Marketing in today’s world is primarily about creating customer value and build a profitable customer relationship (Kotler,2010). With the advent of technology, consumers have been enabled with smoother access to commodities and services. Technology has made it possible for users to engage frequently with one another, making the world increasingly a smaller place. Using the internet to access social media, usage of mobile apps, and other such digital communication is part of people’s day to day activities. For instance, Andrew T. Stephen indicates that the current rate of internet use among American adults is about 87% and is closer to 100% for demographic groups such as college-educated and higher-income adults (Andrew, 2015). This sudden prominence of both, the existing consumers as well as potential consumers on tech enabled domains has brought about a subsequent change in how marketers position products. Kotler goes further to state that the new digital and other high end developments are dramatically changing the relationship of the consumers and marketers (Kotler, 2010). With the growing usage of the internet, Yakup Durmaz & Ibrahim Halil Efendioglu argue in a journal of their’s that marketers and companies by and large unavoidably entered the digital environment, and that this has brought about change in communication which has thereby resulted in the fundamental definition of marketing ( Yakup & Ibrahim,2016). A counter point to this is that the practices that marketers use to communicate with consumers has significantly changed with digitisation coming to light, however it’s not certain that the fundamental essence of marketing has quite changed. Marketing has from the very beginning placed emphasis on product-consumer relationship by creating value for consumers, and to capture value from consumers in exchange (Kotler, 2010). The idea was always historically about refining and improving the effectiveness of marketing by enabling customers to participate in the marketing process which stands identified for at least 20 years (Jackson & Ahuja, 2016). With digitisation entering the fray, this has witnessed a significant transition in the process of doing so, while retaining the essence of marketing. As been stated by John Deightona & Leora Kornfeld (2009), “only few from the last decade envisaged how much power the new technologies would give to the people”. Marketers have now come to understand that the latest digital tools can provide their customers with ‘added value’ through their feeling of being involved in an experience shared by their peers in the digital space (Graham, 2016). Having said that, this paper will go further into assessing the prominence of digital marketing over the traditional approach in the overall process of strategy development.
Evolution Process:
(a) Communication in a digital age
As been explained by John Deightona & Leora Kornfeld (2009), “A decade ago there was a sense, not misplaced, that the Internet was about to disrupt the settled practices of marketing.” A lot of evolved marketing practices have come into being since the last decade, and that they have only made it easier for marketers to engage with their potential consumers. The fundamental challenges faced by marketers 10 years ago have feasibly been overcome, as the gap between the marketer and the consumer has been conceivably come closer.
A common prediction that was made a decade ago was that the new tools would enable very powerful, very inexpensive, and very intrusive direct marketing (John & Kornfeld, 2009). Medium of communication has simply evolved. The practices of communication followed a decade were fairly restrictive in nature. The usage of phone calls, letters and DTC’s were not fully enabling marketers to gain a firm hold over how the product was being perceived by consumers, as how it was intended by the marketer. There was a larger sense of ambiguity which again technology has helped overcome. “It was always expected that the new digital tools would turn this clumsy and artless action-reaction sequence into many cycles of deft action and reaction. Direct marketing would become as fluid and as intimate as conversation” (John & Kornfeld, 2009). With the social media burst taking place a few years ago, communication in the world of marketing proved to be not just be cost effective, but quicker and analytical. According to Chaffey (2011), marketing on social media is “encouraging customer communications on company’s own website or through its social presence”. According to (Afrina Yasmin 2015 (Giese and Cote, 2000)) communication in the digital age is something that “the customer information satisfaction for digital marketing can be conceptualised as a sum of affective response of varying intensity that follows consumption and is stimulated by focal aspects of sales activities, information systems (websites), digital products/services, customer support, after-sales service and company culture”. Engaging with consumers on social media platforms helps marketers quickly assess customer perception, and in exchange helps marketers measure the reach the product or the service is gaining. While communication through Social media does have a greater advantage over the traditional means, it does have it’s own downsides. From a sheer customer stand-point, adaptability to the technical ways of engaging with a brand takes it’s course of time, and this shift in paradigm doesn’t quite treat the elderly consumer base well. Young adults aged between 18 and 29 years have known to have 90% social media adoption rates, other age groups—for example, teenagers and older adults—are also exhibiting exponential growth in social media adoption rates (Alhabash and Ma, 2017 (Perrin ,2015)).
Jackson & Ahuja (2016) further argue that, “though the communication through the use of social media and viral marketing communication campaigns appears to bring the concept up-to-date, it does belie the paradigm shift that has occurred in consumers’ behaviour, attitudes and use of media and, therefore, hardly does it justice”.
(b) Establishing customer relationship in a digital age:
Customer Relationship Management, also known as CRM is about building a strong profitable relationship with customers ensuring that it’s long term. This enables brands or products achieve loyalty to their product. Just like communication, CRM too in a digital age has become significantly more affective. Traditionally, customers have always connected with a product on different counts. The bond can be of several natures such as Social, Financial, structural and relationship bonds (Jackson & Ahuja, 2016). This was well established in traditional approaches, however it does seem to have taken great shape with digitisation, thereby enabling marketers to asses what kind of bond it is that their customers are gravitated by. Social bonds and structural bonds are more prevalent in the digital age, where social bonds are formed due peer to peer consumer interaction whereas structural bonds are formed by the virtue of providing customers with structural access by getting them to login using a mail address and password (Jackson & Ahuja, 2016). By the virtue of these , it can result in financial and relationship bonds to form. Jackson & Ahuja (2016) further state that that “the several online forums such as myStarbucks and Ideastorm by Dell have been formed with the idea of involving consumers in discussions regarding new products and services”. Such ideas get fairly easily shared with other participants of various other online communities, thereby encouraging them to participate. Such organisations are known to foster and and nurture a sense customer customer friendly environment, thereby becoming sought after. The concept of e-commerce has done splendidly well with consumers. The era of e-commerce resulting in online transaction in times when when the vast population is fairly pressed for time, but possessing purchasing power are willing to make an online purchase for sake of absolute convenience and ease of shopping. eBay (in the USA), Flipkart, Jabong and Myntra (in India) and Alibaba (in China) are some of the e-commerce companies offering the opportunity to shop online (Jackson & Ahuja, 2016). Consumers are provided with effectively full access to information related to the products or services offered online (P. Sathya, 2015 (Gregory Karp, 2014)). Quick comparisons can be easily made with other related products. Digital marketing allows consumes to make purchases at any given hour of the day. Prices are transparent in the digital marketing ( P. Sathya, 2015 (Yulihasri, 2011)).
Another aspect that comes to play in establishing a strong CRM is something known as influencers marketing. Influencer marketing being adapted by top brands that reach out to the influencers with massive presence on social media. In the online domain, these are bloggers or social media users with a more-than-average reach among consumers, and they are prized by marketers for their ability to spread the word about products or services they believe in. (Jackson & Ahuja, 2016).
(b) The 21st century paradigm: