Marketing, Chapter 1

Chapter 1

• Marketing involves companies engaging consumers, building strong relationships, and creating consumer value to capture value in return.
• The marketing process contains five steps.
• The first four steps are about creating value for consumers.
• Step 1: Understanding the marketplace and consumer needs/wants
• Step 2: Designing a consumer value-driven marketing strategy to engage and grow target consumers
• Step 3: Constructing a marketing program that delivers superior value
• Step 4: Engaging consumers, building profitable consumer relationships, and create consumer delight
• Step 5: The company reaps the rewards of strong consumer relationships by capturing value from consumers.
• Superior marketing companies understand consumer needs, wants, and demands to build value-laden consumer relationships.
• Increased long-term consumer equity results
• Core marketplace concepts: needs, wants
• A winning marketing strategy involves selecting the segments of consumers to serve (market segmentation and target marketing) and deciding how to differentiate and position itself in the marketplace.
• Five marketing management orientations: production, product, selling, marketing, societal marketing.
• The production concept focuses on improving production efficiency and lowering prices.
• The product concept prioritizes offering the most quality, performance, and innovative features.
• The selling concept emphasizes large-scale selling and promotion efforts.
• The marketing concept achieves goals by determining target markets' needs/wants and delivering satisfactions better than competitors. Societal marketing generates consumer satisfaction and long-run societal well-being through sustainable strategies.
• Customer relationship management engages consumers and builds/maintains profitable relationships by delivering superior value and satisfaction.
• Consumer-engagement marketing integrates a brand into consumers' conversations/lives through direct, continuous involvement.
• CRM and engagement produce high consumer equity, building lasting relationships with superior value and satisfaction.
• This leads to profits and consumer equity.
• The digital age has dramatically changed marketing, creating opportunities/challenges.
• Advances in digital/social/mobile media have transformed marketing, allowing targeted engagement.

Chapter 2

• Strategic planning sets the stage for the company's planning, where marketing contributes and defines its role.
• It involves developing a long-run strategy and growth.
• Strategic planning consists of four steps: defining the company mission, setting objectives/goals, designing a business portfolio, and developing functional plans.
• The company's mission should be market-oriented, realistic, specific, and motivating.
• Management plans its business portfolio with the company’s mission statement and objectives.
• It wants a business portfolio that fits its strengths and weaknesses in the environment.
• The firm must analyze/adjust the business portfolio and develop growth/downsizing strategies.
• Marketing plays a key role in strategic planning by providing a marketing concept alongside attractive market opportunities and inputs.
• Marketing designs strategies for reaching unit objectives and achieving profitability.
• Partner relationship management involves marketers working with partners.
• Customer engagement/value/relationships are at the heart of marketing strategy/programs.
• Companies divide the total market into smaller segments, select those for value targeting (segmentation, targeting, differentiation, and positioning).
• An integrated marketing mix produces the desired response via product, price, place, and promotion (the 4 Ps).
• Companies engage in marketing analysis, planning, implementation, and control for the best strategy/mix.
• Core components of a marketing plan: executive summary, current situation, threats/opportunities, objectives/issues, marketing strategies, action programs, budgets, controls.
• Implementation—turning marketing strategies into marketing actions—is crucial to success.
• Marketing departments can be functionally, geographically, product, or market managed.
• Marketing organizations carry out operating and strategic control.
• Marketing accountability is of utmost importance.
• Marketers are pressured to show value commensurate with costs, leading to improved ROI measures.
• Customer-centered measures act as a key input in strategic decision-making.

Chapter 3

• A company’s microenvironment impacts meaningful relationships with consumers.
• Microenvironment: value delivery network, internal environment, marketing channel firms, competitors, various publics, customer markets.
• Macroenvironment: demographic, economic, natural, technological, political/social, and cultural forces.
• These forces shape opportunities and pose threats.
• Demography is the study of human populations.
• Today’s demographic environment: changing age structure, shifting family profiles, population shifts, education, and increasing diversity.
• The economic environment consists of factors affecting buying power/patterns.
• The current environment involves frugal consumers seeking good quality/service at a fair price.
• Companies are focusing on value for the money, practicality, and durability in their product and marketing.
• The natural environment presents shortages, pollution, and heightened government intervention in natural resources.
• Environmental concerns create marketing opportunities.
• The technological environment offers both prospects and problems.
• Digital advances influence consumer learning, shopping, buying, and brand experiences.
• Businesses can cultivate one-on-one relationships, create products engage consumers, but those that lag risk missed opportunities.
• The political environment entails laws, agencies, and groups influencing marketing.
• The cultural environment includes institutions/forces impacting society's values/behaviors.
• Trends: new tech-enabled comms, lessening trust, greater appreciation for nature, a changing spiritualism
• Companies react to the marketing environment passively or proactively.
• Proactive companies shape the environment rather than only reacting to it.

Chapter 4

• Comprehensive understanding of marketplace/consumer needs and wants starts the marketing process to derive consumer information and insights.
• Companies also need data on competitors/other marketplace forces for effective decision-making and for strategic assets.
• Marketing Information System (MIS): the processes and people assessing information needs, developing it, and helping decision-makers’ insights.
• An MIS assesses information needs and serves company leadership as well as external stakeholders.
• Then the MIS develops information from internal databases, marketing intelligence, and marketing research.
• Internal databases provide information on company operations/departments.
• In marketing research, traditional methods transform as new data-gathering strategies develop.
• While still viable, approaches like surveys and groups are giving way to more agile data-gathering practices.
• The marketing research process first defines the issue, then the objectives, then the types of research (exploratory, descriptive, causal).
• Then one develops a research plan by collecting data from primary and secondary sources.
• The third step is plan implementation by gathering, analysing, and process the information.
• The fourth step is to interpret and report the findings.
• Additional analysis helps apply information with sophisticated statistical procedures/models for stronger findings.
• Secondary data sources are often quicker/cheaper than primary sources and yielding info a company cannot collect alone.
• Researchers must assess secondary information for relevance, accuracy, currency, and impartiality and the value of the primary source in consideration.
• Each primary data collection method (observational, survey, experimental) and research contact (mail, phone, personal interview, online) has benefits/drawbacks.
• Information from internal bases is usually requires analysis.
• Customer relationship management utilizes software to integrate, analyze, and apply mountains of data to understand and build stronger bonds relationships
• Marketing analytics extract meaningful patterns from data to develop insights and gauge performance.
• The MIS must make the right information available to the right people (managers and other staff) for effective decisions, usually either through regular reports or more specific situational information.
• Thanks to Intranets and Extranets, marketers access information at any time, from any location. Some face research situations in business, not-for-profits, or internationally.
• These same basic steps with researchers domestic and abroad.
• Ethical Issues and Public Policy concerns need to be in place on collecting and using private information.

Chapter 5

• The consumer market involves individuals/households that buy or acquire goods/services for personal consumption.
• Consumer behavior is an ongoing process before, during, and after consumption.
• Marketers aware of consumer behavior issues build loyalty and lasting connections.
• Consumer buying behavior is influenced by cultural, social, personal, and psychological buyer characteristics.
• Understanding these factors helps marketers identify interested buyers and appeal to consumer needs.
• Culture determines wants/behaviors; people's product/brand preferences vary across cultural/social class.
• Social factors (small group, network, family) affect product/brand picks; personal characteristics (age, lifestyle, personality).
• Psychological factors (motivation, perception, learning, beliefs/attitudes) influence behavior.

Stages and Adoption

• Buyer decision process stages: need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, postpurchase behavior.
• Need turns into search of info, one can evaluation brands and choices to make a purchase.
• Post purchase action based on satisfaction takes place
• Marketer understand buying behavior at each stage.
• Product adoption stages: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, adoption.
• Marketers should help consumers through these stages.
• Adopters: innovators, early adopters, early mainstream, late mainstream, or lagging adopters.
• Each group needs different marketing.
• Marketers target early adopters, especially opinion leaders.

Business Markets and Buying

• The business market includes organizations buying goods/services for production or resale/rental to others for profit.
• Compared to consumer markets, business markets have fewer larger geography concentrated buyers.
• Business demand is derived, and buying involves more professional buyers.
• Buying situations: straight rebuys, modified rebuys, new tasks.
• The buying centre—the decision-making unit—consists of different people playing different roles.
• Marketers should know participants, their influence, and evaluation criteria and environmental, organizational, interpersonal, and individual influences on buying.
• Process: problem recognition, general need description, product specification, supplier search, proposal solicitation.
• Also supplier selection, order-routine specification, performance review.
• Those who new need go through the buying process while others skip stages.
• Companies oversee the overall customer relationship with all the decisions in the stages.
• E-procurement is driven by technology.
• Marketers connect with customers via digital/mobile/social media for engagement, information, sales, support, and relationships.
• New digital ways allow connections instead of the sales reps.

Chapter 6

• A customer value-driven marketing strategy involves customer selection and value proposition.
• Market segmentation divides the market into groups with distinct needs.
• Market targeting evaluates the attractiveness of each segment.
• Differentiation involves distinguishing the offering to create superior customer value.
• Positioning the market in minds and targeting customers to build the right relationships.
• Marketers test many segmentation variables to see the best ones.
• Consumer segmentation: geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral.
• Geographic segmentation divides the market into geographical units, such as nations and cities
• Demographic includes includes age, life-cycle stage, gender, income, occupation, education, religion, ethnicity, and generation
• Psychographic includes social class, lifestyle, or personality
• Behavioral divides groups via knowledge, attitudes, uses, or in response to product
• Business buyers use the same things to segment markets with business demographics , operating characteristics, purchasing approaches, situational factors, and personal characteristics.
• Effective analysis relies on segments that can be measurable and easily used to take action.
• Attractive segments are evaluated by size/growth, attractiveness, and match with company objectives/resources.
• Four market-targeting strategies: undifferentiated (mass) marketing, differentiated marketing, concentrated (niche) marketing, and micromarketing.
• Undifferentiated (mass) marketers ignore segment differences.
• Differentiated markets offers for segments.
• Micromarketing is tailoring programs.
• Best Strategy varies on resources, product variability, product life-cycle, marketing, and competitive strategies.

Competitive Advantage

• Differentiation and positioning strategy involves identifying potential differentiations and positions to use.
• The brand's total positioning is its worth to it's customers
• Companies pick on how to position the product: more for less/the same and they must be able deliver on their product/service to market.