Connecting With Consumers
Book

Connecting With Consumers

Marketing For New Marketplace Realities

Allan J. Kimmel
Oxford UP, 2010
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Editorial Rating

6

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Recommendation

While replowing much of the same landscape as other social media marketing guides, this academic treatise offers two appealing, redeeming features: numerous fresh examples of campaigns which illustrate specific tactics and, for the academically inclined, an extensive bibliography of market research papers and articles. Professor of marketing Allan J. Kimmel focuses on how new media change the practice of marketing, but his presentation suffers from repetition and overuse of labels and diagrams. Perhaps this is the byproduct of the deluge of marketing research and new theories that drive the advertising business. getAbstract recommends this well-researched book to research-driven marketers, academics and marketing researchers.

Summary

Consumer Power

Contemporary consumers control the marketplace. They no longer passively receive marketing messages and then purchase goods. They connect with other consumers and, in the process, assume more control over product development, modifications, distribution, and even pricing. The driving force behind this shift is the increased social communication available through the Internet and other social media devices. Connected consumers transfer power from product providers to other consumers. This happens through word of mouth, but guerilla, mobile and viral techniques accelerate its force. Some practitioners call these techniques “participant” or “engagement” marketing, which means that marketers no longer can simply address consumers; they must converse with them.

This marks a dramatic shift from the “selling concept,” which occurred when companies pushed items through their distribution channels to consumers. Companies used aggressive sales techniques such as price-cutting or increased advertising to drive demand. In contrast, the “marketing concept” evaluates customers’ needs and creates products that satisfy those needs faster or better than the competition...

About the Author

Allan J. Kimmel is professor of marketing at ESCP Europe Business School.

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