According to the previous lesson that we had tackled last July 30, our instructor had discussed some important facts about the Marketing Convergence and other scopes of it. Now, this essay that I will show to you will be discussing more about Marketing Convergence. To continue with this essay, let me describe to you first what the meaning of the word marketing and convergence is.  Though I already have the idea what is the true meaning of marketing but to explain it further I searched the internet and found the meaning of the Marketing word from Wikipedia.com. It is said that marketing is "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Marketing is used to identify the customer, satisfy the customer, and keep the customer. With the customer as the focus of its activities, marketing management is one of the major components of business management. Marketing evolved to meet the stasis in developing new markets caused by mature markets and overcapacities in the last 2-3 centuries. Now that’s the meaning of the marketing. Next, I will be explaining to you what the meaning of convergence is. I think that convergence is the goal of and work towards establishing a single set of accounting standards that will be used internationally.
                To explain further, Marketing Convergence is the orchestration of information technology, marketing and design required to ensure that companies present an integrated, consistent, clear and interactive message across all the media they use. Now, from the internet I found an article that talk about the Marketing Convergence. The article said that by avoiding the mistake of oversimplifying the subject matter, the author had decided to talk about one emerging trend whose impact is great enough to influence market trends and the way that they do business.  This trend is the emergence of a classless consuming sector. This is merely one trend. It is not an all encompassing trend. However, it offers great possibilities and opportunities. He called it MARKET CONVERGENCE.
                He also included that some of us have heard a lot about technology convergence, or the convergence of telephone, television and computer. Accompanying this development is the commoditization of many of the technologies that were developed in the past century. Stan Davies described that era as being characterized by emergent technologies. It started with real time processes and the principle of miniaturization popularized by the Japanese that commoditized many old-economy products. It peaked with the introduction of the digital technology that redefined the concept of space and distribution. That era created new products that fascinated consumers and created a demand that produced many multi-billionaires in less than 10 years. It took this era only 20 years to duplicate what the old economy accomplished in over 100 years. That era is about to end. The internet bust and the dislocation of millions of IT workers are perhaps the concluding statements. The Next Economy is about to unfold if it is not yet in our midst. As in the past era, it is something that we’ve never seen before and perhaps something that we in the Philippines might again miss given our culture for resisting change and transformation. That era brought with it a trend towards market convergence.
                To continue, let me ask you a question.  What is Market Convergence really is?  There are lots of examples given from the article that he created. Here are some examples of it: The trend towards connectivity, the trend towards eating convenience, the trend towards a shopping community, and the trend towards wellness.
                Let us say that we want a convenient way to shop for our favorite clothes without going outside the house. All of us think that the better way to shop without going outside is to shop online thru the use of internet connection. This may be an example of a trend of a marketing convergence. The process would start from dealing with a company that provide or sell clothes and a company that uses the World Wide Web to promote products via online. Both of them have the same goal which is to provide customers with their products.  In this sense, the marketing convergence is happening. Both of them will decide the marketing strategies that would serve as their offer to the costumers that longing to shop indoors via online marketing.
                Another example from the article is this: Across the various segments, the mallers go to malls to be entertained, to shop, to eat/dine, and to look for specialty item. They crowd the same places to do practically the same things, at the same shopping hours, and during the same shopping days. Top 10 malls frequented in Metro Manila (in ranking order) are: SM Megamall, Ayala Center, Robinson’s Place, Alabang Town Center, Festival Mall, Powerplant Rockwell, Edsa Shangri-la Mall, Robinson’s Galleria, SM City, and SM Manila. Economists have been studying market convergence and have come out with many materials in the last two years. Marketing is left behind. Marketing practitioners, in fact, have to start understanding the principles and implications of market convergence.
                The perspective that we should take is to ask what strategic options are open to firms faced with market convergence and discuss the firm level initiatives that might make them more or less successful in their strategic. When market convergence unleashed its might in such industries as communication, food and retail, how did we fare? The wellness industry is threatening to capture the imagination of a classless sector. How are we positioned to take advantage of this opportunity? What other markets have the tendency to converge? What are the predictors of market convergence? As marketing practitioners, we need to respond these questions. As marketing practitioners, we need to understand such trends.
                Lastly, let me share this to you. It was written by Thomas Friedman. He said that People around the globe are pretty much pursuing the same goal: the basic human desire for a better life; a life with more choices as to what to eat, what to wear, where to live, where to travel, how to work, what to read, and what to learn.