Information Marketing

Jennifer Rowley

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367249281
• eBook ISBN: 9781351766913
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 2001. Technology-led developments are changing the nature of the information marketplace. In the face of rapid change, stakeholders and players in the marketplace need to form new strategic alliances, identify new market segments, evolve new products, and, in general, manage changing relationships between suppliers and customers. This work focuses on "information marketing" - the marketing of information based products and services. It studies marketing in contexts and organizations in which information based products and services are a significant product category. Typical information based products include: books, CD's, videos, journals, journal articles, and databases and typical information based services include: libraries, business consultancy services, and web-based information services. Chapters explore concepts such as the structure of the information marketplace, relationships with customers, marketing communications, and marketing planning and strategy.

1 Marketing

AIMS

This chapter sets the scene for the remainder of the book by introducing a number of key marketing concepts, and by explaining how the elements of marketing practice that are discussed in greater depth in the chapters that follow can be drawn together to inform marketing strategy. This chapter introduces:

• definitions of marketing, and the concept of marketing orientation; and

• the marketing mix.

INTRODUCTION

Organizations and professionals in the information marketplace have a wide range of prior levels of experience with marketing. These experiences, gathered in both professional and consumer roles, will colour their reactions. Responses to marketing fall into two groups, typified by the following statements:

1. Marketing is concerned with encouraging people to buy things that they don’t really need or want, and interfering with people’s behaviours, attitudes and values, or

2. Marketing is designed to bring you the products you want, when you want them, where you want them, at prices you can afford, and with the information that is necessary to make informed and satisfying customer choices.

Most people could cite examples of marketing that fit both of these descriptions. Aggressive marketing tactics pursued by some of the organizations in the consumer marketplace have had a major influence on what we eat, what we wear, how we spend our leisure time, and a host of other dimensions of our social and cultural experience. In addition, privatization and corresponding marketization of the public sector in recent years have justifiably made employees in the public sector, in sectors such as education and public libraries, sceptical as to the relevance and impact of marketing in these environments. Unquestionably, there are ethical issues associated with marketing. It is, after all, designed to influence, and where there are significant commercial gains at stake, high-profile advertising campaigns can be very attractive. Yet this very statement is merely a confirmation of the importance of marketing in our society. The position taken in this book is consistent with the concept of marketing orientation which will be explored later in this chapter; that is, marketing’s role is communicating with and understanding customers, and responding to customer needs.

Two widely used definitions are a useful starting point in exploring the various aspects of marketing as both an activity and a philosophy:

1. ‘Marketing is the management process which identifies, anticipates, and supplies customer requirements efficiently and profitably’ (Chartered Institute of Marketing).

2. ‘Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create, exchange and satisfy individual and organizational objectives’ (American Marketing Association).

These definitions embed a number of key aspects of marketing:

First, marketing is a business process, and as such needs to be executed, which requires time and resources. Larger organizations have dedicated marketing departments that take responsibility for managing and executing elements of the marketing function. Such departments have a responsibility for understanding the marketplace in which the organization operates, and can act as an interface between other departments in an organization and the external environment. In organizations in which there is no specialist marketing function, responsibility for marketing still needs to rest somewhere in the organization.

REFLECT: Who takes responsibility for the marketing function in your organization?

Second, marketing is about meeting customer requirements. All marketing activities should be customer focused. Customer requirements need to be understood and met, using the resources at the disposal of the organization. These organizational resources define the product offering that the organization is in a position to make to the customer. They constrain the market in which the organization can function, but within these constraints the organization must tailor the resources and the use of resources to meet the needs of an appropriate customer group. Often, meeting customer requirements means anticipating those requirements, such as when new products are launched or new customer groups are courted.

Third, marketing meets the organization’s objectives by assisting the organization to fulfil customer requirements efficiently and profitably. Efficient use of resources is important to success in both profit and non-profit sectors. Most businesses exist to create a profit, but where this is not a key objective, as in some public sector situations, there is still a need to control costs and adhere to budgets, and generally maintain the financial health of the organization.

Fourth, marketing is an exchange process, which may be very straightforward. The organization offers a product or a service, and the customer offers a sum of money in return. For example, if you want to buy a book, you establish that the bookseller has a book to offer, and you browse it to assess whether you are interested in its content, and then pay for it. In other situations the exchange process may be a little less obvious. So, for example, citizens pay taxes to support public library services. In exchange they expect to be able to access quick reference services and leisure reading, among other facilities. Exchange processes do not always have to involve money. A volunteer may give time, and political parties are interested in securing votes. Both parties must value what the other is offering. This reciprocated value is the basis for customer satisfaction and further exchanges. Repeated exchanges can lead to what marketers describe as a relationship between the customer and the supplier. The concept of relationships is explored more fully in Chapter 4.

Fifth, marketing applies to ideas, goods and services, referred to by the generic term ‘product’. However, the dominance of goods marketing in the consumer marketplace has led to a popular usage in which the terms goods and products tend to be treated as synonymous, and so it is often necessary to make explicit reference to the service component in a product offering. Ideas are promoted by political parties and pressure groups, whose aim is to change attitudes and beliefs. Goods include any physical objects that can be exchanged; services include personal services, such as hairdressing, retailing, and professional services, such as information services, accountancy and legal advice. As we shall discuss further in Chapter 5, many product offerings comprise a complex mixture of goods, services, ideas, and possibly information, if this can be regarded as distinct from the other three product types.

REFLECT: Describe some other exchange processes relevant to the information industry; who are the two parties, and what do they give to each other?

The organization that develops and uses its understanding of customer requirements to shape its activities and strategy has a marketing orientation. This is a philosophy that places customers and their needs at the heart of what the organization does. The assumption is that customers are looking for the offering that best fits their needs, and therefore the organization must define those needs and develop appropriate offerings. These offerings include product, brand, price, delivery options and any other relevant elements of the marketing mix (see below). Customers are individuals, and each person’s or organization’s needs may be different. In order to respond in an efficient way, organizations define customer groups, and seek to meet the needs that can be associated with those groups. If organizations do not create and hold customers, clients, users, or members, they undermine the reason for their existence.

When expressed in these terms, marketing orientation may seem the obvious way forward. Businesses have only embraced marketing orientation relatively recently. Other options are:

• Production orientation, where the emphasis is on making products that are affordable and available; price is seen as the differentiating factor between products, and customers are assumed to buy the cheapest product.

• Product orientation, where the focus is on quality of the product, and consumers are assumed to seek the highest level of quality for their money.

• Sales orientation, where the assumption is that consumers are reluctant to purchase, and therefore need encouragement, and products are pushed towards them.

REFLECT: Taking an organization that is familiar to you, describe the impact that these different business and marketing philosophies might have on that organization.

Marketing orientation should sit comfortably with the traditional public service ethos in which there was a concern for user needs. There is, however, an ever-present danger that information services may slip back into an approach that is more sales oriented. The enormous resources and archives held by libraries, and the backlists held by publishers, are inclined to encourage such organizations to sell their resources or products to the public, rather than clinging to a true marketing orientation. In addition, the speed of technologically led change in the information industry is inclined to encourage either a production orientation or a selling orientation. Figure 1.1 demonstrates the implications of a marketing orientation for one public library.

THE MARKETING MIX

The marketing mix is the combination of four major tools of marketing – product, price, promotion and place – known widely as the 4Ps. The marketing mix is an important tool for creating and maintaining an offering that is of value to customers. Before the elements in the marketing mix can be discussed and explored, the organization must undertake a range of processes in order to identify customer needs. One valuable source of such information is customers’ responses to current product offerings, which will be evident from sales level, customer surveys, complaints and other channels through which the organization listens to its customers. Other data may be collected on customers’ attitudes to potential new products, or to communication messages, or to competitors’ products. A number of chapters in this book explore aspects of understanding customers. Chapter 3 examines the segmentation of customer populations and consumer decision-making behaviour. Chapter 4 looks at customer relationships. Chapter 9 discusses approaches to collecting and managing customer data through marketing research activities and marketing information systems.

Our library is ‘user-centred’ and is organized to this end over administrative ease. Not for us separate reference and lending libraries, but subject libraries with teams qualified professionally, academically and by experience to promote their subjects throughout the town. That is their remit – they buy and organize stock, answer questions, give advice and do the traditional work of a librarian and information officer, but they also organize lectures, seminars and other live activities relating to their subject: they conceive and organize exhibitions; they write press releases; they compose advertising copy: they vie with each other to produce stimulating activities to persuade the community to use library facilities. They are so successful that we claim to be the busiest library system in London.

We have decided to ‘bring the library into the marketplace’. Not for us the off-putting image of a reserved academic backwater – although there are quiet places of study, and our subject departments serve our users in depth. Rather we have embraced the decor of a good department store embellished with the exciting but paradoxical ordinariness of a street market. We actually use market stalls and our gallery display space is filled with a succession of ever-changing activities – art exhibitions, booksales, computer fairs, craft demonstrations, jazz concerts, music recitals, etc. We have let the space for the sale of encyclopaedias, gas stoves, showers, timeshares and holidays. Our coffee shop is never empty and our book, jigsaw and souvenir sales produce a healthy profit, and add to the spirit of the place. We attract people and we pride ourselves in catering for their needs. My staff are always searching for new and improved services, ranging from major activities like online services to small but still important adjuncts to the service such as umbrella loans (good advertising); the Domesday Discs; facilities for nursing mothers, etc. You can buy a ticket for a show, hire a typewriter or a market stall: consult a book or periodical or listen to records and cassettes … Talks to some kind of local society are a weekly occurrence. Posters advertising our activities are everywhere. Our relationship with the press is a busy strand of our marketing plan. We are blessed with four very good series of local newspapers and we certainly cultivate them … Consequently we are rarely out of the headlines …

Source: extracted from R. Smith, ‘Marketing the library’, in Marketing of Library and Information Services, ed. Blaise Cronin. London: Aslib, 1992, pp. 123–4.

Figure 1.1 On being m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Marketing
• 2 The information marketplace
• 3 Customers
• 4 Building customer relationships
• 5 Information products
• 6 Branding and corporate identity
• 7 Marketing Communications
• 8 Price and pricing policy
• 9 Collecting marketing data
• 10 Marketing strategy and planning
• Index