Holistic Marketing Management, Volume 5, Issue 1, Year 2015

Editorial Board of “Holistic Marketing Management” (A refereed journal published four times annually by the School of Management-Marketing of the Romanian-American University) Editor-in-Chief Theodor Valentin PURCĂREA

Editorial Board

Bernd HALLIER

John SAEE

John L. STANTON

Léon F. WEGNEZ

William PERTTULA Levent ALTINAY

Andrew KILNER Dana ZADRAZILOVA Riccardo BELTRAMO Sinisa ZARIC Gabriela SABĂU Hélène NIKOLOPOULOU Vasa LÁSZLÓ Peter STARCHON John MURRAY Kamil PÍCHA Irena JINDRICHOVSKA Holistic Marketing Management

President of European Retail Academy; President of EuCVoT, Member of the Astana Economic Scientists Club; Former Managing Director EHI Retail Institute, Germany, Chairman of the Advisory Board of EuroShop, Chairman of the Board of the Orgainvent, Trustee of EHI Retail Institute at GLOBALG.A.P. President - Association of Global Management Studies (USA); Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues; Former Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Management Systems, USA; Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, the Faculty of Business and Enterprise, Swinburne University of Technology; Member of France’s National Academy of Scientific Research (CNRS); Director - ESB International Teaching and Research Exchanges, Reutlingen University, Germany Professor of Food Marketing, Erivan K. Haub School of Business, Saint Joseph’s University Philadelphia, USA; Director, Institute of Food Products Marketing, Editor, Journal of Food Products Marketing Secretary General, International Association of the Distributive Trade, AIDA Brussels; Member of France’s Academy of Commercial Sciences; Doctor Honoris Causa of NUPSPA (SNSPA) Bucharest; Hall of Fame of the European Retail Academy, Honored Personality 2015 Internet Marketing Professor, College of Business, San Francisco State University, USA Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Research Area Leader, Oxford School of Hospitality Management, Faculty of Business, Oxford Brookes University, UK First MBA Director at the Rennes Graduate School of Business in France; Director of RAFME Research into Management Excellence; PhD (Cambridge), MBA (City, London) Faculty of International Economic Relations, University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic University of Turin, Italy University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia Memorial University, Grenfell Campus, Corner Brook, Canada University of Lille 3, France Szent Istvan University, Hungary Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia Faculty of Business, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland Faculty of Economics, University of South Bohemia in Ceske Budejovice Deputy Head of Department of Business Economics, University of Economics 1

Norbert HAYDAM Constantin ROŞCA Hans ZWAGA Roxana CODITA Dumitru MIRON Valeriu IOAN-FRANC Iacob CĂTOIU Virgil BALAURE Gheorghe ORZAN Luigi DUMITRESCU Marius D. POP Petru FILIP Ion VOICU SUCALA Virgil POPA Alexandru NEDELEA Olguța Anca ORZAN Ana-Maria PREDA Ovidiu FOLCUȚ Doinița CIOCÎRLAN Marius Dan DALOTĂ Mihai PAPUC Gheorghe ILIESCU Alexandru IONESCU Olga POTECEA Oana PREDA Nicoleta DUMITRU Monica Paula RAȚIU Costel NEGRICEA Elisabeta Andreea BUDACIA

and Management, Prague, Czech Republic Faculty of Business, Marketing Department, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa President of Romanian Scientific Society of Management - SSMAR Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences, Finland Technische Universität München, TUM School of Management Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest National Institute for Economic Research, Romanian Academy; Romanian Marketing Association; Romanian Distribution Committee Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca Dimitrie Cantemir University, Bucharest Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Management and Economic Engineering Department; University of Glasgow, UK, College of Social Sciences, School of Social & Political Sciences; Managing Editor, Review of Management and Economic Engineering Valahia University of Târgovişte Ştefan cel Mare University of Suceava Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy Bucharest Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University

Associate Editors Diana SOCA Irina PURCĂREA Dan SMEDESCU Art Designer Director Alexandru BEJAN

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“Holistic Marketing Management” (A refereed journal published four times annually by the School of Management-Marketing of the Romanian-American University) Volume 5, Issue 1, Year 2015

Contents

Theodor Valentin PURCĂREA - Editorial: Promoting the Proper High Quality Educational Media in the Era of the Chief Executive Student........................................................................4

Andrew KILNER - Manager or Specialist. Which Role is Most Suitable for You………………………………..6

Costel Iliuță NEGRICEA - Digital Marketing, Digital Disruption, and the New Rules of Digitization………..11 Ioan Matei PURCĂREA

Diana SOCA - The Store of Tomorrow – A Symbiosis Between the Real and the Virtual......................................18

Elisabeta Andreea BUDACIA - The Coordinates of Quality and Satisfying the Consumers’ Needs…………..23 Alexandra PERJU - MITRAN

Theodor PURCĂREA - Marketing as a Center of Constant Improvement and Change…………………………30

The responsibility for the contents of the scientific and the authenticity of the published materials and opinions expressed rests with the author.

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Editorial: Promoting the proper high quality educational media in the era of the Chief Executive Student

In our previous editorial, we highlighted what we want readers to remember from HMM reading experience, mentioning, inter alia, the importance of both, on one hand, right impacting on digitally-enabled journal content consumers (so as to keep the journal brand on the readers’ mind, while keeping the desire to read it alive), and on the other hand, properly involving our readers into a research project on HMM brand relationship quality (a HMM reader-based indicator of the strength and depth of the person-brand relationship).

Following our readers’ suggestions, we are pleased to confirm that we will continue staying in tune with HMM Journal’s readers’ evolving wants and needs, targeting which is resonating with their reason, grace, perception and sentiment. HMM Journal is striving to listen to them, enabling positive interactions, collecting readers’ feedback at all stages of this journey called reading, aggregating readers’ feedback data to detect their opinions and make right improvements, including by offering visual interactions experiences, taking into account the video trend driven by the current need of using rapid valuable content.

We are confident that we will succeed in capturing reader sentiment in real-time, explore it, align with it in our HMM issues’ qualitative content, and also challenge the reader subtly, hoping that our HMM journal leaves the reader with the editors’ intended sentiment, being convinced that including our students will benefit from the good HMM reading practice which we’ll try to personalize to their level. Digital student engagement is a top Romanian-American University (RAU) strategic priority, HMM Journal being a promoter of the proper high quality educational media in the era of the Chief Executive Student. In fact, within the context of RAU general learning environment, we are pledging for HMM synergy between physical, virtual and social environments, HMM collaborative learning stimulating equipping students (through a better understanding of the essence of brand building with HMM) with the ability to interact effectively, while creating, analyzing, and transforming information.

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As shown in the current issue, marketing is constantly under continuous pressure involving constant improvement and change, and marketers need professional development on marketing topics, finding out the right balance between inbound and outbound marketing, and creating connected experiences between their companies and the audiences they need to reach.

Marketers are also challenged to choose the right channels/strategies and digital marketing tactics, the right metrics to gauge marketing success and to allocate the right budget on the right digital areas. They also need a better understanding of the new rules of digitization radically pushed by the hyper scale businesses, and of the lessons learned from debate on the so-called “new consumer� approach, including considering, on one hand, the innovation made possible by integrating mobile technology and the in-store experience, and on the other hand, the need of digital marketers to be actively engaging on potential disruptors.

Theodor Valentin Purcărea Editor - in - Chief

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MANAGER or SPECIALIST. Which role is most suitable for you?

Andrew KILNER * email contact rafme2000@yahoo.com **http:// rafme.homestead.com ***http://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/achieving-excellence-management-identifying-andlearning-bad-practices

Abstract There is a current tendency in Business Schools to glorify the status of 'manager'. His practice is unrealistic because many students are not suitable for this role -which therefore leads to problems for them and their eventual employers. This article discusses alternative avenues of development which can be more appropriate for such people.

Keywords: manager; career; skills JEL Classification: M51; M54 Introduction There is a proliferation of MBA courses on offer and each one invariably promises prospective students the acquisition of skills to enable them to become managers, as if this were the only career ideal to aim for. However, probably only half of these candidates really have the potential to become good managers-the rest being more suitable for a career as specialists. What is the basis upon which this distinction should be made?

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Which role is most suitable?

As explained in the Management Excellence book**,the fundamental reason is that a manager of a department requires certain interpersonal skills which some people do not possess nor are they capable of acquiring. Typical among these skills are the abilities to motivate and coach their subordinates, to handle certain difficult situations -especially those dealing with conflict, and to foster the good performance of the whole team rather than just of themselves.

The origin of this situation is that we all have an innate preference either for dealing with people or for working on tasks: very few of us are excellent in both. It is thus the first group who are more suited to be managers, whereas the second group can follow a career as 'specialists' be it in research, information technology or in other specific departmental functions like accounting.

Among auxiliary characteristics of these two groups are opposing perspectives (broad and general versus narrower and detailed), and the usually less extrovert behaviour of scientific specialists, who are also more at ease to work on their own.

A common error made by companies is to designate a successful but non-suitable person as manager. Take the example of a good salesman gifted in dealing with his clients but who could be ineffective in managing other salesmen. Promoting such a salesperson to sales manager will have a doubly negative effect in that the firm acquires a bad manager and at the same time 'loses' a good salesman.

However, there are of course many people who are not at either of these two extremes; they could be represented by coordinates of say 5,5 on a 10x10 graph showing emphasis on people as opposed to task.

For such people, there is the possibility of being project team leaders where, from time to time, they lead a multi-disciplinary team working on a specific project. The project team leader option is therefore useful for specialists to get an experience of management, and for managers to improve their knowledge of complex factors concerning the product or process Holistic Marketing Management

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being developed. The latter is particularly important in Anglo-Saxon companies which frequently select as managers people who do not have much product knowledge. Thus, for example, one finds General Managers within electrical engineering firms who do not have scientific degrees-something which would never occur in a German company who would insist on the person having an engineering or at least a physics degree.

Conclusion To conclude, a few words about careers for the two types of employees. In the more progressive firms there are parallel avenues of advancement for managers and for specialists with fairly comparable salary scales. Although the managers may be seen as being more important and possessing greater prospects for reaching the top levels within the company, they also run greater risks of being made redundant especially during periods of change when they may get a new boss who appreciates them less than did the previous one. Moreover, as there is obviously only limited space at the top of the organisational pyramid, the less successful candidates reach a positional and salary plateau from which they are encouraged to depart from the firm after the age of 45. Such a situation is more rare for specialists who, if they have been keeping up with progress in their subject, can maintain their post to a later age.

Management Processes summary chart Planning • Mission, goals, strategies, plans, actions • Continuous plans (every year for 3–5 years) • Strategic plans (periodic, “where do we want to be?”)

• One-off plans, e.g., small firm start-up or launching major event • New projects (why, where, who...)

• Timetable (+ PERT chart?)

• Problem solving (groups, sequence/methods, alternatives/constraints) • Decision making (free discussion, consensus, importance, speed) Holistic Marketing Management

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Organizational Structure • Centralization vs. devolution (depends on culture, degree of control, staff availability) • Departmentalization by function, product, place, hybrid, matrix (depends on importance of rapid response vs. duplication, cost) Organizational Style • Bureaucratic/mechanistic (hierarchy) or organic (flat) (depends on nature of environment, age/size, plus for manufacturing: on technology process (continuous/batch) • Services: on whether routine or nonroutine Organizational Change • Transformation based on “hard” issues, e.g., reengineering and “soft” issues, e.g.empowerment, resistance Staffing • Selecting, hiring, training, evaluating, promoting, parting, future planning Leading/Directing • Leader behavior: carrot and stick, democratic/autocratic (depends on leader needs, nature of followers, situation) • Leader orientation: human/broad/fl exible or task/detailed/rigid (largely depends on leader’s personal character and background) • Motivation and respect (individuals/groups, methods, absence) • Communication (internal/external, up/down, formal/informal) • Delegation (what, to whom, how, benefits, resistance) Holistic Marketing Management

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• Management development (skills, coaching, psychology) • Managers vs. leaders (complexity/efficiency vs. change/effectiveness) Control • Four financial statements (profit/loss, balance sheet, cash flow, break-even) • Budgets, financial ratios (liquidity, leverage, profitability) • Operations activity (stocks, capacity) • Projects (within time-frame, budget, quality norms) • People (performance evaluation) • External control (auditors, non-exec administrators, regulators) While on this topic, it should be emphasized that managers also have to 'keep themselves in shape' by frequently making use of the four management processes (planning,organising,leading,controling) for handling complex projects. These processes (Management Processes summary chart), remain largely unchanged,in contrast to management functions-especially marketing & finance, which need to be considerably adapted to deal with the present situation of crisis and recession.

-----------------------------------About the author Andrew Kilner, PhD (Cambridge), MBA (City, London) spent over 15 years as Business Planning Manager in large international companies in several countries, and ultimately became Professor, Head of Department and first MBA director at the Rennes Graduate School of Business in France.

He is currently Director of RAFME research** into Management Excellence with a book published on this topic*** and is giving conferences and writing articles in the French business press.

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Digital Marketing, Digital Disruption, and the New Rules of Digitization Dr. Costel Iliuță NEGRICEA Ioan Matei PURCĂREA Abstract As a constantly changing marketplace, online marketing demands constant innovation and evolution to keep attracting new customers. Marketers are challenged to choose the right channels/strategies and digital marketing tactics, the right metrics to gauge marketing success, and to allocate the right budget on the right digital areas. As digitization is steadily becoming the main pathway for consumer journeys, companies need the right DNA for the current evolving environment. The conventional management intuition about scale and complexity is challenged by the new rules of digitization radically pushed by the hyper scale businesses, and hyper scaling will probably touch more areas. The debate on the so-called “new consumer” is continuing, including considering, on one hand, the innovation made possible by integrating mobile technology and the in-store experience, and on the other hand, the need of digital marketers to be actively engaging on potential disruptors.

Keywords: digital marketing; digital disruption; new rules of digitization; hyperscale business; mobile technology; in-store experience JEL Classification: L81; L86; M15; M31; O33

Digital marketing trends and developments Just at the beginning of this year, on 5 January, Gabriel Shaoolian, a digital trends expert and founder and CEO of New York digital advertising agency Blue Fountain Media, argued (Shaoolian, 2015) that as a constantly changing marketplace, online marketing demands constant innovation and evolution to keep attracting new customers. Within this framework, in order to increase sales and brand recognition, he recommended five digital marketing tactics: Go responsive (by building out a responsive or adaptive website so as to offer a tailored experience for the majority of users which will be on mobile devices); Update guest posting practices (by making a point of creating well-written guest posts, and generating this way brand recognition and referral traffic); Take website speed seriously (an easy element to optimize in company’s digital marketing strategy, by running your images through image optimization software as a great first step in improving users’ interaction with company’s website and making easier their Holistic Marketing Management

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purchases ); Add Schema Mark-Up (and making sure that people click on your search result instead of ones higher up the page, being confirmed that websites with schema mark-up tending to rank four spots higher in search results); Allocate more resources to content marketing (by starting treating each piece of content that a company put out as a stand-alone representation of company’s business, and adding advice that is unique to company’s business or publishing studies that only this company has the data to create). In Shaoolian’s opinion, the need to constantly update and refine company’s strategies remains consistent across all channels, and he is pledging in conclusion for a full audit of company’s existing digital marketing strategies and to identify what needs an overhaul.

At the end of the same month, MarketingProfs (Nanji, 2015) showed that according to a recent report (based on data from a survey conducted in October and November 2014 of 5053 marketers from around the world, 56% B2C-focused, and 44% B2B) from Salesforce Marketing Cloud, social media advertising (70% plan to increase spend), social media marketing (70%), social media engagement (67%), location-based mobile tracking (67%), and mobile applications (66%) are the top 5 digital areas marketers plan to allocate more budget on. Additional key findings from the report referred to key issues such as: Channels and Strategies (the most used digital channels/strategies by the marketers surveyed are corporate websites, social media, and SEO/SEM; the most effective channels/strategies are email marketing, social media advertising, and social media listening); Metrics (a top metric used to gauge marketing success is revenue growth, according to 32% of marketers; one of their top metrics is customer satisfaction, according to 30% of marketers).

At the beginning of the next month, we find out (Jarsky, 2015) other news about digital marketing tactics (according to an infographic by Brand Muscle) companies should adopt in 2015: to give company’s audience engaging content that keeps them subscribed to company’s email list, making sure emails are mobile-friendly (91% of consumers check their email daily, while 66% of consumers made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message; to share content company has created more than once on different social networks; to use social media tools to measure engagement and post at optimal days and times. On the other hand, as shown at the beginning of March, (Nanji, 2015) according to a recent report (based on data from a survey of 600 US marketing professionals, a combination of B2B and B2C) from Holistic Marketing Management

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Webmarketing123: one-third of marketers say they do not know which digital marketing tactic has the biggest positive impact on revenue; email is the digital marketing channel with the greatest positive impact on revenue - 26%; SEO is second - 17%, followed by paid search - 15%, social media - 5%, and online display advertising - 5%. Additional key findings from the above mentioned report showed that: email is the most effective tactic for B2B marketers (31% of respondents saying it has the biggest impact on revenue); paid search is the most effective digital tactic for B2C marketers (24% of respondents saying it has the biggest impact on revenue); most B2C marketers (56%) say Facebook has generated some revenue for their business, while 46% of B2B marketers are not sure whether any social channels have generated revenue for their business.

The main pathway for consumer journeys: Digitization Marketers need indeed to understand the role of marketing technologists and to increase their ability to link different technologies, and ensure a successfully intersection with their audience across channels and devices, and to constantly innovate and improve the customer experience by concentrating on a trusted brand that makes the customer feeling having someone on its side. (Purcarea, 2014) In February 2015, McKinsey Quarterly brought to our attention a valuable study (considered to be a vivid picture of the factors involved in a consumer’s purchase choice - also known as brand conversion; conducted over 2012–13, and covering 70 percent of discretionary spending for about 15000 European households; compiling data on 1000 brands across a wide range of product categories, covering 20000 consumer journeys and 100000 touch points along them) on the relationship between the level of digitization across the consumer’s decision journey and the likelihood that a consumer will select a brand after considering and evaluating its qualities. (Bughin, 2015) According to the authors of the study, the identified landscape shows the well-known and challenging (from the point of view of company’s adaptation to) so-called “Digital Darwinism”, underlining, inter alia, that: digitization is steadily becoming the main pathway for consumer journeys; the likelihood of brand conversion is lower for fully digital consumers than for experimenters; most savvy digital brands are consolidating their positions within their sectors, and diminishing the chances that laggards will catch up; more thoroughly digitized brands benefit from higher levels of positive word of mouth etc. The authors of the study pledge for a Holistic Marketing Management

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company’s right DNA for the current evolving environment, in order to adapt companies needing to consider the followings: to track emerging digital models, to see if social-feedback loops are working against the company, and if company’s digital channels are the most effective ones. And they recommend knowing the company’s customer, figuring out the correct digital channel, and using these insights while building company’s ecosystem.

A month later, in March 215, other McKinsey representatives (Chui and Manyika, 2015) highlighted that the conventional management intuition about scale and complexity is challenged by the new rules of digitization radically pushed by the hyper scale businesses (big data business are already part of the daily lives of hundreds of millions of users, rising up and disrupting traditional businesses at surprising speeds). They argued that: by creating network effects and evaporating marginal costs digitization catalyzes rapid growth (the cost of storing, transporting, and replicating data being almost zero); we see already digital platforms which can instantly conduct experiments across a base of millions of interactions, and hyper scaling will probably touch more areas (being already a visible move from search and social networking into new sectors, like banking and retailing) as cheaper computer power, sensors, and communications accelerate the pace at which businesses adopt digital technologies.

The potential of integrating mobile technology and the in-store experience.

Digital disruption, a constant for retailer marketers In the middle of March this year, Steve Needel (Managing Partner of Advanced Simulations; former Vice President for Product Development at A.C. Nielsen, and also former Vice President of Analytical Services at Nielsen; B. A. in Psychology from The American University; Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Connecticut; member of the American Marketing Association) recalled that two years ago he has written (Needel, 2015) about our misconception of the so-called “new consumer” (overly reliant on digital technology and researching everything or doesn’t daring making a purchase without consulting social media). At that time, Needel stated that he (Needel, 2013) is not sure it’s relevant for most of the purchase decisions we make (showing in this respect a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation, and making reference, inter alia, to the Food Marketing Institute’s 2012 U.S. Grocery Trends study), and arguing that what shoppers are doing with their mobile devices in stores may be Holistic Marketing Management

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evolutionary, but it may just be a simplifying mechanism. In his opinion, adopting this “New Consumer approach” may well lead us into unproductive research and marketing activities in the CPG world, because there is nothing to suggest that these “New Consumers” aren’t susceptible to the usual shopper marketing activities. That is why he recommended: not confusing new tools with new behavior at the store; as marketing research has always been segmented, let’s use a level of segmentation for categories in which technology matters and another one in which it does not much matter. His point of view generated a true debate.

This time, in March 2015, Steve Needel pointed out that the longer he does marketing research, the more he realizes there are no absolutes in our business, and recommended not to care so much about “everything must be digital” (“Your shoppers are wired, why aren’t you!?”).

He referred to the findings of Michael Sciandra and Jeff Inman (University of Pittsburgh), who used the 2012 and 2013 POPAI studies to understand smartphone usage in grocery stores and mass-merchandisers. Within this context, Needel underlined some astounding results (marketing folk are all “digital this” and “mobile that”; retailers are all wringing their hands trying to figure out what to do; according to the obtained data, nobody is actually using their phones in the stores for shopping - the retailer suffers and when shoppers do etc.). And Needel, therefore, considers that it is essential to get over both ideas, that using mobile devices are ubiquitous in the stores (where most of our purchases take place), and that people want to be bombarded with messages while they are in the store. That is why he didn’t recommend encouraging in-store mobile device usage.

But it is worth to add that Ellen Woods, a participant to the above mention debate from 2013, underlined a big difference (between: “Do I use my phone to aid my shop in the grocery?” and “Do I use a phone to aid/plan my grocery shopping?”), while another one, Leonard Murphy, made reference to a study (examining 3000 consumers in three markets – US, UK, Canada – and identifying five unique segments of “M-Shoppers”) of Columbia Business School and Aimia: Showrooming and the Rise of the Mobile-Assisted Shopper. (Quint, Rogers and Ferguson, 2015) This study concluded that retailers should take care not to overreact to every consumer that uses a smartphone in their store (people still want to live in a world that balances online and offline interactions), but they can take an active role in helping these M-Shoppers find the information or incentives they seek so that they walk out satisfied with a purchase. And while greater threat Holistic Marketing Management

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for retailers, according to the above mentioned study, may well be the growing adoption of mobile device use at home (in which browsing for goods and daily deals takes the retail environment entirely out of the equation), this innovation made possible by integrating mobile technology and the in-store experience has the potential to provide greater delight to customers and keep them coming back (whether online or in-store) to the retailer.

In February 2015, Paul Schottmiller, senior vice president, strategy, retail and consumer goods, at Merkle (a customer relationship marketing agency specializing in data-based marketing solutions), attracted the attention to the fact that digital has moved from transforming the purchasing of media (e.g., music, movies and books) to influencing 50 percent of all shopping purchases, arguing that retail marketers need to be watching for, and innovating with, the next round of digital disruptors, because digital disruption is becoming a constant. (Schottmiller, 2015) In his opinion, all digital marketers will need to be actively engaging on five potential disruptors: Location, location, location (for a retailer, consumer’s mobile screen has become some of the most valuable “real estate” to “occupy”; technologies like beacons, Wi-Fi and geofencing open up new dimensions for real-time and personalized marketing, there are already notable examples such as Wal-Mart with store-specific apps, and Walgreens with beacons); Social shopping 2.0 (listening, targeting and interacting are the three main areas of opportunity today with social media, and the velocity of new social channels has continued to increase with emerging players like Snapchat and Wanelo); Fast analytics (built on top of big data and making marketing decisions in sub second timeframes a differentiator and potential disruptor); It's about the journey, not the destination (retail marketers have now the opportunity to drive increased levels of personalization tanks to improved tracking and attribution technologies across differing channels); The death of the pure-play (either on their websites, in social media, in-store, on mobile, or integrating - which is recommendable - all of these, marketers are now in a better position to deliver personalized omnichannel experiences that differentiate their brand).

Instead of conclusions: The pressure of better understanding a fundamental truth At the beginning of March this year, Joel Rubinson highlighted that: “Marketers need to understand this fundamental truth…in a digital, social, mobile age, consumers can choose brand messages as much as the brand messages choose them. Consumers are always on, always connected and this has fundamentally changed how we shop… we browse incessantly, on Holistic Marketing Management

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whatever screen we have handy. Progressive marketers know their brands need to be ‘alwayson’ as well to generate earned (social media) or owned (e.g. website visits) media impressions that will benefit the brand.” (Rubinson) Indeed, as we showed before, marketers (needing to be actively engaging on potential disruptors) are really challenged as digitization is steadily becoming the main pathway for consumer journeys, and within this context of the new rules of digitization radically pushed by the hyperscale businesses.

References Shaoolian Gabriel - 5 Resolutions for Digital Marketing in 2015, Target Marketing, January 5, 2015, available at: http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/5-resolutions-digital-marketing-2015/1 Nanji, Ayaz - 2015 Digital Marketing Budgets Top Priorities, Metrics, and Challenges, MarketingProfs, January 27, 2015, available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2015/26900/2015-digital-marketing-budgets-toppriorities-metrics-and-challenges#ixzz3Q6ZpwN8N Jarski, Verónica Maria - Three Digital Marketing Tactics You Should Adopt in 2015 [Infographic], MarketingProfs, February 9, 2015, Available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2015/27013/three-digital-marketing-tacticsyou-should-adopt-in-2015-infographic#ixzz3RJynjZDt Nanji, Ayaz - Which Digital Marketing Tactic Has the Biggest Revenue Impact? MarketinProfs, March 3, 2015, Available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2015/27157/which-digital-marketing-tactic-boosts-revenuemost#ixzz3TgoUAJvH Theodor Purcarea - A Review of the Different Marketing Opinions on Marketers’ Maturity and Challenges in the Second Half of 2014, Holistic Marketing Management, Volume 4, Issue 4, Year 2014 Bughin, Jacques - Brand success in an era of Digital Darwinism, McKinsey Quarterly, February 2015, available at: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/brand_success_in_an_era_of_digital_darwinism?ci d=other-eml-alt-mkq-mck-oth-1502 Chui, Michael and Manyika, James - Competition at the digital edge: ‘Hyperscale’ businesses, McKinsey Quarterly , March 2015, available at: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/Competition_at_the_digital_edge_Hyperscale_busi nesses?cid=other-eml-alt-mkq-mck-oth-1503 Steve Needel - In-Store Mobile Usage: Much Ado About Nothing – Again, Green Book Blog, March 17, 2015, available at: http://www.greenbookblog.org/2015/03/17/in-store-mobile-usage-much-ado-about-nothing-again/ Needel, Steve - Meet The New Consumer? Green Book Blog, September 11, 2013, Available at: http://www.greenbookblog.org/2013/09/11/meet-the-new-consumer/ Quint, Matthew and Rogers, David (Columbia Business School), Ferguson, Rick (Aimia) - Showrooming and the Rise of the Mobile-Assisted Shopper, September 2013, available at: http://www.aimia.com/content/dam/aimiawebsite/CaseStudiesWhitepapersResearch/english/Aimia_MobileAssisted Shopper.pdf Schottmiller, Paul - Digital Disruptors for Retail Marketers in 2015, Retail Online Integration, February 20, 2015, Available at: http://www.retailonlineintegration.com/article/digital-disruptors-retail-marketers-2015/1 Rubinson, Joel - 6 Killer Insights From Digital and Social Data, Green Book Blog, March 2, 2015, Available at: http://www.greenbookblog.org/2015/03/02/6-killer-insights-from-digital-and-social-data/ Holistic Marketing Management

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The store of tomorrow – a symbiosis between the real and the virtual Diana SOCA

Abstract At the end of the twentieth century new technologies have revolutionized the economic life but also the consumer behavior. Everything has been accelerated, leading to the development of a new relationship between customer and time. The customer in this new relationship wants to save time and spend it as he pleases, to be able to order anywhere, instantly and with ease. He doesn’t want only products, but also complementary services which will make his life easier. He no longer wants to be passive, but instead to be actively involved in his commercial relationship.

He wants to be listened to and to have access to a customized offer. To meet these new customer demands, retailers use multichannel direct marketing strategies, which combined with new technologies, will radically change the nature of the client-retailer interaction. Shops and the act of buying will become a symbiosis between the real and the virtual, online retailers will open showrooms while network operators will increasingly integrate the Internet into their strategy.

Keywords: customer behavior; commercial services; multichannel marketing strategies; retailers JEL Classification: M31; L81

Meeting consumer demands and facilitating the purchasing process In modern economy, the main variable on which the retailer relies to achieve success is customer satisfaction. Therefore, there is an increasing necessity to introduce a wide range of facilities that, along with the actual product that is subject to the act of buying, contribute to customer satisfaction.

Services help customize a sale point, a commercial network, a business activity because they represent the sum of all elements that make buying easier, more enjoyable and emphasize the aspects that make a certain product valuable. Services also support merchant prosperity.

Without their continuous improvement, everything would crumble, regardless of investments, Holistic Marketing Management

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technical infrastructure, staff etc. The consumer expects the merchants to provide him with more attractive and dynamic commercial services.

By closely following the technological development that contemporary society is witnessing, retailers together with their suppliers conduct many research studies aimed at enhancing distribution channels and discovering new ways to diversify and enrich the offer through a wide and varied range of services.

A study conducted in 2012 showed that the number of people who access the Internet using mobile phones or tablets to do their shopping or seek information on products and services is constantly growing. It also revealed that about half of respondents seek information on their mobile phones before arriving in store and over a third of them access the Internet for information even while in the store.

To meet consumer demands and facilitate the purchasing process, modern retailers have introduced a range of services such as: x

increasing availability for certain information regarding the company's products and services (for example the status of an ongoing delivery) by using email or text messages (SMS, MMS) and the Internet

x

direct access to product information through QR codes (two-dimensional barcode that can be read by the camera of a mobile phone. It can contain different types of information including a web address; in this case reading the QR code connects the mobile to the corresponding web site.) placed on shelves

x

direct access to virtual stores through QR codes strategically placed in subway stations, train stations, bus stations or even in supermarkets

x

mobile applications that allow the customer to access the online store, to get information regarding customer loyalty plans, to save vouchers, to find the nearest stores on the map and to check the availability of certain products.

A service introduced 4-5 years ago on the Romanian market which has seen exponential

growth is the introduction of pay points in shops. Its development was influenced on one hand by the efforts made by vendors towards network expansion and promotion and on the other hand by the increasing consumer confidence in this type of payment.

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The offer for this kind of services evolved from basic ones such as prepaid recharge, payment of various utilities or money transfers to magazine subscriptions, discount coupons, buying music, games or software, vignettes or bus tickets.

Future shops will incorporate the advantages of the Internet Research conducted by the American company e-Marketer highlighted the fact that there isn’t currently a single sector in the world more dynamic than the online sector. According to the company’s estimates, the fastest dynamics are recorded in Asia, where forecasts for online sales in China and Indonesia reach 65 and 71% this year. In Western Europe online market value will increase from $ 291 billion to $ 388 billion in 2016. In the US and Australia but also in Western European countries such as the UK online share is close to 10% of total sales of goods and services to end consumers. According to the estimates, in the following years online sales worldwide will reach 20% of the turnover. This will be achieved by introducing new technologies in shops.

Studies undertaken by European researchers on a great number of medium-sized and large retailers in Northern and Western Europe, emphasized that the difference between the two types of stores will depend heavily on the implementation of digital technology in their structure.

It has also been highlighted that some European retailers, and particularly British ones, are interested in implementing advanced payment methods such as: contactless cards, multipurpose cards that can be used as debit, credit or prepaid cards, devices that can be attached to key chains or payments made via mobile phone. In the near future, 22% of retailers are expected to allow customers to automatically scan their products. Label systems based on radio frequency identification are likely to be introduced by 34% of retailers in order to facilitate the inventory process and also to decrease the effort of providing customized promotions.

Other studies focused on the design of future stores. According to them, the shops of major retailers will include large displays showing current discounts, big interactive screens with suggestions of related products, reviews from customers and indications regarding product placement and of course free Wi-Fi. The way future stores will look was also the subject of many of the discussions at the EuroCIS 2013, the largest fair for retail technology that takes place in Germany. Thus it is Holistic Marketing Management

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estimated that online retailers will start opening showrooms while network operators will further integrate the Internet into their strategy.

Dramatic changes in the field of mobile technology and tablets, the integration of the Internet, and social media were some of the topics of great interest for the suppliers and retailers participating at the fair. More and more companies rely on multichannel marketing strategies in order to satisfy their desire to better manage customer relationships and increase sales. Their number has increased significantly, almost doubling from year to year, one out of two companies considering the use of integrated marketing communication in the future.

Conclusion The advance of technology and the diminishing of boundaries between TV, social media and mobile technology will enable tomorrow’s operators to revolutionize ways of identifying, understanding and recognizing clients and prospects, radically changing the nature of communication with them.

The Internet will continue to have an important role in direct marketing, its use will not be limited to emailing or e-commerce but will extend to all new devices interconnected, providing unique and customized services to prospects and customers.

Whether we refer to major regional players or international chains of stores in the offline environment, retail companies will want to benefit from the online boom. Therefore these companies will develop a multi-channel distribution. Multichannel commerce will become the standard for retailers worldwide and will be the essential factor for companies to achieve success.

References Claeyssen, Yan, Deydier, Anthony, Riquet, Yves – Marketingul direct multicanal. Prospectarea, fidelizarea si recastigarea clientilor , Ed. Polirom 2009, pp. 329-336 Purcarea, Theodor – Marketing’s Continuous Rise and Shine, “Holistic Marketing Management” Journal, Volume 4, Issue 3, Year 2014 Holistic Marketing Management

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Purcarea, Theodor – Distribution, the Challenge of the Super Agility, “Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine”, Volume 5, Issue 3, Year 2014 Purcarea, Theodor – A review of the different marketing opinions on marketers’ maturity and challenges in the second half of 2014, “Holistic Marketing Management” Journal, Volume 4, Issue 4, Year 2014 Purcarea, Theodor, Ratiu, Monica – Comportamentul consumatorului, Ed. Universitara Carol Davila, Bucuresti, 2007 Ristea, A. L., Tudose, C., Ioan Franc, V. – Tehnologie comerciala, Ed. Expert 1995, pp. 256-257 Magazinul Progresiv 2013-2014

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The coordinates of quality and satisfying the consumers’ needs

Elisabeta Andreea BUDACIA Alexandra PERJU - MITRAN Abstract Quality is a dynamic concept, because the demands of the technical progress impose to production the creation and permanent realization of new modern products with superior characteristics and performances. Quality is, in the long run, defined by the client, while the management ensures the overfulfilment of the client’s demands and expectations. At the managerial level, it is essential to have a product that responds to the clients’ needs and the conformity with certain standards is just one of the multiple ways that lead towards this purpose.

The conformity of products and services is connected through their nature with static standards and specifications, while quality represents a mobile target.

Keywords: quality; the management of quality; consumer satisfaction JEL Classification: M00; M30 Introduction The origin of quality objectives has its roots in the clients’ (consumers’) needs. Hence, one can state that the scientific substantiation of the management of quality should be oriented towards the market and new technologies for the implementation of the quality goals. The quality strategic objectives have a deep effect on the production process, ensuring the performances of the products and of the important processes of multifunctional nature.

The goal of the management of quality is, firstly, the understanding of the client’s expectations regarding quality and, secondly, the establishment of a plan and of a pro-active process which would achieve this goal. Quality is, in the long run, defined by the client, while the management ensures the overfulfilment of the client’s demands and expectations.

Nowadays, we go through a period in which the evolution of social life leaves a deeper and deeper mark on quality, seen as a result of different processes, at the level of different domains of economic and social development. In the context of the increase and diversification of product demand, of the development of industrial production but also of the higher and higher consumer exigencies, the notion of product quality has continuously evolved and today we use terms such as “the management of quality”, “quality audit”, “total quality”.

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Quality – an abstract or a concrete notion?

Quality represents the expression of the degree of social utility of the product, degree in which, through all of its characteristics (technical, functional, psycho-sensory and economic parameters), it satisfies the need for which it has been created and respects the restrictions imposed by the general interests of the society regarding the social and economic efficiency, as well as the protection of the natural and social environment.

According to the standard ISO 8402, quality represents all of the characteristics of an entity – product, activity, process, organization, person – which give it the ability to satisfy the implicit or expressed demands. Three conclusions come out of this definition.

• According to some partial aspects of the quality of a product or service, the notion of quality signifies: o The ability to be used; o Satisfying the client’s demands; o The conformity with a certain documentation or with the beneficiary’s exigencies.

• The ensemble of the activities which have as a goal the attainment of quality form the step of quality.

• The product regarded in conformity with the same standard can be any material or immaterial good and/or service which appears as a result of certain activities and/or processes.

Quality is a dynamic concept, because the demands of the technical progress impose to production the creation and permanent realization of new modern products with superior characteristics and performances. The diversity and improvement of the product quality involves the promotion of certain unitary activities, starting from analyzing the market and continuing with a complete industrial cycle in which the products are created.

This cycle, according to some dynamic evolutions of quality, can be realized in the production process through a spiral of quality which contains: the marketing study, scientific research, economic and commercial planning, projecting and creating the prototype, approving the prototype, planning the fabrication process (with the establishment Holistic Marketing Management

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of the technical documentation and of the typo-dimensions), material supply with equipments (machinery, measurement items, trial stands), technological process, the control of the technological process, the final control, the verification of the reliability, sale, technical assistence and “service” activity for the beneficiary and the cycle repeats itself.

In correspondence with the process of production, therefore the producer, the quality of the product can be: -

Potential – projected;

-

Realized – created at the end of the production line;

-

Delivered – ensured by the delivered products;

-

Total – which incorporates the degree of utility, economy, but also the aesthetic, ergonomic, functional, social degree, etc.

The correlation between the quality spiral, the production process and the activities which are specific to the management of quality are highlighted in the following figure:

The design phase:

The creation phase:

The usage phase:

•marketing study, •scientific research, •economic planning, •projecting the prototype, •getting the product approved, •planning the fabrication process.

T o t a l

•material supply, •fabrication, •controlling the technological process, •storage, •verifying the efficiency.

•sale, •technical assistance and service.

Q u a l i t

Fig. No. 1 The correlation between the quality spiral and the process of production Holistic Marketing Management

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The fact that the quality characteristics of products are created in the production process allows us to highlight also the notion of production quality – together with the notion of product quality – that refers to the manner of development of the activity ensemble which forms this process – concept, organization, technology, etc. The quality of a product in the production process is obtained in three phases: -

in the research-projection phase through the quality of the concept and of the resulted documentation (usage technology);

-

in the fabrication phase through the quality of the raw materials, of the equipments and of workforce;

-

in the exploitation phase, in which it is ensured through the quality of the technical assistance and post-sale service.

Although it is an abstract notion, quality is reflected by a series of objective and subjective factors, which are grouped together in the following figure:

Objective factors:

•raw materials and materials which help produce the product, •machinery, •the technological process, •human resources, •aspect, •product life duration, •intrinsic characteristics of the product, competition among manufacturers, •the product’s market availability, •price

Subjective factors:

•utility for the targeted person, •promoting the product, •price, •brand, •usage, •the consumer’s mood

Fig. no. 2 Factors that influence the quality of a product

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Approaching quality through its conformity with standards and specifications, although valid, it represents, however, a dangerous concept at a managerial level. At the managerial level, it is essential that the product responds to the needs of clients and the conformity with certain standards is just one of the multiple ways that lead towards this goal. The conformity of products and services is connected through their nature with static standards and specifications, while quality represents a mobile target. There are standards that contain provisions for chronic losses.

This definition of quality, in conformity with such standards, favors continuous losses. There are situations in which 100 percent conformity means a flawless product, but the sale of the products and services is created by the characteristics that respond to the needs of clients, which are constantly changing.

In the practice of the suppliers and beneficiaries relations, the quality of merchandise can take the form of eight major aspects. (Saseanu, 2007) x The projected quality or the quality of the concept represents the ensemble of the quality characteristics and their values, selected in the phase of the product design. x The approved quality, as a standard (reference system) refers to the ensemble of the quality characteristics and their approved and accepted values. x The prescribed quality refers to the ensemble of quality characteristics and their values which can be found in the product standard. On the basis of this type of quality, the quality reception of the merchandise is made between the manufacturer and the beneficiary. x The contracted quality represents the ensemble of the quality characteristics and their values which are mentioned in the delivery contract. x The delivered quality represents the level of quality of the products at the moment of delivery. This type of quality can be found in the Quality certificate, Conformity declaration, Analysis bulletin, documents which should come with the delivered batch of products. x The real quality refers to the ensemble of quality characteristics and their values which are established after the delivery, by the beneficiary. x The technical (industrial) quality expresses the degree of conformity of the individual values of technical and functional properties, in comparison with the provisions of standards and enforced norms. This type of quality expresses the manufacturer point of view.

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x The commercial quality expresses the consumer point of view and it refers to the following aspects: psycho-sensory characteristics, the variety of sortiments, warranty, after the sale service, display and packaging, maintenance and activity costs.

The projected quality The commercial quality

The approved quality

The prescribed quality

The technical quality

The contracted quality

The real quality

The delivered quality

Fig. No. 3 The coordinates of quality as a result of the practice of relations between suppliers and beneficiaries

Conclusions On the basis of the presented arguments, we can conclude that the entire activity of the enterprise should be oriented towards the consumer and it is always necessary to take into account the reaction of the consumer towards the product/service.

Recent studies have shown that most of the consumers change their preferences for certain products/services due to different reasons, the most important two being the price and the Holistic Marketing Management

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poor quality. As a rule, the consumer is willing to pay extra money in order to have a better quality and the chances of a product to sell grow as the quality/price ratio is higher, which allows us to state that, nowadays, quality is more and more based on what is desired by the client.

In the clients’ perception, the better the product characteristics, the higher the quality. The definition of quality through the absence of deficiencies refers to the fact that the fewer are the deficiencies of products and services, the better is the quality.

The success of an organization depends on the clients. The top management of the organization should ensure that the demands of the clients are analyzed and satisfied in order to continuously increase their level of satisfaction (element 5.2. of ISO 9001:2001).

In order to obtain competitive advantages in the long run, an organization should enhance the rate with which they maintain their clients. The organization should identify the current and future client needs, satisfy their needs and be constantly preoccupied with exceeding their expectations (SR EN ISO 9000:2001, the principles of the management of quality and SR EN ISO 9004:2001, element 4.3.point a).

References Dean, W. - Leadership real. Oameni şi organizaţii, faţă în faţă cu marile lor provocări, Editura Codecs, Bucureşti, 2007 Juran, J.M. - Planificarea calităţii, Editura Teora, Bucureşti, 2000 Olaru, M. - Managementul calităţii, Editura Economică, Buucreşti, 1999 Saseanu, A. - in the book „Tratat de Management Comercial”, Ed. Universitara, Bucuresti, 2007, coordinated by Dumitru Patriche Stanciu, I. - Managementul calitatii totale, Editura Universitară, Bucureşti, 2003 Zsifkovits - Total Quality Management (TQM) als Strategie im internationalen Wettbewerb, Verlag TUV Rheinland, Koln, 1992

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Marketing as a center of constant improvement and change Theodor Purcărea Abstract Marketing is constantly under continuous pressure involving constant improvement and change.

On their continuous way of becoming more engaging and effective, marketers need professional development on marketing topics, an engagement strategy that provides a willing marketing team with a road map for success, to keep a tight focus on the metrics, to step away from lifecycle marketing and personas, and to evangelize the customer journey in the organization.

They also need a better understanding of the marketing predictions and of the direct relationship between marketing’s value and impact and marketing’s alignment to the business, viewing marketing and sales as a company’s investment, and getting the process of transforming marketing and sales capabilities to drive growth moving in a fruitful direction. They must learn to cut through the noise existing in today’s wonderfully rich content world, and to secure relationships by translating a level of honesty to the customer and earning trust. And as marketing spend is on the rise, and CMOs are gaining influence, while in the same time data and automation technology are driving seismic shifts in the industry, marketers must identify and face the current challenges, so as to achieve measurable and actionable results, and to refresh and realign company’s marketing objectives on the basis of an outside perspective that also helps those outside the accountable marketing department understand the whole picture. In the same time they must find out the right balance between inbound and outbound marketing, and to create connected experiences between their companies and the audiences they need to reach, while synchronizing all the channels to send the right message to the right person every time.

Keywords: marketing techniques; marketing department; marketing predictions; brand tone of voice JEL Classification: M31; M15; D83

The continuous challenge of understanding the latest Marketing techniques, technologies, and trends

Seneca argued that it’s the excellence of the acting that matters in life, while Aristotle underlined that excellence is not an act but a habit. Climbing the ladder of time, and coming in present times, allow us to remember the words of Tom Peters: “Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.” And there is no doubt about the fact that marketing is constantly under continuous pressure involving constant improvement and change.

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No wonder therefore that, according to a recent survey conducted for MarketingProfs by emedia, (Jarsky, 2015) the most popular topics for marketing training are: content marketing (45%), branding (45%), social media (40%). But despite the real need of spending time and money in order to train marketers, the survey results showed that only 63% of surveyed marketers offer professional development on marketing topics. On their continuous way of becoming more engaging and effective they also need, for instance, to improve their marketing by learning how the human mind processes information and images: “Emotions process input five times faster than the conscious brain; the brains process images 60,000 times faster than text.” (Jarsky, 2015) It is also worth remembering that at the end of last year, in December, (Lucas, 2014) Mark Williams, creative director at LiveWorld, spoke on a magic formula for becoming better marketers: Data + Analysis + Insight. Being in the business of social media marketing since 1999, Williams is aiming for a purpose-driven sustainable engagement.

We have seen recently (Negricea and Purcarea, 2014) that in the era of the Chief Executive Customer digital customer engagement became a top strategic priority, marketers are challenged taking advantage globally of digital technology, but they are missing the inbound call channel, despite the fact that they are tracking the digital user experience across the various touch points and marketing channels. How can companies today better engage their customers using more devices than ever before and across more channels? In order to create an engagement strategy that provides a willing marketing team with a road map for success (not only aligning with company’s business objectives), Reggie Wideman, (Wideman, 2015) senior director of strategy at Janrain, highlighted five actions that brands and companies can take in this respect: (1) Write a customer-engagement manifesto; (2) Define company’s key use cases and determine a starting point (by making a list and prioritizing it, finding ways to get company’s customers to create content and provide feedback and so on); (3) Define the path to value over 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months (an important step not only for internal evangelism but also for getting customer buy-in); (4) Map company’s (sustainable, scalable, cost-effective) engagement ecosystem (technology and marketing leadership must work together); (5) Engage the internal organization (for prioritizing customer engagement, and delivering on the promise of better customer engagement).

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Marketers must make time to learn, even to be in a perpetual state of learning, because being busy doesn’t equal success, (Radice, 2015) and when it comes to their relevant market they need to be both, in the information business and an education sponge. For example, the below mentioned most comprehensive marketing report of 2015 recommended to educate marketer team and the larger organization on the importance of mobile (70% of the surveyed marketers see mobile marketing as a critical enabler of products and services, while only 64% of marketers see social media marketing as a critical enabler of products and services).

The 2015 State of Marketing (a report on senior-level marketers published by LinkedIn and Salesforce Marketing Cloud; a survey conducted online from October 28, 2014, to November 25, 2014, and sent to full-time marketers in Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s) offered a professional analysis (on the basis of 5000 responses received by due date) for stronger marketing insight (by asking marketers about their budgets, priorities, channels, metrics, and strategies for 2015). According to this analysis, new business development, quality of leads, and remaining up to date with current marketing technology and trends are the biggest challenges of 2015. Marketers, that must keep a tight focus (largely centered on attracting customers and engaging them long-term) on the metrics (shifting attention from traditional metrics like conversion rates and return on investment to metrics that better reflect customer satisfaction), identified the following top 5 digital marketing metrics for success in 2015: Revenue growth 32%; Customer satisfaction - 30%; Return on investment - 23%; Customer retention rates - 23%; Customer acquisition (i.e., audience and/or list growth) - 23%. There are also other significant 2015 recommendations of the report, such as (within the customer journey approach) to step away from lifecycle marketing and personas, and to evangelize the customer journey in the organization.

Understanding both, marketing predictions and the direct relationship between marketing’s value and impact and marketing’s alignment to the business Marketers also must make time to learn seeing things as they will be, by better understanding marketing predictions. They must go beyond “Facebook marketing” and “Twitter marketing”, for instance, and use a combination approach of multiple social networks and weave together and drive social traffic from one network to another. They must also see video as experiential, by using video and creativity to give customers engaging experiences. (King, 2015) Holistic Marketing Management

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It’s time to develop this channel by keeping with their brand identity, while considering YouTube as more than a platform for sharing video footage. (Hemley, 2015) In the same time marketers must not forget that there is no doubt about the direct relationship between marketing’s value and impact and marketing’s alignment to the business.

That is why it is important: to focus on impact versus activity; to capture (thanks to the right marketing metrics) marketing’s impact and contribution (in significant areas, such as customer acquisition and retention, customer/brand equity, competitive position, operational efficiencies and financials); to effectively move from data to embraced insights; to transform and maintain marketing as a center of excellence on the basis of the right marketing operations road map (technology, systems, tools; workforce; processes/process improvement; performance measures; capital allocation/requirements; supplier management). (Patterson, 2015) Viewing marketing and sales as a company’s investment According to McKinsey representatives (following a recent benchmarking study involving 15,000 employees at more than 140 leading B2B and B2B2C global businesses), companies must tap the potential of marketing and sales to deliver better results, because better marketing and sales capabilities allow companies to grow faster (Delmulle, Grehan and Sagar, 2015). McKinsey’s analysis was based on McKinsey’s Commercial Capability Assessment Tool (CCAT), which benchmarks institutional marketing and sales function versus best practice, allowing the company to pinpoint where it stands across 170 practices. There are two CCAT – B2B2BC categories: a) Commercial capabilities: Consumer and shopper insights; Brand / product portfolio strategy and management; Innovation strategy and execution; Marcom and brand activation (incl. digital); Pricing, promotions and trade terms; Channel strategy and management; Sales and account management; Sales support / service; b) Enablers: Organization design and effectiveness; Talent management; Performance management; Tools and information systems). It is considered that CCAT is valuable in a number of different circumstances, such as: Starting the dialogue about the current state of company’s marketing & sales capabilities; Stimulating new thinking by exploring best practice; Measuring company’s capabilities in a factbased way; Spotting opportunities to share practices across company’s business units; Deciding where to make company’s capability investments; Identifying the underlying drivers of company’s performance problems.

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The McKinsey’s analysis revealed that: “revenue growth at companies with more advanced marketing and sales capabilities tended to be 30 percent greater than the average company within their sector.” McKinsey representatives attracted the attention on the mistake made by many companies which choose to focus on tactical efforts that provide quick and visible results (instead of taking a systematic and deliberate approach to investing in their institutional marketing and sales capabilities), arguing that marketing and sales ROI is just too difficult to assess (especially when compared with revenue-generating line businesses). McKinsey’s analysis identified seven hallmarks of leading companies: (1) Viewing marketing and sales as an investment, not an expense (it is recommendable to focus on building capabilities that are directly linked to specific growth and margin opportunities by instilling ROI discipline); (2) Knowing what needs to be fixed (by undertaking a diagnostic that reveals capability strengths and weaknesses, and rolling out a shorter version of the diagnostic on an annual basis to gauge ongoing performance and to spot emerging trends); (3) Targeting the capabilities that matter the most (responsible thinking through which capabilities are likely to have the most impact or are most important to beat the company’s competition, and focusing on improving these capabilities); (4) Not trying to do too much (by focusing the attention on building capabilities, and avoiding failing or losing the right momentum); (5) Tailoring the approach to the company’s stage of development (by not only choosing the right capabilities, but choosing to develop them in the right sequence according to where the company is on the business-performance curve); (6) Thinking institutional capabilities, not just individual skills (by creating a common and accepted frame of reference for company’s necessities and priorities); (7) Having an operating model to keep it all running (by adequately using the elements of a specific and measurable operating model, such as: clear annual performance-improvement goals; scheduled and formal reviews throughout the year by segment, key account, and other categories; individual and business-unit performance reviews; incentives aligned with institutional goals; and leadership role modeling to shape the culture). In the same time, McKinsey representatives highlighted the importance of the right rating of the company’s culture, and that in order to get the process (of transforming marketing and sales capabilities to drive growth) moving in a fruitful direction, CEOs and senior executives should start from three key questions: (1) How good are company’s marketing and sales capabilities today compared with best practice? (2) How much value is at stake in

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radically improving company’s marketing and sales performance? (3) What’s the ROI on company’s current capability investments?

Trying to build a solid contemporary marketing department and to differentiate it by a correct brand tone of voice MarketingProfs attracted recently (Solomon, 2015) our attention with a practical approach of the components of company’s annual planning by dividing planning into “buckets” (market growth, market retention, and brand), ensuring that everyone is aligned on the importance of brand, and that the company has the right resources and tools for a strong marketing function. According to Susan Solomon, there are four foundational elements for company’s marketing effort that should be budgeted for in the coming year: (1) Marketing Fundamentals: Marketing Automation and CRM (for growth and retention); All the Basics (for a marketing department: Google Analytics, Google Adwords, the Adobe suite, SurveyMonkey, GoogleAlerts or Hootsuite, and simple film editing software); (2) Branding Fundamentals (a solid narrative and brand guidelines); (3) Communications Fundamentals (an editorial calendar system being critical for planning company’s content strategy, assigning stories, managing version control, and providing a “parking lot” for great ideas etc.); (4) People: The Fundamental Fundamentals (making sense to inventory marketing department team’s skillsets: setting vision and strategy, creative development, project management, writing and editing, data reporting and analysis, technical expertise in digital marketing – or starting budgeting some training or recruitment dollars, taking into account the specific needs of company’s industry).

As in order to express company’s brand identity, brand tone of voice (which encompasses the types of words used, the way sentences are constructed, and the way language flows) is vital, Anne Marie Kelly, (Kelly, 2015) a strategic marketing and business development executive and the founder of Kelly Marketing Solutions (Kelly held senior positions at GfK, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal) recommends five steps (each of them requiring a wellthought-out plan) to creating a distinctive tone of voice: (1) Know your brand’s DNA (by identifying company’s values, and reflecting those values in the way the company writes); (2) Establish company’s tone of voice “characteristics” (by determining two or three tone of voice characteristics that reflect the above mentioned values and the personality company wants to Holistic Marketing Management

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convey); (3) Conduct a content audit (by identifying that tone of voice keeping with the characteristics chosen to support company’s brand’s values, a tone consistent across platforms, target audiences, and countries)’ (4) Create a style guide (by making sure it’s used in all written communication, consistently, across platforms and countries); (5) Communicate, communicate, communicate (by making sure that the style guide it is read and understood by all marketers).

People must know why should do business with the company.

It is worth mentioning within this context that in February this year, Gillian Vallee, (Vallee, 2015) a multichannel marketing professional, argued that to resonate as genuine, a brand must demonstrate accessibility, inclusiveness, and familiarity. Starting from the Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising Report showing that trust and action often go hand in hand, Vallee underlined the need of cutting through the noise existing in today’s wonderfully rich content world, and recommends to be authentic in company’s marketing approach, considering the followings: (1) Honesty is still the best policy; (2) Think in terms of heart; (3) Highlight the unique. In her opinion, there is always a level of honesty that translates to the customer, and earning trust secures relationships (not only validates company’s fiscal and otherwise efforts).

Overcoming challenges facing marketers today and the role of inbound marketing efforts Amid ongoing debate on the role of marketing, its goals, and how to achieve them, the CEO and founder of Fliptop, Doug Camplejohn (a leader in Predictive Analytics applications for B2B companies), argued in January 2015 (Camplejohn, 2015) that marketing spend is on the rise, and CMOs are gaining influence, while in the same time data and automation technology are driving seismic shifts in the industry (which have created uncertainty). In Camplejohn’s opinion, there are five common challenges facing marketers today (and suggestions for overcoming them): (1) Nobody understands what marketing does (being responsible for branding, messaging, demand generation, collateral, competitive positioning, revenue etc.); (2) Not controlling many aspects of the business we are expected to influence (hence the need for striving to understand as many facets of the business as possible); (3) Not knowing whether we are measuring the right things (measurement being critical to understanding, and the most Holistic Marketing Management

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important metrics are often the hardest to measure, so it is recommendable to start with revenue and work backwards, while avoiding vanity metrics, and only focusing on the factors that drive the business forward, in today’s data-driven world being necessary to quantifiably connect marketers’ efforts to hard metrics, such as revenue and growth); (4) Not knowing what expectations to set (marketers’ ability to stay at the top depends on making the right promises at the right time, and within the right context; when setting expectations for marketing deliverables with others don’t forget the formula “happiness equals reality minus expectations”); (5) Not knowing whether the data is leading us to the right place (the best marketers fuse intuition and analytics to make bold moves, measure, and iterate, by relying on predictive technologies that do the analysis for them and suggest where to make their best marketing bets).

In what concerns data, it is worth noting that next month, in February 2015, Brian Davies, a managing partner at Movéo (a Chicago-based B2B marketing firm), showed that if 2014 was a year of tremendous innovation for marketing, then this year will be no different.

(Davies, 2015) He argued that: “data must drive all marketing decisions, strategies must be tailored to translate across a multitude of mobile devices, and CEOs are demanding to see measurable and actionable results.” Let’s take a look at some recommendations made by Davies within this framework: prioritize data; integrate your strategies; embrace both amateur and professional content; track, report, and actually deliver on your goals and objectives; communicate with the rest of your company. In his opinion, it is important to refresh and realign your marketing objectives on the basis of an outside perspective that also helps those outside the accountable marketing department understand the whole picture.

We have discussed a year ago about the difference between inbound (targeting consumers who are actually looking for goods and services that you provide, by providing useful and quality content in multiple iterations that meets customers where they are, and market this content across multiple channels to build a relationship based on shared interests and values and convert prospects to leads) and outbound (“interruptive marketing” - advertising goods and services by presenting information to consumers even if they are not looking for them) marketing and explore options of what each of them can do for company’s business.

According to a recent report (based on data from a survey of 270 B2B businesspeople from around the world) from NetProspex and Ascend2, (Nanji, 2015) we find out that only 27% Holistic Marketing Management

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of B2B leaders say their inbound marketing efforts are very successful in helping to achieve important objectives, while 66% view their efforts as somewhat successful (just 7% say inbound marketing has not helped their business at all). The report referred to: tactics (the most effective inbound tactic and the most difficult to execute is content creation); objectives (improving lead quality and increasing sales revenue are ranked as the most important inbound marketing objectives for the year ahead); challenges (46% of respondents say lack of an effective strategy is a top obstacle to inbound marketing success). Regarding marketing automation, it is interesting to note that 55% of respondents make limited use of it to manage their inbound efforts.

And as a renewed conclusion: Now is the time for Marketing Innovation As we noted on the occasion of the last HMM issue (December 2014), at the beginning of November 2014, a new feature, of the widely read blog Ernan’s Insights on Marketing Best Practices was launched, called “4 Questions for Marketing Innovators.” On March 19, 2015, Ernan’s Blog (Roman, 2015) presented the answers of Alisa Norris, CMO of RR Donnelley (a Fortune 300 company), to these 4 questions (What is one marketing topic that is most important to you as an innovator? Why is this so important? How will concentrating on this help improve the customer experience? How will concentrating on this help improve the overall effectiveness of marketing?). According to Norris, the challenge today is to create connected experiences (which drive brand loyalty, spark conversations, and inspire consumers to act) between companies and the audiences they need to reach. And in order to create these connected experiences for consumers all of the channels (print, digital, email, text, video, web, and social) must work together. Norris recommends a better understanding of the power of print (tactile, shareable, and engaging the senses) as a critical gateway driving the connected experience, not forgetting to mention the importance of the right synchronizing of all the channels, so as to avoid creating disconnected experiences and losing potential sales. In her opinion, as consumers have finite attention bandwidth, in order to improve the effectiveness of marketing brands must synchronize all the channels to send the right message to the right person every time.

References

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Jarski, Ver贸nica Maria - Why Marketers Need Professional Development [Infographic], MarketingProfs, March 17, 2015, available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2015/27272/why-marketers-need-professional-developmentinfographic#ixzz3Ul7P0HRJ Jarski, Ver贸nica Maria - 12 Secrets of the Human Brain to Use in Your Marketing [Infographic], MarketingProfs, February 14, 2015, available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2015/27058/12-secrets-of-the-human-brain-to-use-in-your-marketinginfographic#ixzz3S1VshMv6 Lucas, Shelly - Three Data Questions With Mark Williams, 12/23/14, available at: http://www.dnb.com/connectors/becomebetter-marketers-magic-formula.html#.VQq2BsIcTIU Negricea, Costel Iliuta and Purcarea, Ioan Matei, Digital Marketing and Better Understanding the Consumer Mobile Journey, Holistic Marketing Management, Volume 4, Issue 4, Year 2014 Wideman, Reggie - Five Actions Marketers Can Take to Deliver Real Engagement in 2015, MarketingProfs, February 5, 2015, available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2015/26992/five-actions-marketers-can-take-to-deliver-real-engagement-in2015#ixzz3QwOSFEPV Radice, Rebekah - 6 Habits of Successful Social Media Marketers, Social Media Examiner, January 28, 2015, available at: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/habits-of-successful-social-media-marketers/ 2015 State of Marketing, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, mc_2015stateofmarketing.pdf King, Cindy - 28 Social Media Marketing Predictions for 2015 From the Pros, Social Media Examiner, January 1, 2015, available at: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-marketing-predictions-for-2015/ Hemley, Debbie - 26 Tips for Improving Your Social Media Marketing, Social Media Examiner, January 27, 2015, available at: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/26-tips-improving-social-media-marketing/ Patterson, Laura - Are You Too Busy Chopping (Marketing) Wood to Sharpen Your (Marketing Operations) Ax? MarketinPprofs, March 10, 2015, available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2015/27229/are-you-too-busy-choppingmarketing-wood-to-sharpen-your-marketing-operations-ax#ixzz3U3ABO2Xi Delmulle, Bart, Grehan, Brett, and Sagar, Vikas - Building marketing and sales capabilities to beat the market, McKinsey & Company, March 2015, available at: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/Building_marketing_and_sales_capabilities_to_beat_the_market?cid=mckgr owth-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1503 McKinsey & Company, Commercial_capability_assessment_tool.pdf Solomon, Susan - Planning Your Marketing? Don't Forget These Fundamentals, MarketingProfs, March 19, 2015, available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2015/27290/planning-your-marketing-dont-forget-these-fundamentals#ixzz3UuEZslrt Kelly, Anne Marie - Every Brand Needs a Distinct Tone of Voice. Here's Why - and How to Create It, MarketingProfs, March 19, 2015, available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2015/27286/every-brand-needs-a-distinct-tone-of-voice-hereswhyand-how-to-create-it#ixzz3UuEFEbvQ Vallee, Gillian - Be Effective by Being Authentic, MarketingProfs, February 2, 2015, available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions/2015/26949/be-effective-by-being-authentic#ixzz3QfdC2Kxd Camplejohn, Doug - Five Challenges Facing Marketers Today, MarketingProfs, January 22, 2015, available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions/2015/26873/five-challenges-facing-marketers-today#ixzz3PZSB4mNk Davies, Brian - Five Resolutions Every Marketer (including CMOs) Should Stick to in 2015, MarketingProfs, February 5, 2015, available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2015/26993/five-resolutions-every-marketer-including-cmos-should-stickto-in-2015#ixzz3QwOlUHYZ Nanji, Ayaz - B2B Inbound Marketing: Top Tactics, Goals, and Challenges, MarketingProfs, February 23, 2015, available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2015/27097/b2b-inbound-marketing-top-tactics-goals-and-challenges#ixzz3SeIHOvNX Roman, Ernan - RR Donnelley CMO Answers 4 Questions for Marketing Innovators, March 19, 2015, available at: http://ernanroman.blogspot.ro/2015/03/rr-donnelley-cmo-answers-4-questions.html?utm_source=BP_recent

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