Michael Calciu - University of Lille I, Ecole Universitaire d'Ingenieurs de Lille & EREM - IAE de Lille
 

QUANTITATIVE MARKETING ON THE NET

A PERSONAL LOOK TO EMERGING TRENDS IN MARKETING

Marketing is a way of profitably approaching exchanges under competition that is useful to companies and individuals. 

Its focus is on customers. Their needs are analysed (using Marketing Research and Data Analysis techniques and adapted Statistical Software) . Marketing strategies are developed in order to satisfy them. 

The traditional strategies in a competitive environment  the companies can use are the so called "marketing mix" or product, price, promotion and distribution policies. In the "classical" marketing mix approach  company objectives are mainly offensive and the link with the customer is indirect. 

 Today's computer and communications technology allows a direct and interactive relationship with the customer. The "New marketing" or "relationship marketing" is emerging. Prototypical for this new trend is the Direct Marketing Approach. New customers management strategies are introduced. They combine traditional "offensive mix" elements (product, price, promotion, place) with newer "defensive" or "customer retention" mix elements (quality programs to increase satisfaction, switching costs and relationship communications). Their impact on companies' profits can be significative. 
 

SOLUTIONS TO SOME ACTUAL CHALLENGES IN MARKETING OFFERED BY THIS RESEARCH

Our research efforts are concentrating on developing aids to improve competitive analysis and problem solving as well as on modelling the customer relationship and customer targeting.
The framework we are suggesting combines classical offensive marketing mix policies with newer mainly defensive relationship marketing and customer management approaches.
 

Aids to approaching competition

 Companies face competition both on their business - to - business front as on their retailing front. There are broad conceptual similarities between many business-to-business markets and frequently purchased consumer goods. Companies are competing either in the customers' perceptual space with the image of their products/services or in the geographic space with the image and location of their retailing outlets. Competition mechanism are conceptually the same in both spaces. 
We are developing a series of methods and models to improve competitive decision making, many of them are implemented as computer decision support systems. 
They deal with:   

Aids to customer relationship development

 New Customer Database segmentation methods to:   Aids to evaluate the market response and profit impact of marketing policies 
 - Internet based participative modelling methods used by managers to assess market response (Decision calculus) 
 - Internet model based communication techniques to help managers interact and assess the impact of their policies on profits and on customer attraction and retention. (Fidelisator) 
 - On line and off line strategic marketing simulations combining traditional "offensive" marketing mix strategies with new "defensive" retention mix strategies (Strategy simulation game). 
The simulation can be used either to explore several scenarios and determine policy impacts or it can serve as a pedagogical game to be used in indoor teaching programs, for managers, organised with the participation of academic moderators.