Research - What is Marketing?

Marketing is the communication of the value of a good or service or brand to customers with the intention of promoting and selling what the company has to offer the audience.

This includes the number of marketing techniques that can be used from both the traditional and the modern day ones. But firstly, to find the right technique to use; it requires narrowing down the target market otherwise, loads of money may be spent on ineffective techniques to the particular demographic. The understanding of the consumer behaviour is also what needs to be analysed since patterns can be found within the targeted demographic. Example; majority of teenagers nowadays have their own mobile device which they can access different types of social media.

"Marketing satisfies these needs and wants through exchange processes and building long-term relationships." This means marketing can also establish customer loyalty and trust with the companies but at the end of the day; it depends whether the product meets to the standards of the consumer.

"Marketing is applied in enterprise and organisations through marketing management," Thus, meaning companies can may also have their own marketing team which has their own goal of providing the marketing techniques for the companies' own products and not to any other companies such as their competition.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing

Mood board for the majority of teenage girls (aged 13 - 18)

This a mood board which displays the images of what a stereotypical teenage girl has interests in and what their personality may be like.

Basic Research About Advertising & Marketing (with Harvard Referencing example)

Clive Gifford. (2006) Advertising & Marketing: Developing the marketplace. Oxford (Great Britain): Heinemann Library.

Advertising is displayed and presented through different formats of media. A couple of ways of how they're presented to the public is through "breaks on television or radio programmes" as well as in magazines, posters, billboards, on the side of buses and "pop-up windows that appear on the internet". It can take as many formats for a product to be displayed in order for customers to have the image embedded into their mind since it is a type of communication which uses a variety of techniques such as sound, motion pictures and words in order for the message to get across to them. It's a way of persuasion to the audience for them to buy their products or watch a particular television show. Advertising is also used to keep the public audience updated with any upcoming products or services being presented to them.

Advertisers can be "a company or an individual who pays for advertising". They usually pay an advertising agency to help organise and plan for a campaign in order to get their message across to their targeted audience.

Advertising is used for a variety of things in the industry such as; launching a new product to the public or a new television series about to start showing. It can also be used to persuade and influence the audience's opinions. For example, political elections; the labour party may display large posters on billboards saying that if the audience votes for them, they will do drastic changes in order to create new jobs to decrease unemployment in the country.

In the past, companies used to spend very little on advertising but in the modern world of today; companies are now spending £billions on advertising. The reason for this is due to the power that advertising possess; it's able to persuade a person's way of thinking and what actions they take next after. For example; a brand-loyal apple customer, they may see an advert about the latest apple iPhone being released soon and after seeing the advert, they may pre-order the new model so that they would have the latest model as soon as it is released in stores.

Initial Planning Meeting with Supervisor

Today, I met up with my supervisor and discussed about my initial idea for the extended project. I have managed to find a combined solution for the two initial ideas I had. It still has the same concept with marketing however, I have mixed the two ideas to elaborate on one very specific idea.

My supervisor said she was very impressed with the plan but added on some more specific areas in the marketing concept I should look into such as; how marketing is used via the internet and how social networking can now be counted as one of the main contributes to a marketing campaign.

The topic of my extended project is will be "What makes a successful marketing campaign for a product targeted at teenage girls (13-18 year olds)?".

Extended Project Initial Ideas

For my extended project, I would like to do it on the main concept of marketing since it will apply to my university course. Another reason why I chose to base my extended project on marketing is because I enjoy the use of media that's included in the topic and also the idea of advertising in order to sell out an product or service.

Initial Idea 1
The marketing concept includes advertising and I would like to focus on what would make a successful marketing campaign for the targeted demographic of teenage girls between 13-18 years old. What I plan to research for the marketing of this specific demographic is what appeals to the majority of girls, what would be the most used marketing technique and what technique the majority prefers. I would conduct this research with techniques including a questionnaire asking the targeted audience as to what forms of advertising they prefer the most as well as what would be the most important aspect of the advertising for the product. I believe the artefact that would be an outcome of this project is a marketing campaign that is targeted to teenage girls. An example product I'd base my entire marketing campaign on would be a new-release of a perfume for females (possibly a made-up perfume created by an existing music artist or fashion brand). The marketing campaign will include what the majority of the target audience prefers. For example, if the majority prefers posters as a form of advertising then I will create a poster as part of the marketing campaign. If I'm going to be doing a marketing campaign on a music artist, I would also a research on the background of the music artist as well as the songs they have created which will give a bit more background knowledge about what the target audience's interests may be.

Initial Idea 2
Another marketing concept I have thought is to create an marketing campaign dedicated to a new upcoming music artist/band. The marketing campaign will include researching their demographic due to the genre of their music with existing music artists. Once I've researched their demographic, I'll do some more research with existing advertising techniques used to promote upcoming artists which will be an influence for the creation of my artefact since I would plan to do a whole marketing campaign which includes a prototype for the posters, leaflets and on-line advertising. For part of the evaluation, I plan to do video interviews and surveys with the targeted demographic; questioning them with how appealing the whole marketing concept is to them, whether they would go to their upcoming gig, why it didn't appeal to them and why it did appeal to them.