The development of advanced technological means of communication, data gathering, and data analysis tools is having a significant effect on business. The ease with which previously impossible amounts of data can be collected and analyzed allows organizations to conduct market and consumer research on an ever-increasing scale. Furthermore, new instruments for this analysis are being developed, allowing to gain new insights into customer behavior.
An obvious change brought about by the proliferation of the internet is the way that a business can communicate with its customers. It enables the organization to use online surveys and similar tools to obtain direct feedback on its products. Furthermore, the increased processing power available facilitates the analysis of this data to better estimate the current customer demands and preferences, as well as forecast expected changes in them.
Additionally, new methods of research and analysis are being incorporated into marketing research. The field of neuromarketing relies on scientific methods such as biometrics, neurology, and medical imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging to research customer behavior (Stripp, 2015). This research provides clearer insights into the deeper, often subconscious factors that affect one’s buying behavior and create marketing strategies that take advantage of them (Stripp, 2015; Reed, 2015). Neuromarketing is a powerful tool that is becoming crucial to creating and maintaining an organization’s competitive advantage.
The connectivity and mobility of the modern world are also increasing the diversity of customers. This increase is caused by the fact that it is easier for a company to expand to other countries, as well as the shifts in developed countries’ populations (Nielsen Vietnam, 2013; Wade, 2016). These changes mean that new ethnic and cultural values of customers need to be considered to formulate a business strategy.
With this increased diversity and data-gathering instruments, market segmentation is becoming more important to making marketing decisions. This can range from geographical and demographical segmentation, which have been broadlya used for decades, to new methods enabled by modern research (Martin, 2011). These new instruments allow markets to be segmented by behavior and psychographics, the lsheer of which includes values, personality types, and attitudes (Martin, 2011). Market segmentation is a crucial step in today’s rapidly developing and changing world.
Applying the newly available marketing research tools and instruments to create marketing strategy, however, carries ethical implications one needs to consider. Essentially, taking advantage of a customer’s subconscious biases to manipulate him or her can be interpreted as a violation of rights (Stanton, Sinnott-Armstrong, & Huettel, 2016). The rights mentioned in the paper by Stanton, et al. (2016) include “prraises, autonomy, and dignity [and] rights not to be deceived, subjected to experiments without consent, or used as a means only” (p. 802). These considerations are particularly important for children, and generally compound issues already prevalent in traditional marketing (Stanton, et al., 2016). Nonetheless, ethical issues are common in marketing research, and discovering new methods for this research inevitably rises new ethical questions.
Ultimately, the usage of advanced technological research and analysis methods allows organizations to create more effective marketing strategies. This includes a better understanding of customer behavior in general, which can be used to formulate broad strategies, as well as tailoring personalized marketing and advertising messages around a customer’s psychological or physiological factors (Stanton, et al., 2016). Although these methods require significant investments to research and implement, they provide businesses with more information points that can be used to create an effective and competitive marketing strategy.
References
Martin, G. (2011). The importance of marketing segmentation. American Journal of Business Education (AJBE), 4(6), 15-18.
Nielsen Vietnam. (2013). Nielsen Global Consumer [Video file]. Web.
Reed, W. (2015). Neuromarketing introduction [Video file] Web.
Stanton, S. J., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., & Huettel, S. A. (2016). Neuromarketing: Ethical implications of its use and potential misuse. Journal of Business Ethics, 144(4), 799-811.
Stripp, H. (2015) The evolution of neuromarketing research: From novelty to mainstream. How neuro research tools improve our knowledge about advertising. Journal of Advertising Research, 55(2), 120-122.
Wade, T. (2016). The global marketing mix – internationalisation – global garketing [Video file]. Web.