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Social media is huge in today's marketing world as many new consumers can researched from social media.  The use of social media by companies allows for instant feed back from consumers and a company must respond to it quickly. Also companies can be missed guided and spend a lot of money on social media even though the reach is not as big as expected. Companies must utilize social media to their advantage so that they can create good public relations and brand image.

This week there was a story on NPR about the pricing of ammunition as demand has sky rockets due to the pending gun legislation.  The ammo market is generally a inelastic market as people will pay whatever the price is to have their ammo.  But the article points out that many sellers have not been increasing their price with the increase in demand.  I thought this was very interesting because it is ignoring the invisible hand of the market and market demand.  The sellers have choose a pricing strategy as customer focused because they are keeping prices at the value they had previously deemed even though most customers have adjusted their value.

Looking into purchases that I have made in the past and if I have become a loyal customer or not was related to the sales people and customer relationship that were made.  Personal selling, shown above in Dilbert, is just one strategy that can be employed.  The personal selling creates a one on one relations and helps for complicated products and a target market. The relationship just end with the sales though as it must continue to keep the customer happy. Through service, maintenance, holiday cards, companies can keep a personal connection to customers. This is more important in consumer business relationships and car purchases than the nominal and limited purchases.

A company must have an integrated marketing plan to ensure their marketing strategy is understood and communicated the same across all part of the company.  You do not want one part of the company to be saying one thing and another on a different page of the play book.  By having an integrated marketing plan engineers, business analyst, sales force and executives would all have an understand of what the company is wanting to do. The integrated marketing plan is directly linked to the the companies vision and strategy as it creates the full view of where the company is going. Overall the IMP is important to keeping a company focused and motivated.