Contemporary Marketing

The Changing Face of Marketing in 21st Century

Author
Prof Tapan K Panda
Professor in Marketing
Indian Institute of Management Indore
Pigdamber, Rau, Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India
Email: tapan@iimidr.ac.in
Tel: 09827054500

Introduction

Marketing as a domain of research and practice is undergoing change. This

change is attributable to both the strategic reorientation and evolution of firms in the
context of globalization. Marketing has evolved from the economic practice of surplus
and share of profit for risk ownership to co-creation of value with the consumers. This
evolution is exemplary in the sense that it has changed the direction of practice.
An inwardly directed concept of marketing ruled decades based over an
assertion that mere cost orientation through least cost of production and delivery would
satisfy customers more and more. Of late, the stratification in the society changed to
give a vertical order. Large chunk of people with lesser ability to pay were at the bottom
and over the years grew above in the hierarchy due to better earning opportunity and
smarter management of economic systems across the globe.
Then marketing revolved with the mechanization process in production and
operations thorough which capacity expansion to solve volume goals became the
mantra of success. This led to lengthy distribution channels, larger geographic market
coverage and a non-human face of marketing in which the producer served the
products and services through an intermediary. This is purely mass market driven; mass
advertised, mass consumed and mass distribution oriented non-human marketing. But
the sheer volume of business drove competitors to enter into business and majority of
marketing decisions were taken by looking at what the competitors are doing. This
period of strategic orientation gave birth to ‘strategic marketing’ school of thought. There
was something more to read beyond competitive benchmarking from some successful
marketing organizations, which drove home with super natural profits due to innovation
and value creation by the marketer. This in fact led to concepts like advertising and
branding play more strategic role than tactical orientation.
Till this period, marketing was more driven by the passion to acquire like old day
kings who would conquer land after land and then would die in the same inertia than
managing what they have conquered. Same with modern marketers who went ahead
and acquired customers and never knew how to retain them. Customer retention
became a big issue as competitors were entering with better product offers and
customers got an opportunity to flirt with marketers due to multiple alternatives. The
relationship marketing school and subsequent technological revolution happening in the
information technology landscape, made customer relationship management a potent
area of concentration for marketers.
Contemporary marketing is more complex in nature. It blends understanding of
human psychology with information technology platforms and speed of innovation to
develop a modern discipline that amuses the followers of modern marketing. The
evolutionary process cross breads the ideas from the field of advertising, human
psychology, branding process and brand management and discipline of customer
relationship management. The author presents herewith a set of articles and papers
that reflect the evolution of contemporary marketing.
The book has four distinct sections in which essays on branding, advertising,
customer relationship management and contemporary marketing are discussed. The
book opens with a commentary on contemporary marketing, which takes the reader
through the evolution and emergence of marketing as a school of thought and practice.
Then each of the sections includes selected essays on contemporary issues of
marketing related to the selected field of advertising, branding, customer relationship
management and marketing. The book ends with a commentary on future of marketing
in which the author proposes the emerging directions in which marketing is likely to
grow in future and suggest key observant notes for the reader to take note of the
evolution of marketing in the distant future.
 This book is aimed at researchers, students, working executives and all those
people who have interest in marketing. The book is unique in the form of discussing not
only the evolution of marketing to contemporary form but also suggesting the future
direction. The book showcases special research conducted and thought papers and
essays written by the author at different points of time in the recent past on the above
subject.

Detail Contents of The Book

with
Article Titles and Approximate Page Nos.
Pg
Sl. No. Articles No
Preface
An Introduction to Contemporary Marketing 11
Section A Branding and Advertising
1 To Extend or Not to Extend: Finding the Brand Fit- Brand Extension 10
2 Ancient Philosophy: Commodity Branding 9
Branding in a Crowded Market: A 3-D Framework for Commodity Branding 10
3
4 Advertising a Brand’s Personality through Symbolism and Imagery 10
Being Current while Looking Historic: Strategies for Building Heritage Brands 12
5
6 Making advertising Work Through Cognitive Elaboration 7
7 Convergence and Challenges of Building Digital Brands 14
Section B Marketing
Food Marketing to Children: The Prevalent Paranoia and Policy Rectifications 10
1
2 Pricing Innovative Products Through Internet Research 8
3 Predicting Behavioral Intention for purchase and positioning of a new brand 21
Marketing misgivings and Indian consumer-scope for competitive conduct 10
4
Consideration Sets and Marketing Related Information Search in World Wide 15
5 Web
6 Rural Marketing -Challenges and Opportunities 12
Section C Customer Relationship Management
1 Systematic Thinking and Customer Relationship Management 11
2 Customer Relationship Management in Financial Services Industry 18
3 CRM in Financial Services Industry-case of two Indian banks 22
4 Service Quality Value Alignment through Internal Customer 8
Future The New Direction in Marketing 10

TOTAL No. of Pages 229

Filename: Contemporary Marketing
Directory: E:\Contemtorary Marketing Metrail
Template: C:\Documents and Settings\tapan\Application
Data\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dot
Title: Contemporary Marketing
Subject:
Author: tapan
Keywords:
Comments:
Creation Date: 7/16/2006 11:26 PM
Change Number: 6
Last Saved On: 7/17/2006 1:59 AM
Last Saved By: tapan
Total Editing Time: 49 Minutes
Last Printed On: 12/13/2007 11:52 AM
As of Last Complete Printing
Number of Pages: 4
Number of Words: 911 (approx.)
Number of Characters: 5,194 (approx.)