These concepts are marketing as a business philosophy, the understanding of customer alee, followed by the link between marketing and customer value. In addition, this essay will be using the Village “Gold Class” Cinema as example of the concepts’ application. Marketing as a business philosophy has grew astoundingly for the past few decades. It becomes one of the influential subjects that being thoroughly explored in the society. Many have tried to define marketing in different ways.
Based on a marketing expert Phillip Kettle (1983), marketing Is defined as a “human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes” (p. 7). Marketing exists in order to know what the customers wants and what are their needs, and satisfy those wants and needs through transactions. According to Kettle (1 983), there are various philosophies that can guide the business conducts exchange and achieves desired outcomes. Using Village “Gold Class” Cinema as example, philosophies that will be discussed here are product philosophy and marketing philosophy.
Product Philosophy According to Kettle (1983), product philosophy assumes that customers will choose to buy high quality products, and thus organizations should focus on the product sign and its quality. Village “Gold Class” Cinema is an example of product philosophy application in business. In February 1997, Village Cinemas and Warner Pros partnered to open a new type of cinema In Melbourne Crown Salon-?”Gold Class” cinema (Wisped, 2014). This new luxury cinema format was then expanded to other Village Cinemas throughout Australia and around the world. Gold Class” Cinema is a premium venue, offering personalized service level with smaller and private cinemas. “Gold Class” Cinema focuses highly on its products’ quality by improving the art projection ND its sound systems as well as adding recliner to its seats (Village Roads Limited, n. D. ). All these new high quality products were prove as how “Gold Class” Cinema highly values the quality of its products. However, product concept will not be enough for Village Cinema to become successful.
The purpose of a cinema is to entertain customers. Yet, entertainment as humans needs can actually be satisfied by something else such as sport events or music concerts. Thus, Village Cinema needs to apply marketing philosophy to complement the product philosophy. Marketing Philosophy To understand marketing philosophy, it is important to know the purpose of business in advance. Peter F. Trucker (1999) stated, “there is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer” (p. 5). Marketing concept focuses on identifying what the customer needs, what products can attract customers and how to promote them effectively (Kettle, 1983). By putting marketing philosophy in practice, business can serve what consumers want and will generate greater profit. Village Cinemas developed the “Gold Class” concept even further in order to “widen he appeal of going to movies” and “attract broader demographic” (Village Roads Limited, n. D. ).
They put marketing philosophy into practice by analyzing what action should be undertaken in order to satisfy the customers’ need of being served. In addition to entertainment, human likes to be given personal service. Thus, Village Cinemas improve the “Gold Class” Cinemas by providing entertainment with high quality products and giving a personalized service at the same time. “Gold Class” Cinemas “boast a full service bar, lounge and gourmet food with personal waiter service during each screening” (Village Cinemas, n. . ).
As the pioneer of this concept, Village Cinema has successfully embraced the marketing philosophy where business should focus on the customer and to provide what they want. 2 CUSTOMER VALUE Chitchat (1988, as cited in Smith & Colgate, 2007, p. 8) defined customer value as being “what customers get from the purchase and use of a product versus what they pay. ” According to Trucker (1999), customer value determines what the business will produce and whether it will prosper or not. Clearly, customers will prefer to consume the product that offers them most benefits with least costs possible.
Based on their researches, Smith and Colgate (2007) proposed four major values of customer that applicable to consumer and to customer value creation strategy. According to Smith and Colgate (2007), functional value is concerned about the purpose and usefulness of a product. Experiential value is concerned with the customers’ feelings created by the product whereas symbolic value is concerned about the psychological meaning of indirect costs of using the product. The following table shows customer value creation strategy with Village “Gold Class” Cinema as the example.
