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What is Marketing?The Texas Reading Club is a vehicle of tremendous power. It is a program that allows children to have fun, to enhance their knowledge, to hone their skills, and most importantly, to feel successful. It is also an opportunity for the children's department of your library to shine -- in the eyes of customers, library administrators, and government officials. A successful Reading Club, one that maximizes this potential and power, requires careful thought, extensive planning, and of course, willing and eager participants. These participants are, in fact, the most crucial component, the most important feature of the Reading Club. Without them, there is no Reading Club. It follows quite logically then, that attracting and actively engaging Reading Club participants is of primary importance. This is where marketing begins -- with the Reading Club participant, or more generically, with the customer. Marketing is a systematic and customer-focused approach to doing business that includes analysis, planning, implementation, and evaluation (Elam & Paley, 1992). The central concept in the marketing approach is exchange. The customer exchanges something of value for something else of value. Generally, this exchange is considered in the commercial sector and defined in terms of money for goods and services. Philip Kotler (1975) defines the professional marketer as "someone who is very good at understanding, planning and managing exchanges" (p. 5). Implicit in this definition are the concepts that the marketer will research and articulate the needs of his/her customer, offer a product or service that meets those needs, communicate the offering effectively, and present the offering at an appropriate time and place. Careful consideration of this concept of exchange will quickly lead you to the conclusion that a successful marketing strategy is dependent upon the ability to provide "want-satisfying products and services" (Elam & Paley, 1992, p. 7). The goods and services your customers want are the ones you should be providing. While this may sound obvious, the task of knowing your customer is not easily undertaken nor quickly accomplished. In order to determine what your customers want, it is first necessary to determine who they are. Kotler (1975) suggests that successful marketing involves the selection of target groups and warns against attempts to win every customer and be all things to all people. Customers vary in countless ways. To treat all customers the same ignores their innate diversity and decreases the possibility of adequately meeting anyone's needs. Conversely, treating each customer as an individual, and offering each a personally designed product or service is both impractical and expensive. For the marketer, the answer lies in the middle ground. Through the use of segmentation, the marketer defines and targets specific groups whose needs are similar and for whom a want-satisfying product can be developed and exchanged (Kotler & Andreasen, 1991). When considering the Reading Club form a marketing perspective, you begin with one central question. What are you exchanging? What value are your customers giving and what value are they receiving? You are offering reading materials and reading activities in exchanges for a child's time and effort. You might picture this exchange as a simple two-way street. You will quickly recognize however, that while such a depiction is helpful, it is too simplistic. First of all, the children who participate in the Reading Club are not all the same. They differ by age, by interest, by proximity to your library location, and by a multitude of other characteristics. Additionally, children are not your only customers. Reading Club success depends on the support of parents and other care provides who bring children to the library and encourage participation. Also, you no doubt will maintain that the Reading Club offers more than just books and activities. Customers are, hopefully, receiving in the exchange some level of enjoyment, intellectual and emotional stimulation, positive feedback, and personal satisfaction. These items are less concrete and harder to guarantee, yet they may have considerable exchange value to parents and other caregivers as well as to children. When reconstructing the model, it is also important to consider what is happening to the left of the box marked Reading Club. Who provides support for the Reading Club? What value is that party receiving in exchange for such support? Most likely, primary support comes from your local library institution. You may also receive support from a corporate sponsor, a library friends group, and/or other civic organizations. And of course, the Texas State Library also has a place in your model. Now what seemed like a simple two-way street looks more like a major intersection where multiple and complex exchanges occur. But even this model is inaccurate, because it doesn't account for the unique nature of your library, your Reading Club, and your customers. Take some time to consider, and even sketch out, who is involved in your Reading Club. Who are your customers? Who are your supporters? What are you exchanging with each of them? If you model is too simple -- keep thinking! You may be able to come up with rich and varied ways to segment your customer groups and expand your exchange offerings thus increasing the impact of your Reading Club. If your model is too complex -- you still need to keep thinking! You may be able to find ways to cluster your customer groups and streamline your exchange offerings while maintaining your Reading Club's power and popularity. Another important concept in the marketing approach is the marketing mix. This phrase is used to indicate the aspects of the marketing exchange that can be adjusted to better meet customer needs and to increase chances of success. In the private sector, the elements of the marketing mix are product design, product pricing, communication, and distribution. Kotler (1975) refers to these elements as the "Four P's: product, price, place and promotion" (p. 163). Companies with similar products or services to offer compete, often times quite aggressively, by altering their designs and adjusting their prices. Additionally, they spend great amounts of time and money developing a wide variety of advertising strategies to inform customers of their offerings and to let them know where and when products can be acquired. At first glance, you may think that the library in general, and the Reading Club more specifically, are really only interested in one of the 4 P's: promotion. Certainly, some libraries do emphasize promotion in their approach to the marketing mix. These libraries are erroneously assuming that the product, price, and place are set and somewhat static. Consider again, the main product of the Reading Club: reading materials, reading activities and reading enjoyment. As long as you keep reading in that mix, you have tremendous opportunities for variation that will reflect the needs of your customers. Place may also seem to be a variable difficult to manipulate. Certainly that is true if you think of the Reading Club as synonymous with the library building. However, it is more than likely that you can find ways to take the Reading Club out into the community. If you make school visits, make trips to day care centers, or provide a library presence in local activities you are extending the place where library/customer exchanges can happen. Additionally, the manner in which you present the children's department has an impact on your customer's perception of place. If the children's area is attractive and inviting that perception can be very positive. You may want to think of the children's area as special place within the library environment. Ideally, it is a place where you display your regard for your customers by providing a colorful and child-centered physical setting; a place to come for warm and friendly person-to-person interactions. Adjusting the last of the 4 P's, price, will be the most challenging. Ideally, no money will change hands in relation to the Reading Club. While there may be a limited number of overdue fines and lost book charges, for the most part, Reading Club participants will avail themselves of your services free of charge. This is not to say that no cost is involved. Your customers will be expending considerable time and effort. While you may be able to minimize that time and effort, you will want to maximize the benefits the children receive. Maximizing the pleasure, the incidental learning, and the positive feedback available through the Reading Club will go a long way toward decreasing the price of the exchange in the minds of your customers. The importance placed on the various elements of the marketing mix results in various levels of marketing intensity (Kotler, 1975). The aggressive marketing campaign emphasizes the promotion. Traditionally, the aggressive marketer has a product in continuous production and selling is the primary concern. Minimal marketing is practiced by organizations that pay only limited attention to customer research, assuming that "demand will grow for their product simply because they are offering it, or offering it well" (Kotler, 1975, p. 8). Minimal marketing relies heavily on the product elements of the marketing mix. Balanced marketing, the most desirable and most appropriate approach for purpose of the Reading Club, "seeks to blend effectively all the elements of the marketing mix" in a way that will contribute to increased participation and high customer satisfaction (Kotler, 1975, p. 9). Before moving away from the theoretic aspects of marketing and on to more practical applications, take a moment to think about these questions:
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