The Marketing World Then VS. Now
For any business student specialising in marketing, there is a huge demarcation of the world history before the mid-80s and the profound years after it. It would not be wrong to say that most of what we serve today to the consumers, tied in a pretty pink package, is the result of the inventions that took place in the 80s and aftermath. We would not be daring to even imagine a world today without a laptop and mobile phones, but there was a time when even something as out-dated as a watchman and a VCR was treated nothing short of a luxury.
For the perspective of understanding, these technological advancements and the respective timelines play an essential role in their direct linkage with changing the orientation of marketing, from marketing to societal marketing with a glorifying beginning to the concept of relationship orientation.
Now, before all the current, beautiful services of pitching people to an organisation’s attention came into existence, marketers were doing their jobs effectively by focusing on newspaper advertising, billboard marketing, magazine promotions, radio advertising and the newly developed channel of telemarketing till the 1970s. E-commerce was starting to take its little shape when the use of computers unfolded its wings for the households from the commercial utility. This was the beginning of a different era altogether, for the advertising industry was to witness its most loud medium for the coming centuries. So, this is where the computer-oriented spam originated and integrated marketing communications started developing a set of promotional tools to communicate the target objectives set by the organisation to seek visibility in the eyes of their consumers. This time frame of 1975-1995 was the adapting period for the survivors and creative minds who could use their potential keeping with the rapid industrial changes because we all are aware about the dot com bubble changing the dynamics of marketing forever. It was in 1998, that Google was conceived. Yet another big boom was the commencement of commercialisation of mobile phones in the entire world around the same time.
Now, there were a number of mediums/channels, and new strategies and innovation had to be pursued in order to be the best out of the best. The marketing sector has always been a technology lover, for it has to befriend the features of every single advancement in the world to make the best platter to serve. LinkedIn came in 2003, Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006; and these three platforms began a revolution in the form of social media emergence and changing the face of promotion thereof.
With the development of relationship marketing, the focus was shifted on consumer satisfaction and prioritising to establish a relationship with them over the traditional model of target on sales, profits or revenues, and the transformation of the IT industry post mid 80s helped in making this form of marketing even more viable.
From traditional websites to Facebook pages and Instagram handles filled with …
