Js221 Consumer Culture

JS2225 Marketing and Consumer Culture in Japan was an eye-opening module that greatly changed my perspectives on marketing strategies of firms and consumption patterns of consumers. Marketing, according to the American Marketing Association (2013), is defined as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large” while consumer culture is a broad term that generally refers to the way consumers choose or behave in relation to their consumption. After the commencement of my learning journey in JS2225, I realised how closely marketing and consumer culture are interlinked. To successfully enter the market, regardless local or foreign, one has to understand the culture of the consumers or else, they may face difficulties such as unable to appeal to the consumers. Among the many topics covered in the lectures, week 4’s lecture on market …show more content…
One such criticism claims that target marketing is limited as companies are focusing on a specific group of consumers (Bhasin 2016). By creating a marketing mix catered to a certain segment suggests that the company’s marketing strategies does not take into account of the other consumers who are not included in the target market. This means that they are losing out on possible profit gain by potential consumers, especially if their target market is small and only contributes to insignificant yield. While acknowledging this perspective on target marketing, I feel that having a target segment is not a disadvantage especially to new brands or products. If firms are able to strategically utilise their target consumer culture to develop a marketing mix that could cater and satisfy their target group, I believe in the long run, they would be able to attract loyal customers and thus, reap handsome