Marketing, People, and Interaction

Marketing, People, and Interaction

• Marketing involves people acting together, interacting, collaborating, and engaging in social activities in various contexts.
• Overproduction led to the need for expanded knowledge in marketing, incorporating consumer behavior, perception, cognition, and strategy.
• Service-dominant logic suggests service marketing, with its focus on interactions, represents the dominant logic for all marketing.

Service Marketing

• Services are intangible and often involve simultaneous production and consumption.
• The interaction between customer and service provider determines perceived quality.

Relationship Marketing

• Focuses on relationships between a production and its environment as key to planning and management.
• Relationships are stable and mutual bonds developed over time between actors.
• A relationship marketer works with market, mega, and nano-relationships.
• Market relationships involve customers, suppliers, distributors, and competitors.
• Mega-relationships involve decision-makers, opinion leaders, politicians, researchers, experts, and journalists.
• Nano-relationships involve the internal organization, owners, investors, internal customers, and advertising agencies.
• One-to-one marketing aims to develop unique relationships with stakeholders.
• Network marketing emphasizes studying and managing interactions with surrounding companies and institutions; relationships between producers are central.
• Networks are the sum of a company's external relationships.
• Varying degrees of strength and dependency exist within a network, creating different bonds:
  • Technical bonds arise from adapting technology and equipment.
  • Temporal bonds involve coordinating production or logistics.
  • Knowledge bonds consist of understanding each other's competencies and needs.
  • Economic bonds consist of agreements, contracts, and arrangements.
  • Social bonds arise from informal relationships between company representatives.
• Value arises in complex relationships between multiple actors.
• Brand management involves working with various relationships.
• Consumer relationships with brands are less important than the social links between consumers drawn to the same brands.
• Marketing management emphasizes planning, management, and control:

Fundamental Marketing Management Concepts

• market
• consumer
• product and brand
• price and value
• place
• advertising

Symbolic Interactionism

• Symbolic interactionism studies the interplay between the individual and society, viewing society as ongoing social interactions and relationships.
• Emphasizes the importance of symbols like words, facial expressions, and body language in social interaction.
• Human responses depend on the interpretation of behavior.
• Themes within symbolic interactionism:

The Social Human

• Sociality distinguishes human life; humans exist as social beings.
• Social interaction is a prerequisite for individual existence.
• The self emerges through social interaction.

Interactions and Collaboration

• Interaction is a mutual action and interpretation between individuals.
• Everyday interactions form the backbone of society.
• Stable objects are repeated interactions and collaborations.
• Implicit and explicit rules govern behavior in various situations.

The Interpreting Human and Situational Definitions

• Socialization teaches the meaning of things and how the world works.
• Interpretations guide actions and decisions.
• Meaning is created by people and differs between groups.
• Interpretation is determined by the interpreter's perspective, needs, and interests.

Symbols

• Symbols require interpretation
• Language is the most common symbol system.
• Symbols include signs, signals, images, body language, and objects.
• A symbolic action builds on an interpretation.
• Non-symbolic actions are reflex responses.

Characteristics of a Symbol:

• Meaningful: Refers to something beyond itself.
• Social: Meaning results from agreements in specific contexts.
• Arbitrary: Meaning isn't fixed or obvious.
• Symbols are created and recreated through interaction.
• Interpretation depends on the context.

Relationships

• Things and people become meaningful only in relation to each other.
• Understanding the world means understanding relationships.
• Society is a complex network of relationships.
• Deviant behavior is defined in relation to what is normal.

The Market

• Actors adapt actions to each other through mutual interpretation.
• "The market" is a central marketing concept that's difficult to define due to the variety across contexts.
• It's often described as a meeting place for exchanging goods, services, and production factors.
• The market can be a place or a group of buyers.
• Markets exist as external objects for marketers to study and process.

Reified View:

• Segmentation: Dividing the market into groups with different characteristics.
• Targeting: Focusing on groups with potential for relationships.
• Positioning: Positioning the company relative to competitors.

Market as Collaboration

• A market emerges through actors’ actions and reactions, for example, an auction.

Market as a Type of Relationship

• Relationships build on preconditions and definitions that set the framework for interactions.
• These relationships differ from friendships due to explicit goals.
• Market relationships regulate through law and contracts rather than trust.

Market as an Organizing Principle

• Activities are organized with flexibility rather than stable routines.
• Actors adapt to the "orderer".
• The market is not a natural force but a consequence of social interaction.
• Markets consist of people acting together based on interpretations of the world.

The Consumer

• Consumers relate to their environment and connect what they have to who they are.
• Marketing strategies should be customer-driven and exceed expectations.
• Purchasing behavior is described through sequential models.
• Decisions arise from depleted resources or new ideal states.

The Psychologized Consumer

• Decisions are based on individual reasons, using logical processes.
• Consumers have inner feelings that are the basis for decision-making.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Physiological needs
• Safety needs
• Need for belonging
• Esteem
• Self-actualization
• Lower levels must be satisfied before higher levels.

The Consumer According to Symbolic Interactionism

• This offers a way to understand consumer behavior, rather than view humans as purely psychological beings.

The Consumer as a Product

• Consumers are a product of social interaction.
• Individuals are effects of social life and human relationships.
• Individuals adapt to perceived expectations.

Social Consumer

• Consumption is a part of society and what binds humans.

Shopping as Socializing

• Consumption signals who we are and want to be.
• Consumers can be divided based on economic resources and need for status:
• Proletariat: Lacks finances and need for recognition.
• Posers: Lack finances but need status.
• Nouveau Riche: Have finances and need to show and increase status.
• Patricians: Have finances but don't show it.
• Brands mark social belonging, with different uses based on the above.

The Relative Consumer

• Meaning of consumption is defined in relation to other consumption.
• Consumption of others impacts individual consumption.
• Taste is socially defined in relation to other consumers' expressions.

Products and Brands

• Products used for purposes other than their original design shows that, the meaning of a product is negotiable.

Products and Brands from a Marketing Management Perspective

• The product is the starting point and hub of all marketing activities.
• Marketing involves bringing the product from producer to consumer.

Marketing Mix (4 Ps)

• Product: Anything offered for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption to satisfy a want/need.
• Price.
• Promotion.
• Place
• Distinction is made between product and brand, but often brand becomes the center of marketing.
• Product development materializes the brand's symbolic world.

The Product According to Symbolic Interactionism

• Products come into being through social interaction.

Interpreting Product

• Products are interpreted objects that gain meaning through use.
• Products exist only when understood and used as such by people.

Social Product

• Products come into being through social interaction.
• Products are consumed together or in relation to other people.
• Insight is gained into how products grant status.
• Mercedes and Skoda example of differing status of cars
• Products are social objects and a means for social interaction.
• Social life takes the form of product consumption.
• Product choices signal distance from those we don't want to be associated with.
• Products symbolize belonging and distance, which have become significant for identification.

Fashion as Interaction

• Fashion highlights taste and trendiness over quality and function.

Price and Value

• Price enables comparisons between goods, and the relationship between price and demand is the price elasticity.
• Value-based pricing is based on understanding value for customers.
• Cost-based pricing is based on production cost plus markup.
• Competition-based pricing is based on competitors' pricing.

Price and Value According to Symbolic Interactionism

• Price and value exist in relationships and specific contexts.

Price-Value Relationship

• A set price represents the true value of a good or service.
• Value is an experience, while price captures value in a number.
• Pricing makes goods comparable.
• The price is tied to all other goods, making the value-price relationship difficult to unravel.

Symbolism of Price

• High price signals exclusivity, which leads to the perception of worth.

Value’s Dependence on Situation and Context

• Diminishing marginal utility is, greater utility is derived from the first unit. For example, the first drink when thirsty is more satisfying than the second, third, etc.
• Value is tied to context.

Price as a (Forgotten) Encounter

• The price comes into being between two parties
• The price is a consequence of the exchange between seller and buyer.
• The meeting of supply and demand results in an equilibrium price.
• A price tag is a negotiation, even though we are usually expected to agree to pay what’s on the tag.

Place

Place from a Marketing Management Perspective

• The activities a company uses to make products available to consumers.

Place According to Symbolic Interactionism

• A place exists as an event: it emerges between people.

Places as Interactions and Collaboration

• A store becomes a store when customers and employees use it as a store through collaboration.
• A required shared understanding, for people to relate to each other
• IKEA in Peking is an example of visitors perceiving IKEA as an amusement park rather than a store.

Staged Places

• Places require people who interact in a certain way.
• Different stages require different roles.
• Restaurants and stores are created through ritualized interactions.

Negotiation and Challenging of Place

• City branding enhance the image of a city.
• Associating companies with a place to leverage associations gives leverage.

Advertising

Advertising from a Marketing Management Perspective

• A tool marketers use to influence perceptions and attract attention to lead to a purchase. .

Advertising According to Symbolic Interactionism

• This can help us understand the social nature and how it plays a role in social situations.

Advertising as Production of Dissatisfaction

• Advertising creates a relationship between what we lack and what consumption willprovide.
• Advertising creates dissatisfaction, unmet needs, and a feeling of lacking.
• Failed advertising does not create an underlying feeling of dissatisfaction.

Advertising as a Culture Producer

• Advertising creates values and notions of who we are and how we should relate to each other.
• Forms a share in a culture.
• The family is a common advertising theme.
• Advertising reinforces notions of gender relating to appearance and beauty.

Advertising as an Interaction Catalyst

• Advertising acts as a resource for talk in social situations.
• Processing an advertising message increases likelihood of influence.
• Advertising can create social situations between people.
• It impacts how we think about gender, family, career, and success.

Conclusion

The Troublesome Interactionist

• How a company wants to be perceived is not always how they are perceived.

Dehumanized Marketing

• It is important to prioritize marketing interactions within a society rather than next to a society. A society consists of people who live and interact with each other.

Can Social Relationships and Events Be Controlled? The Death of the Marketer?

• Control builds on a view that causal relationships can be manipulated.
• Symbolic interactionism helps distinguish nature and society.
• Humans react to their interpretations of the world.
• Social phenomena are difficult to predict.

One can try to set frameworks for interaction, but it's impossible to control encounters.

• Spontaneity makes actions unpredictable.

Should One Control People’s Social Lives? Humane Marketing?

• Ethics are important.
• Business ethics regards a company's actions toward the outside world.
• Ethics should characterize relationships between people.
• Whether a company is ethical depends on its relationships, not actions.
• Marketing creates instrumental relationships with the outside world.
• Relationships with the outside world should be less instrumental.
• Humane marketing views stakeholders as fellow humans rather than adversaries.
• The objective to is recognize that other people are also human.