Marketing Report: Digital Media, Consumer Behavior, Ethics, and PR

This report provides an overview of various aspects of marketing, starting with the influence of digital media in the global context, particularly in the Pacific region, and its impact on socioeconomic development. It then explores the fundamental elements of communication in marketing, including message design, communication channels, and the importance of feedback. The report delves into consumer behavior, examining how consumers select, purchase, and dispose of products, and the factors influencing their decisions, such as price, emotions, and social environment. The report also addresses ethical considerations in advertising, differentiating between traditional and programmatic advertising, and the importance of transparency and honesty. It then discusses the role of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) and the planning process involved, including reviewing marketing plans, analyzing communication processes, and determining budgets. Furthermore, the report covers marketing strategies, including the marketing mix, market segmentation, and various strategic approaches such as niche, horizontal integration, and vertical integration strategies. Public relations and its role in promoting tourism and other businesses are also examined, along with the significance of direct marketing and personal selling, including the need for training sales representatives.

Week 3: Digital media
 The existing technologies and digital media have increasingly playing a pivotal role in
the economic, social and communicative purposes in the Globe and more particularly in
glob south.
 Media along with communication do reflect the complexity and diversity of language,
culture, history, transnational network, population, and politics, policies of the region and
geography, infrastructure.
 In some countries, media industries include community media, government, private,
newspaper, and radio and TV platforms.
 Other countries, digital media may include mass media industries that where government
is the only funder
 Due to the undersea cables and lying of fibers, the digital media coverage has expanded
in the pacific island over the past decade
 The established mobile phone mast has greatly contributed in providing sound network
coverage and greater access to Bluetooth, memory stick, DVDs among other platforms
that necessitate the circulation of digital content to people.
 The digital media and development do acknowledge the entanglement of the entire
existing domain in the pacific region.
 Investing media and particularly in a small island with small population who are
dispersed is considered as a strong step towards socioeconomic development.
 Development does encompasses formal development initiatives, regulations, policies and
could also involves the practices of communities or individuals and off course their
relationship to change with digital media

 Digital media and development in the pacific indicates that Wi-Fi nation is recognized as
the first initiative as far as digital media is concerned
 The existing digital media in the pacific region require continual upgrade in order to meet
the demands of the market
Reference
Horse, H. A,. Papoutsaki, E.,& Schmididt, C.(2016).Digital media and development in the
pacific. Information technologies & international development 12(4) 3-5

Week 4: Communication
 Communication means to notify, making known or informing about something.
 Communication is an important tool for marketing and more particularly in conducting
promotions of a given product or service
 The relationship between promotion and marketing is defined by communication.
 There are several forms of communication when it comes to product or service
promotions. They include Marketing communication that helps the organisation to meet
its goal and objectives, formal communication that is based on convention and rules and
finally the informal communication which is believed to be more efficient and effective
than formal one.
 The main components of communication include; Message, Sender, feedback,
communication channels and disturbances
 Message is an important element communication. The creative process of communication
relies upon its content and content.
 To meet a desired goal and objectives, the message need to designed to capture the
attention of the recipient, using appropriate symbol and determine the receiver’s thoughts
 Communication channels contain all elements in which information that is received by
the recipient from the sender. Means of transporting information could include
newspaper, telephone, radion, emails television and magazine
 The means of transmitting information have great influence to the effectiveness of
communication especially in marketing
 Communication is marketing is achieved in two categories and they are either personal or
non-personal

 Recipient of the message refer to the target group that the advertisement or marketing is
designed for different purpose.
 However, in the process of communication, the information is susceptible to disturbance
factors. These disturbance factors need to be known and action taken.
 Feedback is another major component of communication that ensures the recipient is
informed and the impact of the message
References
Gherasim, A, Gherasim. D., & Vasiloaia, M. (2012).Communication in marketing promotion.
Economy transdiscplinary cognitition, 15(1), 36

Week 5: Consumer behaviour
 Consumer behaviour is defined as the process where a group or an individual does select,
use, purchase or even dispose a product or service, experiences or ideas in order to meet
his or her needs and desires
 In most cases, the consumers have a tendency to gather and evaluate information
concerning a certain product or service before making actual purchase
 The evaluation of the information concerning the products or services should meet his
expectation and requirement
 Consumers may either exhibit positive or negative attitude based on the need and
probably the satisfaction that the product and need should offer.
 However, some consumers may be having positive attitudes over a product like organic
food but may not necessarily have the intention of purchasing
 Consumer’s intention to purchase a product is based on their satisfaction of the service or
product or service. The satisfaction is directly related to their attitude.
 It is noted that consumer behaviour is influenced by a subjective knowledge.
 In organic food for instance, the consumer is influenced by the following factors; Price,
emotional, mood, functional values and social environment
Reference
Singhai,N(2017).A study of consumer behaviour towards food and moderating effects on heath
consciousness. IU journal of marketing management 16(3) 45-50

Week 6: ethics and Advertising
 Martínez-Martínez, Aguado & Boeykens (2017) state that advertising is still evolving in order to
factor in changes that are occurring in social and technology
 The journal seeks to differentiate between programmatic advertising from traditional methods.
 From the definition, programmatic advertising involves a business that designs buying and
selling processes through a software in order to automate all processes
 Furthermore, programmatic buying and trading can be used interchangeably
 The ethical data in advertising helps to deal with challenges in traditional advertising
 The adoption to use technology in advertising has helped marketers reach many customers in a
virtual market
 Ethical advertising must explain every information that add value to customers without
necessarily hiding some information that a client requires such as pricing, manufactured date,
and use

 While BANGARi (2016) refers to ethical advertising as setting out a well-defined principle that
governs the manner in which a company communicates with the buyers of s product
 Ethics form an important part of advertising. For example, an ethical ad is one that reveals all
information, avoids faking, giving false claims, or limiting its decency
 The major purpose of conducting advertising is to create an awareness in the market, attract
more customers, and increase the level of demand for products.
 Marketers can do this by designing and presenting a well decorated, colourful, and puffed ad
 This helps to explain that the product has good qualities, it is the most demanded when it comes
to cost saving and value to customers
 The article also focuses on surrogate advertising as an example where marketers use other
products to advertise complete products.
 In a case of advertising alcohol or cigarettes, marketers can use mouth fresheners, music cds, or
fruit juice.
References
Bangari, M. (2016). Advertising ethics and surrogate advertising practices: an empirical study. CLEAR
International Journal Of Research In Commerce & Management, 7(4), 94-97.
Week 7: planning/ objectives setting in IMC
 IMC involves creating and sending messages to different target customers min order to create
awareness

 Furthermore, IMC in marketing communication planning recognizes the need to add value to a
comprehensive plan. According to the author, a marketer must be able to evaluate the
functional strategy for varying communication channels available
 Different communication channels incorporate public relations, sales promotion, direct
response, and general advertising
 IMC must follow an effective planning process to achieve its objectives
 The first step when it comes to planning of IMC is to start with reviewing of marketing plan and
objectives. Therefore, before the marketing department comes up with a plan, the department
nee to gain more information regarding where the company or where the brand has been. This
also involves understand the current position of the company in the market, the future position
of the company, the manner in which it plans to gain such a position.
 The journal by BANGARI (2016) outlines that planning of IMC goes through seven stages
o Conduct a review of the marketing plan. This involves examining the overal marketing
plans, the objectives, the competitors, and the function of both advertising and
promotion
o Conduct and understand the current situation of promotional program. Such analysis to
cover both internal and external environment
o Analyze the current communication process. For example, marketers should analyze the
response process, the source of the messages, the factors regarding the channels, and
establishment of goals and objectives
o Determine the budget. This involves coming up with tentative budgets
o Design and create IMC process that covers IMC marketing mix strategy
o Execute marketing communication strategy
o Monitor, evaluate, and control IMC

References
Martínez-Martínez, I. J., Aguado, J., & Boeykens, Y. (2017). Ethical implications of digital advertising
automation: the case of programmatic advertising in Spain. El Profesional De La Información,
26(2), 201-210

Week 8: Strategy
 Marketing comprises of one of the functional strategies that can be subordinated by business
and corporate strategies
 As long as marketing department develops an enterprise strategy from marketing, it can
combine different components of a marketing strategy
 The author explain that different components of a marketing strategy comprises of the
marketing mix, the marketing positioning, and the market segmentation
 Marketers can use value in order to create pricing concepts, service level, availability of
products, and brand names
 In overall, therefore, different elements of a marketing mix must form the source for
competitive strategic advantages
 Apart from the overall enterprise strategies, every company must come up with marketing
strategies
 The strategies could cover different categories such as;
o Porter’s strategies of cost leadership
o Concentration
o Differentiation
o Ansoff strategies of product choices
 Marketers can analyses all these strategies from a standpoint of marketing to create value for
customers
 Hence, any smaller business can adopt the following types of strategies
o The niche strategy
 Marketers must consider how close the company is to the market. It should also
go to the level of assessing the level of competition from other large companies.

 The best strategy here would be to allocate different small shops near large
competing companies
o The horizontal integration strategy
 Marketers use this when they want to join all resources in a business
 Such resources much occur within the same sector
 Such resources play a key role of positioning a small company to compete
against large competitors
o The vertical integration strategy
 Depends on cooperation of other independent companies that operate within
the same value chain
o The co-competition strategy