Wondering why it is becoming difficult for retail stores to do business in the age of eCommerce? It all boils down to marketing strategies. An important factor that has been born out of the increasing technological innovation is hyper-competition.
Hyper competition arises when there is too much of a product in the market. Earlier, manufacturing processes were longer and slower. This led to a limited number of items being produced, and lack of choice. Now it is exactly the opposite. There is too much choice and too many products. The upshot of this is that the pressure falls on price.
Pricing becomes a complex game, as the price cannot be considerable higher than a competitor who is offering nearly the same product; but it still has to cover costs and generate a profit. Because of this, the importance of marketing has increased manifold. As said before, manufacturing can be outsourced, but marketing is the brains of the operation. Marketing is a long-term investment, and the marketing efforts and the marketing team of a company should be top notch.
Globalization and technology are intertwined. If a technology is invented in one part of the world, it is immediately used in another part of the world. Similarly products made within a small local manufacturing area can be presented to the rest of the world due to marketing and technology.
With the growth of technology, access has become easy – access to resources, access to information which was previously hard to obtain. With devices like the Internet, the customer is highly empowered to make his choices. The choices available to him are numerous, almost infinite. The power which used to rest in the hands of the manufacturer has now passed into the hands of the consumer. The consumer is indeed king.
How is technology shaping the future of marketing?
Simply put, technology is shaping the future of marketing because if you fail to keep up with technology, you become obsolete. Technology is changing rapidly. When personal computers came in the market they were regarded as the pinnacle of technology. Not many decades later, technology has progresses so much that people can wear a computer on their wrist. A company must keep up the progressing technology because as and when new technology arrives in the market, the demand in the consumer base shifts to the newer, more advanced technology. A company cannot survive in this decade without keeping abreast of all the technological changes and developments that are taking place everyday.
Personalization is the key to achieve marketing greatness in the present time. Personalization is made possible with the help of technology. Because of technology, companies are able to record what customers surf on their websites, which links people click more on a blog or which shopping search is the most popular on a particular search engine. Technology makes a customer feel that they are important to the company – everything from personalized promotion e-mails to instant product feedback is a byproduct of technology.
Technology has made personalization easier and better. This has in turn sowed the seeds of expectation in the customers. To fulfil these expectations, companies must constantly be more creative and ahead of their competitors. It is an unending cycle.
