For any business, marketing enjoys the utmost important place. Despite of the fact that how well a business is, cannot maintain, and sustain its position among the target competitors, unless otherwise properly marketed. Hence, marketing can be thought of as a main pillar on which the building of any business rests. It is a field that is hard to define, as marketing is a holistic term that encompasses many different ideas, concepts, and terminologies. In an attempt to put forth an academic definition of the concept, marketing can be defined as an activity that helps in promoting the produced goods and services, with the aim of selling them and earning a profit on proceed . However, it is difficult to provide a universal definition as different scholars view it differently.
There are different indexes that are available within the realm of marketing discipline that helps in identifying where your business stands in its order of hierarchy. The market image index is one of them, used with the same intend. While assessing the position of a hotel industry among its competitors, the market image index is a significant tool. Market image index can be thought of as an instrument that is used to determine how well a hotel is viewed or rated within its market peers. It can be thought of as a popularity-gauging index . It is important for a hotel industry to examine and keep track of this index, as it will lead the future operations of the hotel, thus affecting management decisions. If the hotel is rated at a lower credit within the market, it is an alarm ringing for the management to identify the areas where there seems to be problematic. Hence, identifying the problem leads to its remedy. However, if the hotel is well reputed, it again calls for management attention to take actions beforehand for sustainment of the position and targeting the unexplored areas, as the hotel is now in a position to take risk and experiment. Similarly, public image of the hotel is also a very important indicator. Public image index indicates that how the target customers of the hotel and the public, in general, views the hotel and its operations. It is the customers who are a source of profits to any hotel so how they rate hotel is what determines the future course of action. This leads one to the conclusion that if there exist any discrepancies the management is required to provide services that are in line with the demand and mood of the target customers.
References
Pride, W. (2011). Marketing. New York: Cengage Learning.
Reid , R. (2009). Hospitality marketing management. (5 ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Response 1:
The above post has accurately highlighted the importance of marketing image index. Marketing image index helps the hotel in strengthening its position among its peers. The author has significantly linked the index with the sustainability issues. However, it will be really interesting if the author hints on how managerial decision making in the vague of index influences hotel, apart from sustainment. What’s your take on it?
Response 2
I think that I completely agree with the author of the post. Marketing is an important pillar of any business and a business’s success is heavily dependent on its marketing as this field involves a lot of intuitive decision making, hence, the hotel industry being no exception. So the hotel management need to keep a strict eye on the index.
