Thursday, September 6, 2007

Out Of Sight Out Of Mind. Touch Point Marketing

Very recently I was reading an article about a word called Touch Points. Rather
Touch point marketing. When I was a student in my PG management days I read a lot
from Late Theodore Levitt, Prof in Harvard Business School.
He believed that there is saying in English “Intimacy breeds contempt”, but in the case of marketing “if you are not in the sight of your customer you are not in the mind of your customer”.

In Advertisement we commonly use a word called “Top Of The Mind” concept, the brand name will come out as soon as you name a Product /Service Category. In other words it is the battle to win the share of mind.
It can only be possible if the cycle of Perception, Expectation, Experience and Performance of the product/services are perfectly right. Not only that it should be so good that it should help in repeat buy/reference point and the customer will stick to that particular product /service and slowly build up an attachment to that product/service in turn develops relationship.
Now every time the customer touches the POS (Point Of Sales) or Point Of Service(PoS) he receives an excellent (QoS) Quality of Services. What ever has been promised to the customer, seller keeps his promises every time he interacts with the customer?
In the case of a Global Corporation and in the era of globalization it will be able to keep its promises all over the world and across the world at any point and at every moment.
So to give a world class service and global marketing strategy all MNCs go for a massive Global reach out in form of Touch points.
Buy a laptop in London get it serviced in Singapore with same satisfaction level, which you had in buying the Laptop in London and serviced in Singapore.
So Points are basically the outlets where it is being manufactured /assembled or outlets from where it is sold or after sales services is made.
The quality standards has to be maintained at stringent levels and promises are to be kept as promised before the sale or pre sales at the time of sale and after sales.
According to some marketing experts the very moment you are using a product or seeing it (Product/services) is also doing the marketing for itself. Like driving a Mercedes, using an Operating Systems.
Marketing professionals can not ignore the Touch Point concept anymore.

Debashish Brahma.

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