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.
