The Basic Marketing Tasks

Name: Lê Thị Hương Giang

Student ID: 0852010046

Class: TAN302.CN(2-1011).1_LT

THE BASIC MARKETING TASKS Nowadays, everybody has become familiar with the “marketing concept”, which assumes that the producer’s task is to find wants and fill them, not to make products that are not needed and force customers to buy them. In other words, marketer can be understood as a person who creates and maintains demand for something. However, it is common knowledge that the current demand level is rarely equal to the company’s desired demand level. There are 8 basic types of current demand level : negative demand, no demand, latent demand, faltering demand, irregular demand, full demand, overfull demand and unwholesome demand, according to which marketers have to perform 8 different marketing tasks, with the main purpose of regulating the level, timing, and character of demand for the organization's products in terms of its objectives at the time. 1. Negative Demand  Conversional Marketing According to Philip Kotler, negative demand can be defined as “a state in which all or most of the important segments of the potential market dislike the product.” Negative demand creates a very troublesome situation for most organizations. It can be resulted from differences in culture, personal value and belief: Arabs feel negative demand for pork, vegetarians have negative demand for meat, etc. Facing this kind of situation, marketers have to make a plan to reverse those negative demands, making it rise from negative to positive, which is called “conversional marketing”. This is one of the most difficult tasks in marketing management, in which marketers have to change the taste and beliefs of customers who dislike their products. The most important thing marketers have to do is to analyze and find out the source of the market’s resistance and try to ease them. If it is because of the differences and misleading of beliefs and values, they can be clarified through a communication program; if customers think the cost is too high, it can be settled by a little cut of cost. In case the resistance is too much to worth making a change, markets can even consider switching to another potential market.

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Name: Lê Thị Hương Giang

Student ID: 0852010046

Class: TAN302.CN(2-1011).1_LT 2. No demand  Stimulational Marketing No demand is “a state in which all or important segments of a potential market are uninterested or indifferent to a particular object”. Despite how bad it may sound, no demand is actually better than negative demand. This kind of demand can happen to new products and services, which customers hardly have any knowledge about; or products that are placed in the wrong market (for example, ski-board selling in places that never have snow). The marketing task applied in this case is “stimulational marketing”. Marketers can choose to perform some of all of the 3 following methods. First is to try to connect the object with some existing needs in the location. Second is to change the environment to make the product become appropriate. Third is to widely spread information about the products to customers. Since it makes people buy the things they do not have any demand for, stimulational marketing has received some social critics. However, it is the fact that the customers decide to buy the products themselves since they find benefits in buying them. 3. Latent Demand  Developmental Marketing Latent Demand is a state in which a lot of people “have strong need for something that does not exist as an actual product.” What marketers have to do here is to change latent demand into actual demand, which can be called “developmental marketing”. The latent need must be recognized, researched before the right product could be developed, followed by choosing the right price, the right channels of distribution. This task is the closest to the definition of the “marketing concept”. It is not a question of creating desire but rather of finding it and serving it 4. Faltering Demand  Remarketing When a product has reached the final phase of its lifecycle, it is most likely facing faltering demand (falling demand). This is the state where “the demand for a product is less than its former level and where further decline is expected in the absence of remedial efforts to revise the target market, product, and/or marketing effort.” Remarketing should be applied in this case. It means starting a new lifecycle for the product, revising every aspects of the product and trying to change it in a better way. If the faltering demand was caused by lack of creativity, a good marketer with a good

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Name: Lê Thị Hương Giang

Student ID: 0852010046

Class: TAN302.CN(2-1011).1_LT remarketing campaign can really revive the product. On the other hand, in some cases, the company should consider withdrawing the product from the market since it is no longer be able to compete with other new and stronger products. 5. Irregular Demand  Synchromarketing There are some kinds of products that sell very well during a certain season of the year, then sales completely fall during other seasons. That is what we call “irregular demand”, when “the current timing pattern of demand is marked by seasonal or volatile fluctuations that depart from the timing pattern of supply.” This kind of demand usually applies to seasonal products or services, such as beach hotels which get overbooked in summer and deserted in other seasons, museums which hardly have any visitors during weekdays but are extremely crowded on weekends, some kinds of fruits that only ripen in some particular seasons. The marketing task of trying to resolve irregular demand is called “synchromarketing”, including promoting new uses and desires for product in the off-season or charge different prices in different periods of time. 6. Full Demand  Maintenance Marketing Full demand is a state in which “the current level and timing of demand is equal to the desired level and timing of demand”. It is the most expected and favorable situation for all companies. In its life cycle, a product is likely to reach that point one or several times. However, full demand does not mean the marketers can rest assured with their success, they have to maintain it, to keep the sale volumes in the face of raising competitors and customers’ changing taste by various methods such as keeping the price right, motivating the sale force, etc. That is why this task is called “maintenance marketing”. 7. Overfull Demand  Demarketing Overfull demand is the opposite of faltering demand, which means at some point, “demand exceeds the level at which the marketer feels able or motivated to supply it.”

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Name: Lê Thị Hương Giang

Student ID: 0852010046

Class: TAN302.CN(2-1011).1_LT If the suppliers are in short of goods or can not increase the size of their plants, they might want to reduce customers’ demand. Demarketing is the attempts to discourage customers on either a temporary of permanent basis in order to reduce overfull demand. Solutions might be raising prices or reducing the quality of products or services. Demarketing is a tough task because marketers have to discourage customers, instead of encouraging them to buy the products, which can cause negative reactions towards the company and its other products. 8. Unwholesome Demand  Countermarketing Countermarketing is the last basic tasks in marketing management and also the most difficult one. Unlike in demarketing when the marketer tries to reduce the demand, countermarketing is the attempt to destroy unwholesome demand for products that are considered undesirable. The question is : what are considered unwholesome demand? Normally, it refers to the demand for products that can be harmful to health or society, such as cigarettes, drugs and handguns. While selling a product seems difficult, unselling it is even tougher, since the marketers have to change the tastes and habits of their customers. They have to affect customers in a psychological way, trying to associate disgust, fear, disagreeableness, or shame with the use of the unwholesome object, trying to cause unpleasant feelings in the users of the products. Other methods should be raising the prices along with decreasing the availability of the products as much as possible. In conclusion, marketing is not easy. A marketer may have to face one or two or all of the above marketing tasks while doing his job, since it varies according to products and environments. He has to perform developmental marketing or stimulational marketing at the beginning of a product’s lifecycle, to create and increase demand for it. In the stage of high growth, maintenance marketing is needed to keep the profit and demarketing can help ease the overfull demand. And when the product reaches the end of its lifecycle, remarketing can help reviving it and generating more profit for the company. A good marketer has to know what kind of demand he and his company are facing and choose the right methods to adjust it to his company’s objectives.

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