Discuss and critique how advertising is regulated in Hong Kong.
With the advent of globalization, innovation is the key and the bases of staying on the competition. Businesses believe that innovation, in the form of new processes, products, machineries, and techniques, is essential to the continued growth of a company. More new products are being developed to replace products that have been with us only a few years. As technology gets better, there are more upgrades to these new products (Tries de Bes & Kotler, 2003). True, there are many new products being introduced to the market but not all of them have succeeded in their market entry. Some of them seem to succeed at first and then have started to become a failure. Thus the company concerned needs to rethink its marketing and advertising strategy.
For most people, the interesting question is what is going to happen next on the advertising of a product or brand in the marketing plan. For producers, this is important because they have to make entry, product positioning, marketing and other business decisions; for consumers, it is important to understand whether investments made in what is on offer today will be made obsolete by what comes tomorrow (Gerick, 2003). A product’s Market Perceived Quality is a driving force that increases market share. They further it is argued that when superior quality and large market share are both present, profits are virtually guaranteed, changing the “competitive positioning” of the product (Reddy, 1994, p203).
In the field of health care, consumer behavior is being made into consideration when advertising. The increase in consumer-directed advertising has helped to foster a health care atmosphere in which it is the patient, and not the medical practitioner, who initiates a discussion regarding possible drug therapy. Consumer-directed advertising also has a profound impact on the doctor-patient relationship and results in patients consuming drugs with attractive benefits and undisclosed possible adverse reactions. This creates an increased dependence on prescription drugs, and the falsified notion that there is a prescription drug to cure most any condition (Holtz, 1998).
There is one study that compared services advertising appeals between Hong Kong and the USA, and between experience services and credence services. Information cues on physical attributes, association attributes, and terminal values conveyed in 212 services ads were analyzed. Services ads in the USA scored high on the quality cue, but much lower in price and availability than their Hong Kong counterparts. In terms of instrumental values, services marketers in the US emphasized traditional heritage more than their Hong Kong counterparts. In terms of terminal values, services marketers in the US were more likely to appeal to consumers’ health than their Hong Kong counterparts. Other differences between the instrumental values and terminal values between the two markets disappeared when the service type is controlled (Ha, 1998).
Many services marketers in both the USA and Hong Kong seemed not like to wage a price war to induce sales. This is contrary to the suggestion of Cheer and Harris (1993) to use price or special offer in services advertising as a tangible cue to consumers and to induce trial. Price is not the top three cues used and seldom did services advertisers offer specials to consumers. In addition, the value of economy was not very often used by service marketers in this study. This might be due to the fact that magazine is not as timely as other media such as newspapers and television to announce short-term sales promotion. This might also indicate marketers’ strong inclination to preserve their brand equity in magazine ads. Marketers have to make a tradeoff between standing out from competitors with competitive price cues and maintaining a high quality image in magazines.
When comparing only by markets, there seems to be significant differences between Hong Kong and the USA in the advertising appeals services marketers used. Hong Kong services to use more price and availability information cues than the US services to stimulate consumers’ impulse to shop there. This might be explained by the geographic size difference between the two markets. Hong Kong is a totally urbanized city-state and the USA is a vast country with great climate differences among its 50 states. Living in a city-state like Hong Kong, consumers have a lot of stores and services outlets that are in the neighborhood within walking distance or can be easily accessible by public transportation. Shopping is a very convenient activity. In the USA, magazine is a national medium that covers different states. Advertisers may have too many locations and different prices for different states to be listed in an ad. Therefore, they have to emphasize quality that is more general and can be applicable to different services locations across the country (Ha, 1998).
Recommendations
Learning is vital in the success of a company’s strategy. To encourage and to make learning an integral part of management technology, companies must lift their sights from the short term. To design strategy, we must learn to search for and to identify patterns of change over time. To practice strategy design and to act proactively, we should replace our transaction-driven calculus with scenario analysis. Learning is not a luxury; it is how firms create their own future. Creating the organizational capability of and ambiance for learning will lead to a truly sustainable advantage.
Since marketing has two key concepts, customer/clients acquisitions and maintenance of customers/clients. In the context of marketing, learning is a result of information received through advertising or other publicity or through some reference group or other (Keith, 1990). In order to have an effect on motives or attitudes, Trap-ease America must implement marketing effort and associate the product with positive drives and reinforcing messages.
Identifying what people buy and why they make the purchase choices they do is complex. Product features such as status, economy, price, style, color, comfort, and service appeal to different market segments with specific sensitivities (Elliot, 1990). Purchasing motives are not permanent and change throughout time. Motivation is influenced by other buyers.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment