Marketing Management Fundamentals

Marketing Management

• Marketing is about establishing and nurturing relationships with customers, clients, sponsors, or other stakeholders to improve the performance of an organization.

Role of a Marketer

• A marketer decides which market opportunities to pursue, which customers to target, what products and services to offer, at what price, how to communicate with prospects and customers, and what distribution systems to use.

Marketing Program

• A marketing program is a collection of interrelated decisions that attract, retain, and grow customers.

Marketing Planning Process

• Preparing a marketing plan is a disciplined preparation of a marketing strategy.
• It involves a 10-step approach to making marketing decisions and developing a marketing plan.

10-Step Approach to Making Marketing Decisions

• Step 1: Define the Marketing Challenge
  • Identify marketing objectives and activities.
  • Determine whether it's a start-up or ongoing situation.
• Step 2: Identify Market Opportunities
  • Identify and assess market opportunities.
  • Determine what the organization could do.

Performance Metrics

• Total sales
• Sales per customer
• Market share
• Sales growth
• Total profitability
• Customer profitability
• Awareness
• Satisfaction
• Loyalty

Marketing Strategy

• Marketing strategy is about deciding what to do and for whom.
• It should lead the firm's strategy by helping the firm make what can be sold, not just sell what can be made.### PEST Analysis and Competitor Analysis
• PEST analysis: study of Political, Economic, Social, and Technological factors that affect business
• Importance of PEST analysis:
  • Helps identify opportunities and threats
  • Enables marketers to add value to their organization
  • Weak signals in the environment can be picked up to gain a competitive advantage
• Competitive analysis:
  • Identifies and understands competitors
  • Analyzes their marketing programs and performance
  • Helps in anticipating and dealing with competition

Customer Analysis

• Customer analysis: understanding end-users, buyers, and intermediate buyers/sellers
• Importance of customer analysis:
  • Helps in identifying customer needs and wants
  • Enables marketers to develop marketing programs that satisfy customer needs
• Customer care-abouts:
  • What wants and needs are people trying to satisfy?
  • What is particularly important to them?
  • Can customers be influenced to want something different?

Market Segmentation

• Market segmentation: dividing people into different groups based on similar characteristics
• Importance of market segmentation:
  • Enables marketers to focus their efforts on the most promising customer groups
  • Helps in developing targeted marketing programs
• Types of market segmentation:
  • Product-based segmentation (e.g., bicycle types)
  • Customer-based segmentation (e.g., children, weekend users, enthusiasts, racers)
  • Price-based segmentation (e.g., high, medium, low sensitivity)
  • Shop-based segmentation (e.g., specialty store, mass merchant)

Self-Analysis and Market Opportunity Assessment

• Self-analysis: identifying and assessing market opportunities by matching company capabilities with market needs
• Importance of self-analysis:
  • Enables marketers to understand their strengths and weaknesses
  • Helps in identifying market opportunities that can be pursued
• Market opportunity assessment:
  • Involves understanding market needs and identifying opportunities that can be pursued
  • Requires analysis of company strengths and weaknesses to exploit opportunities and deal with threats

Target Market Selection

• Target market selection: identifying the primary target market to focus on

• Importance of target market selection:

  • Enables marketers to focus their efforts on a specific group
  • Helps in developing targeted marketing programs

• Criteria for selecting a target market:

  • Substantial market size and potential growth
  • Accessibility of the target market
  • Differentiation from competitors
  • Actionable guidance for the organization### Marketing and Product/Service Offering

• Marketing involves understanding customer needs and wants, and making decisions based on that knowledge to offer products or services that satisfy those needs.

• The product or service offering is a package of benefits or a customer value proposition, focusing on what customers get from the product or service rather than its features.

• Customers pay for a package of benefits with money, time, and effort, and value is the relationship between the costs paid and the benefits received.

Product/Service Decisions

• A marketer must decide what to offer in terms of products and services, including the product portfolio, branding, and packaging.
• The number of product variations can quickly increase, adding complexity to marketing challenges.
• Only 5% of new product launches are successful, highlighting the difficulty of matching product/service offerings with customer wants and habits.

Product Life Cycle

• Every product and service has a life cycle, which affects marketing decisions.
• Products and services can have a short life cycle (e.g., fads) or a long life cycle (e.g., the Boeing 747).
• The product life cycle impacts decisions on production, pricing, and service provided.

Services Marketing

• Services are performed and consumed at the same time, making demand management a key challenge.
• Services are often intangible, making it difficult to communicate their benefits.
• Marketers can make intangible services more tangible by providing creative ways for customers to experience the service before choosing it.

Distribution Approach

• Distribution refers to the movement of a product or service to the customer.
• Marketers must decide which distribution channels to use, including owning stores, using wholesalers, or selling directly to customers.
• Distribution tasks include carrying inventory, shipping, and providing after-sales service, and are divided among intermediaries who take a margin of the sales dollar.
• Deciding on the distribution approach is a major marketing decision with long-term implications.

Attracting Customers

• Marketing involves communicating incentives to buy, and can be done through various methods, including advertising, promotion, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, web marketing, telemarketing, packaging, personal selling, publicity, and guerrilla marketing.
• The overall trend in marketing communications is towards a dialogue with customers rather than a monologue.
• Customers have control over whether and when advertising reaches them, and marketing communications must be based on the customer inviting the marketer's message into consideration.