Application And Studies Of Integrated Marketing In Wuhan Department Stores

As a trading port, Wuhan has a long history. Conveniently located in the central position to nine provinces, it boasts a flourishing business. Department stores, a principal force in Wuhan's business section, have long been grabbing unparalleled retail shares of the market. However, with the emergence and development of newly rising retail types, customers'consumption is divided by countless supermarkets, storage supermarkets, medium-sized supermarkets, convenience stores, discount stores, cyber shops and shopping malls, which has led to department stores'continuously reduced market share and profit rate. While department stores are losing their past glory, customers'consumption concepts are also going through changes. More diverse, personality-oriented and multitiered consumption has taken shape and mental and psychological consumption have received more and more attentions. Being confronted with the daily changing consumption circumstances and increasingly harsh competition on the market, merchandise enterprises in Wuhan are undergoing an unprecedented ordeal. It is a question that needs pondering on and solving by each merchandise dealer that how to get rid of the restrain of traditional operational philosophy and management mode to adapt to the changing demands on market. Integrated marketing, a marketing theory springing up in western developed countries in 1990s, boasts a lot of successful application overseas so that much experience has been accumulated. Some brands, such as IBM and Procter & Gamble, have also caught the attentions of the Chinese enterprises. Integrated marketing, applying integration in marketing management and policy, enables the two parties to achieve increment in transaction by combining various marketing tools and means from customer's demands based on immediate dynamic alternation according to different circumstances. Based on the characteristics of market development and current operation and marketing status of department stores in Wuhan, the thesis discusses in depth inevitability of their applying integrated marketing, as well as function and strategic importance that integrated marketing have on corporate development, and puts forward specific implementation measures. The thesis, absorbing experience of successful cases of integrated marketing in the West and other cities in China, studies how department stores in Wuhan apply integrated marketing in their operation. Hopefully, it helps the enterprises to take integrated marketing into full play.