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Library Review
43,2
46
Application of Marketing
Principles and Techniques to
Libraries and Information
Centres
Joseph B. Ojiambo
Faculty of Information Sciences, Moi University, Kenya
The Concept of Marketing
Marketing is one of those technical or jargon words which enjoy extensive
usage outside the linguistic confines of the discipline which spawned it.
“Marketing” is often misused and confused with problems of public relations
and selling, which are part of the marketing technique. Levitt[1] distinguishes
between marketing and selling as follows:
Selling focuses on the needs of the seller; marketing; on the needs of the buyer. Selling is
preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert the product into cash; marketing, with the idea of
satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things
associated with creating, delivering, and finally consuming it.
Kotler[2, p. 12], an authority on marketing, defines marketing as concerned
with “the effective management by an organization of its exchange
relationship with its various markets and publics”. Marketing is an attitude, a
philosophy which influences the style of management itself. Kotler goes on to
define “marketing management” further as the analysis, planning,
implementation, and control of programmes designed to bring about desired
exchanges for the purpose of personal or mutual gain. It relies heavily on the
adaption and co-ordination of product, price, promotion and place for
achieving an effective response[2, p. 12].
Kotler’s definition of “marketing concept” states that the societal marketing
concept is customer-oriented backed by integrated marketing aimed at
generating customer satisfaction and long-term consumer welfare as the key
to organizational goals[2, p. 13]. This definition relies on three major points:
(1) Customer orientation (or user orientation for non-profit organizations):
offering a product or a service which answers people’s real needs.
(2) Integrated marketing: co-ordinating within every function or
organization, also known as the market process.
Library Review, Vol. 43 No. 2,
1994, pp. 46-51. © MCB University
Press, 0024-2535
(3) Customer satisfaction and long-run consumer welfare: working towards
the interests of consumers, not only in the short run but in the long run
too.
Characteristics of Marketing Management
Yorke[3] identifies the main characteristics of marketing management as:
● the market being surrounded by an environment which greatly affects it,
and these influences outside the control of the organization;
● the market consisting of a series of sub-markets or segments.
Yorke goes on to characterize the marketing environment as a composition of
legal, economic, competitive and societal elements. And Kotler defines market
segmentation as:
the sub-division of market into homogeneous subsets or customers, where the subsets may be
selected as the market target to be reached with distinct market mix[4].
In library and information centres, Sherkow defines segmentation as the:
process of identifying various groups of users and modifying your services and information
based on those different groups and their different needs[5].
This is to say that any market consists of groups of individuals (customers)
whose needs are completely different from one another. This segmentation may
follow different patterns and can be geographic, demographic, or psychographic.
Marketing techniques have implications that will vary from one company or
organization to another. First, marketing techniques imply a change in the
structure of the organization. Second, any organization that wishes to adapt
marketing techniques will have to take into account the competition. Finally, an
organization that wants to use marketing techniques will have to undertake
market research so as to determine the real needs of the people it is serving or
intends to serve.
Marketing for Non-profit Organizations
Marketing practices are not confined to profit-making organizations alone. The
principles and practices of marketing are increasingly being applied to nonprofit organizations, including marketing of political candidates, universities,
health services, libraries and information centres. While the above-mentioned
examples are non-profit organizations, their primary interest is in attracting
voters, members, patients or customers. It is the social objective that
characterizes what has come to be known as social marketing. Examples of
social marketing include family planning, cigarette-smoking and accepting
AIDS victims in society. Although the organizational objectives of social
organizations differ from those of profit-motivated groups, the principles of
marketing are the same.
Shapiro[6] identifies four key business concepts which provide the basis for
marketing thought and action in the non-profit organization:
(1) The self-interest of transaction or exchange, in which both the buyer and
the seller believe they are receiving greater value than they are giving.
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(2) The marketing task, which stresses the importance of satisfying
customer needs. However, the typical non-profit organization operates in
a more complex manner than a profit-oriented organization. The nonprofit organization has two constituencies: a client to whom to provide
goods or services, and donors from whom it receives resources. The nonprofit dual constituency makes the marketing task more complex, since
there are two different consumers to satisfy.
(3) The marketing mix: the elements or tasks used in marketing, usually
referred to as the four Ps, i.e. price, product, promotion and place.
Shapiro re-categorizes the four Ps for the purposes of a non-profit
organization as advertising and product policies.
(4) The idea of distinctive competence: an organization concentrates on what
it does best because doing so maximizes profits.
For non-profit organizations, this means evaluating their roles in terms of the
consumers they serve, the product they offer, and their own distinctive
competence – those things that they do better than anyone else.
The marketing concept, can therefore be seen as a philosophy of action for
managers, forcing them to reorient the administration of the organization
towards better communication with the customer/user, to understand their
needs, to offer them a good product/service, and look for feedback. In libraries
and information centres, not only the needs of the user are involved, but also
his/her problem.
Using Marketing Techniques to Libraries and Information Centres
How can librarians and information managers apply marketing techniques to
libraries and information centres? Libraries as non-profit organizations have
three constituencies: clients to whom they provide services, the parent
institution from whom they receive funds and donor agencies. As non-profitmaking organizations, library and information centres cannot avoid marketing
practices. But why should libraries market their services? Four reasons are
outlined below:
(1) Marketing as an aspect of management enables library and information
managers to know and understand the needs of their clients. This
knowledge will help them to make good management decisions, which
will in turn help in providing services to clients more efficiently and
effectively.
(2) Library and information managers are not only interested in the group of
people who do use the services. They are also interested in non-users.
Marketing will help library and information management to identify the
information needs of non-users and therefore provide them with relevant
information.
(3) Librarians and information managers need to present their services as
an indispensable part of the organization within a community and try to
justify their claim that their clients cannot do their job efficiently or
effectively without a library service. Or, their community will in one way
or another suffer without a good library and information service. In this
way, marketing techniques will help libraries and information services
receive more funding from their patrons.
(4) Marketing may help to improve the image of the library and information
profession.
How to Apply Marketing Techniques to the Library-Information
Centre
The following marketing techniques can be applied to libraries:
(1) Know the purpose and resources or product of your library/information
centre. Identify the goals of your library/information centre and, in
particular, goals for the marketing programme. These goals as
Grunnenwald states: “Should be stated in such a way that subsequent
evaluation of programme results can be determined in an effective
manner”[7].
Know your product well because you cannot serve or meet the
information needs of your patrons if you do not know what you are
offering. It is important for information managers planning marketing
for their services to take into account Fine’s[8] point that information is
not an end in itself but a means to assist users to reduce the ambiguity of
the various markets that can be met by the organization. This will help
library/information centres to deliver specific programmes that meet
each of the specific market’s needs.
(2) Know your competitors. Libraries and information centres are in
competition with several non-profit and profit-making organizations in
providing information. Managers of libraries/information centres should
identify those organizations with which they are in competition. They
should evaluate their roles in terms of the patrons they serve, the
products they offer and their own distinctive competence and market
those services they provide better than anyone else, and provide or create
new services and fulfil other roles not performed by their competitors.
(3) Identification of your users of “publics”. A major step in library and
information centres’ marketing is identification of your “publics” or
segments and a complete analysis of the marketing situation. Library and
information centres have three major “publics”: the parent organization,
donor agencies and, very important, users and potential users.
Applying marketing techniques to libraries requires that a library
identifies various groups of users and modifies the library service and
information based on those different groups and their different needs.
This process is called “segmentation”. This will involve knowing your
patrons and their information needs by conducting user studies. Non-
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users are a very important part of the library and information centre
community and their information needs should not be ignored. Nonusers may not be using the information services because they may not be
aware of what services the library/information centre can offer to them.
Everyone has information needs and problems to solve and libraries/
information centres are best suited for this function.
Totterdell and Bird[9] suggested three types of information needs:
● The expressed need: the one people are aware of, and express
through the use of a library or information agency.
● The unexpressed need: the one people are aware of, but do not
express.
● The inactivated need: the one which is currently unfelt, but which
can be developed by different means.
(4) Establish a market strategy for the library/information centre. After
defining library segments and establishing needs and matching these
with information resources, the next step is to identify particular goals
for the marketing programme. Next is to develop specific strategies to
reach them, and to develop a timetable for all communication efforts.
(5) Use of the marketing mix method. This includes advertising and public
relations, channels of distribution and product policies. In general these
factors can be referred to as communicating with the library/information
centre segments. Communication with the segments enables the
library/information centre not only to provide its users with needed
information but also to get feedback. Feedback in marketing is very
important, without it re-evaluation of services provided to the market
becomes a difficult task.
● Advertising. The first step in marketing communication is to
make people aware of where libraries/information centres are
situated, what they are and how they can help people to solve
their problems by providing them with relevant information. This
can be done by using advertising techniques through posters,
radio, and television.
● Public relations as a promotional method. This is related to
advertising because it also relies on printed promotional materials
such as circulars, newspapers, announcements and public
lectures, and these can be employed in many appropriate ways.
Electronic media are also used in public relations.
Most important is personal contact with library patrons.
Printed promotional materials are not able to carry the full burden
of product/service communication, some things need to be
explained in detail and in person. Personal contact is the single
most important promotional method that can be employed. The
external setting of the library is not enough. Once a patron has
been attracted to the library, all personnel must take pains to
assure that the patron knows that his or her patronage is
appreciated.
Conclusion
Market philosophy requires that library management focuses on the
identification of patrons’ needs rather than library needs. Librarians and
information managers seem to be reluctant to become fully involved in
marketing their services and when they attempt to market their information
services they neglect or fail to understand the behaviour of the user. Sara Fine
is correct in pointing out that librarians should understand “the nature of
information, information needs of human beings, the transfer process between
people and information”[8, p. 5].
This understanding will ensure that they will market their information
services as well as providing an effective library and information service.
References
1. Levitt, T., “Marketing Myopia”, Harvard Business Review, July-August 1960.
2. Kotler, P., Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning and Control, Prentice-Hall,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1972.
3. Yorke, D., Marketing the Library Service, Library Association, London, 1977, p. 7.
4. Kotler, P., Marketing for Non-profit Organization, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1975.
5. Sherkow, S., “Marketing Library and Information Service”, Minnesota Libraries, Vol. 28,
Winter 1985-86, pp. 106-8.
6. Shapiro, B.P., “Marketing for Non-profit Organization”, in Cronin, E. (Ed.), The Marketing
of Library and Information Services, Aslib, London, 1981, p. 26.
7. Grunnenwald, J.P. and Traynor, K., “Marketing Plan for the Law Library”, Law Library
Journal, Vol. 79 No. 1, p. 95.
8. Fine, S., “Research and the Psychology of Information Use”.
9. Totterdell, B. and Bird, J., The Effective Library: Report of the Hillington Project of Public
Library Effectiveness, Library Association, London, 1976, p. 17.
Further Reading
Cronin, B., The Marketing of Library and Information Services, Aslib, London, 1981.
Condous, C., “Non-profit Marketing – Libraries Future?”, Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 35, October 1983.
Cundiff, E.W. et al., Fundamentals of Modern Marketing, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ,
1976.
Dragon, A.C., “The Marketing of the Library Services”, Drexel Library Journal, Vol. 19, Spring
1983.
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Principles and
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