Marketing Needs IT in a Recession
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Marketing departments are going to need new information to help their companies make it through a recession. In his blog Marketing KnowHow, Harvard B-School marketing professor John Quelch noted eight things marketing must do, and several of them can't be done without IT-enabled research and number crunching. |
Research the customer. Instead of cutting the market research budget, you need to know more than ever how consumers are redefining value and responding to the recession.Adjust product portfolios. Marketers must reforecast demand for each item in their product lines as consumers trade down to models that stress good value, such as cars with fewer options.
Support distributors. In uncertain times, no one wants to tie up working capital in excess inventories. Early-buy allowances, extended financing and generous return policies motivate distributors to stock your full product line.
Adjust pricing tactics. Customers will be shopping around for the best deals. You do not necessarily have to cut list prices, but you may need to offer more temporary price promotions, reduce thresholds for quantity discounts, extend credit to long-standing customers and price smaller pack sizes more aggressively.
All this means marketers will need business intelligence and analytics to get an updated sense of consumer behavior and demand, and make adjustments to prices. They will need ERP to adjust manufacturing, purchasing and supply chain management. Systems that support reverse logistics should be reviewed and upgraded if found wanting. There's plenty IT needs to do.
The full posting can be read here. For more ideas on how IT can help marketing, sales and customer service, see our January Customer Strategies survey.
