The Marketing Book 5th Edition

Common Characteristics

Marketing for small-to-medium enterprises 767

This process will allow an assessment of
‘key marketing issues’ which belong to any
firm in a given context. These key marketing
issues are those aspects of marketing which any
firm in a given context will simply have to
perform; it cannot ignore these if it is to do
business. How well it performs these key
marketing issues will determine how successful
it is.
This process is applied to an example of an
SME hotel in tourism marketing. The inherent
characteristics of tourism marketing are that it
is a service and that it has a predominately
consumer-based marketing orientation. Issues
of domestic or international may or may not
have significance. Of greater significance is the
SME dimension. Thus an illustration of market-
ing in this context would be something like
Figure 29.3.
Common characteristics are easy to iden-
tify. Service marketing characteristics of intan-
gibility and service delivery are closely related
to SME characteristics of personal/unique
service and lack of resources for any tangible
and impersonal service. Similarly, consumer

marketing characteristics of retail location and

communication are uniquely influenced by

SME characteristics and limitations. Thus, the

key marketing issues which arise out of these

and other common characteristics are image/

reputation; personal service; and location/

communication. The intuitive logic for these

three key marketing issues is as follows:

 Image/reputation– That any SME hotel will seek

to emphasize its smallness as differentiation

from large corporate chains. It will build

competitive advantage by establishing a

reputation for ‘homeliness’, ‘family orientation’,

‘friendliness’, ‘intimacy’, etc. The reputation will

serve to ‘promote’ the SME by word of mouth

communication and publicity.

 Personal service– Further enhancement of the

image and reputation will come from attention

to providing a personal service which is

focused upon individual customers needs.

Strong emphasis will be given to developing

‘regular’ customers who are known by name.

 Location/communication– This is emphasized

because an SME hotel will need to draw on

Figure 29.2 Marketing in context – common characteristics