The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales - Essay Example

Advertising Campaign Name: Institution: Date of submission: Advertising Campaign With the increasing levels of globalization resulting from liberalization of markets, efficient flow of information and integration of economies, the level of competition in the market has increased tremendously. This is because of the entry of multinational companies which have huge financial base that enables them to position their products strategically in the markets, segment the market and attract customer loyalty towards the products. This aspect has pushed some businesses out of the market because they have been unable to stage a stiff competition against these companies which have high experience from various markets. In order for Australia to retain its tourism, it needs to diversify its operation. Wine tourism will offer a good alternative. Effective marketing and branding of Australian wine will see the number of tourists in the country increase tremendously. Branding is more qualitative rather than quantitative. It could be a sign, a symbol, term, design or name or a combination of them that is intended to distinguish the goods of one manufacturer from those of another manufacturer. It is aimed towards making products and services unique. This can be carried out through advertising campaigns but with an unswerving theme. Branding should be aimed at attracting customers and retaining them. It should not be aimed at convincing the customers to choose a country over another, but at getting your forecasts to view the country as the only solution to the problem at hand. For branding to be efficacious, the wants and the needs of the consumer have to be kept in mind. There is a variety of objectives achieved via branding: motivation of the buyer, user loyalty is concreted, credibility is confirmed, the message is delivered clearly, and the target forecasts are connected emotionally. In marketing communication, it is referred to as a foundational piece. The current problem can be resolved through rebranding of the Australian wine. The goal for branding will be to attain the long-term competitive advantage hence it is both a marketing and financial concept. It is more of a qualitative term rather than the thought of it as being related to the product thus, it is immaterial. It is an idea that is altering and translates the tangible to something that is of value. The old notion of marketing involving the product has been outdone by the fact that the brand name has taken over the market. Basically, marketing relies on the brand name. The brand name wins over the loyalty of customers in a market. Research has it that brand is more than a logo or a name, but it is the relationship with a customer. A brand name conveys a variety of ideas, possibly: a thought, emotion, mind, heart, feeling, a phrase, or a word (Ghose & Yang, 2009. This depends on what is to be communicated to the customers. The mind and the heart of a customer gets what the marketers want them to get via the branding name. People may buy brands based on image, awareness, knowledge, experience, trust, perception, feelings, and the perceived quality. The campaign should target international market. International advertising involves conveying the message to target audiences in different countries. Audiences of target differ from country to another depending on their response to emotional appeals or humors, interpretation and perception of signs and symbols, the language spoken and the literacy levels too. The organization of the advertising function varies with a firm. Multinational firms have advertising decisions and budgets centralized and use similar or a limited number of advertising agencies worldwide (Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2003). Decentralization of budgets and placed in the hands of local subsidiaries is practiced and hence a wide use of local advertising agencies. International advertising is a communication process carried out in many cultures that differ in communication styles, consumption patterns, and values. It is a business activity that involves advertising agencies, and advertisers who create advertisements and buy media in different countries. Marketing and advertising are about the consumer rather than the producer. Therefore before, any advertising or marketing plan is implemented, the focus should be on the consumer’s interests. The gap between the two logics is being bridged by the market research; nevertheless its excellence depends on the ability that the producer will think in terms of customer (Fogel & Nehmad, 2009). Branding has affected international advertising in a great way as stated by proponents of the Levitt theory, “developing powerful advertising that crosses international borders, cutting across all lines of values, culture, customs, race, religion, mores, and nationality. The brand identity may be global thus worldwide recognition of the same, but the product may not be standard for all the products. An example is the Knorr soup and sauces. The brand is the same but the products are composed of local contents. Although branding identity is global, the products names, signs, and symbols may not be similar in all the countries but the characteristics are the same. Branding can be termed as a key point for reconfiguring of the existing process of production. It is believed to mediate the product’s supply and demand through the integration, co-ordination, and organization of the use of information (Constantinides & Stagno, 2011). The relationship may be changed if new ideas, feelings, thoughts, mind and heart are incorporated in fresh brand names. The brand name should reflect the present need of customers in the market. Since the beginnings of trade, advertising has been part of the economies of scale. The oldest advertisement written was a Babylonian tablet requesting the return of a slave 3000 years ago. Prior to the newspapers, the modes of advertising were broadsides affixed to walls, shop signs, trees or posts across all streets. A new age of commercial communication was ushered in by the movable type of printing. Lately, there are variety of advertising media like the search webs and the social media where the adverts are placed in the media that marketers prefer. When consumers search the web they receive a consistent branding message despite their location. During this period, the emphasis of advertising was on the product’s performance, price, and construction (Fenwick & Wertime, 2013). The advertisement aimed at familiarizing the newspaper reader with national brand. As a result, when selecting the appropriate media to use in advertising the wine, cost, and the audience will be important aspects to consider. This will be crucial in ensuring that the message reaches the target market. Cultural imperialism is a practice of separating, distinguishing, promoting, and temporarily injecting the language or culture of one country into another. This has promoted international advertising as it is a form of cultural influence different from other forms by the use of force. International advertising and cultural imperialism share the fact that they are widely spread. International advertising involves marketing of products in the local place of production and also in other countries in the world. Cultural imperialism seeks to inject the culture of one nation to another. It is through cultural imperialism that the Australian culture has been successful to infiltrate France and china market. The modes of advertising have been adversely affected. The major group targeted is the youth group who are vulnerable to technology. Countries (France and China) have tried to resist the cultural imperialism of Australia by restricting the access of the cultural programming of America (Edelman, 2007). Cultural imperialism assists in a great way through standardization in advertising. Australian unique culture is an important unique selling proposition which can be used to segment the market and attract new customers towards the Australian wine. The mode of an advert execution is linked to the culture of the people in a region. An illustration: Nestle company made attempts to transmit their adverts across nations. Therefore, Chile invented an outstanding Nescafe commercial. By a lake there is a little house where a man wakes up to go for fishing and wakes up his son to accompany him. The son gets up and prepares coffee for the father even if he is disappointed just for refreshing. A relationship is built up just through a cup of coffee. This commercial was projected in various markets and the results were completely different. Particularly Paris with the Nestle commercial ecological feelings would be provoked, and it would appear like an environmental statement. When producing a homogenous advert various factors have to be considered, such as language and culture. It is important to take into account the language of the customers and the meaning of various phrases (Chan & Guillet, 2011). Reason for this is that the phrases vary from person to another and have different meaning. Therefore, this could result to the brand portraying a very different message from that which is intended. The ideas, words, and images used in international advertising are dominant in the third world countries. Loyalty of customers has been gained through the brand names, signs, and symbols used. An illustration includes Nike, Cocacola, Amazon, Yahoo, amongst many others. Any product that has some of the above names even without further explanations the customers will purchase them to meet their needs. Therefore, it is correct to say that these brands have conquered the market. Cultural imperialism has a positive impact on other countries as it has promoted the technology, democracy, and freedom (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). As a result, the advertiser of Australian wine should take this aspect into consideration. In the case of global advertising, companies look for opportunities to standardize their advertising campaigns. By standardization, we simply mean that the advertising campaigns are made similar across all markets. The main elements of a campaign include the execution of the campaign and the message composed therein. The message and the execution could actually be similar, but some modifications are made here and there. The changes are made to suite the particular group of people in a region and also to match their taste and preferences. As it is well known, the tastes and preferences of a group of consumers vary from sector to another sector or from nation to another. It also varies with age and the gender too. It is essential when formulating a brand, be it a name, symbol, or even sign, factors such as gender and age should be considered. An illustration: If a market targets youths they ought to use music like Hip hop, or use the hit song of that particular time. With such an advert, the company should expect to have passed on the message as intended. Advertisers should be looking on both building the brand and selling the product too. If the brand name is built, the product will sell as the brand appeals to consumers and their loyalty is extended. Emergence of technology will diversify international advertising and promote cultural imperialism too (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). With many web pages, companies have been able to include their adverts such that when a consumer is on the web search the advertisement pops out. This has reduced the expenses incurred as a result of advertising campaign. Music plays a key role in advertising and represents opportunities for international advertising. It is believed that the transmission of emotions is better conveyed through music rather than words. The problem of language can be avoided via the use of music in international or national advertising. The space allocated to music plays a more important role than the space for words. Music is used to convey emotions and attract attention of the consumers. Some international advertisements include some parts of a dialogue of famous actors from popular films. Although music in international advertisements is given a key role, words also have an important role in an advert. Stuart argues, “Global mass culture is predominantly American culture”. Hall focuses at the “global cultural sphere as dominated by the graphic and visual arts………dominated by film and television, and by imagery, image, and styles of mass advertising” (Barnes & Barnes, 2010) 50% of the budget should be directed towards marketing of wine. This will be significant in ensuring that the marketing department reaches a large market. This aspect will be directly replicated in the overall sales and the number of tourist who will be attracted by the wine industry in Australia. On the other hand, more emphasis will be directed to attract people over the age of fifty five years. However, the young generation forms the largest market segment. Therefore, the campaign should use social media in order to reach this market. References Barnes, N. D., & Barnes, F. R. 2010. Equipping your organization for the social networking game. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 43(6). Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. B. 2007. Social Network Sites: Definition History and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230. Chan, N. L., & Guillet, B. D. 2011. Investigation of Social Media Marketing: How Does the Hotel Industry in Hong Kong Perform in Marketing on Social Media Websites? Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 28(4), 345-368. Chevalier, J. A., & Mayzlin, D. 2003. The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews. Journal of Marketing Research, 43(3), 345-354. Constantinides, E., & Stagno, M. C. 2011. Potential of the social media as instruments of higher education marketing: a segmentation study. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 21(1), 7-24. Edelman, D. C. 2007. From the Periphery to the Core: As Online Strategy Becomes Overall Strategy, Marketing Organizations and Agencies Will Never Be the Same. Journal of Advertising Research, 47(2), 130-134. Fenwick, I., & Wertime, K. 2013. Digimarketing: The essential guide to new media and digital marketing. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. Fogel, J., & Nehmad, E. 2009. Internet social network communities: Risk taking, trust, and privacy concerns. Computers in Human Behavior, 25(1), 153-160. Ghose, A., & Yang, S. 2009. An Empirical Analysis of Search Engine Advertising: Sponsored Search in Electronic Markets. Management Science, 55(10), 1605-1622. Read More