Defining Marketing for the 21st Century PDF

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Defining Marketing for the 21st Century...

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SUMMARY Chapter 1: Defining Marketing for the 21st Century 1- The importance of marketing also means the importance of financial success. Marketing helps introduce new products as well as gain acceptance. Marketing also builds demand for services. Of course making the right marketing decisions is very challenging. Marketing requires marketers to decide what features should be designed into a new product or service and what prices are to be set. So what is marketing and how can we define it? Marketing is about identifying and meeting human and social needs. EBay for example has created an online auction clearinghouse. The American Marketing Association defines marketing as follows: “Marketing is the activity, set of instructions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients”. 2- Goods, services, events, experiences, persons, places, properties, organisations, information and ideas are the main types of entities that are marketed. Perhaps the most obvious would be the concept of “idea”. Some examples are “ A mind is a terrible thing to waste” and “Don’t let friends drive drunk”. The next observation would be who markets. A marketer whom is someone that seeks a response is one who markets. These marketers are skilled as stimulating demand for their products and negative demand; full demand, overfull demand and non-existent demand are just four out of the eightdemand states possible. 3- Marketers are skilled and trained to seek demand. Marketers operate in different market places such as consumer, business, global and non-profit. Marketers seek to influence consumption for goods, experiences, persons, places, information and ideas. In order to achieve these, marketers must think like executives in other departments. 4-

The three concepts that would help us understand how marketing functions are needs, wants and demands. Every business needs, wants and demands a specific something in order for the market to function perfectly. Demands for example are wants for specific products backed by the ability to pay. Some customers have needs and these could either be stated needs such as an inexpensive car or unstated needs such as a customer expecting a good service from the dealer.

5- Marketing behaviours have in a way demonstrated how a market functions. There are 12 key marketing behaviours: A. 1-Network information technology: requires a great amount of communication to lead more accurate production B. 2- Globalization: Shipping and transportation have made it easier for products to be sold worldwide for consumers C. 3- Deregulation: There have been laws and statues that restrict financial services as there is in the US.

D. 4- Privatization: some countries have converted public companies to private ownership. E. Heightened competition: Intense competition raises marketing cost and shrinks profit margins. F. Industry convergence: Computing and consumer electronic industries are converging. G. Retail transformation: store based retailers face competition from catalogue houses. H. Disintermediation: Amazon.com and eBay have created disintermediation in delivery of products. I. Consumer Buying Power: Consumers have increased their buying power by using the Internet from their home, office or even mobile phone. J. Consumer Participation: companies are inviting consumers to participate in designing and marketing offerings. K. Consumer resistance: consumers today show less brand loyalty. L. Consumer information: Consumers can access information from online encyclopaedias, dictionaries, consumer reports, newspapers, magazines or movie ratings.

6- Holistic Marketing can be categorized into four groups: Internal marketing, integrated marketing, relationship marketing, and performance marketing. Relationship marketing, aims to build mutually satisfying long term relationships with key constituents. Integrated marketing occurs when the marketer devises marketing activities and assembles marketing programs to create, communicate and deliver value for consumers. Internal marketing is the task of hiring, training and motivating able employees who want to serve customers well. Performance marketing requires understanding the financial and non-financial returns to business and society from marketing activities and programs.

Chapter 2: Developing Marketing Strategies and Plans

1- A firm’s success depends on how well the company coordinates departmental activities. These processes include the market sensing process, the new offering process, the customer relationship management process and the fulfilment management process. Sony for example in 2009 announced it would cut its number of suppliers in half over the next two years increasing the volume of parts and materials from each. 2- The value chain is identified as a tool for identifying key activities to create value and costs in business. New product realization, inventory management, customer acquisition and retention are core business processes. Managing these core processes well also means creating a successful marketing network. This way the company works with all parties in the production and distribution chain. 3- All corporate headquarters undertake four planning activities, which include defining the corporate mission, establishing strategic business units, assigning resources to each strategic business unit and assessing growth opportunities. Defining the corporate mission involves developing mission statements. 4- The overall evaluation of company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is called SWOT analysis. Market Opportunity analysis would ask questions such as, can we articulate the benefits convincingly to a defined target market? Or will the financial rate of return meet or exceed our required threshold for investment? 5- Holistic marketing is said to maximize value exploration because it understands the relationship between the customer’s cognitive space also the company’s competence spaces. 6- Defining the business mission is left for strategic planning which is for individual businesses. This type of planning will analyse threats, internal strengths, goals and weaknesses. Market- oriented strategic planning however, develops and maintains visible fits between organisations objectives, skills and its opportunities.

Chapter 5: Creating Long term Loyalty Relationships 1- Creating loyalty for consumers is what almost all businesses have as their prime aim. Value that comes from customers is most probably the only value ever needed for companies. Dell for example rose to success because it offered its customers with low price computers and after sales services. 2- A customer value analysis involves these five steps: 1- Identifying the major attributes and benefits customer’s value. This includes asking customers what attributes benefits. 2- Assessing the quantitative importance of the different attributes and benefits. This includes asking customers to rate different attributes and benefits. 3- assessing the company’s and competitors performances on the different customer values against there rated importance. This includes asking consumers to describe where they see the company’s performances. 4- examining how customers in a specific segment rate the company’s performance against a specific major competitor. This includes a company that can charge a higher price or it can change the same price again. 5- Monitoring consumer values over time. This includes companies that value change. 3- If a company looses profitable customers this will result in decline in the firms profit. Attracting new customers is highly expensive and time consuming. Therefore it is recommended that marketers should strike to achieve high levels of total quality. They must also calculate and never underestimate customer lifetime values. Another key feature is determining ways to increase the value of the customer base. 4- Customer Relationship Management is managing detailed information about individual customers. It enables companies to provide real customer service and its advantage is that it stores effective use of individual account information. It is important because it is a major driver for the company’s profitability. Domino’s for example has introduced a new build your own pizza feature. After you build your own pizza on the website the customer can watch the process of their order. The process shows you a straightforward information of when your pizza is ready to cook, in the oven, preparing your order and out for delivery. Companies are therefore recognizing the importance of personal commitment. 5- Some problems involved with Customer Relationship Management include the following: not all customers want a relationship with the company and it may be difficult to get everyone in the company to be customer oriented....