Since 1990s, there have been many new marketing methods in the field of marketing, such as relationship marketing, political marketing, power marketing, green marketing, image marketing, service marketing, direct selling and online marketing. Diversified and innovative marketing methods have greatly expanded the marketing field, enriched people's understanding of marketing and promoted the maturity and development of marketing. This paper aims to summarize the innovative development trend of marketing methods and reveal the background reasons for this diversified development.
I. Diversified development trends and innovation of marketing methods
Marketing theory came into being in America in the 1920s. It is generally believed that the emergence and development of the marketing theory represented by the United States has gone through the embryonic period of 1900 ~ 1920, the functional research period of1~1945, and1946 ~/kloc. After 1980s, marketing theory entered a period of differentiation and expansion, and a large number of new marketing concepts appeared. The discipline of marketing presents a trend of deformation and differentiation, and its application scope is constantly expanding. In recent ten years, especially since 1990s, there have been many innovations in marketing methods. With the deepening and expansion of the marketing field, the marketing methods tend to be diversified, which is embodied in the following aspects.
1 Considering the influence of government's political behavior and power on enterprise activities, political and power factors have been brought into the field of enterprise marketing, thus resulting in the so-called political marketing and power marketing. Political marketing and power marketing originated from kotler's masterpiece Great Marketing in Harvard Business Review. In this article, kotler raised the question of how enterprises can enter the protected market. When faced with a protected foreign market, he believes that enterprises should consider using political means and borrowing political power to open the market. Since then, scholars have begun to study how the government's political behavior affects enterprise activities, especially marketing activities, and political marketing has gradually emerged. Political marketing refers to the marketing activities and marketing purposes carried out by enterprises with the help of political power and political behavior of the government according to the scope, degree and law of political influence on marketing activities. With the in-depth study of political marketing, people gradually realize the important influence and function of power (not only the political power of the government, but also various powers of individuals and other organizations) on enterprise marketing activities, so power marketing came into being. The so-called power is the control and influence of individuals and organizations on other individuals, organizations and society; Marketing activities with the help of some control and influence of individuals or organizations are called power marketing.
2. With the enhancement of human awareness of environmental protection, the strategy of sustainable development has become the consensus of all countries in the world, people gradually advocate green consumption, and many enterprises begin to shift from traditional marketing to green marketing or ecological marketing. People have a broader vision of marketing and look at the role and influence of marketing with a longer-term development perspective. Green marketing originates from people's concept of green consumption. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the increasingly serious environmental pollution, consumers realized that environmental deterioration had seriously affected their quality of life and lifestyle, so consuming green products with the least impact on the environment became their same choice. Green marketing is an enterprise marketing activity that conforms to this consumption concept and takes meeting consumers' green consumption demand as the center and starting point. Enterprises that carry out green marketing should not only care about and study consumers who use their products, but also care about society and all mankind, so that their marketing activities can not only create consumer effects and enterprise economic benefits, but also produce social and ecological benefits. Green marketing mode is the extension and development of traditional marketing mode. Traditional marketing methods emphasize to obtain profits by coordinating the relationship among enterprises, customers and competitors, while green marketing should further consider the relationship between marketing activities and the natural environment. The starting point of green marketing method is also different from the concept of social marketing to some extent. Although the latter emphasizes the combination of enterprise interests with the long-term interests of consumers and society, it does not attach importance to the sustainable development of society. Green marketing requires enterprises to meet consumers' demand for green consumption as much as possible, and the production and use of their products must be safe and beneficial to the environment. Marketing strategy must also be formulated, combined and implemented from the strategic height of sustainable development. Since 1993, Technical Committee 207(TC 207) of the International Organization for Standardization has formulated a series of international standards for environmental management (ISO 14000), aiming at standardizing the environmental behaviors of enterprises and social organizations in various countries, reducing environmental pollution and saving resources. It is conceivable that the comprehensive promotion of ISO 14000 will have a great impact on the marketing behavior of enterprises and will greatly promote the development of green marketing. From this perspective, it is not an exaggeration to claim that the era of green marketing or ecological marketing has arrived. Considering that sustainable development strategy is the inevitable choice of human social progress, we also have reason to believe that green marketing will become the mainstream of marketing in the 2 1 century.
The emergence and increasing attention of relationship marketing not only shows that people have a broader understanding of the marketing field, but also shows that the core of modern enterprise marketing has penetrated into various relationships from market transactions. Relationship marketing is a new method and concept that has been widely used in many western industrial fields since the 1990s. As a key factor to promote sales and open up the market, the relationship between the public and the public has been introduced into kotler's big marketing theory, but the relationship marketing in the 1990s has a broader and deeper meaning. Traditional marketing theory holds that the essence of enterprise marketing is the use and combination of internal controllable factors (including products, prices, distribution and promotion, etc.). ) and actively respond to external uncontrollable factors in time, so as to serve customers and promote product sales. However, with the development of society, especially the increasingly fierce competition and the widespread use of marketing mix strategies, people find that many well-planned marketing strategies are difficult to achieve the expected goals. People finally realize that enterprise is a subsystem of the whole social and economic system, and the realization of enterprise marketing objectives is influenced by many elements of the whole social and economic system and their relationships. Relationship marketing analyzes the marketing activities of enterprises with systematic ideas, and holds that enterprise marketing activities are the process of interaction between enterprises and consumers, competitors, suppliers, distributors, government agencies and social organizations, and the core of marketing is to correctly handle the relationship between enterprises and these individuals and organizations. The focus of marketing activities of enterprises adopting relationship marketing is not to create purchases, but to establish various relationships. Relationship marketing is a method and art to create long-term interdependence between buyers and sellers. The basic requirement of relationship marketing method is to establish and maintain a good relationship with customers; Promote enterprise cooperation and open up market opportunities; Coordinate the relationship with the government and create a good marketing environment.
The change of consumers' lifestyle and the development of science and technology have led to the emergence of various modern mass media, so that the direct selling method, which first appeared in the middle of19th century, has been popular in western countries since the 1970s, and now it is also popular in China, reflecting the diversified development trend in promotion means and distribution methods. The so-called direct marketing, according to the definition of the American direct marketing association, is "an interactive marketing system that uses one or more advertising media in order to generate measurable responses and/or conclude transactions anywhere". In essence, direct selling is a marketing method or way to sell products to consumers outside retail stores. It sells goods by accepting customers' orders, and at the same time conveys commodity information through advertising media. That is to say, the direct selling process includes the direct promotion link that transmits information and exerts influence to the target customers through the advertising media, and the direct distribution link that directly accepts orders through the advertising media and delivers products to customers through mail, door-to-door visits and parties. There are various forms of direct selling, including catalog marketing, mail marketing, telephone marketing, TV marketing, electronic sales and so on. It can be seen that direct selling is different from factory direct selling, which is sold directly to consumers by the factory's own salesmen without the help of media or direct selling companies. Compared with the usual traditional marketing methods, the target customers of direct marketing methods are single individuals. The direct marketing method enables manufacturers to maintain a closer and direct relationship with customers, and its marketing effect can be easily measured directly.
Service marketing has different characteristics from general product marketing, and has gradually become an independent marketing field and achieved rapid development, which shows that marketing methods are gradually decomposed and deepened according to the characteristics of their marketing objects. Generally speaking, compared with tangible products, services are intangible, different, inseparable, non-storable and non-transferable in ownership. Invisible means that the service has no tangible, visible or tangible appearance or shape; Difference means that the components and quality level of service are easy to change with different people, time and place, and it is not easy to be stable and unified; Indispensability describes the direct participation of service consumers in the production process of services, and the production process and consumption process are integrated; Non-storability means that services cannot be stored for future use or sale like tangible products; Moreover, in the process of production and consumption of services, there is generally no transfer of ownership of any items. These characteristics of services determine that consumers usually trust the information obtained from relatives, friends, colleagues and experts when purchasing services. When evaluating service quality, price, service facilities and service attitude become important standards. This further determines that service marketing pays more attention to establishing the quality image of service, paying more attention to people's word of mouth and the reputation of enterprises, and paying more attention to strengthening communication with consumers in the service process.
The appearance and popularization of image marketing adapted to the introduction of enterprise identification system (CLS) by enterprises shows that the focus of enterprise marketing strategy has shifted from the marketing of tangible products or services to establishing corporate image and cultivating long-term intangible assets such as brands and trademarks. CLS includes enterprise mental recognition, behavior recognition and visual recognition, and its main purpose is to convey enterprise ideas and culture and establish enterprise image through enterprise behavior recognition and visual recognition. According to the image marketing requirements of CLS, all marketing activities of enterprises (from product development to pricing, from advertising to distribution channel selection) should be carried out around the established corporate image. This reflects that enterprises have realized that in the fierce market competition, the key factor to determine the competitive advantage and win the "marketing war" is the corporate image, which shows that enterprises pay more attention to their long-term development.
Based on the in-depth understanding of the concept of customer, enterprise marketing has developed from spare no effort to meet the needs of direct customers.
In order to meet the needs of direct customers, pay attention to "customers' customers"-the needs of end customers. For a long time, the object of enterprise marketing is only the direct customers who need their products or services, and enterprises can't realize that their enterprise activities are only one or several links in the whole industry activity chain. The sales of their products or services mainly depend on their customers' customers until the final customers can buy them. The final customer or consumer of each industry is the profit source of all enterprises in this industry. Therefore, it is necessary for any enterprise to analyze the needs of end customers. This requires enterprises to reasonably determine the distance from end customers, and determine the competitive position and demand development of direct customers by analyzing the needs of end customers, so as to formulate their own marketing strategy combination from the perspective of the whole industry and the strategic goal of long-term development of enterprises.
In addition, the development of modern science and technology, especially the development of modern electronic technology and information technology, has brought profound changes to all aspects of social life, and naturally has a great impact on the development of marketing. There are many marketing methods closely related to electronic technology and information technology, such as online marketing, electronic sales, marketing decision support system, virtual market and so on. With the further development of modern electronic technology and information technology and the progress of society, these marketing methods will inevitably gradually replace the traditional marketing methods.
With the globalization of the world economy and the rapid development of foreign direct investment and multinational corporations, the geographical scope of enterprise marketing has changed from one country to many countries or even the whole world, and the marketing environment has changed greatly. International marketing has become an important part of enterprise marketing, and international marketing and international comparative marketing have also developed into important branches of marketing.
Second, the background analysis of the innovation and development of modern marketing methods
Kotler, a famous marketing expert, said: "Marketing is an enterprise function, which identifies the unmet needs and desires, measures their scope, determines the target market that an organization can best serve, and decides the appropriate products, services and plans to serve these markets. Therefore, marketing is a link between social demand and its industry reaction form. " Considering that social demand depends on social environment, the above connotation of marketing determines that marketing, as a basic function of an enterprise, has the most direct and close relationship with the social environment faced by the enterprise compared with other functions of the enterprise, which is not only reflected in the great influence of marketing on social development, but also reflected in the influence of changes in social environment on the innovative development of marketing concepts and methods. Nowadays, science and technology in the world are changing with each passing day, information technology has a far-reaching impact on human society, people's values and codes of conduct are becoming more and more diversified, and people's views and opinions on society, market and consumption have also changed greatly, which determines that marketing methods and technologies are deepening and expanding on the basis of the increasingly mature marketing discipline. Specifically, the development and deepening of modern marketing theory and the diversified innovation and development of marketing methods have the following background.
1 Modern consumers' life concepts, values and lifestyles are increasingly diversified, people's needs are increasingly diversified, and people's consumption patterns tend to be personalized. This urges enterprises to try their best to innovate various marketing methods, cater to consumers' diversified values, meet consumers' diversified needs and adapt to personalized consumption patterns. There is no doubt that green marketing is a value concept derived from consumers' green consumption, and direct selling conforms to the trend that families in western countries are becoming smaller and faster after World War II, and consumers are paying more and more attention to leisure. Similarly, the emergence and development of image marketing has, to a certain extent, adapted to the needs of consumers from "material" consumption to "feeling" consumption such as aesthetic feeling.
The increasingly fierce market competition among enterprises makes the conventional marketing methods difficult to work in many cases, which urges enterprises to find another way in marketing methods and strategies and strive to innovate. Among various marketing methods and strategies, the emergence and development of political marketing, power marketing, direct marketing, image marketing and relationship marketing are all related to competitive pressure. Among them, relationship marketing can better illustrate this point. In the face of fierce market competition, in order to keep stable customers, savvy marketers always establish long-term mutual trust and mutual benefit relations with their customers, distributors, distributors and suppliers through fair prices, high-quality products and good services, which is called relationship marketing. Relationship marketing can not only stabilize customers, but also save transaction cost and time, and it has developed from the previous continuous negotiation transaction to the conventional programmatic transaction. In the implementation of relationship marketing, enterprises maintain extensive and close contact with customers, and price is no longer the most important means of competition. It is difficult for competitors to destroy the relationship between enterprises and customers, and it is impossible for enterprises to lose corresponding customers.
The development of modern science and technology, especially modern electronic information technology, provides technical means and foundation for the innovation and development of modern marketing methods, and many new marketing methods are directly created by modern science and technology. It can be said that without the popularity of audio-visual products such as telephones, televisions and home computers, and without a developed modern mail system, the development of direct selling is unimaginable; If there were no computers and computer networks, electronic shopping malls, online marketing and other marketing methods would not appear and exist at all. With the rapid development of science and technology, new information tools and media are constantly appearing, new marketing methods will also be constantly produced, and modern marketing will also maintain a diversified development trend.
There are different schools of marketing theory in academic circles. It is generally believed that the marketing represented by the United States mainly includes six schools, namely, macro-marketing school, consumerism school, systematic method school, buyer behavior school, behavior organization school and strategic planning school. They study marketing theory from different angles, and their research results have laid a theoretical foundation for the diversified innovation and development of marketing methods.
Because of absorbing the theories, methods and technologies of mathematics, operational research, economics, statistics, social psychology and management, the marketing research technology is increasingly enriched and developed, especially the game theory and simulated market research technology since the 1990s, which greatly promoted the diversified development of marketing method innovation. 1994 After the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to three game theory experts, the research methods of game theory were widely used in marketing research. Game theory is a method to study the interaction and balance of subject behavior, which can help enterprises to deeply analyze the decision-making behaviors of competitors, customers and suppliers in the fierce competitive environment, and then guide enterprises to make scientific marketing decisions. Game theory can be applied to all aspects of marketing mix strategy, such as new product development, pricing, promotion methods and distribution channel selection. For example, GilaE Fruchter ShiomoKalish used non-cooperative game theory to analyze the advertising strategy under oligopoly, and analyzed the famous marketing case1968 ~1984-"Coke Wars" from the perspective of Nash equilibrium.
While game theory technology is widely used in marketing research, with the increasing popularity of computer technology and Internet, simulated marketing technology is used more and more. Especially, the market research of virtual market has been widely used in western countries. Using computer-simulated virtual market to conduct market research can create a real atmosphere of the market, make random changes and combinations in brand listing, product packaging, pricing, promotion and commodity display, and test new marketing concepts, methods and schemes more accurately and scientifically. Using virtual market technology can also reduce the interference of many inevitable and inseparable interference factors in field testing. Virtual market gives free space for marketers to exert their imagination and creativity, enabling them to conduct various experiments and innovate various marketing methods without actual production and promotion costs, without the help of dealers and without the notification of competitors.