Marketing Key Concepts

Marketing Key Concepts

• Introduction to marketing, defining marketing as the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives.
• Evolution of marketing, highlighting periods from production (1890-1920s) to societal marketing (1980-present)
• Definition of customer and consumer, differing in that a customer is someone looking to buy the product while the consumer is someone who is using the product.

Main Topics

• Marketing strategy and analysis, crucial for planning and executing effective marketing strategies.
• Consumer behavior, studying the processes involved in consumer decisions.
• The 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion), fundamental elements of the marketing mix.
• Extended marketing mix (People, Process, Physical Evidence).
• Immersive technology, a key element in modern marketing.
• Branding, crucial for creating a unique brand identity.
• International marketing, strategies applied for global markets.
• Sustainability, including ethical considerations and environmentally sound practices
• Critical marketing, challenging conventional marketing principles and approaches.

The 4Ps

• Product: what the business is selling.
• Price: how much the product is sold for.
• Placement: where the product is sold and how it's accessible.
• Promotion: how the product is advertised and presented.

Extended Marketing Mix

• People: the people involved in the process.
• Process: the processes the customer experiences, service and process focused.
• Physical evidence: the tangible aspects of the service or product to build confidence.

Marketing Relationship With Society

• This is the process of exchange that the organization takes something of value from the customer to give them something of value in return.
• Example: A university takes money from students and gives them education.
• Businesses focus on relationships with customers instead of just exchanging one thing for another thing.

Marketing Strategy and Analysis

• Corporate strategic planning is needed to drive the marketing strategy.
• Situational analysis is key for effective strategic marketing.
• Corporate strategic planning includes defining the organization, conducting a situation analysis, setting organizational objectives, and then selecting appropriate strategies.
• Steps in strategic marketing planning include situation analysis, developing marketing objectives, determining positioning and differential advantage, and selecting target markets, and measuring market demands.

Marketing Strategy And Planning

• Annual marketing plans are prepared annually for each major product and company division.
• Companies organize their strategic goals into various categories like vision, mission, values, organizational goals, and strategy.

Marketing Myopia

• This is a self-deceiving cycle.
• The belief that growth is assured by an expanding and more affluent population.
• The belief that there is no competitive substitute for the industry's major product.
• Preoccupation with a product that lends itself to carefully controlled scientific experimentation, improvement, and cost reduction.

Understanding Our Environment

• It's almost not opening to change and considering there are other competitive substitutes this could be damaging to businesses.

Environmental Scanning

• Environmental scanning is the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting information about the external environment.
• Information comes from media, market reports, government documents and marketing intelligence.

Internal Analysis of Portfolio

• Analyzing the business' product portfolio to assess its performance based on variables like market share and growth rate.
• STAR is a product with both high market growth rate and high market share.

Value Chain Analysis

• Used to analyze internal firm activities to identify what activities are most valuable, and which activities can be improved to perform better in the value chain.
• Value chain analysis divides firm activities into primary and support activities.

Porter's 5 Forces

• Competitive rivalry (intensity of competition among existing firms)
• Threat of new entrants (the ease with which new competitors can enter)
• Bargaining power of suppliers (suppliers' power to drive up prices)
• Bargaining power of buyers (buyers' power to drive down prices)
• Threat of substitutes (likelihood of customers finding alternative products/services)

Consumer Behavior

• Understanding consumer behavior is essential for marketing success.
• The steps customers take to buy a product include motive development, information gathering, proposition evaluation, proposition selection, purchase, and re-evaluation.

Attitudes (towards consumption)

• Attitudes are a composite of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. These can be used by businesses in order to have a better understanding of consumers.

Effects models

• The standard learning hierarchy (cognition, affect, behavior), which focuses on cognitive information processing.
• The low involvement hierarchy (cognition, behavior, affect), which focuses on behavioral learning processes.
• The experimental hierarchy (affect, behavior, cognition), which focuses on hedonic consumption.

Self-Concept in Marketing

• Consumers use products to shape their identity and self-concept.
• Perceptions of how others see themselves.
• An individual tries to evaluate themselves by comparing them to others (social comparison)
• Actual vs ideal self – consumers have an idea of how they would like to be, whereas the actual self is their realistic appraisal,

Multiple Selves

• People play various roles in life, which affect their consumption behaviour.
• Their roles may conflict.

Symbolic Consumption

• Meaning attached to products (brands).
• Symbols affect self-concept.

Segmentation and Target Marketing

• Market segmentation is dividing consumers to discover what they are likely to buy.
• Identifying what customers want helps boost sales and appeal to for individual reasons.
• Example segmentations: Market Segmentation = New market segments – 4P’s new offering or Product diversification = New offering – 4P’s new segment.

Segmentation Criteria for Consumer Markets

• Behavioral criteria (Purchase / transaction, Consumption / usage, Media usage, Technology usage)
• Psychological criteria (Lifestyle, personality, attitudes, perceptions, Benefits sought)
• Profile criteria (Demographic, geographic)

Segmentation in Business Markets

• Organizational criteria (size, age/ lifecycle, industry, type, role)
• Economic criteria (revenue/ turnover, profile, budget)
• Geographic criteria (local, national, multinational, global)

Targeting Strategies

• Understanding the market segments helps organisations to decide on a suitable marketing strategy.
• DAMP – distinct, accessible, measurable, profitable.

Positioning

• Differentiation of offerings is key to attract customers.
• Positioning is means for differentiating offerings for customer to understand, why to buy, and how the product or service is unique.

Product Classifications

• Non-durable goods: Items used up in one or a few uses (e.g., food).
• Durable goods: Items used over a longer period (e.g., cars).
• Convenience goods: Frequently purchased with little effort (e.g., snacks).
• Shopping goods: Items compared on aspects such as quality, price, and style (e.g., furniture).
• Specialty goods: Items with unique characteristics for buyers to make special efforts for (e.g., luxury cars).
• Unsought goods: Products/ services that consumers don’t really need or do not consider them (e.g. funeral plans)

Product Offering

• The product offering consists of a total package that encompasses everything related to the product including the product itself, associated service, branding, and packaging.

Product Levels

• Core product: the basic problem-solving service or benefit that the consumer wants.
• Actual product: physical aspects (look, quality, brand name, and features).
• Augmented product: added-on benefits (guarantees, service, and credit facilities).

Product Decisions

• Individual product decisions (characteristics, labeling, and packaging)
• Product line decisions (similar-use products, in a similar price range)
• Product mix decisions (overall assortment of products offered by a company (breadth, length, and depth)).

Product Life Cycle

• Stages: Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline
• Understanding these stages helps businesses to respond effectively to consumer needs to maximize profits.

Place

• Atmospheres: physical space can evoke feelings that influence purchasing decisions.
• Retailing: Includes both physical and digital stores that present products in certain areas and physical layout which make sense of the selling process.

Distribution Channels

• Manufacturer, agents, distributors, wholesalers, retailers (wholesalers is the business buying the goods, and retailers is where the consumer buys them), and consumers/ customers.
• Channel decision can be direct, indirect, and or multichannel in nature.
• Intensity of distribution strategies (intensive, selective and exclusive).

Just-in-Time Manufacturing

• Minimizing inventory costs by producing goods only as needed
• Improves cash flow by reducing investment in inventory leading to more accurate forecasting.
• High reliance on suppliers can create delays or disruptions.

Sustainability

• Including economic, environmental, and ethical concerns in marketing strategy and operations to achieve long term goals.
• Types: Auxiliary, Reformative, and Transformative sustainability marketing
• Three pillars of sustainability: Ecology, Equity, and Economy.

International Marketing

• Understanding social, cultural, technological, economic, political, and institutional factors for international market expansion.
• International market selection processes, screening questions, direct foreign investment.
• Uppsala model: suggesting a slow, gradual internationalization process starting in domestic markets before expanding to foreign markets.

Critical Marketing

• Challenges, examines the ethical, social, and economic impacts of commercial marketing on society to identify biases in the market.
• Examining the ethical and societal issues inherent in marketing
• Questions the positive influence of marketing on society, and consumer behaviors.

Pricing

• The law of supply and demand plays a role in pricing but also factors like the consumer’s perception of value also have a role to play. Psychological impacts of pricing on consumer behaviour.
• Pricing strategies (value-based, cost-based, and competitor-oriented)
• Pricing tactics (promotional, loss leader, behaviour-based, freemium, dynamic pricing).

Promotion

• Communication plan
• Use of tools (advertising, sales promotions, public relations, personal selling)
• How is the message delivered? Different methods to deliver different types of messages.

Immersive Technology

• How does it affect our experiences in different types of marketing, environments (like a retail store).
• How can it be used for better shopping experiences and sales?
• Types of immersive technologies: Augmented reality (AR), Virtual reality (VR).

Extended Marketing Mix (People)

• Employee training and empowerment are essential for effectively delivering the service.
• The experience/ ambience surrounding the service are important aspects of the service process (appearance and behaviour of the service deliverer).

Extended Marketing Mix (Process)

• Processes are crucial in delivering desired service experience.
• Technology can play a role in optimizing and simplifying processes for faster service delivery.

Extended Marketing Mix (Physical Evidence)

• Tangible aspects of a service provide cues to judge the quality of service (e.g., cleanliness / appearance).
• tangibility helps to gauge quality of experience.

Note: This is a summary of the provided study material, not an exhaustive treatment of all topics. Some connections and relationships between concepts are implied but not explicitly stated. There could be nuances left out, and students should carefully study the original material to gain a complete understanding and depth of information.