MERCEDES EFFECTIVE ADVERTISING

Mercedes Effective Advertising

Mercedes Effective Advertising

Introduction

This paper is based on Mercedes, a leading car manufacturing firm (Mercedes in this case). The major objective of this paper is to present the company with effective advertising campaign.

Discussion on Effective Advertising Components

There is no escaping the harsh reality of the increasingly competitive International marketplace today. A firm (Mercedes in this case) competes for every consumer it seeks to attract. The firm (Mercedes in this case) competes for consumers' attention and involvement. It competes for their effort and time in the buying process. It competes for their willingness to deal with the technical complexity found in many products and the corresponding need for services - and the firm (Mercedes in this case) competes for the funds consumers are willing to spend in acquiring a product or service. But before any of this can happen, the firm (Mercedes in this case) must compete for the consumers' attention and secure a recognizable comparative position in their minds in harmony with their cultural base (Nakata and Sivakumar, 1996, pp. 62-7).

Successful consumer marketing does not begin with a unique product or a great idea. Marketing begins with consumers who want or need the product and have the resources to buy it.

Concept of positioning

Competitive positioning involves the formulation of the market offering; but positioning is not what a firm (Mercedes in this case) does to a market offering.

The major challenge to successful competitive positioning is that the minds of consumers are limited, dislike confusion, are insecure, are hard to change, and lose focus (Trout and Rivkin, 1996, p. 8). Of primary importance in this regard is the “ladder” existing in the mind of each consumer that relates to each category of market offering. For most people, only seven items of information, such as seven brands in a market offering category, are typically held in the mind of a particular consumer (Ries and Trout, 1986, p. 32). Excessive market offering extensions contribute to a loss of focus for established positions in the minds of consumers (John et al., pp. 20-1).

Developing a positioning strategy

Positioning in the International marketplace is the act of placing a new market offering in the minds of prospective consumers. Competitive positioning, a more sophisticated second step in positioning, involves differentiating the firm (Mercedes in this case) market offering from directly competing market offerings in ways that prospective consumers find meaningful and appropriate within their established “mind set”. Therefore, there are two steps in the successful positioning process:

Etablishing the initial market offering in the minds of consumers.

Dfferentiating the market offering from competitors in the minds of consumers (Stewart-Allen, 1999, p. 25).

Developing an effective and successful competitive positioning strategy must begin with research to define the target market. In addition, the key factors that are characteristic of the product component, and that are of primary importance to prospective consumers, must be analyzed (Kim and Chung, 1997, p. 363). A determination must also be made as to how these consumers position a firm's (Mercedes in this ...