女you排行榜2014,冷对万夫,白雾谜岸
|
2.2.2 Discover the dynamic change of market environment
Since the 1970s, market research report showed that economy of western countries had developed for more than 20 years, the social material wealth of the countries was rich, so the people's life was released from scarcity, they began to pay more attention to personality and differentiation, considering consumption, consumers liked products which could reflect their personality (Yang et al., 2017). According to relevant market research report, the 4P marketing strategy of pursuing unified specifications and efficiency while ignoring consumer demand became less effective for enterprises to improve the income (Kearney, 2012). In order to better deal with the challenges in the new market environment, economists and enterprise management began to implement continuously market research, during 1970s-1990s, new marketing theories appeared (Evert et al., 2016). Among the theories, 4C marketing theory was the most representative and it was proposed by Robert F. Lauterborn in the 1990s. The 4C theory figures, corporate marketing should be based on consumers demand, compared with 4P marketing theory, he established the four basic elements of enterprise marketing mix: consumer, cost, convenience and communication. Lauterborn (1990) was through market research on marketing and corporate communications of IBM, the United States Telephone and Telegraph Company, Hewlett-Packard, Exxon Mobil, Texas Instruments and many other companies to find that marketing should first study consumer appetites and desires, and then according to the market demand to develop product strategy, and it should not unilaterally first consider what products that an enterprise can produce; companies should pay more attention to the costs that consumers are willing to pay for to meet their needs, rather than determining the price their products; in terms of marketing place construction, enterprises should first enable consumers to understand and purchase products conveniently, rather than emphasize how to reduce costs and improve corporate efficiency; the interaction and two-way communication between enterprises and consumers are important, and the one-way promotion and activity communication between enterprises and consumers in the past go against improving customer satisfaction. Marketing theory transformation from 4P to 4C actually was actual change of market environment from a seller’s market to a buyer's market, it also revealed that consumers are more and more important in an enterprise’s marketing activities (Payne, 2008). 4C theory helps enterprises to value consumer-orientation, thus enterprises will understand how to improve customer satisfaction. To sum up, 4C marketing theory reflects the basic elements of enterprise marketing mix under the condition of the surplus market economy, accurate market research helps enterprises to understand the change of the market economy environment and new topics brought by this change to enterprise competition, more importantly, market research provides valuable ideas and methods for the enterprises to cope with these new challenges.
2.2.3 Provide a basis for enterprises to develop long-term management and marketing strategies
In the late 1990s, researchers studied through market research to find that with the advent of the globalization and information age, resources were allocated more efficiently and rationally in the global scope, making the social material production efficiency greatly improved, social wealth and products were extremely rich, consumers faced more diversified choices, the competition that enterprises faced was unprecedented (Kearney, 2012; Shi, 2015). After conducting market research on consumer behavior in the market, scholars pointed out that 4C marketing theory emphasizes the importance of customers to corporate marketing, but the reality is that customer demand becomes more diversified and personalized, and consumers face many choices, consumer loyalty to enterprise products is also declining (Evert et al., 2016; Yang et al.., 2017). In this context, deficiencies of 4C marketing theory have been increasingly recognized by academics and entrepreneurs (Pun and Heese, 2015; Shi, 2015). In order to solve the conflict between corporate cost and consumers’ individual needs to maintain and continuously improve consumer loyalty, people began to realize the importance of building a long-term interaction between consumers and enterprises in order to meet the needs of consumers’ personalized demand at the same time to achieve the maximization of corporate interests. In 2001, Don Schultz proposed the 4R marketing theory. He was through the market research on the old economy, the new economy, the post-economic era marketing model to reveal the deep causes of failure, disintegration of the 4P marketing and the traditional marketing model to demonstrate the inevitability of changing into 4R marketing of the future marketing model (Schultz, 2001). He identified the basic elements of marketing mix as four aspects: relativity, reaction, relation and retribution (Schultz, 2001). First, about relativity, Don Schultz (2001) argued that the establishment and development of long-term interaction between enterprises and consumers is the core and most important content of corporate marketing. Second, Don Schultz (2001) believed that companies should learn to listen patiently to each consumer's expectations to discover and predict the potential needs of consumers, and to establish rapid response mechanisms to make rapid and effective reaction to market changes. Third, Don Schultz (2001) figured that the relation between enterprises and consumers should be changed from achieving sales to enterprises’ assuming responsibility and commitment to consumers, so as to encourage consumers to buy and improve consumer loyalty again. Finally, in terms of retribution, Don Schultz (2001) thought that in order to meet the needs of consumers, corporate marketing activities should meet their own marketing objectives as well, to achieve the win-win results of both enterprises and consumers is the ultimate goal of corporate marketing strategies. All in all, through market research, scholars and enterprises not only found the issues of mobilizing consumers at the time, but also provided a decision-making basis for the future long-term marketing strategies.
2.4 Limitation of current market research
With the development of the economy, the progress of science and technology, the behavior and hobby of consumers are still changing constantly, enterprises must pay more effort to meet and respond to consumer demand (Shi, 2015; Evert et al., 2016), so market research for mobilizing consumers should be improved accordingly, but the current market research is still flawed in the following three aspects, first, as research on consumers develops, more and more departments of an enterprise need to be involved in the process of investigation, research on consumer demand, so as to meet what consumers need, the departments include product research and development department, strategic decision-making department, financial sector, etc., the current market research in consumer mobilization research is mainly concerned about the marketing department and it is not much involved in other departments. Second, market research on how to mobilize consumers focus more on the research on tangible products, but with the development of the service industry, service industry in today's society is more and more important, consumers consume more and more intangible products, such as service, but the current market research is still slightly inadequate in research on intangible products, for example: service. Finally, as the market competition becomes more and more intense, and the individual characteristics of consumer demand become more and more obvious, the consumer market segment will be more and more fine, in different segment markets, consumers have different performance, which needs enterprises to understand and meet. And the current market research on consumer segments is not enough detail, which is very unfavorable for enterprises to find and meet the consumer demand of valuable segment markets.
2.5 Directions of future market research
Future market research in the mobilization of consumers can be improved from the following three aspects and development. First of all, it should pay attention to the roles of the various departments of enterprises in the process of mobilizing consumers, making use of management theory and perspective to explore how various departments coordinate and cooperate in the process of mobilizing consumers, in order to achieve the greatest degree of mobilization of consumers. Then, there is a big difference between service and regular products, the consumer demand for service has a lot of particularity, the future market research should focus on these differences in order to better mobilize consumers to consume service. Finally, market research should be segmented more to deal with research on different consumer demand in different market segments, while emphasizing the combination of marketing theory and other disciplines of knowledge, including: psychological disciplines, behavioral disciplines, statistics, etc., which is more helpful to carrying out targeted research on consumers of many market segments.
3.0 Conclusion
In the current situation, how to mobilize consumers to allow consumers to focus on, purchase, recommend products of an enterprise is very important for success of the enterprise (Payne, 2008). However, enterprises to mobilize consumers must do a good job in its management, marketing and other aspects, to complete these tasks requires an enterprise to do a good job in market research. Market research in the process of mobilization of consumers plays important, multiple roles, including helping companies to understand the current state of market environment, helping companies to understand the changes in market environment and the future development of market environment in the future, as well as providing the basis for enterprises to develop correct management and marketing strategies. At present, the problems of market research in mobilizing consumers include less research on the importance of enterprise management in the process of consumer mobilization, less research on service product, and less research on consumers of different segment markets. Future market research will be improved from the above three aspects in order to better help enterprises to mobilize consumers. |
