As a final year finance student, I used to think that marketing is something related to graphic designs, slogans and posters. After taking this course, I know how naive I am. Of course, marketing includes advertisement, but more important inside marketing is the strategic plan. One of the mains point of the plan is how can we satisfy the needs.

In order to understand the needs of customers, the first question is who will be our customers? It comes to the STP process. Firstly, we should divide the customers into different groups by looking at their behaviors, histories and wills. Secondly, we would find which group(s) is more favorable to us. Finally, we would customize our brands, products and advertisements in order to impress the targeted customers and fulfill their needs. However, how important is it? Let’s have an example.

As a student come from Hong Kong, I would like to express my view on the Disneyland and its competitor Ocean Park(Ocean Park Advertisement) in Hong Kong. As for the targeted customers, Disneyland should be targeting people who grew up with Disney Cartoons and want to have a more “realistic” contact with the characters. Ocean Park in the meantime should be targeting people who love sea animals. That’s the difference. As a multi-cultural place, Hong Kong people grew up with not only Disney, but also Japanese cartoons, Chinese cartoons, etc. The connection between Disney and Hong Kong people is much weaker than people in the western countries. However, what we love is in fact the ocean and also the marine life which can give us a sense of peace and freedom in such a busy and fast-pacing city. This is simple but enough to explain the success of Ocean Park and failure of Disneyland in Hong Kong.