Changing Communications Environment

Two major factors are altering the face of today's marketing communications. Primary, as mass markets have fragmented, marketers are shifting from mass marketing. More and more, they are developing targeted marketing programs designed to make closer relationships with customers in more intently defined micro markets. Second, Huge improvements in information technology are fasting the movement toward segmented marketing. Modern information technology helps marketers to have closer track of customer needs-more information regarding consumers at the individual and household levels is available than ever before. New technologies also give new communications avenues for reaching smaller customer segments along more tailored messages.

Shifting from mass marketing to segmented marketing has had a dramatic impact on marketing communications. Only as mass marketing gave growth to a new generation of mass-media communications, the shifting toward one-to-one marketing is spawning a new generation of highly targeted and more specialized communications efforts.

Given this new communications environment, marketers ought to rethink the roles of many media and promotion mix tools. Mass-media advertising contain long dominated the promotion mixes of consumer product companies. But, magazines, television and other mass media remain very significant, their dominance is now declining. Market fragmentation has resulted in media fragmentation-in an explosion of more focused media that better match today's targeting strategies. More usually, advertising appears to be providing a way to other elements of the promotion mix. Consumer product companies spent the lion's share of their promotion budgets on mass-media advertising in the splendour days of mass marketing,. Now day, media advertising captures just about 26 % of overall promotion spending. The rest goes to many sales promotion activities, which may be focused more effectively on specific consumer and trade segments. They are utilizing a richer variety of focused communication tools in an effort to attain their diverse target markets. In all, companies are doing less broadcasting and more narrowcasting.