Current Issues in Marketing

Introduction Marketing and feminism gravitate in two different, yet allied fields. Therefore, they have often intersected. One such instance was when issues arose while segmenting consumers according to the binary genders and stereotypical gender assumptions that made women inferior to men were made. (Catterall, Maclaran & Stevens, 2013) Throughout time, marketing campaigns that utilized women as mere objects evoked. In light of the situation, many feminists have pointed out the ill-portrayal of women in advertisements, the illusion of feminism in organizations which is erroneously crafted and the problematic nature of them. Marketing has the ability to create normality as many women try to identify with similar figures around them. As this could potentially inflict psychological damage upon women and limit them to a stereotypical role, marketers have been accused as the causers of this situation and not conducting their duties responsibly. Consumers have even gone on to boy...

Introduction Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the optimization of a website in order for it to appear at a high rank within the organic search results. (Forbes, 2018) SEO is becoming increasingly important to organizations as in the contemporary digitalized world, the first step consumers would take before purchasing a product is conducting a search online. Search engines such as Google and Microsoft’s Bing analyse the content and ranking of websites before matching them with search terms and displaying a list of results. Therefore, if an organization’s website is optimized for search, they would appear high among the search results and customers would be aware of them. This would lead to increased opportunities to acquire customers, achieve a competitive edge and increase revenue. On the other hand, if an organization’s website is not well optimized for search, they would lose the aforementioned assets. The causes for the above are that many consumers are only drawn t...

Introduction User Generated Content (UGC) refers to any brand related subject matter that has not been created inside professional practices (Christodoulides et al.,  2012 ), while Corporate Generated Content (CGC) is created and published by organizations. At contemporary times, consumers have increasingly begun to trust UGC substantially more than CGC. This is a current issue in marketing as organizations have no control over UGC and possible unfavourable remarks made regarding a brand are negatively associated with successfully communicating a brand message and capturing the target market. As appealing to the target market enables customer acquisition, retention and growth, failure to communicate the brand message appropriately would make the organization experience stagnant growth, strategic incompetency and below-average returns. Therefore, marketers of this day and age are expected to find a means of effectively managing UGC and use it for the betterment of the or...