The ideas and practices associated with marketing emerged in response Essay

The ideas and practices associated with marketing emerged in response to the challenges posed by mass production, and these idea - Essay Example In addition, the adoption of marketing strategies in the face of increasing competition is discussed. The evolution of marketing On the advent of the factory, new products began to emerge while old products appeared in strikingly new forms. With the flooding of the market with uniformly mass produced products that were virtually indistinguishable from one another, branding was introduced to differentiate the products. Competitive branding evolved to compensate for the product similarity, thereby, achieving image based difference. Essentially, advertising changed from delivering product news to developing an image around a branded version of a product. Design theorists assert that logos were introduced to evoke familiarity in an effort to address the new and unsettling similarity of packaged goods. Brand names replaced small shop keepers as the interface between the consumer and the product (Klein, 2001, p.12). In recent years, marketing has gone into an overdrive with increasing numb ers of ads and aggressive new formulas for reaching customers. The astronomical growth rate of the advertising industry is well reflected by the 1998 projection which set the total ad spending at $196.5 billion while the global estimate was $435 billion. This figure outpaces the growth of the global economy by a third. This trend is attributed to the firmly held belief that brands need to continuously and constantly increase advertising in response to increased competition. According to the law of diminishing returns, as more firms increase their ads firms are under increasing pressure to aggressively market their brands (Arvisdsson, 2006, p.178). As a result of the competition, marketers invented more strategies to attract customers. This caused marketers to introduce more clever and intrusive selling techniques. For instance, Calvin Klein stuck CK Be perfume strips on the back of Ticketmaster concert envelopes to attract customers to the CK Be brand. Proponents of branding claim t hat markets where producers compete based only on price, promotions and trade deals are susceptible to product duplication leading to decreased profits. Some companies have over time integrated their respective brands in the fabric of their companies. Such companies mould a corporate culture around the brand. Everything within such organizations is an ad for the brand; this includes branding employees with such tags as partners, superstar CEOs and design consistencies (Brownlie, et al, 1999, p.379). New media has revolutionised the interaction between consumers and organizations characterized by a shift in power where consumers have more influence on the product. The rise of consumer generated content has turned consumers into content producers. Consumers now possess greater control over what is provided in corporate communications. The shifts in power have not only changed consumer expectations but also have changed purchasing decisions (Bob, 2005, p.285). There is extensive eviden ce of a decline in traditional media usage among advertisers. In response to changes in technology, marketers are shifting expenditure to new media options. New media has transformed many aspects of brand marketing such as segmentation and targeting through positioning, distribution and customer relation management (Bob, 2005, p.285). Marketing strategies Marketing strategies evolved as a result of the need by marketers to deal