The concept of micromarketing involves marketing processes targeted at microsegments. This policy affords greater autonomy for brand and product managers and an advisory position for micromarketing staff. In general, line companies lend themselves to decentralization. Micromarketing helps to meet the diverse or limited marketing needs and wants of a particular target audience. As greater authority passes down the line closer to micromarketing, decentralization brings a need for marketing specialists at the branch level, thus creating problems of coordination. In organizing these functions, micromarketing is confronted with the problem of timing. Such positions as a brand or product-line manager, marketing-services manager, manager of sales, or commodities manager, represent “slotting-in” of people to coordinate activities.
The example of Nike ID shows that micromarketing is based on customized products that meet the unique and diverse needs of every customer. The site allows to create unique sport shoes for every occasion and select the materials and color of the product. In addition, several micro-marketing activities have been “broken out.” They include sales forecasting, product planning, control, physical distribution, credit, manpower development, sales planning and analysis, and micromarketing research. Breaking out occurs when product features are separated from each other so that they are performed in a more effective and logical manner (Nike ID Home Page 2009). Important organizational factors arise in the process: when to break out functions, how fast they should be developed, and how they should be organized in micromarketing. The example of Nike ID places emphasis on adjustment to a dynamic external environment and the subordination of the needs and demands of customers. Externally oriented, it leads to greater service and product quality, reliance on men rather than charts and systems, and overlapping of job responsibilities and power (Boone and Kurtz 2007).
The Nike site proposes a wide range of products for different groups of consumers. Nike ID can be seen as a microbrand aimed to meet the needs of women, men, and special groups of sports professionals. Although the structure, or formal part, of a site, can be easily portrayed, the organization, the part that greatly affects behavior and performance, cannot. The site is a social system whose efficiency is influenced greatly by interpersonal communication. Thus, to understand a micromarketing organization is to understand more than its formal structure. No one scheme can be developed, or a set of principles established, that can specify the best organization for a company. But knowledge of factors influencing micromarketing, of the impact of market forces, of organization concepts, and of alternative tools for coordinating and integrating human effort, can furnish a basis for approaching the problems of the marketing organization. Micromarketing may be under-structured, operationally structured.
The proposed product for micromarketing are orthopedic shoes for elderly consumers. The uniqueness of this product is that it will help old people engage in an active lifestyle and choose cozy and fashionable sportswear. Similarly, various orthopedic models will be used to increase the effectiveness of advertising expenditures and establish microbrand policies. Yet it is true that to some extent critical micromarketing problems appear to be mathematically intractable. They lie somewhere between the problems of applied micromarketing and those of the behavioral sciences. The latter often leads to outright rejection of the idea that marketing activities can be quantified (CĂ©spedes 2000).
The price for this product will range from $100 to 150. It is the average price proposed by Nike ID. The price is appropriate for this type of product. Many micromarketing executives have strong reservations about operations research, feeling that it is an expensive luxury that only large firms can afford; that the intelligence generated is based on data that businesses usually do not have readily available; that operations research cannot be used unless adequate records are kept; and that the underlying assumptions and restrictions made by operations-research people seriously limit the usefulness of its information in decision making.
In contrast to other groups of people, the elderly do not meet the perfect body image as a part of life. People do not identify femininity as an explicit criterion for judgments about being “Fashion In.” Femininity is tied to looking right is one criterion for being judged “Fashion In.” The costs for the pursuit of “Fashion In” remain monetarily, physically, and socially quite high. Further, the pursuit of this standard of fashion is part of a social process that relies on women’s uncritical internalization of multiple forms of racism and segregation that are circulating rather transparently within their prevalent discourse on fashion. Nonprice competition and price confusion, rather than price clarity, seem to be the rule. Elderly consumers are concerned not only with price, in their purchases, but also with service, status, and image. Low price alone does not result in a deal. Elderly consumers are not mechanical price calculators and price reactors, as so much theory leads one to believe. They do not know all the prices discounts, trade-ins, special deals, and premiums cloud the actual price (Evans and Bratton, 2008).
The case of Nike ID and the new orthopedic shows that as a result of past experience, buyers have preconceived notions or attitudes that shape their view of sport and hence their decisions. Microbrand risk is a function of the degree of product knowledge, the price of the product, visibility, and the social importance of products and their newness (Nickels, 2006).
In sum, micromarketing is a part of the traditional marketing approach followed by many large companies in their campaigns. Micromarketing reflects demand and o the willingness and ability to buy customized products. Micromarketing sellers are concerned with specifying in advance the nature and extent of the request. But customers’ willingness and ability to buy a host of products under varying market conditions is a most difficult undertaking for Micromarketing managers and their staff. Micromarketing is designed to affect and shape demand by causing changes in consumer preferences and reactions or by bringing products into line with customer needs. Micromarketing, personal selling, sales promotion, product development, pricing, and other marketing approaches endeavor to elicit favorable reactions from buyers.
References
Boone, L. E. and David L. Kurtz. (2007). Contemporary Marketing. South-Western College Pub; 13 edition.
CĂ©spedes, J. M. M. (2000). Micromarketing. Action Learning.
Evans, D., Bratton, S. (2008). Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day. Sybex.
Nickels, W. (2006). Understanding Business McGraw-Hill/Irwin; 8 edition.
Nike ID. Home Page (2009).