Directions: Read the given passage and answer the questions based on that…
2022
Directions: Read the given passage and answer the questions based on that
Marketing is all about connecting with the customer. And in today’s marketplace, customers are changing. Their needs, demands, wants, attitudes, mindsets, behavior, habits, consumption are changing. Especially given the rapid change not only in technological development and tools, but also their adoption into normal everyday life, marketing is — or needs to — change along with the times. It has been seen that the traditional consumers are more predictable a creature of habit. The new ones are more socially aware, and thus often more responsive to socially responsible consumption of goods and services. Having more information at their fingertips, many customers are much more judicious giving them more confidence — and also less inclined to blindly consume spoon-fed information from brands and companies. This means they are the new _______________ for growth. Millennials may seem like an overused term nowadays, but there is no denying the importance these customers have on the way companies do business. Keeping this in mind, brands should be more conscious and wiser in the way they interact with their clients and customers. Part of this is developing marketing that does not lose touch with customers; marketing that the customers of today can relate to. Companies’ survival will thus be contingent on better understanding this new crop of customers, as well as how the current environment — one that is largely digital in nature — factors into how these customers think, behave and consume. And thus, Marketing 4.0 was born. But you cannot talk about Marketing 4.0 without tackling what came before. Marketing 1.0 was largely productional based and the most basic, born out of the manufacturing boom in the 1950’s. But the crisis in the 70’s and 80’s created Marketing 2.0, which is also called relational marketing. Here, consumers started becoming more smarter in their spending (given the economic hardship prevalent at that time), meaning companies needed to find things customers could relate to in order to prompt a positive, beneficial response. Marketing departments now classified customers through basic profiling, and companies were beginning to understand the importance and impact of customer loyalty, engagement, and advocacy. The evolution of the old approach gave birth to Marketing 3.0, where the objective was to meet both the rational and emotional needs of customers. It’s also called the “appeal to emotion,” or “emotional marketing.” As opposed to the two previous approaches where the market was seen as product driven (Marketing 1.0), mass market with smarter customers (Marketing 2.0), Marketing 3.0 saw customers as people, instead of just segments.
What was/were the characteristic(s) of Marketing 3.0?
(A) This focuses on the customer as a human being in its entirety
(B) This marketing strategy had imbibed emotion driven approach into the other preexisting characteristics of previous marketing strategies.
(C) This strategy customized products for every segments thus make a ground level change to the previous marketing strategies.
- A.
Only (A)
- B.
Only (B)
- C.
Only (C)
- D.
Only (A) and (B)
- E.
Only (B) and (C)
Attempted by 1 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
Concept: A 'which characteristic(s)' question on a passage is decided purely by what the passage states. Check each candidate statement against the text and accept it only if the passage asserts it (directly or by clear paraphrase); reject any statement that contradicts the text or that merely sounds plausible but is never claimed.
Application to this passage: The passage describes Marketing 3.0 as the 'appeal to emotion' that meets both the rational and emotional needs of customers, and explicitly says it saw customers 'as people, instead of just segments.'
Customer as a whole human being: supported — the text says Marketing 3.0 saw customers as people rather than mere segments, i.e. as human beings in their entirety.
Adding an emotion-driven layer onto earlier approaches: supported — the passage calls 3.0 the 'appeal to emotion' meeting rational AND emotional needs, building emotion onto the product-based (1.0) and relationship-based (2.0) strengths that came before.
Customising products for every segment: not supported — this contradicts the passage, which says 3.0 treated customers as people INSTEAD of just segments; segment-level profiling is described under Marketing 2.0, not 3.0.
Cross-check: The two passage-backed statements survive while the segment-customisation claim is ruled out by the very line that defines 3.0, so the combination naming exactly those two supported statements is the answer.