Marketing (Wom)

Mark Danso-Atta_13705806

In his article, Bill Lee iterated that tradition marketing is dead because consumers are checking out product/services information in their own way through word-of-mouth (WOM), Marketers lack business credibility to generate sufficient business growth based on a survey, Social media environment has displaced traditional marketing strategies and he called for new possibilities of peer influence-based, community oriented marketing because that holds the key to creating sustained growth for firms through authentic customer relationships.

Marketing (traditional) revolves around the utilization of the marketing mix thus set of marketing tools that a firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives and this tools has been classified by McCarthy into four broad groups that he called the four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion (Kotler et al., 2002). Since the focus of traditional marketing has been on the products and services that firms provide, marketing management has traditionally been viewed as demand management (Kotler, 1973). With this view the role of marketers was to stabilize demand through promotional sales, couponing and price adjustments through various forms of advertisement to meet the product/service sales targets of their firms.

But I must concede that with the advent of the internet, the focus of marketing has shifted from a supplier perspective to a customer perspective (Sharma and Sheth, 2004). No one can underrate the intelligent ubiquitous information platform that the internet offers of which word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing is a particularly prominent feature.

Apart from the CEO survey, Bill could not back his accession with any evidence. I will not state that traditional marketing is dead but the advert of Internet (social networking) enhances the marketing mix and the online presence should act as an extension to the traditional marketing messages. Whereas the effect of social media is great...