Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Volume 27, Issue 7
This issue is concerned with matters of targeting and are thus central to the concept of marketing planning with which this journal is concerned. The first paper is about the basis of how we understand customers – emotional intelligence, this is followed by a contribution on a specific economic group– low income consumers and the third piece is about internationalising a niche product – culture-based handicrafts. Fourth, marketing plans to target different customer roles in the prescription medicine market are discussed and in the fifth paper. This is followed by a further crisis situation, this time driven by economic change is an example of how ill-conceived marketing planning led to disaffected consumers in financial services. We then move on to the effective use of advertising in the beer market and finally present a teaching case study that is focused on the need to understand cultural nuances in customer behaviour.
We begin with a paper concerning the impact of “Emotional intelligence and marketing effectiveness”. N. Gladson Nwokah and Augustine I. Ahiauzu from Rivers State University of Science and Technology in Nigeria make an important contribution to the notion of emotional intelligence in a commercial context. We have become familiar with the idea of emotional intelligence in personal and social situations. Although, we have an understanding of our customers at the heart of marketing orientation and we know that customer behaviour is driven by both cognitive and affective factors, we have not addressed the depth of relationship with our markets that emotional intelligence suggests. This paper explores the concept of emotional intelligence, validates its measurement and has considerable implications for its use in marketing. The paper also considers the transfer of this Western-focussed idea in a developing market that is Nigeria and the importance of emotional intelligence of corporate success in this area. Ayantunji Gbadamosi at the UEL Business School, University of East London in the UK contributes a paper on “Low-income consumers'reactions to low-involvement products”, presenting a study that indicates that such purchases are based on habit. They do not show strong loyalty to brands and do not perceive price as an indication of quality. Rather, the study found that the key motivation is value-for-money and sales promotions play an important role in this perception. However, buy-one-get-one-free offers stand out as the most favoured promotions above free samples, discounts and coupons. This group are not at all inclined towards gifts and competitions. Indicating the direction and intensity of sensitivity to marketing stimuli, we get a valuable insight into the drivers of this important, price-sensitive but large,segment.
Though we have become accustomed to international production of large brands,niche products provide a specific challenge. Through a case study of a handicraft company, Jesus Cambra-Fierro and Rosario Vazquez-Carrasco of University Pablo de Olavide in Seville, Spain, with Edgar Centeno of the University of Strathclyde, UK discuss the challenges to a small business when their strategy is to internationalise a handicraft offering. This paper analyses how internationalization problems were dealt with and the decisions taken to resolve them, assessing the main implications that emerge from the experience. The case demonstrates that demographic characteristics such as age, gender,income level or occupation may not be enough to explain consumer behavior in this sector and, therefore, firms must consider variables such as consumers'lifestyles, levels of ethnocentricity and approach to the concept of “made in” – these elements may explain why some consumers happily buy some foreign-made products while others hesitate to do so. Through this case analysis, the authors identify several real problems that not only SMEs, but also any other business, have to face when internationalising their activity and analyse strategies to overcome these challenges.
The varying customer roles in the purchase and consumption role have always been a central challenge in target marketing and prescription drugs are a classic case of the separation of the decision maker, purchaser and the consumer. The fourth paper on “Reaching and influencing consumers in the prescription medicine market” is by Julia Peters of Bond University and Deon Nel and Stewart Adam from Deakin University in Australia. Their case study illustrates how direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicines can be used to rebuild faith in a product in crisis. Marketing managers and strategic marketing students alike will benefit from this discussion on how external environmental factors can suddenly impose a review of marketing strategy. The reader learns target marketing was used to address a dilemma through direct-to-consumer advertising to target customers in this market. This paper highlights the need to communicate about a product to different customer roles,in this case to both the medical profession and the patient. The authors demonstrate how influencing doctors to recommend a medicine and pulling the product through the channel by stimulating patient demand after a health scare is paramount to effective recovery. Nnamdi Madichie from the University of Sharjah in the UAE reviews Egg Card's marketing response to the recent media flurry over its disaffected customers. The paper also highlights how this example highlights the gap between marketing theory (marketing as an academic discipline) and practice (marketing in organisations) pointing to the implications for the future of marketing as an academic discipline.
In their paper about effective advertising expenditure in the beer market and Kari Heimonen and Outi Uusitalo from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland examine the impacts of advertising expenditure on brands' market share. This paper isolates the impact of advertising by using an unusual four-week period during which price competition among beer brands was not allowed, utilising advertising-sales data on the highly competitive oligopolistic Finnish beer market. This study gives new insights into the beer market – the impacts of advertising were not similar across brands,overspills of advertising impacts across brands were detected and only mild reactions to competitors advertising attacks were found. Finally in this issue,a teaching case study on “Product placement in Bollywood movies” is presented by Sukhbinder Barn of Middlesex University in the UK. This case study illustrates the way in which product and brand placement function in this sector of the entertainment industry. Based on field work conducted in India, it draws on interviews with many film industry figures, the case illustrates the potential tension between the artistic goals of the director and the commercial goals of the brand owner. Increasingly popular world wide, this study of Bollywood represents an important contribution to understanding the interface between commercial interests and artistry. At the 2009 Academy of Marketing Conference in Leeds, UK, keynote speakers Stephen Brown, Jim Bell and Noel Dennis made an artistic and effective plea for novel ways of communicating marketing themes to students, themselves using music, drama, literature and poetry. This film script is a contribution to this debate and I hope marketing teachers find it useful.
Gill Wright Editor
Michael HarkerAssociate Editor
