Mass marketing

Mass marketing is a market strategy in which a firm decides to ignore market segment differences and appeal the whole market with one offer or one strategy, which supports the idea of broadcasting a message that will reach the largest number of people possible. Traditionally mass marketing has focused on radio, television and newspapers as the media used to reach this broad audience. By reaching the largest audience possible, exposure to the product is maximized, and in theory this would directly correlate with a larger number of sales or buys into the product.

Mass marketing is the opposite of niche marketing, as it focuses on high sales and low prices and aims to provide products and services that will appeal to the whole market. Niche marketing targets a very specific segment of market; for example, specialized services or goods with few or no competitors.

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. It is also called overall marketing.

Over the years marketing activities have notably transitioned from traditional forms, such as television, radio and print advertisements to a more digitalized forms, such as the utilisation of online media platforms to reach various consumers. Huang (2009, as cited in Shyu et al., 2015), explains three chief attributes digital marketing has enhanced; one being “Penetrating Power” which is to have the ability to reach a wider circle of customers in the market, accredited to the ease of online communication. Digital marketing allows for a marketer to reach a larger-scale audience in a more efficient and cost-effective manner, which is ultimately what Mass Marketing seeks to do.

For a mass marketing campaign to be successful, the advertisement must appeal to a “set of product needs that are common to most consumers in a target market.” (Bennett & Strydom, 2001) In this case it is unnecessary to segment consumers into separate niches as, in theory, the product should appeal to any customer’s wants and/or needs. Many mass marketing campaigns have been successful through persuading audiences using the central route to persuasion, as well as using the peripheral route to persuasion, according to the Elaboration Likelihood Model. Lane et al. state that the different types of persuasion depend on the “involvement, issue-relevant thinking, or elaboration that a person dedicates to a persuasive message.” (2013). Political campaigns are a prime example of central persuasion through mass marketing; where the content of the communication involves a detailed level of thinking which seeks to achieve a cognitive response. Contrastingly, a toothpaste advertisement would typically persuade the audience peripherally; where there is low involvement and consumers rely on “heuristics” to alter their behaviour. John Watson was a leading psychologist in mass marketing with his experiments in advertising.

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