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Consumer Psychology For Marketing

By: Ronald Jones


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Emerging challenges posed by robust competition has put the automobile industry on a very high pedestal. By and large it has become imperative to understand the dynamics of the market so as to enable the creation of a comprehensive strategy that will respond to the realities of the market. One of the ideal ways of achieving this is clearly the ability to be able to reach the consuming public with the information that will enable them to make informed choices. It is thus the process of making the market aware of the products available that defines the ultimate goal of the communication strategy to be used. Whilst this remains true, it is also important to understand the industry down to its core so as to ensure that success is achieved in the dissemination process. The marketing communication plan must of necessity be highly integrated in a manner that ensures that all the diverse facets of the plan are seamlessly complementary in the final delivery.

To begin with, no marketing communication plan will be successful without a prior identification of the intended market and its players. It is the understanding of the target market that enables a corporation to be able to specifically craft the communication message that will reflect the expectations of the customers. This specification also has the added advantage of highlighting the most appropriate marketing media and channels that will be in perfect tune with the position being held by the customers. It also has a lot to do with the prevailing psychology of the target market.

It is very important to understand that marketing communication strategies are backed by comprehensive financial and logistical budgets and therefore efficiency in execution will ensure that eventually maximum returns will be realized from the campaign. It is on this premise that this essay will essentially look at the trends on the automobile industry with specific emphasis on the Skoda and Nissan Altima.

The Tale of Skoda
Prior to the takeover of Skoda by Volkswagen, the Skoda brand performed so abysmally on the market. Much of the woes of the Skoda brand had to do with customer negative perception about the brand name. Historically, the decay of the communist state of Czechoslovakia, the home country of the Skoda brand, did also have a toll on the brand thus explaining the difficulty with which the product contended with on the market. Executives of Volkswagen were fully aware of this setback the very moment they expressed interest in taking over this ailing corporation. What did however change? Several years down the line the fortunes of Skoda were converted from a loss making institution into profit making. The secret is as open as all would care to know. Management confronted the perception hurdle head-on using innovative integrated marketing communication strategies.

When Chris Hawken took over the helm of affairs of Skoda’s marketing department, he was quoted as saying that “All the research showed quite substantial levels of rejection of the Skoda brand by consumers, you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that something quite serious and radical had to be done about the brand.” The marketing strategy of Skoda was suddenly turned completely to reflect four main pillars of strength as a platform upon which the sorry brand name of Skoda was going to be rehabilitated. They are: direct marketing, advertising and public relations.

Management put together a vibrant team that worked tirelessly to ensure that all loopholes and grey areas that boarders on the vulnerability of the brand image of Skoda will be addressed effectively. As the evidence poignantly indicates the most immediate concern was to deal with the negative perception that consumers associated with the brand name of Skoda. Management therefore had to reverse this perception assault squarely with a very consistent message to be disseminated at all the various stages of the communication strategy. As a principle the brand message was to be given utmost priority over the over product specification. Viewed superficially this unconventional marketing approach was inherently wrought with a considerable of risk that could easily explode to the detriment of the overall communication strategy goals.

Beyond this point management chose the onus of further knowing and conceptualizing the target market in a way that will fit into the communication strategy. Previous communication strategies place emphasis on owners of Skoda products. But the new strategy chose to broaden the scope of the strategy to capture the entire population thus extending the corridors of the market size. Given the financial limitation posed by a meager budget for marketing communication in relation to other competitors such as Nissan, Skoda had to make real the fact that its product would be at the core of the communication stream of the corporation. Consumer public relations became acknowledged as another vital component of addressing the perception details in a cost-effective manner.

Competition
Steadily the global automobile market can best be described as a dynamic stream that flows in a manner that makes it open to rapid changes in response to both domestic and international forces. With globalization at its highest peak the automobile market industry especially the consumer brands are most definitely going to continue exhibiting a robust dynamism as the level of political will needed to sustain international trade is facilitating relaxations in international trade restrictions. An inevitable consequence of this trend is a massive influx of competition to be experienced by both local and foreign automakers including Nissan and Skoda for every market niche on the world market.

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