In Technopreneurship or Entrepreneurship, one of the reasons why you put up or build a business is to sell. Or simply saying that the services and the products that you offers reached to the people. How would you do this? How would you introduce your business to the people especially in today’s trends? This is where marketing strategies are needed. For technopreneurs, or entrepreneurs, it is important to know what is Marketing Convergence.
To start, let us define Marketing Convergence. Now, let us try to define those two words individually. American Marketing Association defines Marketing as an activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. In BusinessDictionary.com, they said that Marketing is the management process through which goods and services moves from concepts to customers. As a practice, It consists of four elements called the 4P’s: (1) identification, selection, and development of a product, (2) determination of its of its price, (3) selection of a distribution channel to reach the customer’s place, and (4) development and implementation of a promotional strategy. With this definition, we could actually say that Marketing is the way or activity that the company is selling its products or services to the people. Because in business, the market is the people or clients. And now, let us go to the second word, Convergence. In WhatIs.com, they defined Convergence as the coming together of two or more entities or phenomena. They added, Convergence is increasingly prevalent in the IT world; in this context the term refers to the combination of two or more different technologies in a single device. Here are examples of convergence in IT: (1) taking pictures with cell phone and (2) surfing the web on television. For simpler definition, Convergence simply means the combination of two different things.
We have defined the two words individually. So now, let us define Marketing Convergence, as a whole. According to Susan K. Jones and Edward J. Spiegel, Marketing Convergence is the orchestration of information technology, marketing and design required to ensure that companies present an integrated, consistent, clear and interactive message across all the media they use.
From the above definitions, we could actually say that Marketing Convergence is the way or the activity where the technopreneurs or entrepreneurs uses different media or the new technology to sell, introduce or advertise the services or products that they offers to the public, or to their prefered market. In this generation, televisions, newspapers, radios, catalogues, magazines and flyers are the means of advertising one’s product or business. With the use of the internet, you can actually market your product and services more effectively. Internet had made big difference in many fields. It had changed the way of living of every individual, from ordinary people to big people like businessmen. With the use of internet, the interactions between the consumers up to the producers had changed a lot. Let go of the word “consumers” because in the online world or in the internet world, this word is no longer exist. Consumers are now called the “prosumers”. Prosumer is the combination of the word consumer and producer. Prosumers are the people who can be the consumer at the same time the producer.
Putting up a business in the internet world is the most effective way to make good profit. It is because most of the consumers now-a-days are into online. You can sell and introduce your products locally and internationally without paying, spending or using big amount of money.
There are two types of businesses that uses internet in two different ways. The first type is for Offline Businesses. For Offline Businesses, the entrepreneur uses the internet to introduce their business. An example to this is when the entrepreneur placed the location of his or her company into Google Maps. And the second type is for Online Businesses. Now how does this work? Well, we are very much knowledgeable of online stores. Just like what I have said in the earlier part, many people are using internet and the consumers are more interactive because with just a simple typing and clicking, the consumers or clients can choose the items that he or she desires. In the internet world, people (can be the entrepreneur or the clients) are given the chance to avail and search for a product or a service easier. And this made Marketing Convergence helpful in the world of business.
Marketing Convergence is a very useful strategy in the world of business. We might not get rid with the traditional way of selling, introducing and advertising of the business but we have improved it with the use of technology. With the combination of the new technology and the traditional way, we can have good market. Though, honestly, using television, radio, magazines, catalogues, flyers and etc. is way more expensive than using internet. But we also need to consider that there are also people, that can be a good market, that is not really into surfing the net. So, we still needs the traditional way. According to Yoram (Jerry) Wind, Vijay Mahajan and Robert E. Gunther, there are areas where the interactions are important to the business or where convergence occurs. These are the 5C’s of Convergence Marketing: (1) Customerization -- Convergence of customerized andstandardized offerings and messages, (2) Community -- Convergence of virtual and physical communities, (3) Channels -- Seamless Convergence of call, click and visit, (4) Competitive Value -- Convergence of new and traditional competitive value equations and pricing models, and the last (5) Choice Tools -- Convergence of new search engines and decision tools for consumers and company-provided advice. With this, consumers or prosumers can be very interactive. Because they can do many things not just viewing.
Why does Convergence occurs? Well, the change of the people’s interest, trends and in the innovation of technology made the convergence. This is a good thing because it only tells us that the industry is very much alive and diverse.
