Why Do Companies Gather Market Intelligence and Conduct Marketing Research?

Why Do Companies Gather Market Intelligence and Conduct Marketing Research?

Marketing Research can help businesses understanding will it gonna fail or not, to know their targeting market. If no one wants to buy it, then build it will be a bad choice for a profit-seeking company. Besides, companies should not limit their choices by lower prices. If someone is willing to buy your product, we must do our research to know what will they want to pay? For instance, if a person is willing to pay $10 for your cake, then you should try to sell it for $10.

In addition, marketing research helps companies with many tasks, such as ideas, designs, demands, what to produce and how much or how many, and better pricing decisions as we discussed earlier. Better marketing research also means better satisfaction of your customers since you know exactly what they want and meet their needs.

To summarize, marketing research is the process of collecting and analyzing the marketing information we need, to improve our business. 

When we talk about market intelligence, it often means competitive intelligence such as solving issues and gathering related information. For instance, if you own a cafe, you should go around to see what competing cafes are doing, what types of coffee drinks they are offering, or how much do they charge for a cup of coffee. It is an ongoing update for decision makers to stay in touch with what’s happening in the marketplace.

The Market Intelligence Gathering Activities

Most of the time, companies are gathering marketing information related to their daily operations such as which product is the top hot sale or reviews. However, do we really need to know everything? I mean, do we really need to know the person is single or not, in order to sell him or her a cup of coffee? It can be costly to collect everything and every piece of information in detail? Therefore, our target is to get what we need, not everything we want. Remember, we do this to help us make great decisions, not for private seeking purpose. We have to do it legally and properly.

Nowadays, an excellent customer relationship management (CRM) system has become more and more important. Recording key information to unlock a better success. Salespeople or brokers can provide and record those kinds of information and using the CRM to help them sell products.

Before we consider buying something, we are likely to search it online and ask Google first. So, if you are frequently been asked about electric cars, what would you do? It's billion-dollar information for the 2020s if you catch up with the trend and start building your own electric car business.

We are not almighty god, but we can learn from nature and anyone better than ourselves. By purchasing some subscription plans or keep eyes on the information provided by professional authorities like WSJ, The Economist, or Bloomberg, companies can keep their strategies update and fit.

During the pandemic of COVID19, e-commerce has become an unexpected trend for traditional retailers. Before the weak sale report comes out, companies should all get prepared. Quickly catch up on what customers are moving and what suppliers are now providing.

Finally, truly understanding customers is not only collecting quantitative data but also have to know what they think.

How Do Marketing Professionals Know If They Have Crossed The Line in Terms of Gathering Marketing Intelligence?

A locked door can keep honest people honest. But what to lock and how? Companies have to manage their internal culture to avoid gathering corporate information illegally or unethically or become a victim of industrial espionage.

Most of the time, when companies know they have crossed the line is during filing lawsuits or been charged with illegally gathering information. To avoid that situation, companies must have a strategy or plan for that. From interview a new intern to fire a senior CEO, companies must accurately disclose all relevant information and regulate them with contracts. Although not everyone is a spy or criminal, these codes are just like a locked door. Company policies, objectives, and guidelines are also the detectors for earlier known when someone has crossed the line.

Reference

Tanner, J. & Raymond, M.A. (2015). Principles of Marketing. University of Minnesota Open Textbook Library. Licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa.

Why Study Marketing? “build it and they will come” philosophy doesn’t work

Why Study Marketing? “build it and they will come” philosophy doesn’t work. Marketing helps facilitate exchanges between buyers and sellers for the mutual benefit of both parties. 

Marketing Delivers Value

Not only does marketing deliver value to customers, but also that value translates into the value of the firm as it develops a reliable customer base and increases its sales and profitability.

Marketing Benefits Society

Marketing benefits society in general by improving people’s lives in two ways. First, as we mentioned, it facilitates trade and in economics, trade makes people’s lives better. Then, better marketing means more successful companies, jobs are created. 

From an economic perspective, more choices and smarter consumers are indicative of a higher quality of life. Marketers are trying to deliver offerings of value to consumers by effectively communicating so that consumers are able to make more informed decisions.

Marketing Offers People Career Opportunities

Marketing is the interface between producers and consumers, the one function in the organization in which the entire business comes together. 

Marketing Research

To understand what strategies or tactics work best.

Merchandising

To develop strategies regarding what products wholesalers should carry to sell to retailers.

Sales

To determine the needs, propose offerings, and make sure that the customer is satisfied.

Advertising

Television commercials, print ads, electronic media, Web sites, pop-up ads, podcasts, and more.

Product Development

To identify and create features that meet the customers' needs.

Direct Marketing

Channels such as e-mail, chat lines, telephone, or direct mail.

Digital Media

To determine which consumers receive which message and with IT professionals to create the right look and feel of digital media.

Event Marketing

To plan special events and conversations with potential and current customers in a special setting.

Nonprofit Marketing

Nonprofit marketers typically have smaller budgets. But their work is always very important as they try to change behaviors without having a product to sell.

Criticisms of Marketing

It is costly, and business leaders need to understand the cost/benefit ratio of marketing for wise investments. 

Another criticism is that marketing creates wants among consumers for products and services that aren’t really needed. 

Reference

Tanner, J. & Raymond, M.A. (2010). Principles of Marketing 2.0. Lardbucket.org. Licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0.

Who Does Marketing? For-Profit Companies, Nonprofit Organizations, and Individuals

Everybody does marketing today, but with different types.

For-Profit Companies

P&G then sells the toothpaste through retailers like Walmart, which has a panel of consumers sample the product and provide feedback through an online community. 

For-profit companies can be defined by the nature of their customers such as B2C (business-to-consumer) or B2B (business-to-business).

Other ways to categorize companies that engage in marketing is by the functions they fulfill such as P&G is a manufacturer and Walmart is a retailer. They have different functions, but all engage in marketing activities by different types.

Nonprofit Organizations

Although an organization like the American Heart Association does not directly benefit, the organization is meeting its mission, or purpose, of getting people to live heart-healthy lives. So, not everything is based only on a financial point of view. Its marketing activities are nonprofit marketing. Even government entities also engage in marketing activities. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) runs a number of advertising campaigns designed to promote environmentally friendly activities. 

Individuals

If you sell yourself in an interview, is that marketing? When you work for a wage, you are delivering value in exchange for pay. 

Reference

Tanner, J. & Raymond, M.A. (2010). Principles of Marketing 2.0. Lardbucket.org. Licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0.

Defining Marketing

American Marketing Association: Marketing is “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

The traditional view was the 4 Ps, Products, Promotion, Place, and Price.

Now, it's 4 Components of marketing

Creating - The process of collaborating with suppliers and customers to create offerings that have value.

Communicating - Offerings learning from customers.

Delivering - Getting offerings to consumers.

Exchanging - Trading value.

However, the four Ps are not exactly the same as the 4 Components of marketing. They fail to capture all the activities of marketing. 

For instance, "exchanging" requires the transfer of "ownership", not just a price or place. When you buy a car, you must sign documents that transfer the car’s title from the seller to you. 

The goal of marketers is to create a profitable exchange for consumers. 

Value is at the center of everything marketing does, but what does value mean?

The term value means the benefits buyers receive that meet their needs. Also means, what the customer gets by purchasing and consuming a company’s offering. 

Notice that although the offering is created by firms, the value is determined by their customers.

By profitable, we mean that the consumer’s personal value equation is positive. The personal value equation is value = benefits received – [price + hassle]

Hassle is the time and effort the consumer puts into the shopping process. 

The equation is very personal since the benefits customers receive from a product will vary, as well as the time and effort they put into shopping. For instance, because your tastes vary, the benefits you received varied. Although the same dish in the same restaurant, the benefits are still depending on your own personal taste. 

Market-Oriented

The value varies from customer to customer based on each customer’s needs. Marketing requires that marketers seek to satisfy customer wants and needs.  

Production Orientation

However, businesses don’t always embrace market orientation. The Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s was an example of production orientation. During that period, companies believed that the best way to compete was by reducing production costs, which means "good products would sell themselves". Ford’s production line made the automobile cheap and affordable for just about everyone was an example of production orientation.

Selling Orientation

From the 1920s until after World War II, companies tended to be selling orientation, which means it was necessary to push their products by advertising and sales

The Product Orientation

In the post–World War II environment, demand for goods increased as the economy soared. Some products, limited in supply during World War II, were surplus. Companies now have to do product innovation for product differentiation from their competition. 

As consumers had many choices available, the new challenge is to create what customers wanted. 

Therefore, leading to the development of the marketing concept. 

Service-Dominant Logic

Service-dominant logic is an approach to business that recognizes that consumers want value. 

Defining and labeling are difficult. Value and one-to-one are both natural extensions of the marketing concept, and still in the marketing era. 

Creating Offerings That Have Value

Marketing creates those goods and services that the company offers at a price to its customers or clients. It consists of the tangible good, the intangible service, and the price (the company’s offering). 

However, you can’t buy one manufacturer’s car, another manufacturer’s service, and a third manufacturer’s price when you actually make a choice. 

Marketing people do not create the offering alone. For instance, when the iPad was created, Apple’s engineers were also involved in its design. Apple’s financial personnel had to review the costs of producing the offering and provide input on how it should be priced. Apple’s managers needed to evaluate the manufacturing requirements the iPad would need. The dealers provided input regarding the service policies and warranty structure. 

Marketing has the most responsibility to ensure that it will deliver value.

Communicating Offerings

Communicating means describing the offering and its value to your potential and current customers and learning from customers what it is they want and like. Customers get a chance to tell the company what they think as well.

Delivering Offerings

Marketing can’t just promise value, it also has to deliver value. Value is delivered in part through a company’s supply chain. 

Exchanging Offerings

To communicating and deliver the benefits to consumers, we must do the actual transaction. 

In most instances, we consider the exchange to be cash for products and services. But, what if we pay with "cashback points" or something like that? The transactions would not require cash. 

When consumers acquire and consume products and services, exchange occurs. Like Apple’s “One-to-One” program, you can pay a yearly fee in exchange for additional periodic product training sessions with an Apple professional. 

The Disposing Services

Apple has a Web page where consumers can fill out a form and ship old devices to Apple. Apple then pulls out the materials that are recyclable.

Reference

Tanner, J. & Raymond, M.A. (2010). Principles of Marketing 2.0. Lardbucket.org. Licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0.

Cyber Crime Cases, Money Laundering, Bank Fraud, Malicious Agents, Advance Fee Fraud, Stock Robot Manipulation, Digital Piracy

Fake Websites

Fake websites have become increasingly pervasive it hurts people's trust and makes us doubt with each other. Also, the design and appearance of these websites makes it difficult for users to manually identify them as fake. In addition, it needs problem-specific knowledge. However, we can learn and developed to detect them by utilizing richer sets of fraud cues in combination with problem-specific knowledge.

Money Laundering

Money laundering means the legalizing proceeds of money from criminal acts and integrated these dirty money into the legal economy for the perpetrators can openly use it. 

Why? I think if you want to spend your money legally and publicly, you still need to guise it as if it is legal and clean. That's the basic rule of a medium of exchange, commonly acceptance and trust.

Money laundering involves moving the funds, disguising them, and making them available to the criminal again.

Bank Fraud

As the term "Bank" fraud, it is a criminal offense to defraud a financial institution by knowingly executing a scheme.

Advance Fee Fraud

Frauds are generally intentional misrepresentation, typically financial, and often carried out by white-collar.

Nigeria scam is a scam established by international scammers under the name of Nigeria. Because of Nigeria’s abundant oil and mineral resources, Nigeria’s economy has been relatively prosperous among African countries. Due to its corrupt bureaucracy and civil wars around its nearby countries, rich people want to secure and transfer their assets through a third party to a safe place. However, this is becoming a way for fraudsters to deceive all over the world and expanding quickly through the Internet.

Malicious Agents

A malicious agent is a computer program that operates as a potential intruder to attack a system, a network, or even remotely controlled such as a spying agent transmits sensitive information from the organization to a specific agent. 

Stock Robot Manipulation

Link a robotic computer program to a stock exchange to manipulate a stock-trading by performing real buying and selling orders where stocks were bought at low prices and sold at high prices. 

Digital Piracy

Digital piracy often refers to illegally duplicate digital assets such as software, digital documents, digital audio, and videos without permission. Moreover, the Internet facilitates digital piracy because the network allows crime to take place detached from the owner. 

So, I think if we want to secure our copyright, we can try to shrink the benefits of copy it. Never try to induce anyone or give anyone a strong motive. 

Reference

Garvin, M., III, W., & Williams, A. (2020, January 27). 2020 Intellectual Property Primer: Cases to Watch this Year. Retrieved January 05, 2021, from https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=2c7b42fb-aa04-4556-978c-110cd6bc4f7c

Gottschalk, P. (2010).  Policing Cyber Crime. Bookboon.

Intellectual Property Alert: 2020 Intellectual Property Primer: Cases to Watch this Year. (n.d.). Retrieved January 05, 2021, from https://www.vorys.com/publications-2481.html

Cyber Crime Defined, Click Frauds, Financial Computer Crime, and White-Collar Computer Crime

Cybercrime and computer crime are both related to Internet crime. The initial role of these technologies was to improve the efficiency and effectiveness by using them correctly. However, its side effects are computer crimes. It often means any violations of criminal law for piracy, data stealing, investigation, or any other crimes. And the economic damages will be also huge since we are more and more dependent on computers and the internet, to supply products and services. The Internet is a double-edged sword that provides many opportunities for goods and also for crimes. It has become a global issue and requires full cooperation at the international level.

Click Frauds

Click fraud is often designed to achieve some click targets fraudulently by programming or by hand and losing the original purposes of clicks. For instance, When you click on an ad displayed on a website, the advertiser typically pays a fee for each click. So, they are supposed to meet the advertisers' purpose, to direct potential buyers to their products.

Financial Computer Crime

Financial crime generally means crimes against property that are unlawful. Financial crimes are mostly profit-driven, involve frauds, and are labeled economic crimes sometimes. For instance, check frauds, credit card frauds, mortgage frauds, medical fraud, and insurance frauds are big issues these days. The victim range is from individuals to institutions, corporations, or even governments.

White-Collar Computer Crime

The theory of profit-driven crime for white-collar crime suggests that financial crimes are opportunity-driven. Basically, I agree with it. Because if every financial crime is profit-driven, it will become jobs for everyone, just like we do for livings.

White-collar crime can be defined in terms of the offense, the offender, or both, which means the people who are seen as white-collar, the things are considered as white-collar computer crimes or both. 

If defined in terms of both perspectives, it against a property for a personal or organizational benefit, plus highly educated and socially connected individuals, typically the persons of respectability who commit crime in the course of their occupation. From the victim's perspective, hacking was the most commonly reported computer crime incident. 

Reference

Gottschalk, P. (2010).  Policing Cyber Crime. Bookboon.

What is intellectual property? Why Is It A Valuable Asset for The Owner? How Are Intellectual Property Rights Acknowledged and Protected?

What is intellectual property? 

Intellectual property is a broad term that covers intangible assets and legally protected. It is summarized as all rights from the field of intellectual activities, an intangible property created by human wisdom, mainly involving copyright, patent, trademark, and other fields. Works of art in the form of music and literature, as well as discoveries, inventions, symbols, and designs, can be protected as intellectual property. 

Intellectual property rights can be divided into industrial property rights and copyrights. Industrial property rights include patents, trademarks, industrial designs, and geographical indications. Copyright, on the other hand, includes literary and artistic works.

Why Is It A Valuable Asset for The Owner? 

For business owners, businesses measure value in different ways such as client retention, return on investment, sales, revenues. Intellectual property consists of many different types of valuable assets owned by a company, For instance, trademarks, patents, and copyrights.

Although it’s an intangible asset, intellectual property can be far more valuable than a physical asset and provides a competitive advantage over competitors. Also, an organization with intellectual property assets can utilize it internally or by sharing it externally through royalty rights. In addition, intellectual property is an asset that can be licensed, sold, or assigned regardless of whether a company has a physical location. For instance, amid COVID-19, many physical storefronts struggle to keep their doors open. Without intellectual property protection, researchers and businesses would not get proper compensation for their creations. 

How Are Intellectual Property Rights Acknowledged and Protected?

It may sound very difficult or time-consuming, but it is worth to protect it. For copyright, there is no additional registration procedure to follow. The protection is free and automatic. 

However, copyright does not actually protect an idea itself. It is protected the way the idea has been represented such as brochures, presentations, or websites.

If you want to apply for a patent, registered design, or a trademark this can be done through intellectual property offices such as the UK intellectual property office, depends on where you want to do your business. Also, you can do it either on your own or find a patent solicitor. In addition, online resources like the Business & IP Centre has a number of business events and services that can help. 

Conclusion

A good thing is developed, usually because it targets to solve a problem and the solutions may indeed be very similar or even identical. This is the parallel creation or design. Because, in the same field, the problems are very similar and the principles of the application of technical methods are also the same. Therefore, we must confirm the plagiarism can really exist because of special correspondence and excluding the possibility of parallel creation. In any case, if plagiarism occurs, it is necessary to carefully examine it is protected by law or not.

The Madrid Agreement

The Madrid Agreement was concluded in 1891. By 2012, it had 56 members. The main purpose of this agreement is to simplify the trademark registration application procedures. For instance, after registered in a member country, it can apply for an international trademark registration based on the registered trademark. An application for international registration must designate one or more Contracting Parties in which protection is sought. 

Reference

Gottschalk, P. (2010).  Policing Cyber Crime. Bookboon.

Why Intellectual Property Is So Valuable To Businesses. (2020, June 17). Retrieved January 04, 2021, from https://feldman.law/news/why-intellectual-property-is-so-valuable-to-businesses/

Why you need to protect your Intellectual Property. (2015, July 21). Retrieved January 04, 2021, from https://www.bl.uk/business-and-ip-centre/articles/why-you-need-to-protect-your-intellectual-property