Among all the activities involved in business, marketing is the most visible and far reaching. It is virtually inescapable in the free world. Customers are often confronted with very many marketing messages from televisions, newspapers, radios, billboards, direct mail, and magazines and many more. Due to this reason, marketing is the whipping boy of social critics and business, who bewail the article for foisting all manner of misfits upon an otherwise innocent human population: pollution, materialism, resource depletion, economic inequities, materialism, and even the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica (Castellan 1993, p. 34).
In spite of the criticism all over the spectrum, marketing still remains one of the vital business activities. It is the very lifeblood of organisations revenues, whereby without it, very few if any customers would be aware of the firm’s products and services. Therefore, it can be argued that marketing is the very essence of a free community in which competition of products, ideas, philosophies, among others, find their place in the marketplace.
These variables in marketing are also referred to as environmental factors. Most of the external factors have control while others do not. According to the marketers, their vulnerability to the variables is always the function of the marketer’s resources, size and ability to respond. It has been noted that no organisation or firm has total immune to these external variables. The variables nature evolves from time to time. For instance, the impact of yesterday’s variable might be commonplace today, which might have little consequence for everyone.
Moreover, the variables have new manifestations that appear as time passes by. For instance, some years back, the door to door retail may have had a great threat to retail in traditional stores. On the other hand, today the mail-order retailing is the current concern where door-to-door retail has very little attraction. To the marketers, they think of external valuables as being either opportunities or threats in their marketplace. Their biggest concern is to keep a steady outlook for both the opportunities and threats to make an appropriate response in a timely fashion (Castellan 1993, p.56).
The marketer’s main objective in any marketplace is to maximise income. This can only be achieved through the creation of consumers to achieve their targeted goal. The marketers achieve their objective by increasing customer awareness, increasing brand loyalty, entering a new market segment, and increasing the product range. However, the marketers create influence on customer decision making through the exploitation of these factors. Some of the common external factors in the marketplace which are exploited include; new technological advancement whereby due to improved technology, new products have been put in the marketplace.
As a result of new inventions, more consumers go by the new products, thus, abandoning the old fashioned products. Consequently, the marketers enjoy increasing brand loyalty to the consumers, thus, capturing their decision making. The marketers have also exploited competition as an external factor to influence the customer’s decision-making. The competitive environment in business is in a constant evolutional state. In any marketplace, nothing is static in business.
The competitors appear in many new forms and shapes. The worse notion in business is that unrecognising of changing face competition does not recognise the competition completely. A clear indication of a soon to die business is one that practices no competition at all. It is true that there is a certain fixed amount of money to be spent by the consumer while all the businesses are out to compete for such finite dollars (Chisnal 1995, p. 87).
Any short-sightedness implies the demise of the business. A new business entity is another common problem whereby many traders think it will enter a market and command a market share that is sizeable if not dominant. This, in turn, is not the case. The reality of the matter is that the newness of the market does not guarantee it to get larger due to the arrival of new products in the market scene. The growth in the market can only be as a result of having a structural change in the demand curve and also when the market gets larger on its own accord. Generally, when all factors are held constant, the new entrant must literally steal all of its business away from other firms.
Most of the marketers have, in turn, exploited this variable which has adversely influenced consumer decisions. This has been through modification of the products to be of better quality, provision of gifts and discounts these services creates more consumers thus differing from one firm to another hence increase of sales. The main types of competitions include; intratype competition, which implies the competition between within type of competition, for instance, a supermarket and another supermarket and intertype competition, which implies competition between the type of competition like as supermarket with a convenience store.
Another exploitation of external factors is evident with political aspects. Politics is part and parcel of government activity, which plays a vital role in the economy. An ill political system in the government can lead to failure in the economic sector. When the economy fails, consumers are the most affected group due to high priced products and services. In turn, this influences their purchasing plan through proper consideration of quality when making purchases.
Market characteristics is another aspect that influences consumer decision making in that depending on the services found in a certain market, a consumer should decide on what to purchase and vice versa. For instance, the difference in prices of products and their quality, among other aspects, contributes to consumer’s choice in the marketplace. The industrial structure is another external variable that has been exploited by marketers to capture consumer decisions.
This is through the industry’s type of products and its locality to the consumers. For instance, if the industry specialises in a certain type of products that are different from other industry’s products, it is the choice of the customer to locate where to get the better services. Social factors also influence consumer decision making through the way a certain community perceives the importance of certain products. For instance, according to the societal norms and beliefs, there are limitations in using some products (Blythe 2006, p.99).
Product is another variable that is the main tool for any marketer. They range from totally tangible to intangible items. It becomes the marketer’s decision to know the attributes and services of such a product and decide on its essential benefits, quality and features, among others, so as to attract the consumer. An example is the provision of a service by Federal Express, which has the capability of delivering documents and parcels in less than 24 hours.
Promotion as an external variable is used by marketers as a way to communicate between the marketers and the potential customers. It can be through advertisements, personal selling, publicity and also sales promotions. Depending on how the information is delivered to the consumers, it adversely influences their decisions making in evaluating the products. Price is another variable that has had an impact on consumers in decision making. In a free economy state like that of the US, marketers usually set their prices as they wish, although there are some exceptions like utility rates, TV cable rates, and insurance rates.
Marketers have the realities of economic theory as it performs to the elasticity of demand, the structure of market which includes the production and selling cost such selling of price randomly adversely affects consumers buying decisions.
Strategic positioning of variables in the marketplace plays a vital role in marketing. How consumers perceive a company’s products influences their buying decisions. For example, a Coca Cola company has much variable position in the marketplace. Consumers see it as patriotic and with a classic beverage, while Pepsi is positioned as youth’s oriented product. The target of the market also influences consumer decisions through the way in which marketers aim at selling their products to consumers. Few of them target all consumers; hence choose a subset of the total market referred to as the target market. The markets examine the market segments through accessibility, potential profitability and size before making target selections which affect consumers in one way or the other (Marley 1997, p.55).
The types of marketing communication channels used by marketers to explain consumer decision making include; use of television and radio advertisements which is also called paid-for communication. Through the advertisements, consumers learn the products available, their prices and quality; hence plan on how to acquire such products. Newspapers also act as a communication medium whereby marketers convey their message to the consumers, and in turn, consumers organise on how to get the products. Magazines are also used, although not all consumers have time to read. The same applies to direct mails which target some individuals.
A good example includes a billboard that is positioned at a strategic place to be seen by the majority of people. For instance, it can be added to show the services offered by the Federal Express company, which offers quick delivery of parcels and documents, which can attract very many clients. Another example includes how television shows the nature of a product, explains and shows how it is used if complicated, shows the prices and also where it can be acquired.
For instance, how Harpic as a household detergent leaner can improve the quality of cleanliness at home. For such an advert, as a form of motivation top the consumers. Some comments like when you buy Harpic, you have bought heath and one used. Other adverts like blue band margarine are clearly shown how they are used, their prices in the marketplace to avoid exploitation, and some comments like when you buy blue band you buy wisdom are used in the adverts which highly motivate the consumers (Zsambok 1997, p. 351).
Another form of communication is a channel from the marketer to the consumer through personal selling, whereby the consumer directly interacts with the marketer. It is also referred to as one-on-one selling, which requires direct consumer response. At the same time as the transaction, the consumer is advised on how to use the price of certain products. Of all methods, advertising has proved to be more effective because various groups of consumers are captured through various means.
This is facilitated by the use of outdoor media, direct response, print and broadcast media, among many more. On the other hand, the new technology of e-mail has facilitated the marketer’s communication with the consumers. Once products are placed in the advertising media, it costs very little time for more people globally to know the product in the market. For instance, a new brand of the car like Harmer, model, and one can know the details through contacting the manufacturers whereby the quotation of price is made.
The Internet has also played a major role in communication in that, through browsing relevant websites, a consumer can be able to get all the information concerning a certain product. In case of any further information, information can be quickly obtained from the marketers through the same channels. Publicity is another channel of communication that exploits consumer decision making include public means. It included free coverage given to the public by news media. It includes the use of press conferences and press releases and other media events like grand openings, appearances, celebrities, among others. Consumers are met face to face and given talks on certain products and in turn left to make their own decision about the products (Dubois 2000, p 77).
References
Blythe, J. (2006) The Essence of consumer Behaviour. Mahwah.
Castellan N, (1993). Individual and Group Decision Making: Current Issues. Hillside.
Chisnall, P. (1995). Consumer Behaviour. New York.
Dubois, B. (2000). Understanding the Consumer. Cambridge.
Marley A, (1997). Choice, Decision, and Measurement: Essays in Honor of R. Duncan Luce. Mahwah.
Zsambok C, (1997). Naturalistic Decision Making. Mahwah.