1. Mass marketing is the advertising or promotion of a Product, Goods or Service to a wide variety of audiences with the expectation of appealing to as many as possible. It is a market coverage strategy in which a firm decides to ignore market segment differences and appeal the whole market with one offer or one strategy. The idea is to broadcast a message that will reach the largest number of people possible.
2. The benefits of mass marketing are:
a. Wide Audience – Since the target audience is broad, the number of successful hits is high despite of the low probability of a single person turning up.
b. Production costs per unit are low on account of having one production run for homogeneous product.
c. Marketing Research cost and advertising cost are relatively low.
d. Higher potentials of sales volume and efficiency of scale in a much larger market.
3. But due to increased competition and the complexity of consumers’ wants and needs in today’s society, mass marketing campaigns are less likely to be successful; as consumers have a range of specific tastes and requirements that they would more likely find in alternative products.
Example:
1. In soft drinks, Pepsi is targeting the youth, but on the other hand Coke is targeting whole families through defining values. Thus coke has a bigger market and it is a more widely recognized brand when compared to Pepsi.
2. Walmart is an example of an effective mass market retailer. As the number one retailer in the world, they are very smart about their mass marketing efforts, often giving their customers a feeling of locality and warmth.
