Mass Markets - Do they still exist?
BusinessWeek reports that now are the days of micro-marketing, and so is the world. Gone are the days, when a single TV serial (the most common mass caputre tool) had a mass market audience which translated into huge profits. But now, the almost-universal audience assembled long ago by network television and augmented by the other mass media is fragmenting at an accelerating rate. The mass media’s decline is an old story in many respects; prime-time network ratings and newspaper circulation have been sliding since the 1970s. What’s new is that the proliferation of digital and wireless communication channels is spreading the mass audience of yore ever-thinner across hundreds of narrowcast cable-TV and radio channels, thousands of specialized magazines, and millions of computer terminals, video-game consoles, personal digital assistants, and cell-phone screens.
For marketers, the evolution from mass to micromarketing is a fundamental change driven as much by necessity as opportunity. America today is a far more diverse and commercially self-indulgent society than it was in the heyday of the mass market. The country has atomized into countless market segments defined not only by demography, but by increasingly nuanced and insistent product preferences. “All the research we’re doing tells us that the driver of demand going forward is all about products that are ‘right for me,”‘ says David Martin, president of Interbrand Corp. “And that’s ultimately about offering a degree of customization for all.”
In the competition for ad dollars, the new digital media — especially the Internet — are blessed by two intrinsic advantages over mass media. First, they are interactive. This capability enables marketers to gather reams of invaluable personal information directly from customers and adjust their sales pitch accordingly, in some cases in real time. Second, in part because digital media are interactive they permit a fuller and more precise measuring of advertising’s impact. “Advertisers want to exactly know what they are paying for and what they are getting for it, and you really get metrics on the Web,” says David Verklin, CEO of Carat North America, a media-buying agency. “Clients really believe in the Web now.”
Recent Comments