As the variety of media outlets continues to grow, not only with new types of media, but with continually expanding twists on the media stalwarts of television and newspaper, the need of marketers to adapt their methods of reaching consumers is ever increasing. The article “The Vanishing Mass Market”, which appeared in Business Week on July 12, 2004, does an excellent job of identifying both the winners and losers in the shift from “mass production into mass customization” in the marketing and advertising arenas.
As Kotler’s Chapter 8 clearly identifies, marketers have always attempted to segment their markets, and this concept is certainly not a recent development. However, with the current plethora of newer, more specialized media outlets, segmenting a consumer base has become more efficient than ever before. Of course, both the article and the text mention P&G, and especially their product Tide, and many people still see this type of company as a mass marketer. The new claim is that it is anything but. Companies such as McDonald’s and P&G, both darlings for marketing analysis, are spending the same or even less as they have in the past on marketing, but reaping greater rewards for their advertising investments. This is, in part, explained by the fact that the media outlets and technology available to reach increasingly segmented markets have finally caught up to the desire of marketers to use the theories of market segmentation in their purest form. Now, when a company desires to segment geographically, demographically, pscyhographically, or behaviorally, there is almost a guarantee there is a cable station, specialty magazine, or newsletter that will almost directly reach the particular target market.
The most interesting consequence of this shift to customized advertising, especially by the traditional mass marketers, is that there are both winners and losers. First, the winners: marketers themselves, specific cable channels, and new forms of targeted custom print media all benefit. Advertisers receive more value for their dollar, cable channels can reap the rewards of providing a direct link to their specific viewer base, and custom print media can do the same. The losers become the television giants ABC, NBC, and CBS, some large marketing agencies, and national/city newspapers. As advertisers continue to realize they only need mass marketing advertising space such as multi-million dollar superbowl spots or full page ads in major newspapers to build new brands, these media outlets will definitely suffer. They will be forced to drastically change their value proposition to gain new large-scale advertisers on a consistent basis. The question becomes, can they ever convince major marketing spenders such as the McDonald’s and P&G’s of the world to send more of their advertising dollars back to these traditional advertising mediums?
Finally, this major marketing shift is further complicated when the company in question is a “global firm” (Kotler 596). As advertisers move farther and farther into markets across the world, the number of segmented markets drastically increases, forcing these companies to create extremely complex strategic marketing plans that cater to significant numbers of target markets. Their segmentation strategies have to delve even further into demographics, including race and culture. Thus, it could be argued that the cost would drastically rise for global marketing as it shifts to greater degrees of customization. In the end, the shift is inevitable, and marketing departments will hopefully increase their efficiency to the point that segmenting strategies can be duplicated for other countries, even if the are changes due to cultural issues.
