Marketing- Mass vs. Personal Mass vs. Personal

Marketing- Mass vs. Personal Mass vs. Personal Marketing In the articles, "Word of Mouth on the Web" by Cate Reigner (2007) and "The Continuing Power of Mass Advertising" by Paul Nunes and Jeffrey Merrihue (2007), a comparative analysis of mass and personal marketing via traditional and online channels was conducted. Although the authors' studies were independent of each other, their research focus provides a sufficient survey of current literature evaluating the effectiveness of new and traditional marketing strategies in today's rapidly evolving consumer market.

One of the popular questions posed in consumer environment that is now driven by Internet technologies is, "Is mass advertising dead in the era of personalized marketing?" Reigner and Nunes reports on personalized and mass marketing, respectively, showed the same line of thought when assessing the prevalence and effectiveness of personalized compared to mass marketing.

Both their studies highlighted the fact that even though personalized marketing is rapidly emerging as a strong force in influencing marketing strategies today, mass advertising still has a significant role and purpose for companies who seek to make their brands and products known to a specific target group. An important takeaway message from their studies is that the emergence of personalized marketing has hardly put mass marketing in the sidelines. Instead, marketing to today's consumers has become streamlined and focused on specific consumer/target groups in the market.

Today, the practice of marketing recognizes the fact that consumers have different preferences and behavior, and companies must reach out to them in an approach that is suitable to the consumer group where s/he belongs. Now more than ever, companies must be able to position themselves effectively in their respective industries/markets. The strong influence of both personal and mass marketing to consumers must be taken advantage of through strong identification of a company, product, or brand's positioning in the market.

The changing consumer environment ultimately requires companies to interact with their customers to a certain degree. Reigner shared in her study of word-of-mouth marketing in the Internet that interestingly, despite popular discussions and perceived increased prevalence of personal marketing, consumers who actively engage in "user-generated content" (UGC) contribution "is still in single digits" (438-9).

This statistic highlights that UGC is a phenomenon that is gradually making its way to influencing consumer decision-making, and through this finding, companies must 'play catch-up' and position themselves ahead of their competition by already making headway efforts to target specific consumer groups that can be reached most effectively through personal marketing. Nunes also emphasized the still-critical role that mass advertising plays in consumer markets. Far from being passe, mass marketing is still a strong marketing strategy in addressing "consumers in the "bottlenecks,".