Market Readiness Strategy
A marketer must be able to effectively communicate market readiness strategy with the target audience; they must truly know the readiness stage that the consumer is at in order to develop communication objectives to the consumers. (Kotler p407) &ldquoToday marketers are moving toward viewing communications as managing the customer relationship over time.&rdquo Different readiness stages of the target market are as follows awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, and purchase.
Awareness - Marketer must communicate with consumers to produce awareness about a new product or service. For example if a company is operating in Bermuda and it want to introduce a new product however no one is aware of the product, then the company's communication objective will be to create awareness of the product or service.
Knowledge - With awareness comes the perfect opportunity to provide the consumers with product or service knowledge to help them make a commitment to the purchase. It should get consumers attention and attempt to hold their interest and arouse the desire of consumer.
Liking - The promotion of the product or service must be communicated in such as way that it is appealing to the consumers, if through market sampling the company finds that the promotion activities are liked then the marketer must take action to redesign the communication to increase the appeal.
Preferences - When promoting a product or service the marketer can focus on various sections of the marketing mix like location, price, product or promotional. Marketers can focus on appearance, warranty, quality, discounts, performance, and value to appeal to consumers.
Conviction - Marketers may have to build up the conviction among their potential consumers as they may not the conviction to buy.
Purchase - The consumers must be exposed to advertising to help reinforce the purchase decision.
For example when Apple launched the iPhone, they must first build awareness and knowledge, during the Oscars they created initial awareness and curiosity to millions of people watching. Once the potential buyers know about the iPhone, Apple wanted to move consumers to purchase, moving those consumer that feel favorable about the iPhone, convicted to buy and prefer the iPhone over other items. Apple marketing team has the job of promoting the iPhone taking the favorable feeling to a belief that iPhone is the best cell phone for them. Advertising was built on emotional brand connection and illustrating the iPhone innovation design and features. Potential iPhone buyers might have decided to wait for more information or for the price to drop.
In conclusion, a goal of marketing in general and of marketing communication in particular, the plan is to move the target consumer through the buying process. This is all starts with understanding customer needs and wants.
