Introduction
The concern that lingers in the minds of a good number of marketing managers in the increasingly competitive market is the extent to which customer demands and needs are changing.
Firms keep advancing their marketing techniques and strategies as a way of keeping pace with the contemporary developments in the industry. This results in a shift in the pattern of consumption by customers.
It can, therefore, be argued that consumer behaviour is partly shaped by the changes that take place in the economy. Consumer behaviour is often a concern to the marketing managers who keep developing strategies of engaging customers in the dynamic marketing environment in the contemporary economy.
This paper argues that the contemporary techniques and strategies of marketing are developed out of a close observation of the changing trends in the industry.
The changes necessitate the change in the demands and needs of customers in the market. This paper discusses the modern marketing techniques and how they ape the changing patterns of consumption.
According to Rahnama and Beiki (2013), the modern marketing environment is quite dynamic and competitive. The competitiveness in the marketing environment is associated with the changes in the economy, which makes the demands and needs of customers in the market to change.
It is critical to begin with understanding what modern marketing techniques and strategies are in order to link them to the satisfaction of the dynamic demands and needs of customers.
The world is changing at an accelerating pace and so is the change in industry and the nature of products and services that are released and marketed by firms. The emerging products and services in the market necessitate the search for new customers and new markets for the products and services.
The marketing managers in the contemporary economic environment are required to keep monitoring the changes in industry and market to be able to respond to the emerging marketing issue by basing on a modern framework (Ranade 2012)
Rahnama and Beiki (2013) observed that several strategies of marketing have been developed by marketing experts, which act as a basis upon which marketers mould their strategies of marketing in a manner that they can capture all the developments in the industry and the external market.
An example is the marketing mix technique that has been expounded on by a number of marketing scholars, among them Kotler and Armstrong (Ranade 2012).
The main aim of adopting marketing strategies and techniques is to ensure that customer value is effectively created, delivered and communicated in the given market. The modern markets operate basing on four main pillars. These include customer needs, target market, integrated marketing tactics, and profit making.
The market entails the customers who are a critical factor in marketing since they are the targets of a substantial number of products and services that are produced in different industries and firms within industries (Ranade 2012)
Most of the companies in the contemporary economy are working on the modality of marketing that is often referred to as customer oriented marketing.
This kind of marketing forms the pillar of the contemporary marketing practices, where companies develop and market products based on the needs and demands of customers.
The needs and wants of customers are not only shaped by the prevailing goods and services in the market, but to a large extent by the changes in the entire economy (BusinessKnowledgeSource.com 2010).
Changes in the economy, for instance the demand for information technology and its deployment in industry is a factor that shapes the orientation of production and marketing by firms (Ranade 2012).
Modern marketers must be apt with the changes in the contemporary economy because this is what makes them to be in a position to comprehensively understand and incorporate the needs and wants of customers in the marketing practices of firms.
The needs, values, and demands of the customers and the society, and not the mere focus on corporate goals and benefits to firms make marketing managers understand modern marketing techniques (Rahnama & Beiki 2013).
As observed earlier in the paper, the modern economic environment is dynamic. The dynamism is in a number of critical developments in the economy.
Among these developments is the growth in the scale of information exchange in the modern society, which has been steered by the development of information and communication technologies and tools.
According to Clement (2008), the level at which consumers access and synthesize information about the developments in the market has risen due the developments in the information and technology industry.
Contrary to what was experienced in the past customers, the modern marketing environment has totally changed in the sense that customers in the contemporary market can monitor the developments in the industry and market and make informed choices about what they want.
Therefore, firms ought to engage in activities that can help to promote the differentiation of their products and services as one way of dealing with the dynamics in the demand side of the market.
Customer vigilance is highly supported by the presence and access to information, which is necessitated by information technologies (BusinessKnowledgeSource.com 2010).
Consumers also increasingly value technologically advanced products as they keep testing new technologies as soon as they emerge in the market (McDermott 2013).
The modern economic culture has seen the emergence and development of the culture of consumerism. The culture of consumerism is promoted by the education systems that prevail in the world today, which are moulded around the patterns of behaviour that prevail in the market.
Instead of moulding students into learner and inventors, there seems to be a lot of concentration on the modalities of development in the nature of products and services in academic institutions. These result in graduates who are consumption minded.
This adds to the complexity of the modern marketing environment, especially in firms since a substantial number of the population concentrates on evaluating the dynamics of the products and services in the market.
The pressure on firms to keep devising marketing techniques in order to satisfy the modern customers who embrace consumerism keeps mounting and promoting market research by firms (Molesworth, Nixon & Scullion 2009).
The modern economy has seen the rises in the level of intra and inter-industry competitiveness, which enhances competition between firms in the market.
Competitive pressures that are posed on firms cause firms to adjust a number of activities, among them the techniques of marketing in order to redeem their level of competitiveness in the market. Social and environmental issues have added to the complexity of the marketing environment for firms.
Modern firms are required to adhere to a number of social and environmental standards as a way of meeting the specifications of quality of their products and services in the market.
Ethical consideration has, thus, emerged as a critical issue in as far as the advancement of marketing practices by firms is concerned. Inadequacies in the products can be easily detected in the contemporary marketing environment, thereby tainting the image of the firm whose products and services are found to have defaults.
As part of dealing with the ethical considerations in the market, several models have been devised to act as a basis upon which firms assess the level of quality of their products through the entire process of product development until the goods reach the consumers (Haris 2009).
Ethical practices are often interlinked with the antecedents of consumer behaviour in the modern market. As observed earlier in this paper, consumer behaviour is shaped by the developments in the industry and the market and the easiness with which consumers learn about the developments.
Marketing strategy has been found to be the main means of raising awareness about the ethical considerations in products and services, which addresses the concerns of consumers (Perner 2010).
Conclusion
This paper has explored the issue of modern marketing techniques as a means of satisfying the needs and demands of customers. From the discussion, it can be concluded that the modern market presents a situation where the channels of exploring developments in the industry and the market have opened up.
This implies that modern consumers have a lot of knowledge on what they want. This forces firms to adopt modern techniques to keep engaging and managing customers.
Reference List
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