Hong Kong Small & Medium Enterprises General Association

A Critique of Marketing Terminology

by Albert PK Lau

Vice-chairman, Hong Kong Small and Medium Enterprises General Association

Marketing is a discipline of social science positioned between arts and natural science as it scientifically deals with human behavior for making buying decisions in a society. However, human behavior is susceptible to societal changes due to development in technology, enhancement in information and variations in human values as well. All authors claim, implicitly or explicitly, that their marketing concepts are universally applicable and ever-lasting but the fact proves otherwise. The marketing concepts are made obsolete much sooner than before because buyers' behavior is now subject to the influence of Information Age, which alleviates the effects of information asymmetry. Some marketing concepts still prevail by virtue of the halo effect of their authors.

Marketing has become an increasingly popular subject in management studies and all walks of life. Textbooks, academic treatises and media reports on marketing are churned out at a whopping speed. The spin-off is the new marketing terms coined by their writers in a bid to secure a foothold in the arena. The ??Ps?? acronym in marketing speaks for itself. Initially, we have 4Ps to serve as aide-memoir to encapsulate the essence of marketing products. By the same token, we have 7Ps for services. Jumping on the bandwagon, a ??purple?? cow is fabricated to represent distinctive products or services. Alas, can we be spared the ??P?? platitudes? The term 'marketing' is also abused profusely by academics and marketers. The rationale behind is self-explanatory, that is, to carve a niche in this field of ever-changing knowledge.

Let us go through some marketing terms with ??marketing?? commonly found in modern marketing literature in alphabetical order:

Affinity marketing

Ambush marketing

Cause marketing

Confusion marketing

Differential marketing

Experiential marketing

Green marketing

Guerrilla marketing

Ingredient marketing

Integrated marketing

Interactive marketing

Lateral marketing

Maxi-marketing

Mega-marketing

Multi-channel marketing

Multi-level marketing

Multi-sensory marketing

Neuro-marketing

Niche marketing

One-P marketing

Open-source marketing

Peer marketing

Permission-based marketing

"Person" marketing

Reactive marketing

Search (engine) marketing

Vertical marketing

Viral marketing

The definitions, which are readily available in marketing text and on Internet, are not given here. The list is by no means exhaustive and we might be surprised to learn that marketing is a discipline fraught with confusing and plausible terminology. Some of the marketing terms only capture a perspective for a certain time but purport to be all-embracing and generalizations for all occasions. Differential marketing, for example, refers to the discrimination between "angels" and "devils" in customers as an antithesis of consumer sovereignty, which harks back to the late seventies or early eighties. Thanks to Information Age, customers are nowadays more marketing-savvy and discerning. Differential marketing might be applicable to the financial sector in which demanding and well-off clients contribute to much higher profit margins. On the other hand, supermarkets and other retail outlets must treat every customer equally.

Some marketing consultants tend to make marketing a complicated business. In order to convince their clients, they come up with some creative marketing terms which are, in fact, no different from the originals. This gimmick is equivalent to repackaging an old product for higher price. Moreover, clients will not challenge the marketing proposals or their recommendations under the guise of ??new?? approach. If a manager commissions a marketing consultancy firm to make a marketing study, he or she should not be terrified at strange and high-sounding words but question their exact implications and applications. As example, the writer suggests the following:

Comprehensive Channel Interface for Integrated Marketing Communications;

360∘Environmental Audit for SWOT Analysis;

Companywide Empathy Model for Internal Marketing;

Target Identification System for Market Segmentation;

Customer Equity Maximization Program for Customer Relationship Management

and more?K?K?K?K

Marketing gurus tend to create neology. Firstly, they are committed to shedding new light on marketing as a mission to advance knowledge in business sector and academia. Secondly, they are seasoned marketers who know how to make their brainchild marketable. Thirdly, they benefit from halo effect and pecuniary gains when they come up with new ideas. Since after the World War II, consumers' behavior in the baby-boom era was stable and predictable so was the then theories to forecast their behavior. Since the mid-nineties, the Information Age and globalization have given rise to fickle consumers, whose individualistic lifestyles and shifting preferences vary from place to place and from time to time. Marketing concepts lose to certain extent their power in analysis and prediction without the knowledge of CEOs and marketers, who, wittingly or unwittingly, take them for granted. It is the obligation on the CEOs and marketers to consider the validity of existing marketing concepts. It is the obligation on marketing gurus to update and revise their marketing theories in the light of new observations and empirical studies.

After a careful study of these marking terms, it is found that they are actually specific to and valid for certain market segments. Peer marketing, for example, is every effective if deployed to promote trendy items among young people. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can leverage niche marketing and guerrilla marketing for achieving their marketing objectives on a tight budget. Green marketing is to be embraced by ??tree-huggers,?? who are willing to pay a price premium for green products and services. Marketing professionals are advised to take these marketing concepts with a grain of salt and believe in Shakespeare's ??Ripeness is all.?? .
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