Information Marketing

Jennifer Rowley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317116769
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

The nature of the information marketplace is under continual evolution and all organisations in the information industry need to form new strategic alliances, identify new market segments and evolve new products, employing a full armoury of marketing tactics to succeed in the changing environment. In this fully revised second edition of Information Marketing Jenny Rowley explores the impact of globalization, digitization, connectivity and customization in the information marketplace. She introduces a number of new topics and a shift of emphasis which reflect both the changing nature of information services and also practical and theoretical perspectives on marketing. As well as being thoroughly revised and updated, themes that are more fully developed include: e-service, self-service, customer relationships, online branding, online marketing communications, measuring online activity and customer relationship management systems. This book's unique perspective makes it essential reading for professionals in information services as well as students in information management, library and information studies, business information, marketing, e-commerce and communication studies.

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 later chapters can be drawn together to inform marketing strategy. This chapter:

explains why marketing is important to information organizations and in the information marketplace

explores the nature of marketing

promotes marketing orientation or the marketing concept

introduces the marketing mix.

INTRODUCTION

Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others.

(Kotler et al., 2004, p. 5.)

Librarians and information professionals will need to recognise that developing effective marketing strategies is more difficult today, not because of the digital revolution, but because of a society in which customers are becoming more sophisticated and knowledgeable, maybe even cynical, about marketing activities.

(De Saez, 2002, p. 3)

Organizations and professionals in the information marketplace have a wide range of different levels of experience with marketing. These experiences, both as professionals and consumers, will colour reactions to the concept of marketing. Responses to marketing fall into two groups typified by one of the following:

‘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.’

‘Marketing is designed to bring you the products you do 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 significant ethical issues associated with marketing. Marketing is 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. All organizations, whether they be in the public or private sector can and are expected to use marketing to enhance the success of their organization. As De Saaz (2002) suggests, consumers (people/users/citizens) are exposed to ever more sophisticated marketing; their expectations of the ways in which organizations communicate and interact with them (and seek to deliver value and benefits) are coloured by their experience of marketing. Information organizations need to embrace and embed marketing in pursuit of their various commercial, economic, social, educational, scholarly, knowledge-based and cultural missions.

As the earlier definition from Kotler et al. (2004) suggests, marketing has moved on from its emphasis on products to focus on the delivery of customer value, and benefits that the customer appreciates. Key aspects of this perspective on marketing can be summarized as follows:

Marketing is a social and managerial process, and is about people and communication.

Marketing is an exchange process through which individuals, groups and organizations obtain benefits and value, defined in their own terms.

Marketing is a process through which relationships with customers or users can be developed.

The stance that is developed throughout this book is that marketing is about everything that an organization does or says. Actions and words are both important; marketing is concerned with communicating to others what you are about, and using their response to that message to evolve what you are and what you do. Because an organization involves numerous product and service exchanges and communication episodes, enacted through many different individuals, marketing needs to intervene to align and integrate these processes across an organization.

In summary, then, marketing for information organizations is a process in which customers’ needs for information and knowledge are met through matching these against appropriate information resources and services. This involves:

researching and understanding customers’ needs and other factors in the marketplace

selecting and defining the customer or client groups that the information service will serve

defining the offering, in terms of products, and associated elements of the marketing mix, and doing this with reference to the potential value that offerings can deliver to the customer

delivering the product or service in line with user expectations and needs

ensuring communication and engagement with the user community

establishing strategic direction and making plans that support this continuing engagement.

Delivery and the messages that it communicates are a key element of marketing, and influence customer expectations and perceptions. Whilst elements of marketing, such as planning a public relations campaign or involvement in a branding exercise, may be the responsibility of ‘marketing’ staff, marketing needs to be embedded in the psyche of the organization and its staff. Marketing is everyone’s business.

THE NATURE OF MARKETING

This section develops further notions of the concept of marketing as both an activity and a philosophy, using two widely used definitions of marketing as a starting point:

Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.

(Chartered Institute of Marketing)

Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.

(American Marketing Association)

These definitions draw out a number of aspects of marketing, which will now be reviewed.

Marketing is an organizational process, and as such needs to be executed. This execution 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 an interface between other departments in an organization, and with 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?

Marketing is about meeting customer requirements and delivering customer value. 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 needs to tailor its resources and its use of those resources to meet the needs of an appropriate customer group. Often, meeting customer requirements means anticipating those requirements, as when new products are launched or new customer groups are courted.

Marketing meets the organization’s objectives, by assisting the organization to fulfil the 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 to maintain the financial health of the organization.

Marketing is an exchange process. The exchange process can be very straightforward. The organization offers a product or a service, and the customer offers a sum of money in return for it. For example, if you buy a book, the bookseller has a book to offer, and you browse it to assess whether you are interested in the book’s 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 the opportunity to access quick reference services, and leisure reading, amongst other facilities. Exchange processes also do not always have to involve money. A volunteer may give time, and political parties are interested in 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 customer relationships is explored more fully in Chapter 5.

Marketing applies to ideas, goods and services. The generic term for ideas, goods and services is ‘product’. However, the dominance of goods marketing in the consumer marketplace has led to a popular usage in which 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 typically promoted by political parties, pressure groups and others who wish to change attitudes and beliefs. Goods include any physical objects that can be exchanged, such as cars, pens, apples or videos. Services include personal services, such as hairdressing and retailing, and professional services, such as information services, accountancy and legal advice. As we shall discuss further in Chapter 4, many product offerings comprise a complex mixture of goods, services, ideas, and possibly information, if this can be regarded as distinct from these 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?

MARKETING ORIENTATION

The organization that develops and uses its understanding of customer requirements to shape its activities and strategy has a marketing orientation. Otherwise described as the marketing concept, marketing orientation is a philosophy that places customers and their needs at the heart of what the organization does. The purpose of marketing is not to find the right customers for the product, but rather to create the right products for the customers or potential customers. The assumption is that customers are looking for the offering that best fits their needs, and therefore the organization has to understand and interpret those needs and develop appropriate offerings. These offerings are defined in terms of product, brand, price, delivery options and any other relevant elements of the marketing mix. 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. However there are other orientations that organizations can take towards their marketplace:

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 to purchase, 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 comf...

Table of contents

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