Home
Marketing
Marketing is one of the terms in academia that does not have one commonly agreed upon definition. Even after a better part of a century the debate continues. In a nutshell it consists of the social and managerial processes by which products, services and value are exchanged in order to fulfill individual's or group's needs and wants. These processes include, but are not limited to, advertising.
Definitions
1) “Marketing consists of those activities involved in the flow of goods and services from the point of production to the point of consumption."
2) "Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders."
3) "Human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes".
4) "Management process of anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer requirements profitably"
5) The process of ensuring that every potential customer or consumer of your product or service is aware of your existence and that of your products or services and the reasons to buy from you as opposed to a competitor.
History
The practice of marketing is almost as old as humanity itself. A Market was originally simply a gathering place where people with a supply of items or capacity to perform a service could meet with those who might desire the items or services, perhaps at a pre-arranged time.
Such meetings embodied many aspects of today's marketing methods, although sometimes in an informal way. Sellers and buyers sought to understand each other's needs, capacities, and psychology, all with the goal of getting the exchange of items or services to take place.
The rise of Agriculture undoubtedly influenced markets as the earliest means of 'mass production' of an item, namely foodstuffs. As agriculture allowed one to grow more food than could be eaten by the grower alone, and most food is perishable, there was likely motivation to seek out others who could use the excess food, before it spoiled, in exchange for other items.
Transactional Marketing
First assumption
• There are a large number of potential customers
Second assumption
• Customers and their needs are fairly homogenous
Third assumption
• It is rather easy to replace lost customers with new ones
Two Levels of Marketing
Marketing is understanding that marketing operates on 2 different levels.
1-Strategic Marketing
Strategic Marketing attempts to determine how an organization competed against its competition in a market place. In particular, it aims at generating a competitive advantage relative to its competition. When Jack Trout says that marketing is 'the war between competitors' and 'the conflict between companies' what he is really doing is defining marketing at the business level.
Strategic marketing process
Step 1: Develop a vision, mission and set objectives: Top management needs to determine what type of business to run and where the business wants to be in 15 - 20 years time.
Step 2: To enable management to make well informed decisions, information needs to be gathered from the environment. The environment is divided into three main parts namely the micro environment (This represents the business itself and is also known as the internal environment), the market environment (this represents part of the external environment and engages those participants that closely interact with the business) and the macro environment. This is also part of the external environment but there is limited direct interaction with the business. An assessment of all three environments are known as a situation analysis. All data gathered during the situation analysis must be processed into a usable format so that the managers can use it (known as information). An aid in analysing the information to support management in decision making is using a SWOT grid. A SWOT grid is a summary of the findings of the situation analysis in Strengths, Weaknesses (both from the internal environment) and Opportunites and Threats (both from the external environment).
Step 3: Decision making. Once the marketing managers are in possession of suitable information, they embark on a process of decision making. The combined result of the decisions forms the marketing strategy. First the marketing manager will (in conjunction with the top management of the business) participate in determining the main strategic direction of the business. Based on the information available, they decide whether it is appropriate to grow the business, keep it as it is, turn it around or even get out of the market (divest). After this decision has been made, the marketing manager must decide what competitive advantages a business possesses. A decision on segmentation follows, and from these segments a business can decide which and how many segments to select as target markets. Following the selection of target markets, a positioning sub strategy should be created for each and every target market selected to serve. Positioning consists of two steps. First, the positioning instruments (marketing mix variables) are employed to create in the mind of a consumer a favorable picture of the business when compared to rivals. Secondly, the position should be communicated to the targeted consumers by using one of the positioning instruments, namely marketing communication. Marketing communication consists of the communication mix (instruments), such as personal selling, advertising, publicity, public relations and sales promotion.
Step 4: Implementation. Once all the decisions are made it is said that the strategy is created. It can be the best strategy ever, but if it stays on paper nothing will happen. Implementation is a two part process. The first is the development of the marketing plan. The second is the development of an action plan. A simplified example of an action plan: (Flow charting can help here) Action i.e. Budget Responsible person Starting date Completion date
Many influences exert pressure on the environment. Some of these include your own and your competitors' business decisions and the government. These pressures causes the environment to change, thus forcing businesses to revisit their visions, missions and objectives and the whole strategic process repeats itself.
2-Operational Marketing
Operational Marketing executes marketing functions to attract and keep customers and to maximize the value derived from them. Also to satify the customer with prompt services & meeting the customer expectations.
This includes the determination of the marketing mix, advertising execution etc..
Four Ps
The four Ps are:
• Product: The Product management and Product marketing aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual good or service, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants.
• Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary - it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or service, e.g. time, or attention.
• Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.
• Placement or distribution refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point of sale placement or retailing. This fourth P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc.
Seven Ps
As well as the standard four Ps (Product, Pricing, Promotion and Place), services marketing calls upon an extra three, totalling seven and known together as the extended marketing mix. These are:
• People: Any person coming into contact with customers can have an impact on overall satisfaction. Whether as part of a supporting service to a product or involved in a total service, people are particularly important because, in the customer's eyes, they are generally inseparable from the total service. As a result of this, they must be appropriately trained, well motivated and the right type of person. Fellow customers are also sometimes referred to under 'people', as they too can affect the customer's service experience, (e.g., at a sporting event).
• Process: This is the process(es) involved in providing a service and the behaviour of people, which can be crucial to customer satisfaction.
• Physical evidence: Unlike a product, a service cannot be experienced before it is delivered, which makes it intangible. This, therefore, means that potential customers could perceive greater risk when deciding whether or not to use a service. To reduce the feeling of risk, thus improving the chance for success, it is often vital to offer potential customers the chance to see what a service would be like. This is done by providing physical evidence, such as case studies, or testimonials.
Eight P's
"PHILOSOPHY" is the potential 8th P of marketing. Products (or services) should reflect the underlying philosophy or ethos of the organization. It should also be clear what the philosophy behind the introduction of the particular product is, as well. In his book, "Meeting Need", Ian Bruce explains this concept as it relates to marketing for charities. It also applies to other products and services.
FACTORS AFFECTING MARKETING
Marketing in the past focused mainly on basic concepts like the 4 Ps, and primarily on the psychological and sociological aspects of marketing. Competitive advantage was created by directly appealing to the needs, wants and behaviors of customers, better than the competition. Successful marketing was based on who could create the better brand or the lowest price or the most hype. Marketing in the future will be based on a more strategic approach to competitive marketing success. Marketers will consciously build and allocate resources, relationships, offerings and business models that other companies find hard to match. This does not mean the four P approach is dead, simply that it has been expanded upon.
1. Resources
Companies with a greater amount of resources than their competitors will have an easier time competing in the marketplace. Resources include: financial (cash and cash reserves), physical (plant and equipment), human (knowledge and skill), legal (trademarks and patents), organizational (structure, competencies, policies), and informational (knowledge of consumers and competitors). Small companies usually have a harder time competing with larger corporations because of their disadvantage in resource allocation.
2. Relationships
Success in business, as in life, is based on the relationships you have with people. Marketers must aggressively build relationships with consumers, customers, distributors, partners and even competitors if they want to have success in today's competitive marketplace.There are four type of relationships 1)win-win 2)win-lose 3)lose-lose 4)lose-win.(customer-vendor)
3. Offerings
Most companies sell a mix of products and/or services. Today's marketplace is often too competitive for "one-trick ponies". Companies that sell the right mix products and services can have a competitive advantage over companies that sell just one product or service.
4. Business Models
The concept of product vs. product in competitive marketing is dying. It's slowly becoming business model vs. business model. Business model innovation can make the competition's product superiority irrelevant. Business model innovation allows a marketer to change the game instead of competing on a level playing field.
Marketing is one of the terms in academia that does not have one commonly agreed upon definition. Even after a better part of a century the debate continues. In a nutshell it consists of the social and managerial processes by which products, services and value are exchanged in order to fulfill individual's or group's needs and wants. These processes include, but are not limited to, advertising.
Definitions
1) “Marketing consists of those activities involved in the flow of goods and services from the point of production to the point of consumption."
2) "Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders."
3) "Human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes".
4) "Management process of anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer requirements profitably"
5) The process of ensuring that every potential customer or consumer of your product or service is aware of your existence and that of your products or services and the reasons to buy from you as opposed to a competitor.
History
The practice of marketing is almost as old as humanity itself. A Market was originally simply a gathering place where people with a supply of items or capacity to perform a service could meet with those who might desire the items or services, perhaps at a pre-arranged time.
Such meetings embodied many aspects of today's marketing methods, although sometimes in an informal way. Sellers and buyers sought to understand each other's needs, capacities, and psychology, all with the goal of getting the exchange of items or services to take place.
The rise of Agriculture undoubtedly influenced markets as the earliest means of 'mass production' of an item, namely foodstuffs. As agriculture allowed one to grow more food than could be eaten by the grower alone, and most food is perishable, there was likely motivation to seek out others who could use the excess food, before it spoiled, in exchange for other items.
Transactional Marketing
First assumption
• There are a large number of potential customers
Second assumption
• Customers and their needs are fairly homogenous
Third assumption
• It is rather easy to replace lost customers with new ones
Two Levels of Marketing
Marketing is understanding that marketing operates on 2 different levels.
1-Strategic Marketing
Strategic Marketing attempts to determine how an organization competed against its competition in a market place. In particular, it aims at generating a competitive advantage relative to its competition. When Jack Trout says that marketing is 'the war between competitors' and 'the conflict between companies' what he is really doing is defining marketing at the business level.
Strategic marketing process
Step 1: Develop a vision, mission and set objectives: Top management needs to determine what type of business to run and where the business wants to be in 15 - 20 years time.
Step 2: To enable management to make well informed decisions, information needs to be gathered from the environment. The environment is divided into three main parts namely the micro environment (This represents the business itself and is also known as the internal environment), the market environment (this represents part of the external environment and engages those participants that closely interact with the business) and the macro environment. This is also part of the external environment but there is limited direct interaction with the business. An assessment of all three environments are known as a situation analysis. All data gathered during the situation analysis must be processed into a usable format so that the managers can use it (known as information). An aid in analysing the information to support management in decision making is using a SWOT grid. A SWOT grid is a summary of the findings of the situation analysis in Strengths, Weaknesses (both from the internal environment) and Opportunites and Threats (both from the external environment).
Step 3: Decision making. Once the marketing managers are in possession of suitable information, they embark on a process of decision making. The combined result of the decisions forms the marketing strategy. First the marketing manager will (in conjunction with the top management of the business) participate in determining the main strategic direction of the business. Based on the information available, they decide whether it is appropriate to grow the business, keep it as it is, turn it around or even get out of the market (divest). After this decision has been made, the marketing manager must decide what competitive advantages a business possesses. A decision on segmentation follows, and from these segments a business can decide which and how many segments to select as target markets. Following the selection of target markets, a positioning sub strategy should be created for each and every target market selected to serve. Positioning consists of two steps. First, the positioning instruments (marketing mix variables) are employed to create in the mind of a consumer a favorable picture of the business when compared to rivals. Secondly, the position should be communicated to the targeted consumers by using one of the positioning instruments, namely marketing communication. Marketing communication consists of the communication mix (instruments), such as personal selling, advertising, publicity, public relations and sales promotion.
Step 4: Implementation. Once all the decisions are made it is said that the strategy is created. It can be the best strategy ever, but if it stays on paper nothing will happen. Implementation is a two part process. The first is the development of the marketing plan. The second is the development of an action plan. A simplified example of an action plan: (Flow charting can help here) Action i.e. Budget Responsible person Starting date Completion date
Many influences exert pressure on the environment. Some of these include your own and your competitors' business decisions and the government. These pressures causes the environment to change, thus forcing businesses to revisit their visions, missions and objectives and the whole strategic process repeats itself.
2-Operational Marketing
Operational Marketing executes marketing functions to attract and keep customers and to maximize the value derived from them. Also to satify the customer with prompt services & meeting the customer expectations.
This includes the determination of the marketing mix, advertising execution etc..
Four Ps
The four Ps are:
• Product: The Product management and Product marketing aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual good or service, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants.
• Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary - it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or service, e.g. time, or attention.
• Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.
• Placement or distribution refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point of sale placement or retailing. This fourth P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc.
Seven Ps
As well as the standard four Ps (Product, Pricing, Promotion and Place), services marketing calls upon an extra three, totalling seven and known together as the extended marketing mix. These are:
• People: Any person coming into contact with customers can have an impact on overall satisfaction. Whether as part of a supporting service to a product or involved in a total service, people are particularly important because, in the customer's eyes, they are generally inseparable from the total service. As a result of this, they must be appropriately trained, well motivated and the right type of person. Fellow customers are also sometimes referred to under 'people', as they too can affect the customer's service experience, (e.g., at a sporting event).
• Process: This is the process(es) involved in providing a service and the behaviour of people, which can be crucial to customer satisfaction.
• Physical evidence: Unlike a product, a service cannot be experienced before it is delivered, which makes it intangible. This, therefore, means that potential customers could perceive greater risk when deciding whether or not to use a service. To reduce the feeling of risk, thus improving the chance for success, it is often vital to offer potential customers the chance to see what a service would be like. This is done by providing physical evidence, such as case studies, or testimonials.
Eight P's
"PHILOSOPHY" is the potential 8th P of marketing. Products (or services) should reflect the underlying philosophy or ethos of the organization. It should also be clear what the philosophy behind the introduction of the particular product is, as well. In his book, "Meeting Need", Ian Bruce explains this concept as it relates to marketing for charities. It also applies to other products and services.
FACTORS AFFECTING MARKETING
Marketing in the past focused mainly on basic concepts like the 4 Ps, and primarily on the psychological and sociological aspects of marketing. Competitive advantage was created by directly appealing to the needs, wants and behaviors of customers, better than the competition. Successful marketing was based on who could create the better brand or the lowest price or the most hype. Marketing in the future will be based on a more strategic approach to competitive marketing success. Marketers will consciously build and allocate resources, relationships, offerings and business models that other companies find hard to match. This does not mean the four P approach is dead, simply that it has been expanded upon.
1. Resources
Companies with a greater amount of resources than their competitors will have an easier time competing in the marketplace. Resources include: financial (cash and cash reserves), physical (plant and equipment), human (knowledge and skill), legal (trademarks and patents), organizational (structure, competencies, policies), and informational (knowledge of consumers and competitors). Small companies usually have a harder time competing with larger corporations because of their disadvantage in resource allocation.
2. Relationships
Success in business, as in life, is based on the relationships you have with people. Marketers must aggressively build relationships with consumers, customers, distributors, partners and even competitors if they want to have success in today's competitive marketplace.There are four type of relationships 1)win-win 2)win-lose 3)lose-lose 4)lose-win.(customer-vendor)
3. Offerings
Most companies sell a mix of products and/or services. Today's marketplace is often too competitive for "one-trick ponies". Companies that sell the right mix products and services can have a competitive advantage over companies that sell just one product or service.
4. Business Models
The concept of product vs. product in competitive marketing is dying. It's slowly becoming business model vs. business model. Business model innovation can make the competition's product superiority irrelevant. Business model innovation allows a marketer to change the game instead of competing on a level playing field.
» Video for our MPH colleagues. Must watch
» Salam
» Feeling Sad
» Look here. Its 2020 and this is what we found
» Sad News
» Pakistan Demographic Profile 2018
» Good evening all fellows
» Urdu Poetry