Mass marketing

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Mass marketing is a market coverage strategy in which a firm decides to ignore market segment differences and go after the whole market with one offer. It is type of marketing (or attempting to sell through persuasion) of a product to a wide audience. The idea is to broadcast a message that will reach the largest number of people possible. Traditionally mass marketing has focused on radio, television and newspapers as the medium used to reach this broad audience. By reaching the largest audience possible exposure to the product is maximized. In theory this would directly correlate with a larger number of sales or buy in to the product.

The opposite to Niche marketing as it focuses on high sales and low prices. It aims to provide products and services that will appeal to the whole market.

Background

Mass marketing or undifferentiated marketing has its origins in the 1920s with the inception of mass radio use. This gave corporations an opportunity to appeal to a wide variety of potential customers. Due to this, variety marketing had to be changed in order to persuade a wide audience with different needs into buying the same thing. It has developed over the years into a worldwide multi-billion dollar industry. Although sagging in the Great Depression it regained popularity and continued to expand through the 40s and 50s. It slowed during the anti-capitalist movements of the 60's and 70's before coming back stronger than before in the 80's, 90's and today. These trends are due to corresponding upswings in mass media, the parent of mass marketing. For most of the twentieth century, major consumer-products companies held fast to mass marketing- mass producing, mass distributing and mass promoting about the same product in about the same way to all consumers. Mass marketing creates the largest potential market, which leads to lowered costs.

Use and Products Sold

Mass marketing is used to effect attitude change to as wide an audience as possible. Often this would take the form of selling a product like toothpaste. Toothpaste isn't made specially for one consumer and it is sold in huge quantities. A company or individual who manufactures toothpaste wishes to get more people to buy their particular brand over another. The goal is when a consumer has the option to select a tube of toothpaste that the consumer would remember the product which was marketed. Mass marketing is the opposite of niche marketing, where a product is made specially for one person or a group of persons. Other products of mass marketing are furniture, artwork, automobiles, residential communities, fizzy drinks and personal computers. Typically, things which are perceived to be necessary/essential to the consumer are subject to mass marketing.

Even "products" like politicians and services from professions such as law, chiropractic and medicine, are subject to mass marketing.

Questions of quality

To further increase profits, mass marketed products touted as "durable goods" are often made of substandard material, so that they deteriorate prematurely. This practice is called planned obsolescence. Not only does this lower production costs, but it ensures future sales opportunities by preventing the market from becoming saturated with high-quality, long-lasting goods. The forces of a free market tend to preclude the sale of substandard staples, while disposability, technological innovations, and a culture of collection all facilitate planned obsolescence.

Many mass marketed items are considered staples. These are items people are accustomed to buying new when their old ones wear out (or are used up). Cheaper versions of durable goods are often marketed as staples with the understanding that they will wear out sooner than more expensive goods, but they are so cheap that the cost of regular replacement is easily affordable.

John Watson was a leading psychologist in mass marketing with his experiments in advertising.

See also

• 'No Size Fits All: From Mass Marketing to Mass Handselling (book)

References