The question of what kind of advertising strategy to use has been the central matter of concern for the majority of scientists involved in the sphere of marketing and business development. Since there is a set of advertising techniques that should not overlap because of the negative effects they are likely to cause, specialists in marketing should devote particular attention to the allocation of financial sources on advertising and choosing the right strategy to fit the company’s goals in the sphere. The combination that has recently become popular among marketing specialists is titled a ‘marketing-mix interaction’. It involves the optimal combination of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising and detailing, i.e. direct interaction of advertising specialists with the target public. The main matter of interest in the sphere is to define the ideal combination that would yield higher financial returns and would not harm one another.
The considerations of the present work are mainly based on the findings of the article of Narayanan, Desiraju, and Chintagunta published in 2004 and dedicated to the issue of combining the described technologies of advertising or choosing the most suitable one to suit the needs of the company. They rely heavily on the research of such economists as Kaul and Wittink (1996) who worked on finding out the connection between the price of the product and advertising techniques, Capon, Farley, and Hoenig (1990) who researched the dependence of success of advertising on the combination of advertising techniques and other scientists who worked mainly in the sphere of defining the dominant tendencies in the field (Narayanan et al. 2004). The authors conducted their research in the sphere of pharmacology; however, the result they achieved can be successfully applied to other segments of the economy.
The methodology used by the researchers is described by them as follows:
“We used the methods laid out in the work of Berry (1994) and Nevo (2000) to obtain estimates for the parameters of the brand-share function in Equation 7. We deflated prices using the consumer price index for all urban consumers. We deflated detailing expenditures using the wage series for all workers. We obtained the consumer price index and wage series from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)” (Narayanan et al. 2004).
As a result of their research, the authors admit that there may be a positive effect from combining the two strategies named at the beginning of the work, i.e. detailing and DTC. However, the marketing-mix interaction’s success depends on the wise approach to building up the advertising framework of the enterprise.
The concept has already found wide application both in marketing theory and practice. The quantitative research in such companies as Tide, Wisk, Solo, Era, and Bold conducted by Naik, Raman, and Winer (2005, p. 31) showed that optimal levels of advertising and promotion have not yet been achieved by them (e.g. Tide is under-advertised but over-promoted, and Era is both under-advertised and under-promoted). Michael Graber (2008) also admits the growing popularity of marketing mixes implemented in strategies of different companies, pointing at the growing interest towards cyber-space exploration and introduction of new entertainment elements in their framework:
“Even the austere New Yorker invites readers to play with its venerated one-panel cartoon format by submitting their punch lines through an online form. Down the street at the Niketown Lab. consumers can design their shoes, even add their signature to it” (Graber, 2008, p. 22).
The growing need for optimization of the interaction between marketing and advertising has already even led to the commercialization of the very idea and appearance of a software application titled SAS Marketing Mix Advisor that will enable the user to make the right choice in the described combination’s design (Cary, 2009). Thus, one can see that the future of marketing is closely connected with the issues of advertising and design of interactions in this sphere, indicating the necessity to avoid underestimating the importance of such techniques.
References
- Cary, NC 2009, “SAS® Marketing Mix Advisor maximizes results through optimization”.
- Graber, M 2008, ‘Mashing Up the Marketing Mix: Introducing the 6th P… Play”, Interactions, vol. XV.4, pp. 22-25.
- Naik, PA, Raman, K, & Winer, RS 2005, “Planning Marketing-Mix Strategies in the Presence of Interaction Effects”, Marketing Science, vol. 24, no.1, pp. 25-34.
- Narayanan, S, Desiraju, R, & Chintagunta, PK 2004, ‘Return on investment implications for pharmaceutical promotional expenditures: the role of marketing-mix interactions’, Journal of Marketing, no. 68 (4), pp. 90–105.