Marketing Overview

Study Notes

Marketing is the process of creating customer value and engagement, and managing profitable customer relationships.
The goal of marketing is to attract new customers by promising superior value, and keep and grow current customers by delivering value and satisfaction.

Stage 1: Understand the marketplace and customer wants and needs
Stage 2: Design a customer value-driven marketing strategy
Stage 3: Construct an integrated marketing program that delivers superior value
Stage 4: Engage customers, build profitable relationships, and create customer delight
Stage 5: Capture value from customers to create profits and customer equity

Needs, wants, and demands
- Needs: stages of felt deprivation (e.g., physical, social, individual)
- Wants: forms taken by human needs when shaped by culture and individual personality
- Demands: when backed by buying power, wants become demands
Market offering: products, services, information, or experiences offered to satisfy a need or want
Marketing myopia: sellers paying more attention to the specific products than to the benefits and experiences produced by these products
Customer value and satisfaction
- Customers form expectations about the value and satisfaction that market offerings will deliver
- Satisfied customers will buy again and tell others, while dissatisfied customers will switch to other competitors and disparage the product
Exchanges and relationships
- Exchange: the act of obtaining a desired object from someone by offering something in return
- Marketing consists of actions to create, maintain, and grow desirable exchange relationships with target audiences

Production concept: focus on improving production and distribution efficiency to reduce costs
Product concept: focus on continuous product improvements to innovate and differentiate
Selling concept: focus on selling and promoting products to increase sales volume
Marketing concept: focus on knowing the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions better than competitors
Societal marketing concept: consider consumers' wants, company's requirements, consumers' long-run interests, and society's long-run interests

Integrate marketing mix tools (4 Ps) to deliver the intended value to target customers
Product: create a need-satisfying market offering
Price: decide how much to charge for the offering
Place: decide how to make the offering available to target consumers
Promotion: engage target consumers, communicate about the offering, and persuade them of the offer's merits

Engaging customers and managing customer relationships
Customer relationship management: delivering superior customer value and satisfaction to build and maintain profitable customer relationships
Customer-perceived value: customer's evaluation of the difference between all the benefits and all the costs of a market offering
Customer satisfaction: extent to which a product's perceived performance matches a buyer's expectations
Customer delight: companies aim to delight customers by promising only what they can deliver and then delivering more than they promise

Digital age: engaging consumers via digital devices using digital marketing tools
Big data and artificial intelligence: using big data to gain deep customer insights and AI to analyze data and apply insights in real-time
Growth of not-for-profit marketing: sound marketing can help not-for-profits attract membership, funds, and support
Rapid globalization: managers taking both local and global views of the company
Sustainable marketing: building social and environmental responsibility into company value and mission statements