Critique

Marketing Principles Affiliation: Introduction Online marketing is fast catching upwith the traditional personalized marketing where the sales agent is aware of the tastes of the customers and has many different products lined up for the customer in addition to what they are purchasing. In the online version of such personalized sales, the companies have to use different types of personal data from different mediums of their customers and using it to deduce the next big offer (NBO) for their customers once they log in online or purchase products.
According to the article by Davenport, Mule & Lucker, (2011), in order to effectively determine the NBO, it is important to collect personal data about the customers from their names, sizes, physical address, phone numbers, occupation, salary range, number of children, ages of the children and of the customer among many others. All these can be collected from their social media and personal data on file in the online stores and then use the same to predict their purchase context and pricing range of their shopping and products. A perfect example provided in the article is where a person purchasing diapers can have an NBO of wipes, powder, beer among others all of which accompany the baby products which the person is in need of without realizing it.
In order to know the customer even before they make the purchase of the items, it is important to examine their buyer behavior first a few times in order to get a grip about what they like to purchase, in what quality and quantity, their favorite or preferred brand and the duration between one purchase and the next (Kotler & Armstrong, 2015). All these is important to predict the buyer behavior and hence be in a position to offer then an NBO the next time they are online just as a way to not only advertise the products but tempt them on what else they might need.
Once enough personal data has been gathered about a shopper, the next step is to execute the advertisement and promotion. The person may start receiving the NBOs in their emails; receiving phone calls about the same, notifications in their social media accounts among other online places they frequently visit (Davenport, Mule & Lucker, 2011).
All these are in an attempt to make them purchase more than what they need or have planned for or make them aware of new product in the market, new prices and even new promotional offers (Kotler & Armstrong, 2015). In order to make it even more interesting and tempting, numerous discounts and advantages such as reward points can be provided which can then be redeemed in the near future at a higher value.
Conclusion
The main aim of all these knowledge is to ensure that the marketers do not lose much with the shift to digital stores and the customers still get the value for their money while still having their relationship with the marketers continue to build. When the online marketing starts becoming customer-centered, customers are likely to even shift more into it and neglect the traditional marketing while profits continue to increase for the marketers.
References
Davenport, T., Mule, L. & Lucker, J. (2011, December). Know What Your Customers Want Before They Do. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr. org/2011/12/know-what-your-customers-want-before-they-do
Kotler, P. & Armstrong, G. (2015). Principles of Marketing. New York: Pearson Education.