Studies For Future Marketing Men

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32360, 28 July 1970, Page 16

Studies For Future Marketing Men

Marketing executives of the future would have to study not only economics and statistics, but also psychology, sociology and anthropology, the managing director of Sales Marketing Techniques, Ltd, of Auckland (Mr I. J. Davies), told about 150 Christchurch company executives at a conference on export marketing yesterday.

The successful marketing executive of the future would be the one who recognised that he had to give the consumer what he wanted, he said. United States surveys showed that management judgment wu correct only slightly mere than half of the time, and that only one i out of five products succeeded in making a profit—reprei senting enormous investment losses both to the companies and to the national productivity, Mr Davies said. He suggested that any similar surveys in New Zealand would give similar findings. Because of 30 years of concentration on increasing production and with almost guaranteed markets for primary exports and, domestically, for the secondary industries, New Zealand business had not had to flex its marketing muscles, Mr Davies said. Advertising professionals

; must also make progress. The > belief that advertising created ! sales was too common; it ■ could, but If it failed to res cognise the consumers as an individual it could actually i retard sales. Too often advertisements failed to create the emotional ’ desire to buy, and they aci cepted at face value the seemingly obvious reasons why people did things rather than searching for the underlying motives, Mr Davies said. The Labour Party’s recent “Make things happen” campaign could be taken as an example. It was imaginative, dynamic advertising, but it failed to get the necessary results.

He had heard various comments on the campaign, but nowhere had he heard that perhaps it was aimed at the wrong market, Mr Davies said. Had some motivational marketing research been done, the results could have been "very different"