Introduction to Marketing Concepts

Marketing Introduction

• Marketing involves creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that benefit customers, clients, partners, and society.
• It focuses on building strong customer relationships to generate value in return.

Core Concepts

• Needs: Fundamental human requirements (e.g., safety, belonging, as per Maslow's hierarchy).
• Wants: Shaped by culture and personality, building on needs.
• Demands: Wants backed by purchasing power.
• Market Offerings: A combination of products, services, or experiences offered to meet customer needs or wants.
• Marketing Myopia: Focusing on products instead of customer experiences or solutions.

Marketing Management Orientations

• Production Concept: Focuses on affordability and availability through efficient production.
• Product Concept: Emphasizes high quality and innovation.
• Selling Concept: Aggressive promotion to drive sales, regardless of need.
• Marketing Concept: Understanding and meeting customer needs better than competitors.
• Societal Concept: Considers societal well-being along with profitability and customer satisfaction.

Strategic Analysis

• Strategic Analysis involves evaluating a company's strategy using frameworks like the Ansoff Matrix and Porter's strategies.

Consumer Behavior

• Cultural Factors: Influence values and behaviors through culture and subcultures.
• Social Factors: Include groups, family, roles, and status that impact consumer decisions.
• Personal Factors: Such as demographics (age, income, lifestyle) and personality traits.
• Psychological Factors: Include motivation, perception, learning, beliefs, and attitudes—shaping individual preferences.
• Buying Decision Process: Includes need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and post-purchase behavior.
• ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth): The online research phase before a purchase decision.

From Corporate to Marketing Strategy

• Mission Statement: Defines the organization’s purpose, ideally market-oriented, not product-oriented.
• Goals and Objectives: Translate the mission into actionable targets for teams and departments.
• Business Portfolio Analysis: Analyze the company's portfolio using frameworks like the BCG Matrix (Stars, Question Marks, Cash Cows, Dogs).

Microenvironmental Factors

• Company: Cross-functional collaboration among departments (e.g., marketing, operations).
• Suppliers: Provide necessary inputs, and disruptions affect product delivery.
• Marketing Intermediaries: Help promote, sell, and distribute products (e.g., retailers, agencies).
• Competitors: Direct competitors offer similar products to the same audience; indirect competitors offer different products fulfilling similar needs.
• Publics: Groups influencing or influenced by the company (e.g., media, communities).
• Customers: Include consumer, business, reseller, government, and international markets.

Marketing Research

• Marketing Information System (MIS): Utilizes internal databases (sales, customer interactions, costs) and marketing intelligence (public data on competitors and market trends).
• Marketing Research Process: Involves defining the problem, planning the research, collecting and analyzing data, and reporting findings.
• Types of Research: Exploratory (initial insights), Descriptive (in-depth studies), Causal (cause-and-effect relationships).

Segmentation, Targeting, and Persona

• Market Segmentation: Dividing the market into groups based on location (geographic), demographics (age, gender, income), psychographics (lifestyle, values, personality), and behavioral factors (usage rate, loyalty, occasion).
• Targeting Strategies: Undifferentiated, differentiated, concentrated, and micromarketing.
• Persona Development: Creates a fictional representation of a typical customer based on real data.

Differentiation and Positioning

• Differentiation: Standing out through features, design, service quality, brand image, pricing, or experience (e.g., Apple).
• Positioning: Influencing perceptions to occupy a unique place in consumers’ minds. Using Positioning Statement Templates to help articulate the desired position.

Product Strategy

• Levels of Product: Core (fundamental benefits), actual (tangible attributes), and augmented (additional services).
• Product Life Cycle (PLC): Stages include introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.
• Product Portfolio: Describes the width, length, depth, and consistency of product lines.

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

• Promotion Mix: The combination of advertising, sales promotion, and personal selling as communication tools.

Other Key Topics

• Public Relations: Building a favorable image.
• Direct Marketing: Personalized outreach (e.g., email campaigns). Highlighting Communication Process - Sender, Encoding/Decoding, Feedback.