Mass marketing

Mass marketing is a market coverage strategy in which a firm decides to ignore market segment differences and appeal the whole market with one offer or one strategy. The idea is to broadcast a message that will reach the largest number of people possible. Traditionally mass marketing has focused on radio, television and newspapers as the media used to reach this broad audience. By reaching the largest audience possible exposure to the product is maximized. In theory this would directly correlate with a larger number of sales or buys into the product.

Mass marketing is the opposite to Niche marketing as it focuses on high sales and low prices. Mass Marketing aims to provide products and services that will appeal to the whole market. Niche marketing targets a very specific segment of market for example specialized services or goods with few or no competitors.

Background

Mass marketing or undifferentiated marketing has its origins in the 1920s with the inception of mass radio use. This gave corporations an opportunity to appeal to a wide variety of potential customers. Due to this, variety marketing had to be changed in order to persuade a wide audience with different needs into buying the same thing. It has developed over the years into a worldwide multi-billion dollar industry. Although sagging in the Great Depression it regained popularity and continued to expand through the 40s and 50s. It slowed during the anti-capitalist movements of the 60's and 70's before coming back stronger than before in the 80's, 90's and today. These trends are due to corresponding upswings in mass media, the parent of mass marketing. For most of the twentieth century, major consumer-products companies held fast to mass marketing- mass-producing, mass distributing and mass promoting about the same product in about the same way to all consumers. Mass marketing creates the largest potential market, which leads to lowered costs. It is also called overall marketing