HOW TO MOTIVATE CAUTIOUS CONSUMERS

What marketing strategy should we choose when consumer demand is falling and corporate managers are insisting on cutting costs wherever possible? Less advertising and waiting for the consumer crisis to abate; or, on the contrary, start fighting for customers harder than ever before? In the first case there is a danger that more audacious companies will steal customers from less known companies. In the second case, the money invested in advertising can fall on consumers‘ deaf ears, who won’t be, in this time of economic crisis, convinced to buy not even through hypnosis. There is no clear solution. Whether or not companies want to invest less, the same, or more in advertising in a time of crisis than in stable times, they definitely have better results from communication. They should invest in sure things, innovate, but not blindly and without relevant research and they use proven media. The growth in importance of proven methods in the following months has been shown by the latest survey among more than 600 marketing managers from the USA, published by the Marketing Executive Networking Group in January. According to the study, more than half of the respondents from the United States are expecting a lowered departmental budget for 2009. I Pg 24