On 20 May, Martin Liu, Professor in Marketing and Innovation and Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Exchange at NUBS China, gave a public lecture at the Ningbo Library to explain in detail the yesterday, today and tomorrow of marketing.
Stage 1: Marketing equals sales
In the opinion of Professor Martin Liu, Zhuge Liang who is a historical figure from China’s Three Kingdoms period was very good at marketing. In that ancient period, media tools were not developed and the most effective marketing tools were people. It was through his fellow disciples and friends that Zhuge Liang was able to spread the message of "One of the two, Wolong and Fengchu, can secure the world", which led to the familiar story of "Three visits to the thatched cottage" (sangumaolu) which is a Chinese idiom to mean inviting someone with great sincerity to take up a task. This is actually a process of marketing that involves the transmission of a message and persuasion.
Modern marketing was born during the Industrial Revolution. At the beginning of this period, products were still scarce and consumer choice was limited, but as technology advanced and products became more abundant, consumer demand became more diverse and the market became more competitive. As a result, companies began to pay more attention to marketing.
Ford Motor Company is a good example. The company increased efficiency and achieved mass production of cars on its production line, but Ford initially produced only one car model which was only available in black. At the time, there were relatively few other car manufacturers and the product was in short supply, so as long as there was production, Ford cars would still be sellable. Later, as competition increased and consumers had more choices, marketing became important.
In the early stages of marketing, it was still largely sales-oriented. Companies used various strategies to market their products, including unethical tactics such as cheating. For example, doctors selling cigarettes were an unethical marketing tactic. Today, sales-oriented marketing still exists, for example, the current trend of selling directly to consumers through live streaming. However, direct sales practices, while helpful for sales, do not necessarily help build brands.
Stage 2: Telling the brand story
One sign of the evolution of marketing from sales-oriented to market-oriented marketing is the increase in brand influence. However, building a brand is not an easy task. In Ningbo, for example, many people use Amazon for cross-border e-commerce, but it is not easy to build a brand for the national export of goods in this way. Building a brand needs to be cumulative and requires a process of telling a story in order to differentiate it from the competition.
In China, Starbucks is a very successful example of a brand. Starbucks has been in the Chinese market for only a decade or so, but for the company, China has already become one of its largest markets, with nearly half of the market share. At the beginning of its entry into the Chinese market, some people thought that Starbucks would not be successful in China because the country is a tea-drinking nation. However, Starbucks succeeded not because it just sold coffee, but because it created a special brand image in its marketing that attracted the attention of Chinese consumers.
With the emergence of the leisure class, luxury consumer behaviour also began to show itself. Storytelling, therefore, became an important means of building a brand and differentiating the competition.
In 1899, the phenomenon of luxury consumption was already present in China. For instance, some people wore hats by Ma Juyuan and silk clothes by Ruifuxiang. After consumption became a form of class division, market-oriented marketing, intending to formulate and target market segmentations, gave rise to consumerism. In the development of market-oriented marketing, companies had to tell marketing stories that captured the attention of consumers to meet their needs and desires.
With the development and transformation of the economy, consumers are increasingly interested in brands, and consumption is no longer simply an act of satisfying needs through products, but of satisfying psychological desires. Thus, in a market-oriented process, the rise of consumerism began to satisfy human desires rather than needs, which entailed differentiating between needs and desires. The birth of consumerism also brought with it the concept of product renewal iteration, which meant that consumers needed to constantly update and upgrade their products, a clear manifestation of consumerism.
The third stage of marketing is relationship marketing. In this stage, companies need to build a deeper relationship with their target customers. The emergence of digital media provides companies with more opportunities to tell stories to their target customers, shape their brand image and create deep-rooted concepts through digital means. Coca-Cola, for instance, successfully linked itself to the concept of family reunion and fun at Christmas, creating a successful marketing model.
In today's digital age, companies need to integrate all available marketing channels, including digital channels and social media, to achieve more sophisticated marketing as the strategy of platform marketing has become increasingly important. At the same time, big data marketing has become an important tool in the digital age, allowing companies to develop more accurate marketing content and further enhance marketing effectiveness by understanding consumers' browsing habits and needs.
In digital marketing, companies need to guide consumers to their shops and then convert this to make sales. Digital marketing also emphasises the integration of online and offline. For example, a Korean animation company achieved its marketing objectives by creating an animated film to highlight traffic safety, which resulted in free traffic to their digital platforms.
However, the biggest problem with using mobile phones and tablets in the digital marketing scenario is data is easily collected. As we leave a lot of information on the internet, we can offer companies a number of ways to optimise their sales leads. Companies can conduct predictive analyses on the data we provide and thus carry out more precise marketing.
For example, with the Double Eleven Day online shopping festival, everyone saw a different page on their digital media because the data analysis behind it drove this. Digital data allows companies to conduct more accurate data analysis to better understand our needs and provide a better experience so that we want to spend more time undergoing this better experience. As a result, we will spend increasingly more time using our mobile phones and tablets.
Another trend is virtualisation. With the development of digital technology, we have entered an era where we have gone from humans to virtual people. On the internet, we see not necessarily real people, but virtual characters. Virtual characters are used in a wide variety of scenarios, including entertainment, live-streaming goods, gaming and news. At the same time, the lines between reality and virtual and augmented reality are becoming increasingly blurred. Digital marketing technology presents many new challenges, as marketing may have a far greater impact on us than we realise.
Ultimately, the goal of marketing itself has not changed, but digital technology has changed the process of marketing. Digital marketing also faces many ethical and legal challenges. Therefore, in the age of digital marketing, we need to focus on the legality, fairness and integrity of marketing practices and avoid companies that act unethically to make money.