Power Marketing And Its Application In The Chinese Market

In marketing activities, marketers face not only customers but also non-customer organizations such as government departments, trade associations and interest groups. A question being asked is what kinds of strategies the marketers should use to deal with the relationships with these organizations to achieve the marketing objectives. Power marketing is the concept to describe the activities marketers conduct to manage the relationships with organizations with power. Power marketing could be included as a very important element into marketing mix in addition to the traditional 4Ps. This paper discusses the theory of power marketing and its application in the Chinese market.Power marketing is referred to as marketing activities that marketers conduct to influence target audiences through use of their own or other parties'power. The reason why power marketing is a component of the marketing mix is because both customers and non-customers can be influenced, more or less, by certain kinds of power. The right use of their own or other parties'power can help the marketers achieve their marketing goals by influencing customers and non-customers who as a result behave as expected by the marketers. The author concludes three types of function of power marketing. The first function is defined as Hygiene which means that power marketing contributes to the market entry to certain markets. Secondly, power marketing can help increase sales of products by a function called Motivation. The third function named as Promotion means the right use of power marketing can benefit both corporate and product image.In the Chinese market, marketers can adopt the following strategies for power marketing. First, marketers could influence government policy making by attending rulemaking process of the government. Specifically, makers could exert their influence on policies by participating people's congresses at various levels, attending standard making processes, direct lobbying to the government and leverage the power of other organizations. Second, marketers could take advantage of organizations with power to disseminate marketing information and in this regard either governmental administrative or not-for-profit organizations'channels can be used. Third, marketers should build up and maintain healthy relationships with organizations with power, which is regarded as a basis for marketers to conduct power marketing. It requires marketers not only communicates effectively with organizations with power, but establish an image of socially responsible corporate citizen by supporting social causes. A caution presented in this paper is that power marketing has to be conducted in compliance with both legal requirements and business ethics in the society. Power marketing activities already exist in the Chinese market. There are three case studies presented in this paper to showcase the applications of the main strategies of power marketing proposed in this paper.So far there has been a lack of complete and in-depth study on power marketing especially on power marketing strategies applicable to guiding the real practices. This paper aims to contribute the completeness of the theory and the practical strategies of power marketing. Supplements to the theory of power marketing are provided and clear strategies and the applications for power marketing are presented in this paper, by which the author hopes a guide can be provided for practitioners to implement power marketing and a foundation can be laid for researchers to conduct further studies.