Digital Marketing and the 7Ps Marketing Model

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Digital Marketing
For the past one decade, marketing sector has undergone a tremendous transformation, largely because of the emergence of new technologies and how people perceive products. First, the marketing tools that were in use ten years ago are no longer preferred nowadays. For instance, most companies in the 2000s utilised mass media, including television, radio, and newspaper to promote their products and services (Ma and Du 2018, p. 5). Consequently, they were only able to reach a limited number of potential consumers because most of these media were not global and were highly expensive. In the current marketing, with the invention of the internet and contemporary media platforms, companies have shifted to social media as the main tools for promoting their brands, products, and services (Voorveld et al. 2018, p. 38).
Today, almost all businesses have various social media accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Tumblr among others (Voorveld et al. 2018, p. 38). In addition to social media, businesses are exploiting other strategies such as advertising their products and services on sites such as the company’s websites and emails. Another change that has been witnessed in marketing is that customers are expecting to be involved in almost all business operations, including marketing. Unlike in the past when people were just seen as passive consumers, today they expect to get the attention of someone on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform (Stephen 2016, p 20). For instance, once a business advertises a particular product in one of social media platforms, customers usually ask several questions about the product. Therefore, for effective marketing, businesses must actively engage the potential consumers. Today’s marketing is more about how consumers perceive the company’s brand, promoting products, and services everywhere, irrespective of the market segment and strong campaigns and PR.
Digital marketing is different from traditional marketing in a number of ways, such as the ability to reach a higher number of people within a short period (Harms et al. 2017, p. 85). Today, most people have an account in one of the above social media platforms and spend a considerable amount of time surfing. Thus, they are most likely to get a particular message about the business than when using traditional mass media. What is intriguing about social media is that they are all global, which makes it easier to promote the business’s brand all over the world. Also, unlike traditional marketing strategies that consumed hefty amounts of money, digital marketing is the most cost-effective in promoting the brand of a business. In the past, small companies could not keep up with larger business for advertisement space in newspapers, televisions, and radios. Today, both have reaped huge benefits since most of the social media platforms are free and have a high number of users, increasing the possibility of tapping new consumers (Kannan 2017, p. 25). Now, small companies can expose their products or services to more people for a lesser fee than they could using traditional media. The other difference between traditional mass media marketing and digital marketing is that the latter has an increased ability to target business’s ideal consumers. In the past, a business purchased ad space in a newspaper or magazine and hoped that the message would reach the intended audience. With digital marketing, users just need to perform a few clicks and find the content they are searching for. Also, it is possible to measure the results of online marketing. Using web analytics and other internet metric apparatuses, a company can establish how effective promotion has been because it is possible to obtain detailed information on how buyers use website and social media platforms (Yasmin et al. 2015, p. 72).
The 7Ps
The 7Ps is a marketing model that consists of seven elements that are crucial in appraising or analysing the market a business operates in or would like to venture into. The 7Ps model was originally formulated by Jerome McCarthy in 1960 in his book known as Basic Marketing. A Managerial Approach (Eavani and Nazari 2012, p. 9916). The contents of the model include Product, Place, People, Price, Promotion, Process, and Physical evidence. Product element of the model addresses the range of products and services offered by a company. Also, it entails various technologies used to produce a variety of products. The Price component deals with the pricing system and how prices differ with other companies impact sales. The Promotion element involves assessment of advertising strategies, promotion brochures, discounts, and loyalty schemes (Walletzkэ 2014, p. 3859). Place element entails aspects such as the location of business and ease of access. The process examines the type of technology being used and how a business can rate the ability to produce. Physical evidence includes customer satisfaction rates, awards, among other things. Finally, People component describes the number of staff, the skills they possess, leadership, and remuneration. The 7Ps model is crucial in supporting decision-making because various aspects of the business can be assessed using the model (Yasanallah and Bidram 2012, p. 194). Performing a comprehensive analysis using 7Ps can help businesses decide on which objectives best suit them. The model can also help a business to conduct SWOT and competitive analysis. Following these analyses, a company can decide whether to continue targeting the same consumer, add a new component to their current product, change the price of the product, adopt new distribution tactics or embrace new methods of brand promotion (Lin 2011, p. 10638).
Although the 7Ps model has several benefits such as helping the business in making crucial decisions about various business operations, it has a number of drawbacks. One of the major limitations of the 7Ps model is that it lacks the ability to address issues associated with productivity regarding quality and quantity of service delivery (Samani et al. 2017, p. 18). For effective services management, it is crucial to improve productivity during service to minimize the overall cost of management. Quality, however, as defined by the consumer, is crucial for a particular service to distinguish itself from other businesses. The two factors, quantity, and quality, are basically opposite to one another regarding goals. A company would prefer pursuing a strategy that promotes minimization of cost but maintains high quality. Therefore, a strategy that minimizes conflicts between these two aspects of services should be optimized, and the 7Ps framework has not been able to address this problem. Likewise, the 7Ps model has not been able to address the issue of management of basic competencies embedded within a business (Samani et al. 2017, p. 18). Typically, services are intangible, and processes such as service delivery only concentrate on a small portion of the entire issue. Using the 7Ps model does not allow matching of core competencies, which is one of the fundamental pillars in developing strategic frameworks. Further, the model does not consider consumers as active members of a business and therefore does not allow their interaction with the firm’s staff, which makes it difficult to establish meaningful relationships (Samani et al. 2017, p 18).
The Purchase Behaviour of Generation Z
Generation Z (Gen Z) is made up of individuals born after 1998, meaning that they are all 20 years or younger. This generation is anticipated to account for approximately 40% of all consumers by 2020, which is equivalent to $44 billion and is thus considered as the next consumer powerhouse by economists (Littleton, 2018). Also, about 93% of parents indicate that their Gen Z offspring influence how they spend on household items.
The spending behaviour of Gen Z is different from that of its predecessor, the Millennials, in many aspects such as preferences to shopping tools, product quality, and marketing strategies (Smith 2011, p. 491). For instance, Gen Z consists of individuals born in the digital era, who are using various electronic gadgets such as smartphones, computers, and laptops to conduct various activities. It has been estimated that nearly 74% of people in this generation take over two hours surfing on social media platforms (Littleton, 2018). They are more likely to search for and order products and services online than previous generations. They use computers and smartphones to research goods before making purchase decisions. Gen Z shares experiences and looks for brands that match their ambitions and values. Research indicates that the probability of generation Z consumers to conduct research online before making a purchase will continue increasing by 5% per year (Priporas et al. 2017, p. 378). Subsequently, businesses that anticipate tapping this massive market must shift their services online, including promotion of the brand, products and services, sales, and feedback system. Consequently, Companies have a responsibility of providing mobile shoppers sufficient information concerning all products they are offering to convince them to purchase, even if the company is only offering brick-and-mortar buying services (Priporas et al. 2017, p. 378). Nevertheless, it is worth to note that although Z’s are rich in information, they are poor in wallet and marketers should design their promotion strategies to suit their needs.
More of individuals in Gen Z are more likely to shop online as opposed to brick-and-mortar shopping. Therefore, companies expecting to exploit its purchasing power should launch online purchasing websites like those of retail giants such as Amazon and Alibaba. The companies should move their business online and use social media to promote their products and services and provide links for such products in their purchasing website. The use of purchasing websites means that a company must be ready to offer courier services because individuals of Gen Z expect the company to ferry goods from their stores to the customers. In the future, a successful business will be the one that combines brick-and-mortar store, logistics, marketing, and online shopping to a single fluent structure.
It is crucial to understand how teens behave online, which is crucial to formulating effective online and selling strategies. Offering online services is not enough as far as Gen Z is concerned, efficiency is all that matters, and many individuals in this generation state that finding things faster is a fundamental shopping aspect for them. They tend to avoid the websites and applications that load slowly and the ones that are difficult to navigate. Retailers should make sure that their online resources are intuitive and run smoothly.
The traditional consumer behaviour theory states that satisfaction from consuming a product is largely influenced by its intrinsic utility (Katona 1968, p. 20). In part, the purchase behaviour of generation Z is in line with the traditional consumer behaviour theory because individuals in this generation are more inclined to consuming goods from the companies offering high-quality products and services. For example, as indicated earlier, Z’s are more likely to research products and services offered by various companies to identify the ones with high-quality goods. Also, they are less likely to use websites that load slowly and are difficult to navigate. In the other parts, the purchasing behaviour of Gen Z individuals is not in line with this theory because the theory does not consider the fact that in some circumstances, the pleasure of consumption of a product can be influenced by the consumption choice of other buyers or by social status attainable through that choice since social interactions among customers can result in consumption externalities (Katona 1968, p. 20).
Role of Marketing in Sustainable Businesses
A sustainable business also referred to as green business is a firm whose operations have minimal grievous effects on the local or global environment, community, and economy (Kumar et al. 485). Usually, a sustainable company has progressive and strong environmental and human rights policies. Therefore, green business is the one that integrates the principles of sustainability into its crucial business activities such as production, marketing, and sales. The sustainability subject has been discussed for several decades now, but customers are more concerned with sustainable business practices more than ever. They are more concerned with how products sold by a particular company contribute to environmental conservation or promotes their cultural and health values (Seretny and Seretny 2012, p. 64; Peattie and Belz 2013, p. 6). Businesses can take advantage of marketing to promote their sustainability course. Nowadays, consumers are more environmentally conscious than ever and are ready to only consume goods from businesses that promote and practice sustainability. Therefore, marketing sustainability has a huge potential to help a business keep or attract more customers, whose mindsets are inclined towards environmental conservation, social welfare, and economic growth.
Various promotion strategies may play a huge role in encouraging sustainability, and every business must strive to apply them in their marketing activities (Kumar et al. 2012, p. 603; Noo-urai and Jaroenwisan 2016, p. 116). Advertising is one of the promotion metho...