distributor/Retailer . One need to have the understanding of the complete chain and the material needs to be available at all these points.

The cost benefit analysis, understanding business economies are required to chalk out the retail strategy.

Post all these actiosn, everything come down to creating a customer delight program and winning them.

Retail is the oldest form of business started with peddlers and evolving to super markets. But it still remains about winning small battles. Retail is exciting , Retail is energy, Retail is the RELATIONS!!

It all starts with a smile!

Yes it all starts with a smile! For any purchase the customer must be convinced with the features and benefits of the products. And that can be done best while explaining them with the smile. The day to day action tells that any one greeted with smile will be more receptive to your ideas and will listen out the you carefully. The smile shows the sales person is confident about its products and understand then well. 

It is not only salesman but all the faces of business require the smile while interacting with the customer, be it  internal or external.

People who speak with a smile is able to bring customers at ease and thus involving them in a smooth buying process and remains engage for long term in the business.

Sales person  looks  more convincing and confident while talking and smiling. with this he takes away all the worries and purchase inertia of customers.

So the first law of sales remains S for Sales, S for Smile.

Achieve your success understanding 5 Cs

The brands need to stick to one Strategy for a long time to make their brand recognised among consumers. Wether it is B2B or B2C one need to very  carefully  identify its goals and then chose the strategy. The Competition, Customers, Core Benefits, Communication and Consistency helps you to define your moments of strategy success

Competition  influence your strategy

The organisations need to identify their customers and the select a positioning for its products in market place. The competition needs to be identified and analysed along with their  product offering, positioning and promotional strategy. They needs to be studied and results out of that needs to be analysed. The competition  helps any brand in many ways to understand the market and then in drafting Marketing strategies.

Understand your Customers Better.

Along with competition the market for your product  needs to be identified and analysed.  The customer behaviour and journey needs to be understand.  Understanding the motivational factors behind their purchase helps to identify the cusyomers and their influencers and then drafting the product and branding strategies.

Understand  your  Product

The product understanding is equally important. One must know the core benefit of their products. How does the product will make a difference to the life of a customer? Is it a need driven product or the status symbol one, the understanding of core benefits of a product helps in better positioning of product and thus in defining  branding strategy.

What you want to communicate

If you are clear about the competition, customers, and core benefits of your products, you can easily define what you need to communicate. The communication must be developed keeping in mind these 3 actors. The messaging has to be defined according to the core benefits your product offering, keeping in mind your customers  and a bit different than competition. 

Consistency is the key to success

The messaging needs to be consistent on all vehicles and for a long term to register in the mind of customers. Once you have defined the messaging  you needs to be steadily communicating to your customers. The brand needs to identify the media vehicles to ride on to reach to customers. The principal for vehicle remains same the more you have fuel in it, more you will be able to travel to your target destination. You also needs to be consistent and keep the vehicle supported with all required maintenance. The synchronisation  in various media vehicles  help you to reach you're desired place quickly.

So combine  all your 5 Cs together  and then start you brand journey to reach your target fast.

Internet and Customer Journey.

Internet and Customer Journey.

Internet plays a vital role in customer journey and affects his purchase behavior in a significant way. The smart digital marketing manager will influence the behaviour by making effective utilisation of internet marketing. The consumer before buying seeks information about his purchase and look for suggestions from his close ones. Earlier before internet era, one use to rely on recommendation of his peers, advices from family and friends and use to seek the reviews from magazines. Since the inception of the internet the things are changed and people Google for every information.

The customer today has access to all the information he wants on internet. Companies are making their website content rich to share their product  features and benefits to their customers. The consumer visit the review based websites and compare the offers made to them and then decide the best buys.

A typical customer journey starts from either his needs or wants or desires but internet has the capabilities to make a customer feel the need of something which he actually doesn’t need. Purchase at Mantra or jabong.com is one such example where people buy the clothes derived from either discounts or presentation.

The offline customer, once he needs something shall speaks to his relatives, visit the stores and the evaluate the options and buy. In case of online consumer he just go to Google baba and make searches there and take helps of evaluating websites and make purchase. The process ends the participation of any individual other than buyer himself.

So how do one take advantage of internet marketing. Internet marketing is faster and agile than the offline. It reaches fast to consumers in various ways. You can follow the consumers through cookies. One can easily target his customers by following him through cookies stored on his computer or mobile.

The customer can be reached with Facebook or website page he visits. The internet marketing is economical as compared to offline hence it gives advantage for continuous hammering.

For an online customer his journey starts when he desires to buy something. Sometime this desires is induced to him by creatively nice designed advertisements and sometimes he actually has the need. Once the customer identifies his needs he start searching for solutions and in case of being an online customer he searches through various platforms including google, bing and other search engines. The search engine leads customers to various service providers or product supplier sites. At the time of search also, internet provide the opportunity to influence the customer through search ads or PPC.

Out of the results appeared the customer tends to visit the top ranked pages and browse through them. Once customer find his desired products he can visit the price and feature compare sites like Cardekho.com for cars or policy bazar.com for buying policies. The review websites influence the customer decision in a big way as they tend to put a comparative scenario for various products. One can easily advertise on review website and can attract the customers through his product USPs.

After going through the reviews the customer takes a conscious decision and make the purchase.

The whole customer journey gives ample opportunities to marketers to influence its customers and excite them about their offerings. Hence the digital marketing manager really need to act in most innovative and creative manner to  influence the customer throughout their buying journey.

My best learning on Customer Services and Experiences

My best learning on Customer Services and Experiences

I learnt my best customer complaint resolution experience at Tea stall.  While sipping the tea along with my friends, we  heard a person complaining to tea shop owner 'bhaiyya aaj aapki chai acchi  nahi bani hai’. We all were amused as it is the same in taste which we were having for so many years. Then why this person is complaining. To our utter surprise the shop owner acknowledged the problem and said yes there seems to be some problem and he will rectify it. Once the complaining customer left the stall we asked the tea shop owner “bhaiyya kya problem thee” and he smiled that there was no problem and the tea is same as it had been for many years. Then we enquired why did he agreed to complaint, to which he replied if we need to get the answer then we need to be there tomorrow same time when the complaining customer come again at shop to have his tea.

We all were eager to know about it and were keen to find the answer. Next day, thanks to our curiosity we reached at shop again and waited for the complaining customer to come. The customer came ordered his tea and started sipping that. Then The tea owner asked 'bhaiyya aaj to chai theek hai naa’. and the customer nodded in affirmation and said “haan aaj majedar hai”. We also ordered the tea and again experienced the same taste and quality which we had last night. The customer seemed quite satisfied from tea and left the store.

We again asked the  chai wala 'bhaiyya what is the difference between yesterday’s and today’s tea, as we could not find any difference. The tea vendor said that their is no difference. He said, he did not changed anything. We again asked him then how did the customer felt difference. To which he answered that this is the same tea he has been drinking for years . I could make out that yesterday he was not happy with something and hence could not enjoy the tea.  If i would have resisted to the complaint, customer could have more angry and then probably I would have lost the customer.

This taught me some very important lessons for handling the customer:

• Always hear the customer patiently
• Greet & Reply him with a smile
• Be Courteous always

Most of us before listening to customers we start making them understand about the problem, sometimes it is better to listen them patiently and then make them feel as you are always there to help them. Once we make him feel comfortable, he can really contribute a lot to our business via word of mouth communication. Hence while dealing with customers, we must also remember followings:

• Try to resolve the customer ASAP, immediately would be best.
• .One must be courteous, admit the problem and try to be helpful, all of above must have knowledge about product/services while guiding the customer
• Offer Quality Service 24X7
• You can always offer the customer for Free product training and support
• Exceed Customer Satisfaction through proactive support

If one can follow the above said rules, the customer experience will surely be great!

Digital Marketing; why it is so Important?

The pie share for digital spends in India is increasing day by day! Its speed, agility and audience engagement give it edge over rival conventional media vehicles. Each of the brand manager is working in their brain storming rooms to work out a digital strategy to gain the market share. The companies are spending  in huge numbers to increase their digital presence. In fact everyone is looking to maximize the brand equity through online presence via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram or Pinterest.

In one of the recent interview a senior official from coca cola mentioned that  the ROI on digital media is quite less as compared to the conventional media. However still they are transforming themselves to be a digitally communicating brand.

So what does it make companies to work on digital strategies? When out of 132 core population only  34% use internet then why do companies are intending to spend so heavily on the digital marketing. Why do a smart phone is exclusively launched through a website?

Why there are so many digital start ups? The answer is the speed with which people are converting to digital mode and it's engagement capabilities with customers.

As per an estimate in 2010 there were around 92 Mn people were connected to  internet and at the  end of  Year 2015  around 350 Mn people were connected to internet. It is expected that by 2020 , 730 mn people will be connected via internet. Hence the companies are preparing themselves to be at right place at right time.

No doubt digital is fast, things get viral in friction of a minute, and it has a wide engaging effect on audiences.

With conventional media it is a one way traffic. The brand communicate it's side of story and rely on word of mouth to move on. Or else it has to keep spending in huge amounts to gain the recognition in customer mind.

On the other hand the digital platforms tends to engage the audience by story telling. The companies encourage audience to like,share and talk about the brands. The companies like RedMi or Xiaomi used digital platforms extensively to sell their smart phones.  Companies have specialised teams to create posts and then using strategies to engage audiences. And no doubt the phones, sold exclusively in digital platforms were out of stock within the hours of it's launch.

Besides being fast and it's engaging features,  the digital platforms also ride on young Indian population. Today India is one of the youngest country and its youth are not scared of exploring new opportunities and adopting new technologies.

The digital marketing has definitely given an opportunity to marketer to reach to millions in one go and in a quantitative way. It helps in easy classification and segmentation of market and thus in making focused efforts. The consumers can be segmented and classified as per the requirements and then can be targeted. The effect can also be measured by quantifying the impression , clicks and post share.

The digital marketing helps in creating a fast effect on audiences by giving an opportunity to marketer to  repeat their messages at relatively low cost. The low cost helps marketer to fix their budgeting problems.

Although conventional means also helps in limiting your messages to a targeted geography but digital efforts can be ultra-geo targeted. Today you have possibilities to monitor the movement of your target and accordingly modify your message geography. By using beacons one can actually deliver a discount or mega sales message to customers when they are inside a market compound and can significantly influence their buying behavior.

No doubt digital marketing has edge over the conventional media and hence it is going to be future marketing. It would be an important vehicle to carry the brand stories and would be used by companies more as compared to their conventional media vehicles.

www.thinkmukesh.blogspot.com

REFERENCES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users

http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/india/

How active are your customers?

How active are your customers:

For a sales manager it is important to know how many of their customers are active and how much efforts they should put in to make their customers active. One way to identify the activeness of customers is Recency.

Recency is the state of being recent. In sales actions means, when did the customer last time purchased from you. Recency helps in identifying the chances if customers will buy again from you? The customer who has bought material in recent time is more likely to buy from you again. The recency can be defined on the basis of the product consumption cycle. The product consumption cycle is the period in which a product will be consumed and the customer shall be again at store to buy. For example for a bread, it can be consumed in a day time & hence the consumption cycle would be a day while for a Salt packet it might be 30 days.

If the consumption cycle of a bread pack is one day then on the basis of recency the customers can be divided in following categories:

Active Customers are those who have bought the material in recent times and are most likely to buy again. For Bread pack those will be who has bought it yesterday.

Warm Customers who has bought material a little late than the recent past and will buy products on intermittent basis. For a bread pack, The customers who has bought in last 2 weeks will fall in the category

Cold Customers are those who have bought material some time back and would have shifted to competition, for a bread pack they might be someone who has bought a month back

Inactive Customers are those who have bought it long back and not thinking to buy again your products,  for Bread packet, someone who has not bought your products for last 2 months.

The Active Customers are likely to buy more often and regularly as compared to old customers and hence you might need more resources to keep them interested in your brand.

People who have not come back to your stores might have shifted to competition and need more efforts to bring back and hence require attractive sales pitch. While the cold customers are not happy with you and hence probably switched the brand and thus gives you a chance to introspect and analyse why did you lost them.

The Active customers require regular visit by sales team and need to be monitored & followed up with more promotion, while Inactive Customers can be touch based once in a while to know their interest in brand.  But if someone is very important and large customer and he has gone to cold or Inactive mode, then you need to put large amount of promotional efforts.

Hence while recency helps you to segmentise your market and help you in resource allocation, it also helps you to identify the important customers and track them.

The recency phenomenon can also be used to segment the market and for utilisation of your resources.

Authority and Responsibility

Who is Superior?

 Once few friends were crossing a river in a boat and they all were wearing live saving kit. Lifesaving kit is the equipment which allow a person to keep afloat in the water.

While travelling, all of them spotted a hole in the boat and realized that the hole will allow to come water inside and then the boat will be sink. All knew that each of them has also seen the hole and thought, it is other person’s responsibility to take initiative to close the hole. As all of them felt that individually they are superior than other and what if the water comes inside the boat, they are wearing life saving kit which will keep them afloat and they will cross the river. And finally the boat sinked  and all were left with lifesaving kit. They all crossed river but they lost the boat. They did not realized it was boat which could have saved them every time they were crossing the river. All of them thought that they are big and it is the other person’s responsibility and why I should initiate?

Unfortunately they all were considering themselves superior than other one, they could not realise that the bigger person is boat which selfless helped them crossing the river whenever they need it with full responsibility.  One needs to be more responsible and as much as one is powerful or authority, he needs to  take initiative to resolve the issues.

Authority Always comes with Responsibility and one who initiates for resolution of any problem is considered as the right leader.

Market Segmentation

We all know Consumers are complex and to sell them, it is important to understand them well. Consumers buying behavior depends on various factors like their priorities, needs, interests and it is very difficult to understand them in a complete group.  Hence to target & cover the consumers effectively , the consumers/markets are divided into various subsets on the basis of common interests, needs, geography etc. This division helps companies to design and implement the strategies effectively and efficiently.

The process of dividing and defining large market or all consumers in the  subgroups or subsets is known as the Market Segmentation. In the process of segmentation, the consumers are divided into identifiable groups having common characteristics. The market or customers can be divided on the basis of following:

• Demographical features
• Geographical features
• Psychological features &
• Behavioral features

The groups identified under marketing segmentation should have following features:

• The group must be measurable and effectively sized
• Group must be clearly identifiable and segmentised
• It can be targeted with the promotional efforts
• It fits to the marketing mix
• It must be easily definable 

The subsets defined in the market segmentation process helps in defining the right marketing mix for the company. It helps in identifying the prospect opportunities to the companies & developing the correct promotional programs and making adjustments in the various selling strategies and tactics.

The market segmentation also helps in developing the product or solution for a particular subset. It helps in servicing the group better and correct selection of media and execution of media efforts. It helps companies in drafting distribution strategies, fixing the prices and thus better servicing to the consumers,

The customer segmentation has to be done very carefully. It not only assist in productive sales territory management but also in customer retention and thus increasing the customer life value.  

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Marketing Experimentation in Modern Marketing

Marketing Experimentation in Modern Marketing

Miranda is thinking to invest in Bilboard campaign for his bicycle b
rand Avendus. The national campaign cost is $ 50K. His company currently sales $60MN bicycles.  He is willing to invest in the campaign with an aim of net lift of 20% in revenues. There are many correlations and casual factors to achieve the desired objectives. The holiday seasons is approaching and the historically the Bicycle sales increases in school vacations.

Miranda decided to roll out the campaign on national level but the result was not as per the expectations and the sales dipped by 5%.So what went wrong? Why sales could not lift as per the expectation?

The campaign did not succeed because the competition BiMax launched a new range of bicycle based on Disney cartoons with added features in it. While the other competition Newbike offered an added inventory of head guard and water bottle with their Bicycles. The young customers who are crazy about cartoons preferred the BiMax over Avendus and the others opted for competition offer.

She did not make a marketing experiment and hence the results were not as what she expected. While implementing decision to rollout the campaign she could not discount the external factors. She failed due to lack of marketing intelligence, she did not had the right inputs on what competition is doing and planning. She could not anticipate the competition actions and the marketing campaigns were planned in isolation. This all happened because there was no marketing experimentation.

Marketing Decisions are complex because the outcome of any decision depends on several other variables; how competition will behave to your actions, the response of customers, season/force majeure and many others. The brand managers make mistake of making the decisions in isolation and hence could not succeed.  Marketing experimentation helps in overcoming these barriers and can benefit in achieving the organizational goals.

In Marketing Experimentation two groups are selected – Test Group and Control Group. These groups are small in number & representative identities of the complete market. The groups are selected on the basis of their proximity in term of geographical area, consumer sales and their behavior. The external factors are considered and then the experimentation is carried out.

The Test group is selected on advertisement/campaign/offer to be implemented on national level. The discounting factor for external factors is calculated and time frame is decided. The control group is selected on various vicinity. Post all this, Test market is exposed to the campaign or offer.

The results are measured and compared with control market and then the decisions are taken whether to implement the decision on national level or not?

The marketing experimentation work like a chemical laboratory where many experiments are done and the final solution is selected after testing many. For all modern brand managers it is must that before implementing any campaign offer the tests are conducted and the results of test are evaluated both on economic and viability scales and then the decisions are implemented.

Brand Managers: LIFT your marketing

In the Digital Era: LIFT You Marketing Tools

Digital Marketing has offered a number of tools to reach to customers. The tools like Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, Periscope, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Direct mail system, and many more, helps to reach to customers. However, other than Website, which of the 5 tools most of companies employ. They use LIFT You tools for most of Digital marketing efforts.

LIFT a word we all are familiar and whenever we have to move vertical we use LIFT . So in marketing brand managers need to elevate their brands, they use various conventional & digital tools. Add You tube to it and make it LIFT You. So how do we LIFT  our brand digitally

Company Website- the ultimate information adda, 

Twiter- Mouthpiece of company, 

Linked In - a tool to connect with prospect employees, 

Instagram- Tool to share pictures, 

Facebook- share anything, 

Youtube- online video broadcasting service

Direct Mails- Share information with subscribers

Each of the above mentioned tools helps to reach the customers. Website and direct mailers are used for a long time, however in recent past social media has taken lead role in digital marketing. Companies are spending huge amount in LIFT You model.

Each of LIFT You tools serve a unique purpose and provide a unique way to increase the brand reach to audience. 

While Linked In has become a favourite source of connecting with new prospective employees and Informing the brand developments. Instagram helps in converting text messages in pictures and pictures are known to speak better than words. Instagram is often used to broadcast the messages in graphics and images. Instagram is increasingly becoming famous and brands are using this platform to convert words in pictures.

Facebook initially , crafted as a friends messaging service is converted in to corporate messaging platform. Each of major company has their facebook pages and the brand managers are working hard to get likes and the war is ON. Facebook is a unique medium to reach consumers through text, image and videos. It supports all three formats and make it interesting to managers to reach to consumers. Facebook also helps customers to reach to company and appreciate and complaint to brands.

Twitter, the Micro Blogging site is new way to make brand announcement and react/respond to market. The character limit makes it exciting and challenging for brand managers to communicate messages. 

Youtube, an alternative to Television is an experimental video messaging service. The low cost and targeted gives edge over traditional TV medium.

All the abve LIFT You mentioned tools have edge over conventional broadcasting mediums, these tools are agile and provide an opportunity for immediate modifications. The tools unlike conventional medium, are specific, target oriented and easily measurable. Brands are increasing their marketing budgets on digital media. If use efficiently these tools help in reaching the target customers in most effective way.

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Marketing resource Allocation Process

Marketing resource Allocation Process

The financial success of organisation largely depends how well resources are allocated. 

Marketing is considered as one of the four wheels for company growth. Along with Product, Human Resources & Quality;marketing may drive the companies to the pinnacle of success very soon. It is one of the most critical tools for inherent growth of the company. It involves huge resource investments in terms of both capital & human efforts.  And for that very reason, the marketing resources need to be optimally allocated.

Marketing Resource allocation is a complex process. It involves the resource allocation at various levels in various media vehicles, territories and sales force. Every day new vehicle  emerges and asks marketing manager for its share of the money. Digital Media, Print, Pay Per click, Radio, TV, OOH and many more are lined up and each of these vehicles excite a manger to invest in them, and thus makes the resource allocation decision very complex. The marketing resource allocation in common parlance is also termed as Drafting Marketing Budget.

This complexity of decision makes a marketing manager to play safe and opt for a time tested “percentage of sales” rule. The “percentage of sales” rule varies from industry to industry. Many Industry associations publish such details, which helps the organization to decide the allocation ratio. This kind of rule works well with smaller organisations. For example an organization operates in all 29 states of India and the 50 % of its business comes from Northern region and accordingly 50% of Marketing resources are allocated to Northern region while remaining 50% is allocated to other parts of the country. This model is also referred as the Advertising to sales model (A2S).

In some of the cases the company monitors the competition and act accordingly. Some time they choose the vehicles which are used by the competition and act according. This holds good for the geographical allocation also. The agencies like BARC, TAM, IRS etc. provide information about spending patterns of various companies on various vehicles and in different territories.

However for bigger organisations the process needs to be more systematic. On the basis of information obtained from various internal and external sources, the marketing budgets are drafted. The process of drafting a marketing budget is a function of desired level of awareness and the cost of various media vehicle to achieve that awareness. In addition, it has to be in line with the organizational objectives.

While drafting Marketing Budget the economic impact of various activities are estimated. At the end of the period the impact of spends are evaluated and compared with respect to the planned activities.

The other way to look at marketing resource allocation is to allocate as per the opportunity available. The brand manager has to estimate the opportunity available in monetary terms and then decide the allocation of resources.

The process of allocation, as discussed initially. is a complex process. There are a number of tools available like the BCG Matrix in which four quadrants define the four stages in term of the relevant market share and growth rate, and accordingly the resource allocation.

Another model, Miles & Snow Typology helps in defining the existing status of organization in territories and then accordingly in  the resource allocation. They defined the status in 4 positions: Prospector, Reactor, Defender & Analyser. e.g. in a given territory, if you are in Prospector position, then you are willing to capitalize on emerging opportunities and increase investment. If you are a reactor in that geography, then you are willing to maintain the status quo and investments are limited. If you are defender in that territory then you want to invest in defending tactics While if you are in anylser position then you act to defend the existing markets and invests aggressively in emerging opportunity markets.

There are various resource allocation tools and the tool you chose depends upon the company strategy and its existing position with respect to competition. You may like to select any tools, but the key to its success is constant evaluation of resource allocation with respect to the planned goals and then correcting for the next cycle.

The process starts, like any other management process, with identifying the objectives and the resources required. After identifying the objectives, the organisation needs to monitor the competition and analyse the resources invested by them. Parallel they need to study their customers and their journey to purchase and buying behavior. The 4 Ps also play an important role in resource allocation. The companies need to invest as per the brand positioning they want in terms of pricing and brand stature. Once all these factors are analyzed the company can then effectively allocate the resources to achieve the desired organizational goals.

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Effective Resource Allocation

Evaluate Resource Allocation in Your Organisation

Rahim, MD of Asman Groceries, is not happy with some of his territories. While the northern region territoreis are performing well, the Eastern region territories are struggling.

He decides to stop investing in the eastern region and invest Eastern region resources in Northern region.

However his marketing manager Ashok is asking him to reconsider his decision and evaluate the resource allocation pattern. He believes that being the home market, Northern region get more attention and all other kind of marketing support including sales force, marketing campaign etc.

He believes that the Northern territories are over invested and eastern territories has not been allocated the resources, it needs, to pay required dividends. After carefully analysing the resource allocation process, Rahim found that Ashok is right and Eastern region needs to be given more attention and support. After correcting the resource allocation process and optimising the resources, Eastern region started to contribute more than what it was doing earlier.

Resource allocation in strategic marketing is the plan to use available resources. Marketing resources investment in Sales is the function of the potential of a territory, market share and historical sales performance data. And for optimally allocating the resources, one need to analyze the potential of the territory , the revenue contribution from that territory and how it behaved in past with the increase and decrease in marketing investment . For instance, analyze the below given graph for Asman Groceries. The X axis is for marketing investment and Y axis is for Sales. And centre line is devised on the basis of past historical data.

You may notice that the Northern region is in the top right corner while the eastern region is in left lower side which means that the none of the area is optimally resource allocated. The Northern territories are over invested in terms of sales force & marketing resources allocation. While Eastern territories are not provided with enough marketing resources. So Asman Groceries needs to optimized the resources. They need to pull out some of resources from Northern region and invest in Eastern territories. With historical data, it is noticed that by pulling out resources, sales in North will not get any hit. The resources were re-allocated and re-planned by analysing the historical data, sales revenue and sales potential of the all regions. Consequentially The results were visible and post rejigging the all regions were in linear line as per their resource allocation.

Hence it is very important that we all allocate our resources optimally to drive home the desired results. Most of us are tend to invest in the areas which are doing well, weather it is in any function, or territories or media vehicle. The resource allocation is an important function. It is the strategic plan for using available resources to achieve organisation goals. For Marketing manager it is very important to allocate its marketing resources judiciously. The marketing manager needs to employ scientific methods to analyse the historical data and then allocate the resources. Optimally allocated resources can surely lead to the achievement of desired organisational objectives.

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Evolution of Modern Marekting

Evolution of Modern Marekting

Marketing has been defined in many ways by marketing gurus. Some defined it as the set of activities to promote  & sell the products and services while other defined it as the process of management through which the goods reaches from production to consumption. 

Since the evolution of marketing when it was considered the goods will sell itself to the modern marketing- Relationship Marketing.

PRODUCTION MARKETING: THE PRODUCT WILL SELL ITSELF

The 19th century witnessed industrial revolution which made the products available in plenty. And hence in 18th century & early years of 1900, the marketing was considered as a process of facilitating the distribution of products and it was assumed that a good product will sell automatically. This type of marketing is still valid in many B2B kind of business like selling of Aircrafts or Electrical Transformers or any other Industrial Products. But this type of marketing changed soon for consumer products

PRODUCT MARKETING: OVERCOME THE CUSTOMER RESISTANCE

Soon the customer had access to many products and had all needed information about the products. around 1920s, the need  to convince the consumer to buy the products was felt. Accordingly creative ad campaigns were created and consumers were exposed. The ads were created to overcome the resistance of consumers and tackles the competition as well. Apple's I Phone is the best example of this, the product is loaded with a no, of features and expected to sell itself, however still to overcome the resistance of other brand loyal consumers it spends heavily in the advertising campaigns.

CONSUMER MARKETING : CONSUMER IS KING

Post 1950, the consumers become chooser; courtesy to informative advertising of brands and various products choice available to them. And here comes the Customer is King concept. This lead to increased emphasis on consumer research to find what consumer exactly needs and then fulfill that needs. The advts were creatively designed to emphasize that the product fulfills the consumer needs. 

The customer was treated as King and his needs were considered as most prominent. The mobile company marketing campaigns are best example of it, where n number of plans are designed and promoted to suit the individual needs of customers.

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING: BUILD LOYAL CUSTOMERS

Off late the marketing reached to new heights and it was identified that for long term marketing success, it is very important to have relation with consumers . To create a long relation with customer, companies introduced Brand Loyalty Programs. The Post Sales departments were created in organisations, who keep in touch with consumers and build post sales relations with consumers.  The consumers are asked to give their feedback on services and rewarded for long term usage of products/services. The marketing campaign highlights "how much valued you are!" and Customer is treated as more than A King. Automotive companies are an example of this, they create nice creative campaigns around the Happy Family concept and then backed up by world class post sales services.

FUTURE OF MARKETING: EXPERIMENTAL MARKETING

Going forward the future of marketing is experimental marketing, Under experimental marketing the consumer would be convinced to first experiment the products and services, evaluate it and the buy the products and services, which will be backed up by best of post sale services.The experimental marketing will help in word of mouth communication also which will lead to increase in sales volume.

The marketing has evolved in last two centuries and is still evolving, Marketing Managers are finding the best way to overcome the consumer resistance. Marketing has evolved a lot and yet it has to be refined and evolve a lot. And in future we will see more colors of it.

@thinkmukesh,blogspot.in

Management : How do we define?

MANAGEMENT: THE DEFINITION

The father of modern management, F W Taylor defined Management as the "art of knowing what is to be done and seeing that it is done in best possible manner", while the father of scientific management, Henri Fayol defined Management as "to forecast, to plan, to organize, to command, to coordinate and control activities of others".
Traditionally Management is defined as " The art of getting work done through others". For long it has been termed as the application of art and individual skills to handle the people and getting the work done. Management is also defined as a " Process of Planning, Organizing, Directing and Controlling". Each of the management guru has defined this in his own way and unique style. In simple language "Management is to get the people to work together towards accomplishment of common objectives and goals". Management involves planning and directing resources and people for the attainment of organisational targets. Management is an Art or Science Some people call management a Science while others define it as an Art.
Art is defined as application of human creative skill and imagination. In Management also one apply its managerial skills in organisation to manage the people & resources. Science is defined as the set of activities for studying various things and then application of learning made out of the study. In management also people and techniques are studied and then applied in day to day managing activities.

Management is a Process?

Management is also defined as the process of Planning, Directing, Organizing and Controlling resources and actions to achieve the organisational goals.

Decoding Management in Letters:

The management can be decoded as follows: M= Manager A= Architect N= Navigator A= Administrator G= Guide E= Efficient M= Men E= Energy T= Tactfully
So management can be decoded as the process of Managing, Architecting the plans & processes, Navigating an organisation to its goals, Administering & Guiding Efficiently its Men with full Energy and Tactics. So what is Management? Management can be defined in various ways, however the basic essence remains the same. It can be easily summed up as a process or an art or a set of activities which involves application of human skills in creative and scientific way to achieve the organisational goals.