Sarbane Oxley

Abstract

A fundamental marketing problem faced by business is the promotion of their products in order to promote business. Merchants would like to attract as many customers as possible to a business, since the more the customers, the higher the profitability. This suggests that an intense advertising campaign that raises awareness for the largest possible customer base would be desirable. The effects of marketing and advertising are lasting, however the strategies regarding the two should be carried out carefully or else the company will suffer from a poor image in the target market. In this paper, I examine the relationships between marketing and advertising and their impacts on business. My results suggest that the right advertising strategies can encourage consumer retention and increase business long-term profitability.

Introduction

In this rapidly changing corporate world, competition is fierce and each organization is trying to attract as many customers as possible to stay a step ahead of their rivals. Customers are the very backbone of the firms; they give companies the kind of support they need to succeed. It is therefore essential to stay in good books of the target customers in order to beat the competition successfully. Large firms, which have large market shares, know the importance of customer and they thus employ the best advertising and marketing tactics to attract them. The marketing strategies along with advertising policies are not formulated without taking into account the target market. It is only when the needs and demands of the customers are kept in view that companies are able to run successful advertising campaign and are able to market their products to the right customer.

The most important aspect of any business is selling the product or service. Without sales, no business can exist for very long. All sales begin with some form of advertising. To build sales, advertising must be seen or heard by potential buyers, and cause them to react to the advertising in some way.

"Advertising is expensive and also very worthwhile, but it's worthwhile only if it's doing what you want it to do," says Rita Allan, president of Research Dimensions Inc., a market research firm in Denver. "To me, the high cost of advertising well justifies the proportionately minuscule cost of the research. I think of it as an Insurance policy."

One thing should be borne in mind regarding advertising and marketing strategies that if the organizations are only thinking of selling a product without careful analysis of the market especially the target segment, they will never be able to compete effectively with their rival firms. Advertising as been around in many forms from the very beginning of the business history but there was an essential difference in advertising then. It was usually carried out to announce to people the launching of a new product in the market and the goal was simply selling of the product by making know that it exits. Though selling is still the core objective, organization today use advertising for other purposes too like attracting customer loyalty, berating rival products and to stay ahead of the competitions and essentially the most important difference is the concept of choice that has entered in advertising today.

James Twitchell observes, "Advertising is simply one of a number of attempts to load objects with meaning. It is not a mirror, a lamp, a magnifying glass, a distorted prism, a window, a trompe Foeil, or a subliminal embedment as much as it is an ongoing conversation within a culture about the meanings of objects. It does not follow or lead so much as it interacts. Advertising is neither chicken nor egg. Let's split the difference, it's both. It is language not just about objects to be consumed but about the consumers of objects."

Organizations realize that the most purpose of advertising is to let people know they have options available. This concept is simple to understand. For example a person regularly buys a particular brand offhand cream because the product is successful and the company that manufactures it is very reliable, but suddenly the prices soar and the customer who still needs that hand cream will be left with no choice but to pay a higher price. The reason he doesn't buy other hand creams are because they are all sub-standard products, new in this situation there is an opportunity for their rival firms. They may not be in manufacturing hand cream but they have other cosmetics products in the market. Now that they notice that prices of a particular rival firm has gone up, they can take advantage of the situation and enter the market of hand creams with their own brand at a relatively lower price. Now the customers would not really try to find out if there are other quality hand creams unless the new product is properly advertised. This is when advertising and marketing strategies are put to use and the company would launch its campaign through TV, radio, Internet, newspapers and catalogues. Since the customer would now be bombarded with the news of a new product, he would be forced to check it out and this is when there is a possibility that he would be hooked to it because quality is good and price is lower than the that of the previous brand he was using. So what has happened here, rival firm was able to attract the customers of other company and this is how marketing and advertising play their role in businesses.

"Advertising can only get you to walk up to the shelf to consider a brand and maybe buy it the first time; buying it the second time depends on many other marketing elements. But, if you look at what advertising is supposed to do, which is catch the consumer's attention, get your point across in a meaningful way and motivate people to purchase your product, you can measure every one of those things absolutely and correctly."

And measuring is exactly what you need to do if you want to find out just how successful your advertising has been. It is true that when a customer purchases a product after he has seen the advertisements, it means that advertising has done its job successfully but whether or not the customer will buy it gains depends on a number of factors most important of which being the quality of the product. For example if the customer feels that the product he was using had certain other qualities, which this product lacks, there is a chance he will continue buying the old product even if the price is higher. Another important thing is the marketing techniques employed by the rival firm that just lost its customers. In this time of ferocious competition, do you think that the firms would just let their customers