Student Corner - 256

SEGMENTATION

Having seen some important tools of sales promotion, let us spend some time on the necessity of taking initiatives of sales promotion.

Marketing experts point out that the performing company must not be sluggish in its efforts to drive sales promotion. Particularly, they point out some situations where the company must not fail to take concerted efforts to promote sales. Such situations that show the company that it is not sensitive to marketing dynamics are called by Peter Drucker as ‘Deadly Sins’ and he discusses ten such deadly sins a company must avoid to remain sustained in the business. Let us see what are those ‘Sin-Situations and the remedy for the particular sin. The Sins indicate that the company’s marketing programme, marketing campaign is not doing what it is expected to do; that is, it is failing and the earlier it is detected the better for the company.

The first deadly sin is related to: The Company is not sufficiently market focused and customer driven.

In this situation, the lapses of the company can be expressed; it has not done proper study of segmentation; there is no segment manager and the employees seem to think it is the duty of the marketing personnel and not of the segment employees to think about marketing. Possibly, the company has not given serious thought to providing training programme to the employees about customer culture and no distinction seems to have been made between constant and loyal customer and other customer who is likely to make one-time purchase. This failure will give the negative impression to the loyal customer that he has not been given due recognition for his staying with the company.

How to go about in such situation?

Of course, give closer attention to the segments; this is important because segments restrict marketing efforts to very relevant area of marketing ; commercial concern is so vast and expansive—expensive too—the management will have no time to study all issues at once; so, segment helps focus those areas in marketing where the attention is immediate need.  Naturally, segments must be prioritized lest efforts are misdirected and therefore ill spent and wasted. Equally important is creating awareness among the employees of customer consciousness.  Any marketing task undertaken must not lose sight of the customer without whom the enterprise is facing too big challenges.

We will see some more points on these two facts: segmentation and customer consciousness in our next session.