What Your Car Says About You?

Cars have personalities in the same way we have personalities. Cars are designed to appeal to particular demographics and seek to emulate the characters of their target market in their design. This is one reason your personal image becomes associated with the type of car you drive and the items you buy. To the outside world, your car becomes an extension of yourself.

There is brand personality and consumer personality. Brand personalities are those values a brand image symbolizes. Brand personalities revolve around personas of excitement, sincerity, ruggedness, competence and sophistication.  When there is mutuality between consumer personality and brand personality the car is said to “suit you."

People with particular personalities are attracted to products with similar personalities (Seimiene, 2012). If you see yourself as a cowboy chances are you will walk past the smart cars and head straight over to the 4X4s. Your idea of fun may look more like “mudding” with Garth Brooks blasting than having a glass of wine with Beethoven playing in the background.

As consumers, most purchased beyond that which is necessary to sustain life are personality driven. If you are a beach going hippie you may just get yourself a VW Bus while if you are seeking status you could option for a sparkling Lamborghini. Of course, if you are more sophisticated with a refined sense of taste there is Mercedes S-Class Sedan with its polished design.

Practicality and finances mitigate this need to enhance our persona. For example, if you are on a budget you might consider your neighbors $500 1990 Ford Escort that leaks oil and has a mammoth dent on the side. An excellent deal if you don’t care about status!

Before you can make appropriate purchases understand what the car says about you. If you are practical and educated, go with a Honda Civic while if you have some money to burn soup up your drive with a Camaro. Keeping your brand image consistent will help others formalize an opinion. The next time you get attracted to this car or that car, stop and ask yourself “why”? You might just find something out about yourself.

Seimiene, E. (2012). Emotional connection of consumer personality traits with brand personality traits: theoretical considerations. Economics & Management, 17 (4).

Are Companies Seeking Marketing Graduates with a Global Perspective?

Sales management is an important skill in a global community where products buzz world round in only a few days. Executives are having a hard time finding college graduates that have sufficient skill to compete for top sales positions. The demand for sales professionals has outpaced supply at colleges. A study by Deeter-Schmelz & Kennedy discusses their findings of why business colleges are having such a hard time filling this need (2011). 

Few studies have explored why colleges are not graduating a sufficient supply of college prepared sales professionals that can step into a more complex world. Problems span an array of issues ranging from the changing nature of sales management in a larger world to a lack of preparedness of professors. Their paper focuses on the assessment of the state of sales education in a global business environment. 

Marketing has changed over the past decade becoming more complex with high technology functionality. There are hundreds of ways to formulate a marketing strategy and it is difficult for a single person to put their mental arms around the breadth of information. This means that professors with a wide variety of such skills are in high demand but in short supply.

If we also consider the financial and analytic abilities needed to manage a global marketing campaign the task of educating people to fill this roll becomes even more daunting. Sales managers must be competent with databases, IT, financial projects, and analytic forecasting. Each dollar spent on a campaign must have a significant return and this requires the ability to conduct in-depth financial analysis. 

The authors collected college information via online surveys. They found that the major problems in order are qualified faculty, large class sizes, obtaining technology, shrinking resources, business demand outpacing students, not understanding online education, and cross-university competition.  New tools and better methods are needed to keep the momentum. 

The study does list the primary reasons why universities feel they are having a hard time producing qualified candidates at a proficient pace. Marketing can entail concepts ranging from psychology to data analytics and this is hard to pack in a four year degree. Focusing on those core concepts of marketing theory is beneficial but organizations may need to train them in specific skills to create competency. Many colleges can only introduce them to the main tools and concepts. Proficiency is left to the company. For now, there is no perfect solution.

Deeter-Schmulz, D. & Kennedy, K. (2011). A global perspective on the current state of sales education in college curriculum. Journal of personal selling & Sales Management, 31 (1).

The Nature of Marketing and Marketing Management

At the center of all business is the concept of exchange. Just like when early American traders provided fish in exchange for imported supplies the process of exchanging a value-laden thing (i.e. product or service) for another value-laden thing (i.e. money) still continues on today. It is the process of exchanging something of value for something else of value. Each product or service represents a component of effort, often measured in terms of money, to determine the value of this exchange.  The goal of any company should be to sell additional products or services by ensuring the awareness of its perceived and tangible value to the customer. Marketing is all about the selling of value.

The American Marketing Association clarifies the value exchange of marketing management as “a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders” (2011). Marketing is a process of understanding the needs of one’s customers and offering products and services that fulfill the need of those customers. Firms that do well in managing such customer needs often generate higher sales and more shareholder value that allows the entity to find a sustainable position in the market.

To achieve their objectives companies often use a marketing concept. A marketing concept is a customer-oriented philosophy of how the business can achieve its objectives through the analysis and satisfaction of customer’s wants and needs (Finch, 2012). For example, understanding what customers want through polling and proper customer feedback allows companies to develop new products or improve upon existing products to maintain customer interest and value perceptions. It is a philosophy of how a company approaches the market.

 To effectively manage marketing it is often necessary to understand both the market and the unique segments of that market. The market is any potential purchaser of products and services as represented through the economic value chain. In other words, anyone who purchases a product or service through commercial activity is part of the market. Within this wider market are market segments that are made up of prospective and current customers who would be naturally responsive to the company’s offerings. Segments can be separated into groups based on wants, needs, behaviors, locality, currency, nation, or any other differentiation.

A marketing mix helps a firm understand and relate to their target market. The marketing mix uses a variety of methods that follow the 4 P’s of marketing that include price, product, promotion, and place. As each demographic has their own unique interests and needs the marketing mix is often specifically designed to reach these audiences through the four conceptual vantage points.

In order to gauge the effectiveness of the marketing mix firms often use financial metrics (Mintz, et. al. 2013). These metrics create benchmarks of performance and response rates to determine the most effective use of financial resources in drawing in business. For example, the use of promotions along with text solicitations will have one response rate while newspaper advertising will have another.

Most companies have an entire department that work exclusively on marketing. Within those departments, firms often opt to either retain in-house certain skills or contract out certain skills in order to maintain their sales profitability. Depending on the size of the firm the use of graphic designers, programmers, artists, writers, psychologists, researchers, social media specialists, database managers, marketing representatives, community outreach specialists and a whole host of other talent may be used in the marketing process.  

American Marketing Association. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.marketingpower .com/_layouts/Dictionary.aspx

Finch, J. (2012). Managerial marketing. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

Mintz, et. al. (2011). What drives managerial use of marketing and financial metrics and does metric use affect performance of marketing-mix activities? Journal of Marketing, 77 (2).