IHEC Strategic Marketing 2024-2025

IHEC Strategic Marketing 2024-2025

• Course offered by IHEC Brussels Management School
• Instructor: Olivier Schunck
• Contact: [email protected]

Participation details

• Use Wooclap.com
• Enter event code: YOURMIND4
• Participation link available via QR code

Session Review Task

• Students asked to recall key points from previous week's session in a few words
• Suggested responses: right timing, always around, bring value, not intrusive, offer you can't refuse

Course Outline

• Marketing's Journey: Brief history of marketing and its current state
• Strategic Marketing: Step-by-step explanation of marketing strategy
• Customer Centricity: Understanding customer behavior and needs, providing distinctive experiences
• Research & Insights: Customer intelligence driven by data and human insights
• Market & Competition: Achieving competitive advantage via innovation and uniqueness
• Brand & Purpose: Firm's brand identity, its purpose and being purpose driven.
• Responsible Marketing: Crisis-proof marketing strategies and incorporating sustainability and ethical considerations
• Digital & Social Marketing: Relevant strategies for the marketing strategies in the digital era.
• Emerging Technology: Emerging trends like Al, Gen AI and tech-led marketing reinvention
• Agile Marketing: Agile marketing operating models - resilient and adaptive.

Marketing Research Criticality

• Marketing research is integral to all steps of the strategic marketing process
• Crucial for:
  • Overall ambition (vision, mission, goals)
  • Situation analysis (external/internal, value potential)
  • Marketing strategy (strategic choices, evaluation)
  • Integrated marketing program (develop components, marketing mix)
  • Execution and evaluation (implementation, monitoring)

Task - New Telecom Operator

• Students form groups of 2-3
• One person acts as "Marketing" and others as customers
• The "Marketing" person asks 2-3 research questions to gain customer insights
• This is to gain customer insights to develop new telecom services

TASK - Questions

• Marketing team enters questions asked in Wooclap.
• Other team members enter expected questions in Wooclap

TASK - Question Words

• Students choose "question word" keywords related to their understanding of the marketing research topic.
• These words will be entered in Wooclap

Marketing Research Basics

• Main objectives:
  • Problem identification ("understand," "anticipate")
  • Problem solving ("test," "measure," "take action")

Research Areas - Problem Identification

• Consumer behavior research
• Market potential research
• Market share research
• Brand image research
• Market characteristics research
• Business trends research
• Sales analysis research
• Competitive strengths research
• Technology adoption research

Research Objective 1 - "Known-Unknowns"

• Awareness of "known knowns" = what's known
• Awareness of "known unknowns" = aware of areas which aren't known currently
• Awareness of "unknown knowns" = things we could understand, but are currently unaware of
• Awareness of "unknown unknowns" = neither aware of nor capable of understanding

Research Objective 2 - Problem Solving

• Segment market potential
• Online engagement research
• Optimal product design research
• Concept testing
• Price elasticity research
• Impact of pricing policies
• Marketing mix optimization
• Channel margin research
• Optimal coverage analysis

What is Marketing Research?

• Function that links consumer, customer, and public to marketer
• Identifying/ defining marketing problems or opportunities
• Generating, refining, and evaluating marketing actions
• Monitoring performance and understanding process
• Specifies required information, designs methodology, manages & implements data collection process, analyzes results, communicates findings and implications

A bit of Terminology

• Market research and marketing research are often used interchangeably
• At the core of both definitions is a consumer/customer understanding
• Marketing research can incorporate macro-business environment monitoring, competitive analyses, and business risk assessment

Providers of Research Services

• Internal: Firm's own team(s) (with varying organizational alignment) which provide research services
• External: External companies hired to support marketing research services
  • Full-service suppliers (offer a comprehensive range)
  • Limited-service suppliers (specialize in particular aspects/services)

Providers of External Services

• Criteria for selecting external providers: data reliability, scope, tailored solutions, tools & methods, analysis, expertise, and pricing
• Tools/Methods: Surveys, interviews, focus groups, field trials, product testing, analytical services.

Main Sources of Data

• Secondary data: Data collected by others for other purposes (transactional data, social media, publications, industry reports, etc.)
• Primary data: Data collected first hand for a specific objective (surveys, interviews, focus groups, field trials, product testing, etc.)

Primary Data- Qualitative & Quantitative

• Qualitative research: Exploratory, unstructured, small samples (expert interviews, shadowing, mind maps, diaries/journals, focus groups, etc.)
• Quantity research: Measuring, usually through metrics and statistical analysis (focus groups, social media scans, desirability testing, etc.)

In the Digital Era: Strong Focus on Quantitative Methods

• Before Big Data: Partial, internal data, difficult/costly collection & analysis
• Now (with Big Data): Comprehensive data, easier/faster and more cost-effective analysis, and advanced analytics.

Explosive growth of Big Data/Al

• Data is big, growing fast.

What is Data?

• Information, facts, numbers, used in decision-making
• Digital form suitable for computer processing, transmission, and storage

TASK – Customer Data of Telco Company

The emergence of ‘Big Data’

Big data unlocks new potential...

• From descriptive (what happened) to predictive (what will happen) and prescriptive (how to make it happen) to augmented analytics (seamless, synergistic Al-driven customer experience)

Big Data remains untapped...

• Reasons: Poor data usage (lack of clear strategy, insufficient quality, inadequate infrastructure, limited analytics skills, fragmented data sources)
• Additional Challenges (inability to access real-time data, data privacy concerns, lack of executive sponsorship.

From Data, To Insight, To Action

Data Science & AI / Anthropology/Ethnography

• Data Science & Al: Big data, quantitative, hypothesis-driven, analytical methods, vast amount of data, extrapolation, linear
• Anthropology/Ethnography: Thick data, qualitative, observation-driven, experiential immersion, smaller samples, exploration, iterative

Leveraging Mixed Research Methods (Qual/Quant)

Integrating Psychology & Behavioral Economics

• Study of psychological/cognitive factors involved in decisions, deviation from traditional economic theory
• Primarily concerned with the bounds of rationality.

Behavioral Economics Examples

• Anchoring bias: Initial reference point influences subsequent judgments (e.g., pricing).
• Endowment effect: People value items they own more than those they don't (e.g., keeping a mug vs. purchasing one).
• Cognitive biases: Systematic deviations from rationality in judgment (e.g., framing effect).

Neuroscience applied in Marketing

• Neuromarketing: Application of neuroscience & cognitive science in marketing; tries to discover customer needs/motivations/preferences not revealed by traditional methods.
• Appealing across the senses: Multisensory stimuli often strengthen brand impressions & memories.

Thank You!

• Contact details for questions or feedback

This quiz covers key points from the IHEC Brussels Management School's Strategic Marketing course. Students are expected to articulate insights from the previous week's session, emphasizing critical elements in marketing strategy and customer experience. Test your knowledge on strategic concepts and the current state of marketing.