Marketing environment

Refers to all of the forces outside of marketing that affect marketing management’s ability to build and maintain successful relationships with target customers.

Macroenvironment: demography (target markets), economy (cheap products in crisis), natural forces, technology, politics, and culture.

Microenvironment: suppliers (delays=dissatisfaction), marketing intermediaries (people that help the company promote), customer markets, competitors, and publics.

34. Market segmentation and targeting

While many of the consumer market segmentation bases can be applied to businesses and organizations, the different nature of business markets often leads to segmentation on the following bases:

Geographic segmentation - based on customer concentration, regional industrial growth rate

Customer type - based on factors such as the size of the organization

Buyer behavior - based on factors such as loyalty to suppliers

Undifferentiated marketing - Sometimes referred to as mass marketing the firm may decide to aim its resources at the entire market with one particular product. Coca Colas original marketing strategy was based on this form.

Differentiated marketing strategy - Where the firm decides to target several segments and develops distinct products/services with separate marketing mix strategies aimed at the varying groups. An example of this would be airline companies offering first, business (segment 1) or economy class tickets (segment 2) , with separate marketing programs to attract the different groups.

Concentrated Marketing: Where the organization concentrates its marketing effort on one particular segment. The firm will develop a product that caters for the needs of that particular group. For example Rolls Royce cars aim its vehicles at the premium segment, same as Harrods within the UK.

35. Marketing research

Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of data about issues relating to marketing products and services. The goal of marketing research is to identify and assess how changing elements of the marketing mix impacts customer behavior.

Consumer marketing research, Business-to-business (B2B)

Qualitative marketing research, Quantitative marketing research

Field research, desk research

Define the marketing problem; Enumerate the controllable and uncontrollable decision factors; Collect relevant information; Identify the best alternative; Develop and implement a marketing plan; Evaluate the decision and the decision process.

Examples: Brand name testing, demand for a new product testing, changes in taste testing, mystery customer, online panel, brand equity research.

36. The marketing mix models

Four P's: Product, Price, Place, Promotion, + People, Process, Psychological evidence.

Four Cs: Commodity, Cost, Channel, Communication. + Competitor, consumer, circumstances.

37. Product, price & promotion relation

Product - It is a tangible object or an intangible service that is mass produced or manufactured on a large scale with a specific volume of units.

Price – The price is the amount a customer pays for the product. The business may increase or decrease the price of product if other stores have the same product.

Promotion represents all of the communications that a marketer may use in the marketplace. Promotion has four distinct elements: advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion. A certain amount of crossover occurs when promotion uses the four principal elements together, which is common in film promotion.

Relation: don’t sell expensive products in poor countries, because even a very broad advertisement campaign won’t help to increase demand and drive sales up.

38. The nature of marketing research and marketing information systems: tasks, objectives, role within organization.

Marketing Research is "the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information — information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process.

A Marketing Information System can be defined as 'a system in which marketing information is formally gathered, stored, analyzed and distributed to managers in accordance with their informational needs on a regular basis.

Example: offer shoppers free membership cards that provide discounts and thus provides valuable information to the chain about consumer preferences - track customers buy, when and where, helps to stay in touch with them if they relocate.

The system is created through an understanding of the information needs of marketing management. It is available to supply information when, where and how the manager requires it. Data is taken from the marketing environment and transferred into the information that marketing managers can use in their decision-making processes.

Information gathered from sources within the company to evaluate marketing performances and to detect marketing problems and opportunities. Most marketing managers use internal records and reports regularly, especially for making day-to-day planning, implementation and control decisions.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 917