Ch. 7 - Business Marketing

Business-to-business electronic commerce (B-to-B) is the use of the internet to facilitate the exchange of goods, services, and information between organizations. Today, B-to-B sites look more like consumer sites with social media and community building applications. Most marketers are now using some sort of web analytics to determine which activities generate leads to then use that information to make the Web site more effective. One way that Pantene Pro V measures its Web application, Web site, or other piece of interactive technology is to evaluate its stickiness factor. Stikiness is a measure of a Web site’s effectiveness calculated by manipulating the frequency of visits by the durations of a visit by the number of pages viewed during each visits (stickiness = frequency x duration x site reach). The advantage of B-to-B internet marketing is that it allows Pantene marketers to evaluate the effectiveness of their advertisement ads by tracking their audience with statistical measures to see whether these new avenues are beneficial or used by customers. Furthermore, this allows Pantene to make their most marketing investments where there is more frequency of engagement by consumers. Not only does this strategy result in better investments but it also benefits the consumer and the Pantene Pro V market. Pantene’s customers will recognize that their voice is being heard which is very important as it does build loyalty. The chart below is an example the analytic activity that is measured through Web application.

 The primary purpose of creating these new applications is that they provide additional information about present or potential customers; increase efficiency; lower costs; increase supply range efficiency; or enhance consumer retention, loyalty and trust is being developed each year. This enables business marketers to know their audience better as relationship marketing is taking place. Relationship marketing is a strategy that entails seeking and establishing ongoing relationships with customers. Using strategies like these allows Pantene to build competitive advantage as competition has become more intense in today’s market.  


 

Ch. 8 - Segmenting and Targeting Markets

Pantene Pro V understands the importance of their target markets needs and wants. This does not come easy of course, it takes a strong team to perform research and development. As they are a worldwide premium company, in order to maintain a balanced marketing mix along with effective sales, Pantene uses a strategy known as market segmentation. This strategy is the process of dividing a market into meaningful, relatively similar, and identifiable segments or groups. From a marketing perspective this plays a key role as this does enables marketers to perform more efficiently as better evaluation takes place when objectives are more precise. Markets can be segmented using a single variable, such as age group, gender, education and ethnic background.

Pantene segments their markets in several ways but the main one is demographic segments, the common basis here are age, gender, income and ethnic background. When it comes to the age division, Pantene without a question targets the generation y group. Generation Y'ers were born between 1982 and 2003. This group not only has formidable purchasing power but they are also more civic-minded than other age groups. Gender segment is another important subgroup in Pantene Pro V as their primary target market are women, however their products are still available for men. Studies show that women make over 70% of household purchases of consumer goods each year. They are an experienced purchasing group with the responsibility of purchasing most of the household goods. Ethnicity is a popular demographic variable for segmenting markets because Pantene products don’t change to appeal to a subgroup instead their advertising does, this is done to appeal to local preferences. For example, when Pantene publishes their magazine advertisements in different regions of the world, whatever geographic area it is, the Pantene model has the same ethnic background in the area in which the magazine resides. This reflects on readers habits/personality traits and answers the question that most consumers ask themselves as they come across an advertisement, "Are they talking to me?". Such an approach, makes their perception more personalized where the consumer is able to make some type of connection with the product which often leads to an increase in purchasing power.