Marketing Basics Overview

Marketing Summary

• Marketing is defined as managing profitable customer relationships by creating value for customers in order to capture value in return.
• The marketing process involves understanding customer needs, designing marketing strategies, building relationships and capturing value from customers.
• Understanding the marketplace and customer needs involves recognizing needs, wants, and demands; market offerings (products, services, and experiences); value and satisfaction; exchanges and relationships; and markets.
• Marketing management orientations include production, product, selling, marketing, and societal marketing concepts.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) builds and maintains profitable customer relationships by providing superior value and satisfaction.
• Companies capture value through customer loyalty, share of customer, and customer equity (the combined customer lifetime values).
• Marketing strategy outlines which customers a company will serve and how it will create value for those customers, including market segmentation, targeting, differentiation, and positioning.
• The Marketing Mix consists of Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
• The changing landscape includes economic shifts, tech advancements, globalization, and greater social responsibility.
• Strategic planning involves defining the company's mission, objectives, business portfolio design, and functional coordination.
• A company's business portfolio is the collection of businesses and products that make up the company.
• Portfolio analysis evaluates the company's strategic business units (SBUs), and the product/market expansion grid assists in growth planning.

Marketing's Role in Strategic Planning

• Marketing plays a key role in identifying market opportunities, creating customer-focussed strategies, and driving business objectives.

Managing the Marketing Effort

• This includes analyzing, planning, implementing, and controlling the plan, encompassing marketing analysis, goals, strategies, action plans, and budgeting.

Marketing Organization

• Different ways marketing departments can be organized include: functional, geographic, product management, and market/customer management.

Measuring Marketing Performance

• Companies should measure and manage return on marketing investment (marketing ROI) to evaluate their marketing strategies.

Marketing Concepts

• Marketing is about building profitable relationships with customers, understanding their wants, and aiming to exceed expectations.
• Customer Value is the benefit customers receive relative to the cost.
• Customer Needs, Wants, and Demands need to be considered in order to effectively satisfy the customer, from inherent needs to specific wants and demands based on the ability to pay.
• Market offerings are those things that satisfy a need or want, tangible or intangible.
• The exchange and relationships created by marketing should aim to fulfill consumer needs, which can be assessed through the four P's of marketing.

The Buying Process

• Need Recognition: The process begins with recognizing a need or problem.
• Information Search: Evaluating options and gathering relevant information.
• Evaluation of Alternatives: Comparing the options to find the best one.
• Purchase Decision: Deciding to buy.
• Post-Purchase Behavior: Evaluating the purchase after the sale.
• There are different types of buying behaviors, which influence the decision process. Complex, Dissonance-Reducing, Habitual, and Variety-Seeking.
• Adoption of new products is a process for consumers, and different segments are adopted at different rates (Innovators, Early Adopters, etc...).

Consumer Behavior

• Cultural, social, personal, and psychological factors influence consumer behavior. Key factors include culture, subculture, social factors/roles, demographics, lifestyle, personality, motivation, perception, lifestyles, and attitudes.

Environmental Analysis

• The microenvironment includes factors close to the company that affect its ability to serve its customers, such as the company itself, suppliers, marketing intermediaries (resellers, physical distribution firms, etc.), customer markets (consumer, business, reseller, government, international), competitors, and publics.
• The macroenvironment encompasses larger societal forces, including demographic, economic, natural, technological, political, and cultural forces.
• These factors shape opportunities and pose threats to companies and influence how they approach the market.

Marketing Channels

• Marketing channels (distribution channels) move products and services from producers to consumers. This involves intermediaries such as resellers, physical distribution firms, marketing service agencies, and financial intermediaries. Different channel structures like vertical marketing systems (corporate, contractual, or administered) or multiple or horizontal channels lead to specific complexities and characteristics to consider.
• Channel levels indicate the number of intermediaries between producer and consumer. Direct channels have no intermediaries, while indirect channels utilize one or more.
• The channel structure can also lead to conflict.

Marketing Strategy

• Firms focus on the product (uniqueness, features, benefits), price (cost to the consumer and the manufacturer), place (distribution, how the product gets to consumers), and promotion (marketing strategies to get the consumer to buy). These four critical elements of the Marketing Mix should all work in harmony toward satisfying customer needs.

Pricing Strategies

• Customer-value-based pricing is when sellers base pricing on perceived consumer value.
• Cost-based pricing is when the seller includes all costs associated with production, distribution, and sales in determining price.
• Competition-based pricing involves setting prices relative to competitors' decisions and values.

Product Decisions

• Product attributes deal with the specifics of physical attributes, like product quality, design features, and style.
• Brands help facilitate identification of a product and create recognition/value.
• Packaging provides both protection and promotional opportunities to enhance consumer attraction.
• Labeling plays an important role in communicating a product's attributes.
• Product line decision are about determining options and extending a line of similar products or offering new options.
• Product mix management encompasses the entire range of products offered by a specific company or organization.

Overall, these notes provide a summary of core marketing concepts and strategies. The concepts are not exhaustive and should be expanded upon. A variety of examples and case studies can be included for better comprehension.

This quiz covers fundamental concepts in marketing, including managing customer relationships, understanding market needs, and marketing management orientations. It explores how companies can create and capture value through effective marketing strategies and customer relationship management. Test your knowledge on key marketing principles to enhance your understanding!