Marketing Basics: Introductory Chapter

Marketing Basics by Dr. Charrass Abdelmajid

• Professor Dr. Charrass Abdelmajid is a teacher-researcher at ENCG of Béni Mellal, at Sultan Moulay Slimane University.
• The course discusses marketing fundamentals.
• The course plan encompasses: introductory chapter, analytical marketing, strategic marketing, operational marketing, and marketing audit.
• Core marketing references are Kotler, Keller & Manceau’s "Marketing Management", Jean-Marie Ducreux's "The Big Book of Marketing," and Lendrevie & Lévy’s "Mercator."

Introductory Chapter

• What is Marketing?
• Why Market?
• What are the distinctions between marketing and in-depth marketing?
• What are the latest market trends?
• How to achieve successful marketing?

What is marketing?

• Marketing identifies human and social needs then satisfies them in a profitable manner.
• The American Marketing Association describes marketing as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings with value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
• Marketing management is the art and science of selecting target markets and then attracting, retaining, and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value.
• Marketing is societal process where individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering, and freely exchanging products and services of value with others.
• Peter Drucker asserted that the goal of marketing is to understand the customer so well that the product or service fits them perfectly and sells itself.

What does marketing cover?

• Goods
• Services
• Events
• Experiences
• People
• Places
• Organizations
• Ideas

Different Demand Profiles in Marketing

• Negative demand: Potential customers seek to avoid thinking about the product, like dental care or death insurance. Marketing addresses resistance sources and tries to reverse the trend.
• Absence of demand: Customers are ignorant or uninterested in the product. Marketing is aimed at raising product awareness and demonstrating its benefits.
• Latent demand: Many customers have a desire that existing products do not satisfy.
• Declining demand: Customers purchase the product less frequently or not at all. Analysis focuses on the causes of the drop and whether demand can be revived, or product retirement should be considered.
• Irregular demand: Products are consumed irregularly, be it annually, seasonally or daily. For example, ice cream in summer, chocolate in winter, so marketing encourages spreading purchases more evenly.
• Sustained demand: Marketing maintains the level and pace of purchase, measuring customer satisfaction to fend off competitive attacks.

Main Market Types

• Mass consumer markets (B2C)
• Business to business markets (B2B)
• International markets
• Public and non-profit markets

Key Concepts in Marketing

• Needs relate to essential elements for survival
• Individuals need to have fun and to educate, so their needs turn into wants when they focus on specific objects.
• Demand arises when both intention and purchasing power exist.
• There are 5 different types of needs: stated, real, unstated, delight, secret.

Value and Satisfaction

• Value is a fundamental concept resulting from the quality/service/price triad. Marketing identifies, creates, communicates, delivers, and manages value for customers.
• Satisfaction measures an individual's judgment comparing the perceived performance of a good or service during consumption against their prior expectations.

New Marketing Realities

• Due to technology, globalization, and corporate social responsibility, markets have profoundly changed in the last decade.
• New behaviors, opportunities and challenges are generated by these developments.
• Holistic marketing involves developing and implementing wide-ranging, interconnected marketing programs, processes, and activities.
• A broad, integrated perspective is key in holistic marketing.

Carrying out Marketing

• Establish overall strategy and objectives
• Communicate: create ads, websites, social media
• Deliver: ensure that product and the service is impeccable
• Create: good ideas, product or service
• Capture: awareness after a certain number of impressions
• Sustain: reinforce the message
• Connect: with the end user to promote the business
• Measure results
• Repeat

Marketing Approach

• Information marketing: includes internal & external analysis, and marketing decision.
• Strategic marketing: covers marketing plan through segmentation/targeting, positioning, and strategic marketing.
• Operational marketing: encompasses the marketing mix through product price, direct distribution, and communication.

Analytical marketing

• Market study and information gathering
• It considers information system, intelligence system, internal monitoring, and macroeconomic monitoring.
• Companies with better information than their competitors can choose the appropriate markets, develop better offers, and develop more effective marketing plans.
• Analytical marketing definition: a marketing information system (MIS) involves people, equipment, and procedures for the purpose of gathering, sorting, analyzing, and distributing useful, necessary and relevant information to marketing managers to help them make decisions.
• Marketing Intelligence System is the set of means allowing managers to keep continuously informed about the evolution of their marketing environment.
• Internal marketing information relates to order-delivery billing cycle, sales reports, databases and data mining.
• External marketing contains: panels, sites, social networks, blogs, forums.
• Macro environment analysis includes that which is political, legal, environmental, and technological.

Forecasting and Measuring Demand

• Potential Market: All consumers are interested in the proposed product or service along with having sufficient purchasing power and access to the product.
• Available Market: Individuals having interest, means and access to a product
• Target market: the part of the available market to which the company directs its efforts or its product/services.
• Penetrated market: the set of customers or people segment who buy a product or service.

Market Studies

• Market studies analysis includes consumers, customers or the public. It identifies markets and threats, evaluates marketing operations and marketing performance, and can contribute to better understanding of marketing as a whole process.
• Insight marketing refers to data that enables grasping when and why certain phenomena in the market are observed, and what they suggest for marketing managers.
• Conducting a market study involves problem definition, study plan, data collection, data analysis, presentation of results, and decision making.
• Qualitative studies include group meetings, and individual meetings.
• Quantitative studies include behavioural data, and experimentation.

Market Segmentation and Targeting

• A company cannot address all potential buyers as there are too many, are too dispersed and too different.
• Segmentation divides the market into homogeneous, distinct groups and involves selecting the groups the company wants to target.
• A segment of a market is a group of customer who share the same desires and motivations toward the product.
• There are 2 categories of criteria that segment markets:
  • Those that describe intrinsic characteristics of consumers such as geographical, socio-demographical, and psychological.
  • Those that describe their behavior related to the product concerned like situation of purchase, profits, use and price.
• The 4 steps for a segmentation procedure: identifying the segments, study the segments, evaluate the segments, and choose the target.
• Effective segmentation have measurable, sufficient in volume, accessible, relevant and feasible for the brand.
• Market coverage can be mass marketing, personalized to individuals, multiple segments, or one segment.

Positioning

• Positioning is conceiving an offering and its image to occupy a distinct place in the minds of the target customers.
• Brands have to define clear positioning that sets them apart from the competition
• Marketing offers should be associated with a precise and valued idea in the minds of the target customers.

Positioning should be formulated in the marketing plan

• It is recommended to adopt a formula in one sentence like: " For… (Description of target and need answered), the brand x is....(concept), that allows...(differences)".
• Or consider:" For overworked business executives with constant communication needs, Blackberry offers mobile email management that is fast, easy, and more reliable than competitors."
• To assist reflection, some businesses state mantras like "Authentic customer connection and inspiration."

Narrative brands are constructed around storytelling

• It recounts the history of storytelling using words and metaphors.
• A consumer takes a voyage to get involved at contact points with a trademark.
• It conveys visual expression and graphics of the trademark.
• Storytelling transmits in terms of sensory experience.
• A brand plays in everyday events.
• The framework of the storytelling includes components such as an authentic voice of the story through, images, icons, themes, motifs.

Positioning Levers Include

• performance
• economy
• brand imagination

Operational Marketing and the Marketing Mix

• The marketing mix contains the 7 P's.
• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion
• People
• Process
• Physical Evidence