Business to Business Marketing

Todays lecture shows the difference between marketing to businesses as opposed to mass marketing.

According to Fill and Fill (2005) the B2B market for goods and services bought and sold is far larger than the consumer market. The business market includes many different types and sizes of organizations that cooperate and create relationships of different importance and duration.

There are different types of business organizations such as:

Government organisations
Health
Environmental protection
Education
Policing
Transport
National defence and security

Institutional organisations
Not-for-profit
Community-based organisations

Commercial organisations
Distributors
Original equipment manufacturers
Users
Retailers

When marketing B2B a lot of factors can effect the transaction.
Before the transaction is complete many months of planning and proposals maybe necessary to achieve the sale.
The decision making is more complex than competing in the consumer market.
To achieve this it is necessary for personal relationships to develop within both sales and technical representatives of both companies.



In B2B marketing it may be necessary to modify the product on offer to achieve a sale.
• Because there are fewer clients you cannot afford to lose any
• Because there is a lot of money and risk at stake you need to be able to build TRUST
• How can you do this?
• Advertising?
• Sales promotion?
• Face to Face?

FTPEPS varies from organization to organization.
F – Financial
T – Time
P – Performance
E – Ego
P – Physical
S – Social

All the above factors do not come in to play in every business transaction. As was mentioned earlier a close relationship needs to be established to ensure a successful sale. After sale follow up is most essential regarding product service, and warranty.

Culture

Culture is defined as:

`A culture is the configuration of learned behaviour and results of behaviour whose component elements are shared and transmitted by members of a particular society'. (Ralph Linton, 1945)

or `The way we do things around here'.

Culture is built on family, friends and teachers. Each person develops a culture under the influence of various people. This enables us to distinguish smaller groups within the general culture. This is apparent within organizations which tend to have a basic frame of organization that applies to everyone.

An example of how peoples perception can change due to World events. An example is the Second World War which involved most of Europe. Following an attack on Pearl Harbour changed the perceptions of the USA and dragged then in to European conflict.
Culture is represented by “the skin of an onion, indicating that symbols represent the most superficial and value the deepest manifestation of culture.”















Culture is made up of three essential components:
Beliefs: - mental and verbal processes which reflect our knowledge and assessment of products and services.
Values: - indicators consumers use as guides for what is appropriate behaviour, they tend to be relatively enduring and stable over time and widely accepted by members of a particular market.
Customs: - overt modes of behaviour that constitute culturally approved or acceptable ways of behaving in specific situations.
The cultural framework Terpstra and Sarathy 2000 helps marketers when launching a product on to international market. They need to assess cultural differences such as language, education, religion values and attitudes.

Go to: http://www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_international_marketing_culture.htm and find out more.

Four dimensions to explain variations in culture across national boundaries is explained by Geert Hofstede:

-Power distance (interpersonal relationships)
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Masculinity/femininity
- Individualism/collectivism

In the group I was associated with we prepared some information about Poland.
Poland has produced some famous people: Mikolaj Kopernik (famous scientist), John Paul II (Pope), Lech Walesa (Politician), Maria Curie-Sklodowska (chemist), Frideric Chopin(composer), Mariusz Pudzianowski (strongmen).
Popular national food:
Bigos (sauerkraut with bacon and sausage),
Kotlet Schabowy (pork chops with potatoes and salad on the side)
Chicken soup with pasta.
Main religion is Catholicism, and main values are family, hard working and patriotic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBkLZ0A5jf0

To conclude before marketing a product the company needs to have full information regarding the population, their preferences, any problems associated with the proposed product launch.

Social class

Todays lectures discussed social classes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mYY1QGK0jQ

Social class is a division of society made up of persons possessing certain common social characteristics which are taken to qualify them for intimate, equal status relations with one another, and which restrict their interaction with members of other social classes.
(Krech, Crutchfield & Ballachey in Dubois, 2000).

The lesson started with an example of social classes in ancient Greece:


















In comparison to the above class structure in Greece, British society can generally be divided into a three groups in the early 1900’s. Today there are more class groupings as shown below.


The main factor affecting these changes are:
- Social classes are easily changed upwards and downwards by marriage between classes.
- The introduction of a welfare state that can apply to any class depending on circumstances.
- Marriage frequently increases the income of the household thru both spouses working
- Classes have merged thru education being available to all, the availability of degree education is subject to a persons desire to self achieve.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuPxgSYBk6s


The following gives good indications of how social classes determine purchases:
• Social class is a better indicator of purchases that have a symbolic aspect but low to moderate prices e.g. cosmetics, liqueurs
• Income is a better indicator of purchase behavior for non-symbolic, high expenditure products e.g. fridge freezers
• Both social class & income data are needed to predict behavior with expensive & symbolic products e.g. cars, homes

In conclusion incomes and professions can cause a change in class structure i.e. a skilled engineer considered to be in skilled profession could in fact be earning more than someone in a higher class.

Marketing to Children

Marketers are aware that children are often the key to their parents money, by constantly nagging it is possible for them to influence their parents decision making. This is called pester power and can influence parents to buy advertised or fashionable items.

Advertisers spend 100s of billions of dollars a year worldwide encouraging, persuading and manipulating people into a consumer lifestyle that has devastating consequences for the environment through its extravagance and wastefulness. Advertising exploits individual insecurities, creates false needs and offers counterfeit solutions. It fosters dissatisfaction that leads to consumption. Children are particularly vulnerable to this sort of manipulation (Beder, 2009).

During the course lecture a interesting TV programme was shown relating children’s attitudes to media and modern advertising. In the title of the programme a key phrase was ‘children grow older younger’ which marketing has realised that children of a very young age are able to recognize the most popular brands such as Coca-Cola, Fish-Fingers, Barbie and did not recognize or show interest in brands they had not tried.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L01zf0aQvxQ

Another subject was about Piaget's theory which is based on the idea that the developing child builds cognitive structures–in other words, mental “maps”, schemes, or networked concepts for understanding and responding to physical experiences within his or her environment.

More about Piaget's Theory you can find on: http://www.funderstanding.com/content/piaget