Introduction
Essentially, product marketing is critical for all business with profit making goals and expansion targets. Dior Company has applied various strategies to facilitate and maintain a continuous flow of goods from its premises to the consumers. Marketing efforts determine the number of customers attained and the profit achieved. Therefore, it cannot be disputed from the profit making styles. In fact, a product could be meaningless without making sales that could maintain the business. This implies that marketing is a significant factor in determining the business progress of the company. Therefore, it is vital to review how this company has centred its perfumes according to the needs of consumers. In addition, this section of review will assess the marketing techniques that the company has used to spread information and populate its perfumes.
Customer Driven Marketing Strategy
Dior Company has established ways to study customers and supply them with their needs. The perfumes produced depend on the market study involving the customers interested in a product. It involves division of the market to subunits that can be accessed easily, identification of the needs, structure of each subunit, creation of value through differentiation, and formation of awareness in target customers (Ali, 2009).
Segmentation of the Market
This model is applied to partition customers from a large grouped market to a splinted and quite specific group of needs (Bradley, 2003). Dior Company has managed to form several segments in terms of age differences and gender. The perfumes have been made for children and adult uses where gender is a major cause of the sections. Therefore, women have their perfume brands such as Chris 1947, Dior Dior, Diorella and Dior Star. Other perfumes are made for men such as Dior Homme Sport and Dune. Moreover, other brands are usable by both women and men.
These include the Eau Noire and Oud Ispahan. Also, price segmentation is evident because the company has made products served to people for similar purpose but at different prices. For instance, the product named J’adore has various capacities and prices. One oz costs sixty dollars while 1.7 oz has a price of ninety eight dollars. This segmentation allows many people to afford the product in accordance to their capacities (Cravens & Piercy, 2006).
Other forms of segmentations are attributed to location of interest where the company puts efforts on supplying the products to areas where people are wealthy. Moreover, it is able to market its products throughout the globe in countries such as Japan and Western Europe. This distribution arises with differences about the location, race, age, and religion among others because they people have different tastes and believes. Moreover, these differences lead to another form of segmentation that splits customers depending on their livelihood, personal characters and social classification.
The products with high prices are supplied to people staying in high standard estates. Finally, the perfumes are sold in accordance to demand. This could be attributed to the fact that individuals have varying approaches and reactions towards a commodity (Wright, 2006). For instance, Hanover (2012) identified that some Muslims have a positive attitude towards perfume usage. Therefore, the demand of the perfumes could be dependent on the people staying in an area. Their loyalty to the product and the rate of using it depends on personal and grouped behaviours. The behaviours could be explained well by the occasional events such as holidays.
Market Targeting
The company operates under all categories of differentiation. The perfumes are available in the local stalls and national malls. The local stalls do not have any form of differentiation. This form of marketing is termed as undifferentiated because it reaches customers without pointing a specific target. It allows the company to receive high numbers of new customers. Also, differentiated marketing is used to serve groups such as boutiques, races and religions. Orders and suggestion received from the customers are reviewed to facilitate making of better and new perfumes than the prevailing ones.
The orders serve individual needs where perfumes are manipulated for individual tastes. This form of targeting is referred to as micromarketing. Dior perfumes have been directed to specialized niches that include people sharing common attributes. These attributes include beliefs, cultures, races and tribes. For instance, Indian women have a tendency of buying strong perfumes that have a long time before the scent fades. This could form a target base because the company could direct such perfumes to India where there are potential consumers.
Differentiation and Positioning
These strategies enhance the company to cover a wide market enabled by many perfume brands and internalizing their presence in consumers’ mind (Hines, 2004). Information about the perfumes has been distributed through internet as a way of positioning. Moreover, the diverse perfumes are advertised through media such as television and magazines. Differentiation of Dior perfumes does not only lie on the features on each perfume, but also the bottles and colours. For instance, the perfume are brown, red, and orange among others filled in squared, rounded, coloured, or irregular containers. This allows easy identification of a target perfume that a consumer needs to buy.
Factors Influencing Consumer Behaviour
Cultural Factor
Most cultures do not believe in the modern uses of chemicals. They believe that the chemicals are responsible for diseases and other problems. For instance, most skin pimples are attributed to the use of perfumes because the pimples were rare traditionally. Positively, different cultures have varying perfume requirements. The cultures are divided according to races, religions, social classes, jobs, and tribes among others. For instance, musicians could use a perfume that bank manager might not use due to professional reasons.
Social Factors
The social class affects the selection and usage of perfumes. The perfume with high prices might not be afforded by people from low social classes. In fact, these people might not use the perfumes due to lack of money. However, this company have made various prices and capacities for the perfumes to ensure coverage of all interested customers. On the other hand, usage of perfumes could rise significantly on the account of people within the high social class. This is because the customers buy perfumes of high price and do not limit their rate of usage.
Personal Factor
According to Wright (2006), individual tastes and likes could influence the consumer behaviours. Usually, some people have a habit of buying similar brands of products because they know about them. Therefore, since Dior perfumes are well known, most customers do not think about buying the perfumes that they have never used. After all, the perfume might fail to suit their needs and lead to loss of money. In addition, the perfumes could be bought according to the age of the customers. According to Hanover (2012), most young people choose the perfumes that produce a strong and appealing scent. Moreover, an individual could avoid these strong scents simply because they do not want them.
Psychological Factors
This is the other factor whereby customers are moved through psychological attributes (Haugtvedt et al., 2008). For instance, people could be motivated towards using a perfume from Dior or another company. This relies on the perception of the consumers and their principles. What do the consumers’ believe? What do they know about perfumes? For instance, people who do not have knowledge about perfumes could be directed through motivation towards buying Dior perfumes. On the other hand, it is hard to change the mindset of individuals who are loyal to a brand and company.
Four Types of Buying Behaviour
Complex
When brands show huge differences without any selected option, the customer takes time to make a choice (Solomon et. al., 2005). This happens in cases where the customer is needed to evaluate the cost and advantages of each perfume. Dior perfumes are many and create complications because a customer cannot review all brands and determine the most appropriate one to buy. In other cases, there could be risks that a customer is avoiding from the brands. For instance, some people are allergic to some chemicals and must ensure that the chemical is not present in the perfume. These consumers require assistance from the marketers and sellers to guide the customer in making a right decision.
Variety Seeking
In this case, the main agenda of selection is the features contained in each brand (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012). The level of involvement is low, but the customer sees a huge distinction from the features. Consequently, a customer could keep on changing one perfume to the other.
Dissonance Reducing
This arises when the product is expensive and requires keenness due to the risk involved (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012). Expensive perfumes could lead to big losses due to wrong selection especially because the product cannot be returned to the seller. The product sold could cause discomfort to the customer. This could be solved by providing assistance channels to the customer so that s/he could appreciate the perfume.
Habitual
This is experienced when the brands show insignificant price difference and low risk (Weinstein, 2004). Also, the number of brands available is usually few. Selling is promoted by promotion and supplying additional features to facilitate distinction (Alzate, 2009).
Buyer Decision Making Process
Buying of perfumes from Dior Company follows a strategy similar to most goods sold worldwide. A customer must recognize the need of a product to initiate a buying process. This arises when a person experiences a problem. The problem could be internal or external stimuli. For instance, a person could be influenced towards using a perfume by a friend. This could be due to issues such as sweating smells or pressures where a person becomes inferior because of missing a perfume.
This is evident to most peers especially when schooling. Once the customer has established that s/he requires a perfume to serve certain needs, s/he searches for information. This company has information sources such as websites, magazines and advertisements. Moreover, the information could arise from friends since Dior products are popular. In other cases, Dior products are marketed through other organizations and mass media. The people who had used the perfume previously might not require this step. This is because they have handled, examined, and used the product initially. After identifying various choices, the consumer evaluates the brands according to the needs (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012).
This leads to identification of the best brand through personal attitude, assistance from friends and situational factor. This triggers the customer to purchase a product. When a selected perfume is bought, Dior Company has strategies to investigate the satisfaction of costumers through questionnaires. Moreover, information about customer expectation is collected to allow research and development of the perfumes. Also, this allows the sellers to know whether the needs of a customer were met. When there is a huge difference between anticipation and results, the customers could be dissatisfied from the purchase (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012).
Conclusion and Summary
Marketing is unexceptional to all functioning businesses (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012). Business success is reliant to marketing that facilitates entrance of more income. Satisfying the needs of customers is necessary to allow development of loyalty and satisfaction. Satisfaction facilitates recommendation of product. In fact, it is one reason why this company has achieved a lot because customers recommend their friends to use its perfumes. This is attributed to centring their products in accordance to consumers’ needs and taking orders given by individuals. Moreover, the company has established a marketing strategy that allows problem solving by following a decision making process. This has resulted to increasing profits. Therefore, other companies should consider these strategies since they have brought about progress.
References
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