The boundaries surrounding the world of marketing are being wiped out in today’s world. Perhaps, this border has gradually shifted into an illusory outline in the psyche of today’s marketers. Modern marketing techniques have evolved to a large extent that marketing has turned out to be the driver of a product. It is obvious that marketing and sales are not the same. Marketing makes sale superfluous. At the end of the day, the premise on which a marketing process is upheld will be valid or invalid when the sale of a product is considered. The implication of this is that sale will be the benchmark used to evaluate the success of a marketing campaign.
Contrary to conventional believe that high price and relatively small amounts of the product available defines a luxury product, we now know that some of these products are sold in their millions. At the end of the day, the definition and understanding of a luxury product is relative, and evolves with time.
Recently Research in Motion (RIM) announced the release of the new Blackberry Porsche P’9981 into the market. As you already know, the product was greeted with a lot of fanfare, trending worldwide on several social media and forum. Techies have written reviews about the phone. Almost everyone has an opinion or two to voice about this new product. The main point of discuss was the cost of this product and its ability to become a success on the sales front.
In its quest to ensure that the new P’9981 became a marketing success, RIM employed 3 key theoretically possible anomalies in the general theory of demand. These are:
1. The Veblen Effect: preference for buying them increases as their price increases, as greater price confers greater status, instead of decreasing according to the law of demand.
2. The Snob Effect: preference for goods because they are different from those commonly preferred; in other words, for consumers who want to use exclusive products, price is quality.
3. The Bandwagon Effect: preference for good increases as the number of people buying them increases.
There will be 3 groups of people who will purchase the product going by the above, and they are:
a) The majority of the initial buyers of The P’9981 who will go for the product because it confers on them a greater status
b) The next line of buyers will purchase it because it is different from the currently most preferred product and
c) The last set of buyers will buy because everyone is buying.
In addition to this, RIM employed your service as a marketer for the new BB Porsche. Still in doubt?
As the product became an instant hit on social media and online forum over the world, it registers in the mind of prospective consumers of the product. An instant desire to rise above the average smartphone user will therefore be conceived in the minds of the consumers. You created this awareness. Yes you! Still in doubt how you did this? Did you send out tweets on twitter mocking the exorbitant cost of the new BB Porsche? Did you follow any harsh tag related to the new product on twitter? Did you send out funny broadcast messages about the product on BBM? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then you were a ‘marketer’ for RIM for the product.
