Marketing Science Institute recurrently shows us that the world turns into an interconnected digital environment where the most attention is paid to developing the ability to appeal to consumers with the help of information technologies and other computerized benefits. The statistics show that more than half of customers tend to search for online reviews and only make their decision when they have gotten acquainted with at least two or three opinions regarding a product or a service. In the webinar, the idea of content analysis is discussed in rich detail, as the authors are willing to showcase the link between online tools and the possibility to predict consumer behavior at least eight times out of ten. The speaker treats the current digitalization of marketing initiatives as an important step that many companies have to make to improve their industry presence.
The process of data study should be revisited in rich detail if the marketing team is willing to achieve the optimal results and build a strategy that is not going to overstate the importance of intraorganizational assessments. This webinar provides the audience with lots of rather useful information because it focuses on the ways of building a company’s content strategy and creating the perfect-case scenarios for consumers who prefer personalized goods and services (Marketing Science Institute). Every iteration of online activities completed by customers has to be analyzed by retailers and service providers because otherwise, digitalization would not remain as useful for the team as it is right now. Multiple tools and platforms have to be implemented and revisited to support marketing activities and improve the validity of data obtained with the help of digital analytics.
Knowing that the impact of analytics in digital marketing cannot be either ignored or applied inconsiderately, it may be safe to say that the best way to incorporate content analytics into business would be to give up on the old-fashioned marketing approaches and rely more on their digital counterparts. Creative decision-making should become the basis for future marketing strategy, creating more room for automated data analytics. This structural change would allow the business to generate more income based on real trends and not some uninformed predictions made with no regard to prior experiences. The idea is that digitalized content analysis is something that humans cannot do as efficiently as machines, so it may be recommended to invest in the purchase of all required IT tools first. The importance of content analysis should not be overlooked due to the high level of impact it has on the ability of the management to communicate goals and objectives. With digital instruments, it becomes much easier to demonstrate the actual effects of decisions on the organization.
The further application of content analysis practices should be followed by the management establishing valuable partnerships with the audience members (end users). This is necessary to ensure that the company is going to build loyalty continually and only use its analytic tools to adhere to customer needs instead of developing products that are not linked to end-user aspirations in any way. The webinar makes it evident that the process of product development should be preceded by in-depth analytics if the business is willing to succeed. More to say, the team should communicate with the audience recurrently to gather valuable feedback and establish a trustful environment where collaboration between stakeholders would be seen as an essential component of realizing the organizational vision. Without content analytics, no business will ever gain any insight into what kind of services and products clients need. In the future, the management will have to implement digital risk assessment as well. It would allow the team to acknowledge the drawbacks characteristic of their strategy and revise the action plan to the potential changes.
On the other hand, content analysis is an essential upside for any given business because it reduces the exposure to possible negative outcomes that could have been characteristic of human errors from the past. Digital instruments rarely view the market as a subjective entity, so it may be crucial to implement content analysis to make customer and company needs meet. Custom agreements have to be made as well, as it would reduce the potential impact of covert variables on organizational outcomes and also improve the decision-making process. There is no possibility to predict what kind of content might go viral when an organization does not engage in a full-depth content analysis that could provide the team with multiple vantage points. With content analysis, accidental rewards and achievements may become a part of the future strategy, meaning that the team is going to embrace some of the unexpected elements of its operations to run marketing campaigns intended to spark user activity both inside and outside the targeted customer base.
The article written by Fleming is an important piece of evidence because it dwells on how one of the biggest players in the industry – Tesco – managed to respond to the global COVID-19 pandemic and protect its position in the market. According to Fleming, the chain of supermarkets was at its best since the beginning of the pandemic, which is an interesting turn, especially under the condition where COVID-19 forced numerous businesses to close down their operations or at least modify their functions to respond to the transforming market. The long-standing Tesco strategy seems to pay off because the retailer did not change much since this March in terms of its relations with stakeholders or customers. What may be important to understand is that the current pandemic (or any other global challenge) may serve as a means of accelerating the pace for many businesses. Nevertheless, not all companies might be able to keep up with the pace – and that should be the key problem discussed during marketing-oriented organizational meetings.
As per the information presented by Fleming, Tesco managed to complete all of the tasks even under pressure established by the pandemic, which is a crucial finding for those retailers looking for ways to get rid of their shortcomings. Without any pivots or crucial changes, Tesco somehow managed to survive the biggest hits of the COVID-19 pandemic and maintain a mostly positive outlook on the market and relationships with customers. Facing the pandemic was not an easy stroll for Tesco, but the ability to acknowledge the problems quickly allowed the leadership team to address each of the given drawbacks promptly. The fact that the business environment is constantly changing makes it harder for Tesco-like retailers to keep up due to the decreasing number of opportunities related to how one could overcome the most vivid challenges such as the lack of human and monetary resources in addition to limited mobility. The pandemic turned out to be exceptionally severe, and it forced Tesco’s leadership to review the company’s priorities and see what could be the best survival options for the company.
The best part of Tesco’s strategy was that it was never aimed at protecting the company’s income and rather focused on community and employee support. Every campaign that the supermarket chain released over the last six months had to be slowed down to a certain extent in order not to exceed the budget cap and have more room for maneuvering (Fleming). The key lesson for marketers is that even during a crisis, one should never give up on their values and strategies. Tesco’s leadership capitalized on the need to respond to customer needs during the pandemic, and it turned out to be their best decision that kept them afloat and also presented the supermarket chain in an advantageous light over every competitor. The team did not ignore the relevance of customer needs and came up with campaigns that reflected the end-users concerns related to the pandemic. As per Fleming, another lesson is that Tesco started communicating much more with its partners and customers when the pandemic damaged the country. Therefore, significant budget-related cuts did not affect Tesco as strongly as they smashed businesses that did not acknowledge the inner market power of the pandemic.
More to say, Tesco successfully won “the Brand of the Year award” (Fleming), and it shows how much the company cared about the consumers and partners and not their ultimate monetary benefits. The brand of Tesco can be perceived as a combination of loyalty and a rather high quality-price ratio that helps the supermarket chain stand out from the rest of the competition. As soon as the company recognized the influence of COVID-19 on businesses, it became able to recognize the key ways of appealing to consumers and fulfilling their desires. During the toughest times of the lockdown caused by COVID-19 restrictions, Tesco still managed to interact with its partners and provide customers with essential products and services with no delay. While the majority of customer impressions come from in-store experiences, Fleming also points out how Tesco’s success went beyond mere marketing and became relation-based. In other words, the team decided to capitalize on the existing knowledge and revise the existing operations in a way that would allow the leaders to review all possible alternatives before making uninformed decisions.
On a bigger scale, Fleming’s article shows that it is much more important to pay enough attention to customer needs, especially when the pandemic strikes and makes customers and retailers closer than ever. The importance of this article may be explained by the fact that Tesco only slowed down a bit during the whole COVID-19 situation while many of its direct and indirect rivals either froze down their operations or went bankrupt. When responding to crucial events affecting the whole community, Tesco and its competitors should not reply with monetary expenditures but rather try to see what kind of alternative options might make them more successful over time. Tesco could be perceived as an almost flawless role model for other supermarket chains because it always finds a way to display positivity and attract consumers with the help of adequate pricing and high-quality goods. The last important idea that stems from the article written by Fleming is that the majority of decisions made within a highly stressful environment are most likely to flop if the management does not realize the value of protecting organizational integrity and consumer trust.
The ten critical life events that I may be able to list within the framework of the current paper are as follows:
- My parents getting married;
- My friend found a new job after being rejected multiple times;
- My sister giving birth to her first child;
- My father purchased a new car;
- My grandfather reached his retirement;
- I became a student;
- My mother quit her job to take care of me when I was a newborn;
- I bought my first pair of trainers with my own money;
- My sister successfully went through the middle-age crisis;
- I became friends with an influencer.
Even though I am not using my example to describe the changes that have arisen, it may still be concluded that life-changing events have a crucial impact on our everyday existence. When my father bought our first car, it was a valuable experience for the family because it taught us a lot of important background information. Not only was this probably the first time I directly encountered strong marketing initiatives, but it was also at that moment, I realized how many additional responsibilities a car brings to the family. First of all, the car was used, and we had to invest a great deal of money in purchasing spare parts to get the car back in shape. The paint job was the most expensive element that we had to get through to get rid of averagely deep scrapes all across the body of the car.
The decision to purchase the car as it was came to my father because he knew he had to get to his job quicker, so the idea to get a car paid off at the end of the day. Before picking up the car that he bought, my father went through hundreds of printed ads. There was that one ad from a dealer that was highlighted with the help of bold text and a huge frame that instantly caught my father’s eye. In addition to being so visible, that ad appealed to my dad because it was about one of his favorite cars, so the decision to visit the dealer came around quicker than everyone expected. Based on my father’s experience, I can tell that he did not try to buy the first car he saw because he needed to keep looking for the best option. As a marketer, I understand that the dealer needed to present their car in the winning light, but at the end of the day, the essential task was to appeal to potential customers and ensure they are going to see the proposal as the best business option.
Overall, the decision to purchase a car was rather easy for my father because he saw that as an opportunity to get to work quicker and also spoil us during the weekends with family getaways. Even though the family’s budget had to be reallocated to encompass the expenditures expected to cover car issues, we had successfully dealt with that and realized the great value of having a car. To this day, I believe that my father did the right thing when he bought the car he liked instead of going for a cheaper or less attractive vehicle for the sake of saving money. Car dealer marketers did a great job appealing to my dad, being one of their best customers, as they managed to draw an exceptional amount of attention to their ad while also including all the vital information in the body of the commercial. They created an ad that helped them save time and engage in an effective partnership with my father. The pitfalls of purchasing a used car were quickly overlapped by numerous advantages linked to having a car in the family.
The current assignment can be considered a great way to evaluate one’s knowledge in the area of marketing because it creates room for improvisation and a greater outlook on marketing concepts. The variety of tasks makes it easier to pick the most relevant assignments and complete them without worrying about those being too complex or leaden because you are the ultimate person who chooses the assignments for completion. It is rather important to mention that each of the assignments listed in the document allowed me to apply my critical thinking and see how specific conditions could affect the marketing climate within an organization. The overall value of assignments can be discussed as a test of marketing knowledge that brings out the best in the students and allows them to apply their expert skills to resolve situations that they might have considered unresolvable before learning more about marketing and its functions.
My greatest intention would be to recommend such assignments to future MBA students because it might help them realize the best ways of becoming the complete versions of themselves in terms of professional formation. The impact of assignments presented within the framework of the current document goes beyond mere ability to answer questions, as it motivates the respondent to think about what could be the best options depending on the given conditions and requirements. This is an essential skill for marketing specialists due to the crucial link between business operations and innovative thinking that can only be developed in the case where students are willing to leave their comfort zone and side with the path of development.
One of the possible ways to improve the current assignments would be to include questions that would be based on ethical dilemmas and complex business issues that would require even more critical thinking from students. For instance, future assignments could feature questions associated with COVID-19 or any hypothetical scenarios looking at the pandemic. Given the crucial impact of external events, we should not overlook their value for marketers and see how alternative options could bring something new to the table. This may become an especially appreciated opportunity among those students who prefer coming up with innovative ideas and rarely turn their heads to conventional solutions that slowly become obsolete under the influence of technological improvements and organizational transformations. To conclude, I enjoyed completing the given tasks, and I believe that the only thing that should be improved about the assignment is the presence of thought-provoking questions that would spark creativity and attention to detail.
Works Cited
Fleming, Molly. “Tesco on How Covid-19 Helped It to ‘Really Be at Its Best’”. Marketing Week, 2020, Web.
Marketing Science Institute. Human + Machine: How Content Analytics Delivers Unsurpassed Value To Advertisers. 2019, Web.