=$$===MARKETING CONCEPTS=====$$

bonddonraj

MP Guru
What are the tasks of marketing?
■ What are the major concepts and tools of marketing?
■ What orientations do companies exhibit in the marketplace?
■ How are companies and marketers responding to the new challenges?
Change is occurring at an accelerating rate; today is not like yesterday, and tomorrow
will be different from today. Continuing today’s strategy is risky; so is turning
to a new strategy. Therefore, tomorrow’s successful companies will have to heed three
certainties:
➤ Global forces will continue to affect everyone’s business and personal life.
➤ Technology will continue to advance and amaze us.
➤ There will be a continuing push toward deregulation of the economic sector.
These three developments—globalization, technological advances, and deregulation—
spell endless opportunities. But what is marketing and what does it have to do
with these issues?
Marketing deals with identifying and meeting human and social needs. One of
the shortest definitions of marketing is “meeting needs profitably.” Whether the marketer
is Procter & Gamble, which notices that people feel overweight and want tasty
but less fatty food and invents Olestra; or CarMax, which notes that people want more
certainty when they buy a used automobile and invents a new system for selling used
cars; or IKEA, which notices that people want good furniture at a substantially lower
price and creates knock-down furniture—all illustrate a drive to turn a private or social
need into a profitable business opportunity through marketing.
 

bonddonraj

MP Guru
In fact, we can distinguish three stages through which marketing practice might
pass:
1.
Entrepreneurial marketing: Most companies are started by individuals who visualize an
opportunity and knock on every door to gain attention. Jim Koch, founder of Boston
Beer Company, whose Samuel Adams beer has become a top-selling “craft” beer,
started out in 1984 carrying bottles of Samuel Adams from bar to bar to persuade bartenders
to carry it. For 10 years, he sold his beer through direct selling and grassroots
public relations. Today his business pulls in nearly $200 million, making it the leader
in the U.S. craft beer market.
2

2.
Formulated marketing: As small companies achieve success, they inevitably move toward
more formulated marketing. Boston Beer recently began a $15 million television
advertising campaign. The company now employs more that 175 salespeople and has
a marketing department that carries on market research, adopting some of the tools
used in professionally run marketing companies.

3.
Intrepreneurial marketing: Many large companies get stuck in formulated marketing,
poring over the latest ratings, scanning research reports, trying to fine-tune dealer
relations and advertising messages. These companies lack the creativity and passion
of the guerrilla marketers in the entrepreneurial stage.
3 Their brand and product
managers need to start living with their customers and visualizing new ways to add
value to their customers’ lives.

The bottom line is that effective marketing can take many forms. Although it is
easier to learn the formulated side (which will we will also see how creativity and passion can be used by today’s and tomorrow’s
marketing managers.
The Scope of Marketing
Marketing people are involved in marketing 10 types of entities: goods, services, experiences,
events, persons, places, properties, organizations, information, and ideas.
Goods.
Physical goods constitute the bulk of most countries’ production and
marketing effort. The United States produces and markets billions of physical
goods, from eggs to steel to hair dryers. In developing nations, goods—
particularly food, commodities, clothing, and housing—are the mainstay of the
economy.

Services.
As economies advance, a growing proportion of their activities are
focused on the production of services. The U.S. economy today consists of a
70–30 services-to-goods mix. Services include airlines, hotels, and maintenance
and repair people, as well as professionals such as accountants, lawyers,
engineers, and doctors. Many market offerings consist of a variable mix of
goods and services.

Experiences.
By orchestrating several services and goods, one can create, stage,
and market experiences. Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom is an experience;
so is the Hard Rock Cafe.

Events.
Marketers promote time-based events, such as the Olympics, trade
shows, sports events, and artistic performances.

Persons.
Celebrity marketing has become a major business. Artists, musicians,
CEOs, physicians, high-profile lawyers and financiers, and other professionals
draw help from celebrity marketers.
4

Places.
Cities, states, regions, and nations compete to attract tourists, factories,
company headquarters, and new residents.
5 Place marketers include economic
development specialists, real estate agents, commercial banks, local business
associations, and advertising and public relations agencies.

Properties.
Properties are intangible rights of ownership of either real property
(real estate) or financial property (stocks and bonds). Properties are bought
and sold, and this occasions a marketing effort by real estate agents (for real
estate) and investment companies and banks (for securities).

Organizations.
Organizations actively work to build a strong, favorable image in
the mind of their publics. Philips, the Dutch electronics company, advertises
with the tag line, “Let’s Make Things Better.” The Body Shop and Ben & Jerry’s
also gain attention by promoting social causes. Universities, museums, and
performing arts organizations boost their public images to compete more
successfully for audiences and funds.

Information.
The production, packaging, and distribution of information is one
of society’s major industries.
6 Among the marketers of information are schools
and universities; publishers of encyclopedias, nonfiction books, and specialized
magazines; makers of CDs; and Internet Web sites.

Ideas.
Every market offering has a basic idea at its core. In essence, products and
services are platforms for delivering some idea or benefit to satisfy a core need.

A Broadened View of Marketing Tasks
Marketers are skilled in stimulating demand for their products. However, this is too
limited a view of the tasks that marketers perform. Just as production and logistics professionals
are responsible for supply management, marketers are responsible for
demand management. They may have to manage negative demand (avoidance of a
product), no demand (lack of awareness or interest in a product), latent demand (a
strong need that cannot be satisfied by existing products), declining demand (lower
demand), irregular demand (demand varying by season, day, or hour), full demand (a
satisfying level of demand), overfull demand (more demand than can be handled), or
unwholesome demand (demand for unhealthy or dangerous products). To meet the
organization’s objectives, marketing managers seek to influence the level, timing, and
composition of these various demand states.
The Decisions That Marketers Make
Marketing managers face a host of decisions in handling marketing tasks. These range
from major decisions such as what product features to design into a new product, how
many salespeople to hire, or how much to spend on advertising, to minor decisions
such as the wording or color for new packaging.
Among the questions that marketers ask (and will be addressed in this text) are:
How can we spot and choose the right market segment(s)? How can we differentiate our
offering? How should we respond to customers who press for a lower price? How can we
compete against lower-cost, lower-price rivals? How far can we go in customizing our
offering for each customer? How can we grow our business? How can we build stronger
brands? How can we reduce the cost of customer acquisition and keep customers loyal?
How can we tell which customers are more important? How can we measure the payback
 

bonddonraj

MP Guru
Defining Marketing
We can distinguish between a social and a managerial definition for marketing.
According to a social definition, marketing is a societal process by which individuals
and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering, and exchanging
products and services of value freely with others.
As a managerial definition, marketing has often been described as “the art of
selling products.” But Peter Drucker, a leading management theorist, says that “the
aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and
understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.
Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy.”7
The American Marketing Association offers this managerial definition:
Marketing (management) is 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 goals.8
Coping with exchange processes—part of this definition—calls for a considerable
amount of work and skill. We see marketing management as the art and science
of applying core marketing concepts to choose target markets and get, keep, and grow
customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value.
 

bonddonraj

MP Guru
Target Markets and Segmentation
A marketer can rarely satisfy everyone in a market. Not everyone likes the same soft
drink, automobile, college, and movie. Therefore, marketers start with market segmentation.
They identify and profile distinct groups of buyers who might prefer or require
varying products and marketing mixes. Market segments can be identified by examining
demographic, psychographic, and behavioral differences among buyers. The firm
then decides which segments present the greatest opportunity—those whose needs
the firm can meet in a superior fashion.
For each chosen target market, the firm develops a market offering. The offering
is positioned in the minds of the target buyers as delivering some central benefit(s).
For example, Volvo develops its cars for the target market of buyers for whom automobile
safety is a major concern. Volvo, therefore, positions its car as the safest a customer
can buy.
 

bonddonraj

MP Guru
A global industry is one in which the strategic positions of competitors in major
geographic or national markets are fundamentally affected by their overall global positions.
Global firms—both large and small—plan, operate, and coordinate their activities
and exchanges on a worldwide basis.
Today we can distinguish between a marketplace and a marketspace. The marketplace
is physical, as when one goes shopping in a store; marketspace is digital, as when
one goes shopping on the Internet. E-commerce—business transactions conducted
on-line—has many advantages for both consumers and businesses, including convenience,
savings, selection, personalization, and information. For example, on-line
shopping is so convenient that 30 percent of the orders generated by the Web site of
REI, a recreational equipment retailer, is logged from 10 P.M. to 7 A.M., sparing REI the
expense of keeping its stores open late or hiring customer service representatives.
However, the e-commerce marketspace is also bringing pressure from consumers for
lower prices and is threatening intermediaries such as travel agents, stockbrokers,
insurance agents, and traditional retailers. To succeed in the on-line marketspace,
marketers will need to reorganize and redefine themselves.
The metamarket, a concept proposed by Mohan Sawhney, describes a cluster of
complementary products and services that are closely related in the minds of consumers
but are spread across a diverse set of industries. The automobile metamarket
consists of automobile manufacturers, new and used car dealers, financing companies,
insurance companies, mechanics, spare parts dealers, service shops, auto magazines,
classified auto ads in newspapers, and auto sites on the Internet. Car buyers can get
involved in many parts of this metamarket. This has created an opportunity for metamediaries
to assist buyers to move seamlessly through these groups. One example is
Edmund’s (www.edmunds.com), a Web site where buyers can find prices for different
cars and click to other sites to search for dealers, financing, and accessories.
Metamediaries can serve various metamarkets, such as the home ownership market,
the parenting and baby care market, and the wedding market.9
Marketers and Prospects
Another core concept is the distinction between marketers and prospects. A marketer
is someone who is seeking a response (attention, a purchase, a vote, a donation) from
another party, called the prospect. If two parties are seeking to sell something to each
other, both are marketers.Needs, Wants, and Demands
The successful marketer will try to understand the target market’s needs, wants, and
demands. Needs describe basic human requirements such as food, air, water, clothing,
and shelter. People also have strong needs for recreation, education, and entertainment.
These needs become wants when they are directed to specific objects that might
satisfy the need. An American needs food but wants a hamburger, French fries, and a
soft drink. A person in Mauritius needs food but wants a mango, rice, lentils, and beans.
Clearly, wants are shaped by one’s society.
Demands are wants for specific products backed by an ability to pay. Many people
want a Mercedes; only a few are able and willing to buy one. Companies must measure
not only how many people want their product, but also how many would actually be
willing and able to buy it.
However, marketers do not create needs: Needs preexist marketers. Marketers,
along with other societal influences, influence wants. Marketers might promote the
idea that a Mercedes would satisfy a person’s need for social status. They do not, however,
create the need for social status.
Product or Offering
People satisfy their needs and wants with products. A product is any offering that can
satisfy a need or want, such as one of the 10 basic offerings of goods, services, experiences,
events, persons, places, properties, organizations, information, and ideas.
A brand is an offering from a known source. A brand name such as McDonald’s
carries many associations in the minds of people: hamburgers, fun, children, fast food,
golden arches. These associations make up the brand image. All companies strive to
build a strong, favorable brand image.
Value and Satisfaction
In terms of marketing, the product or offering will be successful if it delivers value and
satisfaction to the target buyer. The buyer chooses between different offerings on the
basis of which is perceived to deliver the most value. We define value as a ratio between
what the customer gets and what he gives. The customer gets benefits and assumes costs,
as shown in this equation:
Value 
Benefits

Functional benefits  emotional benefits
Costs Monetary costs  time costs  energy costs  psychic costs
Based on this equation, the marketer can increase the value of the customer offering by
(1) raising benefits, (2) reducing costs, (3) raising benefits and reducing costs, (4) raising
benefits by more than the raise in costs, or (5) lowering benefits by less than the
reduction in costs. A customer choosing between two value offerings, V1 and V2, will
examine the ratio V1/V2. She will favor V1 if the ratio is larger than one; she will favor V2
if the ratio is smaller than one; and she will be indifferent if the ratio equals one.
Exchange and Transactions
Exchange, the core of marketing, involves obtaining a desired product from someone
by offering something in return. For exchange potential to exist, five conditions must
be satisfied:
1. There are at least two parties.
2. Each party has something that might be of value to the other party.
3. Each party is capable of communication and delivery.4. Each party is free to accept or reject the exchange offer.
5. Each party believes it is appropriate or desirable to deal with the other party.
Whether exchange actually takes place depends upon whether the two parties can
agree on terms that will leave them both better off (or at least not worse off) than
before. Exchange is a value-creating process because it normally leaves both parties
better off.
Note that exchange is a process rather than an event. Two parties are engaged in
exchange if they are negotiating—trying to arrive at mutually agreeable terms. When an
agreement is reached, we say that a transaction takes place. A transaction involves at least
two things of value, agreed-upon conditions, a time of agreement, and a place of agreement.
Usually a legal system exists to support and enforce compliance among transactors.
However, transactions do not require money as one of the traded values. A barter
transaction, for example, involves trading goods or services for other goods or services.
Note also that a transaction differs from a transfer. In a transfer, A gives a gift, a
subsidy, or a charitable contribution to B but receives nothing tangible in return.
Transfer behavior can also be understood through the concept of exchange. Typically,
the transferer expects something in exchange for his or her gift—for example, gratitude
or seeing changed behavior in the recipient. Professional fund-raisers provide
benefits to donors, such as thank-you notes. Contemporary marketers have broadened
the concept of marketing to include the study of transfer behavior as well as transaction
behavior.
Marketing consists of actions undertaken to elicit desired responses from a target
audience. To effect successful exchanges, marketers analyze what each party
expects from the transaction. Suppose Caterpillar, the world’s largest manufacturer of
earth-moving equipment, researches the benefits that a typical construction company
wants when it buys such equipment. The items shown on the prospect’s want list in
Figure 1-2 are not equally important and may vary from buyer to buyer. One of
Caterpillar’s marketing tasks is to discover the relative importance of these different
wants to the buyer.
As the marketer, Caterpillar also has a want list. If there is a sufficient match or
overlap in the want lists, a basis for a transaction exists. Caterpillar’s task is to formulate
an offer that motivates the construction company to buy Caterpillar equipment.
The construction company might, in turn, make a counteroffer. This process of negotiation
leads to mutually acceptable terms or a decision not to transact.
Relationships and Networks
Transaction marketing is part of a larger idea called relationship marketing.
Relationship marketing aims to build long-term mutually satisfying relations with key parties—
customers, suppliers, distributors—in order to earn and retain their long-term
preference and business.10 Effective marketers accomplish this by promising and delivering
high-quality products and services at fair prices to the other parties over time.
Relationship marketing builds strong economic, technical, and social ties among the
parties. It cuts down on transaction costs and time. In the most successful cases, transactions
move from being negotiated each time to being a matter of routine.
The ultimate outcome of relationship marketing is the building of a unique company
asset called a marketing network. A marketing network consists of the company and
its supporting stakeholders (customers, employees, suppliers, distributors, university scientists,
and others) with whom it has built mutually profitable business relationships.
Increasingly, competition is not between companies but rather between marketing
networks, with the profits going to the company that has the better network.11Marketing Channels
To reach a target market, the marketer uses three kinds of marketing channels.
Communication channels deliver messages to and receive messages from target buyers.
They include newspapers, magazines, radio, television, mail, telephone, billboards,
posters, fliers, CDs, audiotapes, and the Internet. Beyond these, communications are
conveyed by facial expressions and clothing, the look of retail stores, and many other
media. Marketers are increasingly adding dialogue channels (e-mail and toll-free numbers)
to counterbalance the more normal monologue channels (such as ads).
The marketer uses distribution channels to display or deliver the physical product
or service(s) to the buyer or user. There are physical distribution channels and service
distribution channels, which include warehouses, transportation vehicles, and various
trade channels such as distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. The marketer also uses
selling channels to effect transactions with potential buyers. Selling channels include
not only the distributors and retailers but also the banks and insurance companies
that facilitate transactions. Marketers clearly face a design problem in choosing the
best mix of communication, distribution, and selling channels for their offerings.
Supply Chain
Whereas marketing channels connect the marketer to the target buyers, the supply chain
describes a longer channel stretching from raw materials to components to final products
that are carried to final buyers. For example, the supply chain for women’s purses
starts with hides, tanning operations, cutting operations, manufacturing, and the marketing
channels that bring products to customers. This supply chain represents a value
delivery system. Each company captures only a certain percentage of the total value generated
by the supply chain. When a company acquires competitors or moves upstream
or downstream, its aim is to capture a higher percentage of supply chain value.
 

bonddonraj

MP Guru
Competition
Competition, a critical factor in marketing management, includes all of the actual and
potential rival offerings and substitutes that a buyer might consider. Suppose an automobile
company is planning to buy steel for its cars. The car manufacturer can buy
from U.S. Steel or other U.S. or foreign integrated steel mills; can go to a minimill such
Figure 1-2 Two-Party Exchange Map Showing Want Lists of Both Partiesas Nucor to buy steel at a cost savings; can buy aluminum for certain parts of the car to
lighten the car’s weight; or can buy some engineered plastics parts instead of steel.
Clearly U.S. Steel would be thinking too narrowly of competition if it thought
only of other integrated steel companies. In fact, U.S. Steel is more likely to be hurt in
the long run by substitute products than by its immediate steel company rivals. U.S.
Steel also must consider whether to make substitute materials or stick only to those
applications in which steel offers superior performance.
We can broaden the picture by distinguishing four levels of competition, based
on degree of product substitutability:
1. Brand competition: A company sees its competitors as other companies that offer similar
products and services to the same customers at similar prices. Volkswagen might
see its major competitors as Toyota, Honda, and other manufacturers of mediumprice
automobiles, rather than Mercedes or Hyundai.
2. Industry competition: A company sees its competitors as all companies that make the
same product or class of products. Thus, Volkswagen would be competing against all
other car manufacturers.
3. Form competition: A company sees its competitors as all companies that manufacture
products that supply the same service. Volkswagen would see itself competing against
manufacturers of all vehicles, such as motorcycles, bicycles, and trucks.
4. Generic competition: A company sees its competitors as all companies that compete for
the same consumer dollars. Volkswagen would see itself competing with companies
that sell major consumer durables, foreign vacations, and new homes.
Marketing Environment
Competition represents only one force in the environment in which all marketers
operate. The overall marketing environment consists of the task environment and the
broad environment.
The task environment includes the immediate actors involved in producing, distributing,
and promoting the offering, including the company, suppliers, distributors,
dealers, and the target customers. Material suppliers and service suppliers such as marketing
research agencies, advertising agencies, Web site designers, banking and insurance
companies, and transportation and telecommunications companies are included
in the supplier group. Agents, brokers, manufacturer representatives, and others who
facilitate finding and selling to customers are included with distributors and dealers.
The broad environment consists of six components: demographic environment, economic
environment, natural environment, technological environment, political-legal environment,
and social-cultural environment. These environments contain forces that can have
a major impact on the actors in the task environment, which is why smart marketers
track environmental trends and changes closely.
Marketing Mix
Marketers use numerous tools to elicit the desired responses from their target markets.
These tools constitute a marketing mix:12 Marketing mix is the set of marketing tools
that the firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives in the target market. As shown in
Figure 1-3, McCarthy classified these tools into four broad groups that he called the four
Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion.13
Marketing-mix decisions must be made to influence the trade channels as well as
the final consumers. Typically, the firm can change its price, sales-force size, and advertising
expenditures in the short run. However, it can develop new products and modify
its distribution channels only in the long run. Thus, the firm typically makes fewerperiod-to-period marketing-mix changes in the short run than the number of marketing-
mix decision variables might suggest.
Robert Lauterborn suggested that the sellers’ four Ps correspond to the customers’
four Cs.14
Four Ps Four Cs
Product Customer solution
Price Customer cost
Place Convenience
Promotion Communication
Winning companies are those that meet customer needs economically and conveniently
and with effective communication.
COMPANY ORIENTATIONS TOWARD THE MARKETPLACE
Marketing management is the conscious effort to achieve desired exchange outcomes
with target markets. But what philosophy should guide a company’s marketing efforts?
What relative weights should be given to the often conflicting interests of the organization,
customers, and society?
For example, one of Dexter Corporation’s most popular products was a profitable
grade of paper used in tea bags. Unfortunately, the materials in this paper
accounted for 98 percent of Dexter’s hazardous wastes. So while Dexter’s product was
popular with customers, it was also detrimental to the environment. Dexter assigned
an employee task force to tackle this problem. The task force succeeded, and the company
increased its market share while virtually eliminating hazardous waste.15
Figure 1-3 The Four P Components of the Marketing MixClearly, marketing activities should be carried out under a well-thought-out philosophy
of efficient, effective, and socially responsible marketing. In fact, there are five
competing concepts under which organizations conduct marketing activities: production
concept, product concept, selling concept, marketing concept, and societal marketing
concept.
The Production Concept
The production concept, one of the oldest in business, holds that consumers prefer
products that are widely available and inexpensive. Managers of production-oriented
businesses concentrate on achieving high production efficiency, low costs, and mass
distribution. This orientation makes sense in developing countries, where consumers
are more interested in obtaining the product than in its features. It is also used when
a company wants to expand the market. Texas Instruments is a leading exponent of
this concept. It concentrates on building production volume and upgrading technology
in order to bring costs down, leading to lower prices and expansion of the market.
This orientation has also been a key strategy of many Japanese companies.
The Product Concept
Other businesses are guided by the product concept, which holds that consumers
favor those products that offer the most quality, performance, or innovative features.
Managers in these organizations focus on making superior products and improving
them over time, assuming that buyers can appraise quality and performance.
Product-oriented companies often design their products with little or no customer
input, trusting that their engineers can design exceptional products. A General
Motors executive said years ago: “How can the public know what kind of car they want
until they see what is available?” GM today asks customers what they value in a car and
includes marketing people in the very beginning stages of design.
However, the product concept can lead to marketing myopia.16 Railroad management
thought that travelers wanted trains rather than transportation and overlooked
the growing competition from airlines, buses, trucks, and automobiles. Colleges,
department stores, and the post office all assume that they are offering the public the
right product and wonder why their sales slip. These organizations too often are looking
into a mirror when they should be looking out of the window.
The Selling Concept
The selling concept, another common business orientation, holds that consumers and
businesses, if left alone, will ordinarily not buy enough of the organization’s products.
The organization must, therefore, undertake an aggressive selling and promotion
effort. This concept assumes that consumers must be coaxed into buying, so the company
has a battery of selling and promotion tools to stimulate buying.
The selling concept is practiced most aggressively with unsought goods—goods
that buyers normally do not think of buying, such as insurance and funeral plots. The
selling concept is also practiced in the nonprofit area by fund-raisers, college admissions
offices, and political parties.
Most firms practice the selling concept when they have overcapacity. Their aim is
to sell what they make rather than make what the market wants. In modern industrial
economies, productive capacity has been built up to a point where most markets are
buyer markets (the buyers are dominant) and sellers have to scramble for customers.
Prospects are bombarded with sales messages. As a result, the public often identifies
marketing with hard selling and advertising. But marketing based on hard selling carries
high risks. It assumes that customers who are coaxed into buying a product will like it;and if they don’t, that they won’t bad-mouth it or complain to consumer organizations
and will forget their disappointment and buy it again. These are indefensible assumptions.
In fact, one study showed that dissatisfied customers may bad-mouth the product
to 10 or more acquaintances; bad news travels fast, something marketers that use hard
selling should bear in mind.17
The Marketing Concept
The marketing concept, based on central tenets crystallized in the mid-1950s, challenges
the three business orientations we just discussed.18 The marketing concept
holds that the key to achieving organizational goals consists of the company being
more effective than its competitors in creating, delivering, and communicating customer
value to its chosen target markets.
Theodore Levitt of Harvard drew a perceptive contrast between the selling and marketing
concepts: “Selling focuses on the needs of the seller; marketing on the needs of the
buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his product into cash; marketing
with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and
the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering and finally consuming it.”19
The marketing concept rests on four pillars: target market, customer needs, integrated
marketing, and profitability. The selling concept takes an inside-out perspective. It
starts with the factory, focuses on existing products, and calls for heavy selling and promoting
to produce profitable sales. The marketing concept takes an outside-in perspective.
It starts with a well-defined market, focuses on customer needs, coordinates
activities that affect customers, and produces profits by satisfying customers.
Target Market
Companies do best when they choose their target market(s) carefully and prepare tailored
marketing programs. For example, when cosmetics giant Estee Lauder recognized
the increased buying power of minority groups, its Prescriptives subsidiary launched an
“All Skins” line offering 115 foundation shades for different skin tones. Prescriptives
credits All Skins for a 45 percent sales increase since this product line was launched.
Customer Needs
A company can carefully define its target market yet fail to correctly understand the
customers’ needs. Clearly, understanding customer needs and wants is not always simple.
Some customers have needs of which they are not fully conscious; some cannot
articulate these needs or use words that require some interpretation. We can distinguish
among five types of needs: (1) stated needs, (2) real needs, (3) unstated needs,
(4) delight needs, and (5) secret needs.
Responding only to the stated need may shortchange the customer. For example,
if a customer enters a hardware store and asks for a sealant to seal glass window
panes, she is stating a solution, not a need. If the salesperson suggests that tape would
provide a better solution, the customer may appreciate that the salesperson met her
need and not her stated solution.
A distinction needs to be drawn between responsive marketing, anticipative marketing,
and creative marketing. A responsive marketer finds a stated need and fills it, while an
anticipative marketer looks ahead to the needs that customers may have in the near
future. In contrast, a creative marketer discovers and produces solutions that customers
did not ask for, but to which they enthusiastically respond. Sony exemplifies a creative
marketer because it has introduced many successful new products that customers never
asked for or even thought were possible: Walkmans, VCRs, and so on. Sony goes beyond
customer-led marketing: It is a market-driving firm, not just a market-driven firm. Akio
Morita, its founder, proclaimed that he doesn’t serve markets; he creates markets.20Why is it supremely important to satisfy the needs of target customers? Because a
company’s sales come from two groups: new customers and repeat customers. One
estimate is that attracting a new customer can cost five times as much as pleasing an
existing one.21 And it might cost 16 times as much to bring the new customer to the
same level of profitability as that of the lost customer. Customer retention is thus more
important than customer attraction.
 

bonddonraj

MP Guru
Integrated Marketing
When all of the company’s departments work together to serve the customers’ interests,
the result is integrated marketing. Integrated marketing takes place on two levels.
First, the various marketing functions—sales force, advertising, customer service,
product management, marketing research—must work together. All of these functions
must be coordinated from the customer’s point of view.
Second, marketing must be embraced by the other departments. According to
David Packard of Hewlett-Packard: “Marketing is far too important to be left only to
the marketing department!” Marketing is not a department so much as a companywide
orientation. Xerox, for example, goes so far as to include in every job description
an explanation of how each job affects the customer. Xerox factory managers know
that visits to the factory can help sell a potential customer if the factory is clean and
efficient. Xerox accountants know that customer attitudes are affected by Xerox’s
billing accuracy.
To foster teamwork among all departments, the company must carry out internal
marketing as well as external marketing. External marketing is marketing directed at
people outside the company. Internal marketing is the task of hiring, training, and motivating
able employees who want to serve customers well. In fact, internal marketing
must precede external marketing. It makes no sense to promise excellent service
before the company’s staff is ready to provide it.
Managers who believe the customer is the company’s only true “profit center”
consider the traditional organization chart—a pyramid with the CEO at the top, management
in the middle, and front-line people and customers at the bottom—obsolete.
Master marketing companies invert the chart, putting customers at the top. Next in
importance are the front-line people who meet, serve, and satisfy the customers;
under them are the middle managers, who support the front-line people so they can
serve the customers; and at the base is top management, whose job is to hire and support
good middle managers.
Profitability
The ultimate purpose of the marketing concept is to help organizations achieve their
objectives. In the case of private firms, the major objective is profit; in the case of nonprofit
and public organizations, it is surviving and attracting enough funds to perform
useful work. Private firms should aim to achieve profits as a consequence of creating
superior customer value, by satisfying customer needs better than competitors. For
example, Perdue Farms has achieved above-average margins marketing chicken—a
commodity if there ever was one! The company has always aimed to control breeding
and other factors in order to produce tender-tasting chickens for which discriminating
customers will pay more.22
How many companies actually practice the marketing concept? Unfortunately,
too few. Only a handful of companies stand out as master marketers: Procter &
Gamble, Disney, Nordstrom, Wal-Mart, Milliken & Company, McDonald’s, Marriott
Hotels, American Airlines, and several Japanese (Sony, Toyota, Canon) and European
companies (IKEA, Club Med, Nokia, ABB, Marks & Spencer). These companies focus
on the customer and are organized to respond effectively to changing customerneeds. They all have well-staffed marketing departments, and all of their other departments—
manufacturing, finance, research and development, personnel, purchasing—
accept the customer as king.
Most companies do not embrace the marketing concept until driven to it by circumstances.
Various developments prod them to take the marketing concept to heart,
including sales declines, slow growth, changing buying patterns, more competition,
and higher expenses. Despite the benefits, firms face three hurdles in converting to a
marketing orientation: organized resistance, slow learning, and fast forgetting.
Some company departments (often manufacturing, finance, and research and
development) believe a stronger marketing function threatens their power in the organization.
Resistance is especially strong in industries in which marketing is being introduced
for the first time—for instance, in law offices, colleges, deregulated industries, and government
agencies. In spite of the resistance, many companies manage to introduce some
marketing thinking into their organization. Over time, marketing emerges as the major
function. Ultimately, the customer becomes the controlling function, and with that view,
marketing can emerge as the integrative function within the organization.
The Societal Marketing Concept
Some have questioned whether the marketing concept is an appropriate philosophy
in an age of environmental deterioration, resource shortages, explosive population
growth, world hunger and poverty, and neglected social services. Are companies that
successfully satisfy consumer wants necessarily acting in the best, long-run interests of
consumers and society? The marketing concept sidesteps the potential conflicts
among consumer wants, consumer interests, and long-run societal welfare.
Yet some firms and industries are criticized for satisfying consumer wants at society’s
expense. Such situations call for a new term that enlarges the marketing concept.
We propose calling it the societal marketing concept, which holds that the organization’s
task is to determine the needs, wants, and interests of target markets and to
deliver the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors in a
way that preserves or enhances the consumer’s and the society’s well-being.
The societal marketing concept calls upon marketers to build social and ethical
considerations into their marketing practices. They must balance and juggle the often
conflicting criteria of company profits, consumer want satisfaction, and public interest.
Yet a number of companies have achieved notable sales and profit gains by adopting
and practicing the societal marketing concept.
Some companies practice a form of the societal marketing concept called causerelated
marketing. Pringle and Thompson define this as “activity by which a company
with an image, product, or service to market builds a relationship or partnership with
a ‘cause,’ or a number of ‘causes,’ for mutual benefit.”23 They see it as affording an
opportunity for companies to enhance their corporate reputation, raise brand awareness,
increase customer loyalty, build sales, and increase press coverage. They believe
that customers will increasingly look for demonstrations of good corporate citizenship.
Smart companies will respond by adding “higher order” image attributes than
simply rational and emotional benefits. Critics, however, complain that cause-related
marketing might make consumers feel they have fulfilled their philanthropic duties by
buying products instead of donating to causes directly.
HOW BUSINESS AND MARKETING ARE CHANGING
We can say with some confidence that “the marketplace isn’t what it used to be.” It is
changing radically as a result of major forces such as technological advances, globalization,
and deregulation. These forces have created new behaviors and challenges:Customers increasingly expect higher quality and service and some customization.
They perceive fewer real product differences and show less brand loyalty. They can
obtain extensive product information from the Internet and other sources, permitting
them to shop more intelligently. They are showing greater price sensitivity in their
search for value.
Brand manufacturers are facing intense competition from domestic and foreign
brands, which is resulting in rising promotion costs and shrinking profit margins.
They are being further buffeted by powerful retailers who command limited shelf
space and are putting out their own store brands in competition with national brands.
Store-based retailers are suffering from an oversaturation of retailing. Small retailers
are succumbing to the growing power of giant retailers and “category killers.”
Store-based retailers are facing growing competition from direct-mail firms; newspaper,
magazine, and TV direct-to-customer ads; home shopping TV; and the Internet.
As a result, they are experiencing shrinking margins. In response, entrepreneurial
retailers are building entertainment into stores with coffee bars, lectures, demonstrations,
and performances, marketing an “experience” rather than a product
assortment.
Company Responses and Adjustments
Given these changes, companies are doing a lot of soul-searching, and many highly
respected firms are adjusting in a number of ways. Here are some current trends:
➤ Reengineering: From focusing on functional departments to reorganizing by key
processes, each managed by multidiscipline teams.
➤ Outsourcing: From making everything inside the company to buying more products
from outside if they can be obtained cheaper and better. Virtual companies outsource
everything, so they own very few assets and, therefore, earn extraordinary rates of
return.
➤ E-commerce: From attracting customers to stores and having salespeople call on
offices to making virtually all products available on the Internet. Business-tobusiness
purchasing is growing fast on the Internet, and personal selling can
increasingly be conducted electronically.
➤ Benchmarking: From relying on self-improvement to studying world-class performers
and adopting best practices.
➤ Alliances: From trying to win alone to forming networks of partner firms.24
➤ Partner–suppliers: From using many suppliers to using fewer but more reliable
suppliers who work closely in a “partnership” relationship with the company.
➤ Market-centered: From organizing by products to organizing by market segment.
➤ Global and local: From being local to being both global and local.
➤ Decentralized: From being managed from the top to encouraging more initiative and
“intrepreneurship” at the local level.
Marketer Responses and Adjustments
As the environment changes and companies adjust, marketers also are rethinking
their philosophies, concepts, and tools. Here are the major marketing themes at the
start of the new millennium:
➤ Relationship marketing: From focusing on transactions to building long-term,
profitable customer relationships. Companies focus on their most profitable
customers, products, and channels.Customers increasingly expect higher quality and service and some customization.
They perceive fewer real product differences and show less brand loyalty. They can
obtain extensive product information from the Internet and other sources, permitting
them to shop more intelligently. They are showing greater price sensitivity in their
search for value.
Brand manufacturers are facing intense competition from domestic and foreign
brands, which is resulting in rising promotion costs and shrinking profit margins.
They are being further buffeted by powerful retailers who command limited shelf
space and are putting out their own store brands in competition with national brands.
Store-based retailers are suffering from an oversaturation of retailing. Small retailers
are succumbing to the growing power of giant retailers and “category killers.”
Store-based retailers are facing growing competition from direct-mail firms; newspaper,
magazine, and TV direct-to-customer ads; home shopping TV; and the Internet.
As a result, they are experiencing shrinking margins. In response, entrepreneurial
retailers are building entertainment into stores with coffee bars, lectures, demonstrations,
and performances, marketing an “experience” rather than a product
assortment.
Company Responses and Adjustments
Given these changes, companies are doing a lot of soul-searching, and many highly
respected firms are adjusting in a number of ways. Here are some current trends:
➤ Reengineering: From focusing on functional departments to reorganizing by key
processes, each managed by multidiscipline teams.
➤ Outsourcing: From making everything inside the company to buying more products
from outside if they can be obtained cheaper and better. Virtual companies outsource
everything, so they own very few assets and, therefore, earn extraordinary rates of
return.
➤ E-commerce: From attracting customers to stores and having salespeople call on
offices to making virtually all products available on the Internet. Business-tobusiness
purchasing is growing fast on the Internet, and personal selling can
increasingly be conducted electronically.
➤ Benchmarking: From relying on self-improvement to studying world-class performers
and adopting best practices.
➤ Alliances: From trying to win alone to forming networks of partner firms.24
➤ Partner–suppliers: From using many suppliers to using fewer but more reliable
suppliers who work closely in a “partnership” relationship with the company.
➤ Market-centered: From organizing by products to organizing by market segment.
➤ Global and local: From being local to being both global and local.
➤ Decentralized: From being managed from the top to encouraging more initiative and
“intrepreneurship” at the local level.
Marketer Responses and Adjustments
As the environment changes and companies adjust, marketers also are rethinking
their philosophies, concepts, and tools. Here are the major marketing themes at the
start of the new millennium:
➤ Relationship marketing: From focusing on transactions to building long-term,
profitable customer relationships. Companies focus on their most profitable
customers, products, and channels.Customers increasingly expect higher quality and service and some customization.
They perceive fewer real product differences and show less brand loyalty. They can
obtain extensive product information from the Internet and other sources, permitting
them to shop more intelligently. They are showing greater price sensitivity in their
search for value.
Brand manufacturers are facing intense competition from domestic and foreign
brands, which is resulting in rising promotion costs and shrinking profit margins.
They are being further buffeted by powerful retailers who command limited shelf
space and are putting out their own store brands in competition with national brands.
Store-based retailers are suffering from an oversaturation of retailing. Small retailers
are succumbing to the growing power of giant retailers and “category killers.”
Store-based retailers are facing growing competition from direct-mail firms; newspaper,
magazine, and TV direct-to-customer ads; home shopping TV; and the Internet.
As a result, they are experiencing shrinking margins. In response, entrepreneurial
retailers are building entertainment into stores with coffee bars, lectures, demonstrations,
and performances, marketing an “experience” rather than a product
assortment.
Company Responses and Adjustments
Given these changes, companies are doing a lot of soul-searching, and many highly
respected firms are adjusting in a number of ways. Here are some current trends:
➤ Reengineering: From focusing on functional departments to reorganizing by key
processes, each managed by multidiscipline teams.
➤ Outsourcing: From making everything inside the company to buying more products
from outside if they can be obtained cheaper and better. Virtual companies outsource
everything, so they own very few assets and, therefore, earn extraordinary rates of
return.
➤ E-commerce: From attracting customers to stores and having salespeople call on
offices to making virtually all products available on the Internet. Business-tobusiness
purchasing is growing fast on the Internet, and personal selling can
increasingly be conducted electronically.
➤ Benchmarking: From relying on self-improvement to studying world-class performers
and adopting best practices.
➤ Alliances: From trying to win alone to forming networks of partner firms.24
➤ Partner–suppliers: From using many suppliers to using fewer but more reliable
suppliers who work closely in a “partnership” relationship with the company.
➤ Market-centered: From organizing by products to organizing by market segment.
➤ Global and local: From being local to being both global and local.
➤ Decentralized: From being managed from the top to encouraging more initiative and
“intrepreneurship” at the local level.
Marketer Responses and Adjustments
As the environment changes and companies adjust, marketers also are rethinking
their philosophies, concepts, and tools. Here are the major marketing themes at the
start of the new millennium:
➤ Relationship marketing: From focusing on transactions to building long-term,
profitable customer relationships. Companies focus on their most profitable
customers, products, and channels.➤ Customer lifetime value: From making a profit on each sale to making profits by
managing customer lifetime value. Some companies offer to deliver a constantly
needed product on a regular basis at a lower price per unit because they will enjoy
the customer’s business for a longer period.
➤ Customer share: From a focus on gaining market share to a focus on building customer
share. Companies build customer share by offering a larger variety of goods to their
existing customers and by training employees in cross-selling and up-selling.
➤ Target marketing: From selling to everyone to trying to be the best firm serving welldefined
target markets. Target marketing is being facilitated by the proliferation of
special-interest magazines, TV channels, and Internet newsgroups.
➤ Individualization: From selling the same offer in the same way to everyone in the
target market to individualizing and customizing messages and offerings.
➤ Customer database: From collecting sales data to building a data warehouse of
information about individual customers’ purchases, preferences, demographics,
and profitability. Companies can “data-mine” their proprietary databases to detect
different customer need clusters and make differentiated offerings to each cluster.
➤ Integrated marketing communications: From reliance on one communication tool such
as advertising to blending several tools to deliver a consistent brand image to
customers at every brand contact.
➤ Channels as partners: From thinking of intermediaries as customers to treating them
as partners in delivering value to final customers.
➤ Every employee a marketer: From thinking that marketing is done only by marketing,
sales, and customer support personnel to recognizing that every employee must be
customer-focused.
➤ Model-based decision making: From making decisions on intuition or slim data to
basing decisions on models and facts on how the marketplace works.
These major themes will be examined throughout this book to help marketers and companies
sail safely through the rough, but promising, waters ahead. Successful companies
will change their marketing as fast as their marketplaces and marketspaces change, so
they can build customer satisfaction, value, and retention
 

bonddonraj

MP Guru
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
All marketers need to be aware of the effect of globalization, technology, and deregulation.
Rather than try to satisfy everyone, marketers start with market segmentation
and develop a market offering that is positioned in the minds of the target market.
To satisfy the target market’s needs, wants, and demands, marketers create a
product, one of the 10 types of entities (goods, services, experiences, events, persons,
places, properties, organizations, information, and ideas). Marketers must
search hard for the core need they are trying to satisfy, remembering that their products
will be successful only if they deliver value (the ratio of benefits and costs) to
customers.
Every marketing exchange requires at least two parties—both with something
valued by the other party, both capable of communication and delivery, both free to
accept or reject the offer, and both finding it appropriate or desirable to deal with the
other. One agreement to exchange constitutes a transaction, part of the larger idea of
relationship marketing. Through relationship marketing, organizations aim to build
enduring, mutually satisfying bonds with customers and other key parties to earn and
retain their long-term business. Reaching out to a target market entails communicationchannels, distribution channels, and selling channels. The supply chain, which
stretches from raw materials to the final products for final buyers, represents a value
delivery system. Marketers can capture more of the supply chain value by acquiring
competitors or expanding upstream or downstream.
In the marketing environment, marketers face brand, industry, form, and
generic competition. The marketing environment can be divided into the task environment
(the immediate actors in producing, distributing, and promoting the product
offering) and the broad environment (forces in the demographic, economic, natural,
technological, political-legal, and social-cultural environment). To succeed,
marketers must pay close attention to the trends and developments in these environments
and make timely adjustments to their marketing strategies. Within these environments,
marketers apply the marketing mix—the set of marketing tools used to pursue
marketing objectives in the target market. The marketing mix consists of the four
Ps: product, price, place, and promotion.
Companies can adopt one of five orientations toward the marketplace. The production
concept assumes that consumers want widely available, affordable products;
the product concept assumes that consumers want products with the most quality, performance,
or innovative features; the selling concept assumes that customers will not
buy enough products without an aggressive selling and promotion effort; the marketing
concept assumes the firm must be better than competitors in creating, delivering,
and communicating customer value to its chosen target markets; and the societal marketing
concept assumes that the firm must satisfy customers more effectively and effi-
ciently than competitors while still preserving the consumer’s and the society’s wellbeing.
Keeping this concept in mind, smart companies will add “higher order” image
attributes to supplement both rational and emotional benefits.
The combination of technology, globalization, and deregulation is influencing
customers, brand manufacturers, and store-based retailers in a variety of ways.
Responding to the changes and new demands brought on by these forces has caused
many companies to make adjustments. In turn, savvy marketers must also alter their
marketing activities, tools, and approaches to keep pace with the changes they will face
today and tomorrow.
 

bonddonraj

MP Guru
Winning Markets
Through Strategic
Planning,
Implementation,
and Control


ow do companies compete in a global marketplace? One part of the answer is a
commitment to creating and retaining satisfied customers. We can now add a second
part: Successful companies know how to adapt to a continuously changing marketplace
through strategic planning and careful management of the marketing
process.
In most large companies, corporate headquarters is responsible for designing a
corporate
strategic plan to guide the whole enterprise and deciding about resource
allocations as well as starting and eliminating particular businesses. Guided by the corporate
strategic plan, each division establishes a
division plan for each business unit
within the division; in turn, each business unit develops a
business unit strategic plan.

Finally, the managers of each product line and brand within a business unit develop a​
marketing plan
for achieving their objectives.
However, the development of a marketing plan is not the end of the marketing
process. High-performance firms must hone their expertise in organizing, implementing,
and controlling marketing activities as they follow marketing results closely,
diagnose problems, and take corrective action when necessary. In today’s fast-paced
business world, the ability to effectively manage the marketing process—beginning to
end—has become an extremely important competitive advantage.
CORPORATE AND DIVISION STRATEGIC PLANNING

Marketing plays a critical role in corporate strategic planning within successful companies.​
Market-oriented strategic planning
is the managerial process of developing
and maintaining a viable fit among the organization’s objectives, skills, and resources
and its changing market opportunities. The aim of strategic planning is to shape the
company’s businesses and products so that they yield target profits and growth and
keep the company healthy despite any unexpected threats that may arise.
Strategic planning calls for action in three key areas. The first area is managing a
company’s businesses as an investment portfolio. The second area involves assessing
each business’s strength by considering the market’s growth rate and the company’s
position and fit in that market. And the third area is the development of
strategy, a
game plan for achieving long-term objectives. The complete strategic planning, implementation,
and control cycle is shown in Figure 1-4.
Corporate headquarters starts the strategic planning process by preparing statements
of mission, policy, strategy, and goals, establishing the framework within which the
divisions and business units will prepare their plans. Some corporations allow their business
units a great deal of freedom in setting sales and profit goals and strategies. Others
set goals for their business units but let them develop their own strategies. Still others set
the goals and get involved heavily in the individual business unit strategies.
1 Regardless
of the degree of involvement, all strategic plans are based on the corporate mission.

Defining the Corporate Mission
An organization exists to accomplish something: to make cars, lend money, provide a
night’s lodging, and so on. Its specific mission or purpose is usually clear when the business
starts. Over time, however, the mission may lose its relevance because of changed market
conditions or may become unclear as the corporation adds new products and markets.
When management senses that the organization is drifting from its mission, it
must renew its search for purpose. According to Peter Drucker, it is time to ask some
fundamental questions.
2 What is our business? Who is the customer? What is of value to the
customer? What will our business be? What should our business be?
Successful companies
continuously raise these questions and answer them thoughtfully and thoroughly.
A well-worked-out mission statement provides employees with a shared sense of
purpose, direction, and opportunity. It also guides geographically dispersed employees
to work independently and yet collectively toward realizing the organization’s
goals. The mission statement of Motorola, for example, is “to honorably serve the
needs of the community by providing products and services of superior quality at a fair
price to our customers; to do this so as to earn an adequate profit which is required for
the total enterprise to grow; and by so doing provide the opportunity for our employees
and shareholders to achieve their reasonable personal objectives.”
Good mission statements focus on a limited number of goals, stress the company’s
major policies and values, and define the company’s major
competitive scopes.

These include:​
Industry scope: The industry or range of industries in which a company will operate.
For example, DuPont operates in the industrial market; Dow operates in the
industrial and consumer markets; and 3M will go into almost any industry where it
can make money.

Products and applications scope: The range of products and applications that a
company will supply. St. Jude Medical aims to “serve physicians worldwide with highquality
products for cardiovascular care.”

Competence scope: The range of technological and other core competencies that a
company will master and leverage. Japan’s NEC has built its core competencies in
computing, communications, and components to support production of laptop
computers, televisions, and other electronics items.

Market-segment scope: The type of market or customers a company will serve. For
example, Porsche makes only expensive cars for the upscale market and licenses its
name for high-quality accessories.

Vertical scope: The number of channel levels from raw material to final product and
distribution in which a company will participate. At one extreme are companies
with a large vertical scope; at the other extreme are firms with low or no vertical
integration that may outsource design, manufacture, marketing, and physical
distribution.
3

Geographical scope: The range of regions or countries in which a company will
operate. At one extreme are companies that operate in a specific city or state. At the
other extreme are multinationals such as Unilever and Caterpillar, which operate in
almost every one of the world’s countries.

A company must redefine its mission if that mission has lost credibility or no
longer defines an optimal course for the company.
4 Kodak redefined itself from a film
company to an image company so that it could add digital imaging;
5 Sara Lee rede-
fined itself by outsourcing manufacturing and becoming a marketer of brands. The
corporate mission provides direction for the firm’s various business units.

 

bonddonraj

MP Guru
Establishing Strategic Business Units
A business can be defined in terms of three dimensions:
customer groups, customer needs,

and
technology.6 For example, a company that defines its business as designing incandescent
lighting systems for television studios would have television studios as its customer
group; lighting as its customer need; and incandescent lighting as its technology.
In line with Levitt’s argument that market definitions of a business are superior
to product definitions,
7 these three dimensions describe the business in terms of a
customer-satisfying process, not a goods-producing process. Thus, Xerox’s product
definition would be “We make copying equipment,” while its market definition
would be “We help improve office productivity.” Similarly, Missouri-Pacific Railroad’s
product definition would be “We run a railroad,” while its market definition would
be “We are a people-and-goods mover.”
Large companies normally manage quite different businesses, each requiring
its own strategy; General Electric, as one example, has established 49
strategic business
units (SBUs).
An SBU has three characteristics: (1) It is a single business or collection
of related businesses that can be planned separately from the rest of the
company; (2) it has its own set of competitors; and (3) it has a manager responsible
for strategic planning and profit performance who controls most of the factors
affecting profit.

Assigning Resources to SBUs
The purpose of identifying the company’s strategic business units is to develop separate
strategies and assign appropriate funding to the entire business portfolio. Senior
managers generally apply analytical tools to classify all of their SBUs according to
profit potential. Two of the best-known business portfolio evaluation models are the
Boston Consulting Group model and the General Electric model.
8

The Boston Consulting Group Approach
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a leading management consulting firm, developed
and popularized the
growth-share matrix shown in Figure 1-5. The eight circles
represent the current sizes and positions of eight business units in a hypothetical company.
The dollar-volume size of each business is proportional to the circle’s area. Thus,
the two largest businesses are 5 and 6. The location of each business unit indicates its
market growth rate and relative market share.
The
market growth rate on the vertical axis indicates the annual growth rate of the
market in which the business operates.
Relative market share, which is measured on the
horizontal axis, refers to the SBU’s market share relative to that of its largest competitor
in the segment. It serves as a measure of the company’s strength in the relevant
market segment. The growth-share matrix is divided into four cells, each indicating a
different type of business:

Question marks are businesses that operate in high-growth markets but have low
relative market shares. Most businesses start off as question marks as the company
tries to enter a high-growth market in which there is already a market leader. A
question mark requires a lot of cash because the company is spending money on
plant, equipment, and personnel. The term
question mark is appropriate because the
company has to think hard about whether to keep pouring money into this business.

Stars are market leaders in a high-growth market. A star was once a question mark,
but it does not necessarily produce positive cash flow; the company must still spend
to keep up with the high market growth and fight off competition.

Cash cows are former stars with the largest relative market share in a slow-growth
market. A cash cow produces a lot of cash for the company (due to economies of
scale and higher profit margins), paying the company’s bills and supporting its
other businesses.

Dogs are businesses with weak market shares in low-growth markets; typically, these
generate low profits or even losses.

After plotting its various businesses in the growth-share matrix, a company must
determine whether the portfolio is healthy. An unbalanced portfolio would have too many
dogs or question marks or too few stars and cash cows. The next task is to determine what
objective, strategy, and budget to assign to each SBU. Four strategies can be pursued:

1.
Build: The objective here is to increase market share, even forgoing short-term earnings
to achieve this objective if necessary. Building is appropriate for question marks
whose market shares must grow if they are to become stars.

2.
Hold: The objective in a hold strategy is to preserve market share, an appropriate strategy
for strong cash cows if they are to continue yielding a large positive cash flow.

3.
Harvest: The objective here is to increase short-term cash flow regardless of long-term
effect. Harvesting involves a decision to withdraw from a business by implementing a
program of continuous cost retrenchment. The hope is to reduce costs faster than
any potential drop in sales, thus boosting cash flow. This strategy is appropriate for
weak cash cows whose future is dim and from which more cash flow is needed.
Harvesting can also be used with question marks and dogs.

4.
Divest: The objective is to sell or liquidate the business because the resources can be
better used elsewhere. This is appropriate for dogs and question marks that are dragging
down company profits.

Successful SBUs move through a life cycle, starting as question marks and becoming
stars, then cash cows, and finally dogs. Given this life-cycle movement, companies
should be aware not only of their SBUs’ current positions in the growth-share matrix
(as in a snapshot), but also of their moving positions (as in a motion picture). If an
SBU’s expected future trajectory is not satisfactory, the corporation will need to work
out a new strategy to improve the likely trajectory.
The General Electric Model

An SBU’s appropriate objective cannot be determined solely by its position in the
growth-share matrix. If additional factors are considered, the growth-share matrix can
be seen as a special case of a multifactor portfolio matrix that General Electric (GE)
pioneered. In this model, each business is rated in terms of two major dimensions—
market attractiveness
and business strength. These two factors make excellent marketing
sense for rating a business. Companies are successful to the extent that they enter
attractive markets and possess the required business strengths to succeed in those markets.
If one of these factors is missing, the business will not produce outstanding
results. Neither a strong company operating in an unattractive market nor a weak
company operating in an attractive market will do well.
Using these two dimensions, the GE matrix is divided into nine cells, as shown in
Figure 1-6. The three cells in the upper-left corner indicate strong SBUs suitable for
investment or growth. The diagonal cells stretching from the lower left to the upper
right indicate SBUs of medium attractiveness; these should be pursued selectively and
managed for earnings. The three cells in the lower-right corner indicate SBUs low in
overall attractiveness, which the company may want to harvest or divest.
9

In addition to identifying each SBU’s current position on the matrix, management
should also forecast its expected position over the next 3 to 5 years. Making this
determination involves analyzing product life cycle, expected competitor strategies,
new technologies, economic events, and so on. Again, the purpose is to see where
SBUs are as well as where they appear to be headed.

 

bonddonraj

MP Guru
Critique of Portfolio Models
Both the BCG and GE portfolio models have a number of benefits. They can help
managers think more strategically, better understand the economics of their SBUs,
improve the quality of their plans, improve communication between SBU and corporate
management, identify important issues, eliminate weaker SBUs, and strengthen
their investment in more promising SBUs.
However, portfolio models must be used cautiously. They may lead a firm to
overemphasize market-share growth and entry into high-growth businesses or to
neglect its current businesses. Also, the models’ results are sensitive to ratings and
weights and can be manipulated to produce a desired location in the matrix. Finally,
the models fail to delineate the synergies between two or more businesses, which
means that making decisions for one business at a time might be risky. There is a danger
of terminating a losing SBU that actually provides an essential core competence
needed by several other business units. Overall, though, portfolio models have
improved managers’ analytical and strategic capabilities and allowed them to make
better decisions than they could with mere impressions.
10

Planning New Businesses, Downsizing Older Businesses
Corporate management often desires higher sales and profits than indicated by the
projections for the SBU portfolio. The question then becomes how to grow much
faster than the current businesses will permit. One option is to identify opportunities
to achieve further growth within the company’s current businesses (
intensive growth
opportunities
). A second option is to identify opportunities to build or acquire businesses
that are related to the company’s current businesses (
integrative growth opportunities).
A third option is to identify opportunities to add attractive businesses that are
unrelated to the company’s current businesses (
diversification growth opportunities).

Intensive growth. Ansoff has proposed the product–market expansion grid as a framework
for detecting new intensive growth opportunities.
11 In this grid, the company first
considers whether it could gain more market share with its current products in
current markets (
market-penetration strategy) by encouraging current customers to buy
more, attracting competitors’ customers, or convincing nonusers to start buying its
products. Next it considers whether it can find or develop new markets for its current
products (
market-development strategy). Then it considers whether it can develop new
products for its current markets (
product-development strategy). Later it will also review
opportunities to develop new products for new markets (
diversification strategy).

Integrative growth. Often a business’s sales and profits can be increased through

backward integration
(acquiring a supplier), forward integration (acquiring a
distributor), or
horizontal integration (acquiring a competitor).

Diversification growth. This makes sense when good opportunities exist outside the
present businesses. Three types of diversification are possible. The company could
seek new products that have technological or marketing synergies with existing
product lines, even though the new products themselves may appeal to a different
group of customers (
concentric diversification strategy). Second, the company might
search for new products that appeal to its current customers but are technologically
unrelated to the current product line (
horizontal diversification strategy). Finally, the
company might seek new businesses that have no relationship to the company’s
current technology, products, or markets (
conglomerate diversification strategy).
Of course, companies must not only develop new businesses, but also prune, harvest,
or divest tired, old businesses in order to release needed resources and reduce
costs. Weak businesses require a disproportionate amount of managerial attention;
managers should therefore focus on growth opportunities rather than wasting energy
and resources trying to save hemorrhaging businesses.

BUSINESS STRATEGIC PLANNING
Below the corporate level, the strategic-planning process for each business or SBU
consists of the eight steps shown in Figure 1-7. We examine each step in the sections
that follow.
Business Mission
Each business unit needs to define its specific mission within the broader company
mission. Thus, a television studio-lighting-equipment company might define its mission
as “The company aims to target major television studios and become their vendor
of choice for lighting technologies that represent the most advanced and reliable studio
lighting arrangements.”
SWOT Analysis
The overall evaluation of a business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
is called
SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis consists of an analysis of the external and
internal environments.

External Environment Analysis
In general, a business unit has to monitor key
macroenvironment forces (demographiceconomic,
technological, political-legal, and social-cultural) and
microenvironment
actors
(customers, competitors, distributors, and suppliers) that affect its ability to earn
profits (see Chapter 4 for more detail). Then, for each trend or development, management
needs to identify the associated marketing opportunities and threats.
A
marketing opportunity is an area of buyer need in which a company can perform
profitably. Opportunities can be classified according to their
attractiveness and
their
success probability. The company’s success probability depends on whether its busi-
ness strengths not only match the key success requirements for operating in the target
market, but also exceed those of its competitors. Mere competence does not constitute
a competitive advantage. The best-performing company will be the one that can
generate the greatest customer value and sustain it over time.
An
environmental threat is a challenge posed by an unfavorable external trend
or development that would lead, in the absence of defensive marketing action, to deterioration
in sales or profit. Threats should be classified according to
seriousness and

probability of occurrence.
Minor threats can be ignored; somewhat more serious threats
must be carefully monitored; and major threats require the development of contingency
plans that spell out changes the company can make if necessary.

Internal Environment Analysis
It is one thing to discern attractive opportunities and another to have the competencies
to succeed in these opportunities. Thus, each business needs to periodically evaluate its
internal strengths and weaknesses in marketing, financial, manufacturing, and organizational
competencies. Clearly, the business does not have to correct all of its weaknesses,
nor should it gloat about all of its strengths. The big question is whether the
business should limit itself to those opportunities in which it possesses the required
strengths or consider better opportunities to acquire or develop certain strengths.
Sometimes a business does poorly because its departments do not work together
well as a team. It is therefore critically important to assess interdepartmental working
relationships as part of the internal environmental audit. Honeywell, for example, asks
each department to annually rate its own strengths and weaknesses and those of the
other departments with which it interacts. The notion is that each department is a “supplier”
to some departments and a “customer” of other departments. If one department
has weaknesses that hurt its “internal customers,” Honeywell wants to correct them.
Goal Formulation
Once the company has performed a SWOT analysis of the internal and external environments,
it can proceed to develop specific goals for the planning period in a process
called
goal formulation. Managers use the term goals to describe objectives that are specific
with respect to magnitude and time. Turning objectives into measurable goals
facilitates management planning, implementation, and control.
To be effective, goals must (1) be arranged
hierarchically to guide the businesses in
moving from broad to specific objectives for departments and individuals; (2) be stated

quantitatively
whenever possible; (3) be realistic; and (4) be consistent. Other important
trade-offs in setting goals include: balancing short-term profit versus long-term growth;
balancing deep penetration of existing markets with development of new markets; balancing
profit goals versus nonprofit goals; and balancing high growth versus low risk.
Each choice in this set of goal trade-offs calls for a different marketing strategy.

Strategy Formulation
Goals indicate what a business unit wants to achieve;
strategy describes the game plan
for achieving those goals. Every business strategy consists of a marketing strategy plus
a compatible technology strategy and sourcing strategy. Although many types of marketing
strategies are available, Michael Porter has condensed them into three generic
types that provide a good starting point for strategic thinking: overall cost leadership,
differentiation, or focus.
12

Overall cost leadership: Here the business works to achieve the lowest production and
distribution costs so that it can price lower than competitors and win more market
share. Firms pursuing this strategy must be good at engineering, purchasing,
manufacturing, and physical distribution; they need less skill in marketing. Texas
Instruments uses this strategy. The problem is that rivals may emerge with still lower
costs, hurting a firm that has rested its whole future on cost leadership.

Differentiation: Here the business concentrates on achieving superior performance in
an important customer benefit area, such as being the leader in service, quality,
style, or technology—but not leading in all of these things. Intel, for instance,
differentiates itself through leadership in technology, coming out with new
microprocessors at breakneck speed.

Focus: Here the business focuses on one or more narrow market segments, getting
to know these segments intimately and pursuing either cost leadership or
differentiation within the target segment. Airwalk shoes, for instance, came to fame
by focusing on the very narrow extreme-sports segment.

Firms that do not pursue a clear strategy—“middle-of-the-roaders”—do the
worst. International Harvester fell upon hard times because it did not stand out as lowest
in cost, highest in perceived value, or best in serving some market segment.
Middle-of-the-roaders try to be good on all strategic dimensions, but because strategic
dimensions require different and often inconsistent ways of organizing the firm, these
firms end up being not particularly excellent at anything.
Strategy formulation in the age of the Internet is particularly challenging. The
chemical company Solutia, a Monsanto spinoff, copes by creating four different, possible
short-term scenarios for each strategy. This allows the firm to act quickly when it sees
a scenario unfolding. Sun Microsystems holds a weekly meeting with the firm’s top decision
makers to brainstorm strategies for handling new threats. By revisiting strategic
plans frequently, both companies are able to stay ahead of environmental changes.
 

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MP Guru
Program Formulation
Once the business unit has developed its principal strategies, it must work out detailed
supporting programs. Thus, if the business has decided to attain technological leadership,
it must plan programs to strengthen its R&D department, gather technological
intelligence, develop leading-edge products, train the technical sales force, and
develop ads to communicate its technological leadership.
After these marketing programs have been tentatively formulated, the marketing
people must estimate their costs. Questions arise: Is participating in a particular trade
show worth it? Will a specific sales contest pay for itself? Will hiring another salesperson
contribute to the bottom line? Activity-based cost (ABC) accounting should be
applied to each marketing program to determine whether it is likely to produce suffi-
cient results to justify the cost.
14

Implementation
A clear strategy and well-thought-out supporting programs may be useless if the firm
fails to implement them carefully. Indeed, strategy is only one of seven elements,
according to McKinsey & Company, that the best-managed companies exhibit.
15 In
the McKinsey 7-S framework for business success, strategy, structure, and systems are
considered the “hardware” of success, and style (how employees think and behave),
skills (to carry out the strategy), staff (able people who are properly trained and
assigned), and shared values (values that guide employees’ actions) are the “software.”
When these software elements are present, companies are usually more successful at
strategy implementation.
16 Implementation is vital to effective management of the
marketing process
Feedback and Control

As it implements its strategy, the firm needs to track the results and monitor new developments
in the internal and external environments. Some environments are fairly stable
from year to year. Other environments evolve slowly in a fairly predictable way. Still
other environments change rapidly in significant and unpredictable ways.
Nonetheless, the company can count on one thing: The marketplace will change. And
when it does, the company will need to review and revise its implementation, programs,
strategies, or even objectives.
A company’s strategic fit with the environment will inevitably erode because the
market environment changes faster than the company’s 7-Ss. Thus a company might
remain efficient while it loses effectiveness. Peter Drucker pointed out that it is more
important to “do the right thing” (effectiveness) than “to do things right” (efficiency).
The most successful companies excel at both.
Once an organization fails to respond to a changed environment, it has difficulty
recapturing its lost position. This happened to the once-unassailable Motorola when it
was slow to respond to the new digital technology used by Nokia and others, and kept
rolling out analog phones.
17 Similarly, Barnes & Noble did not immediately recognize
the threat posed by Amazon.com’s Internet-based book retailing model; then, as a
latecomer to e-commerce, it had more of a struggle establishing itself. Clearly, the key
to organizational health is the firm’s willingness to examine the changing environment
and to adopt appropriate new goals and behaviors. High-performance organizations
continuously monitor the environment and use flexible strategic planning to
maintain a viable fit with the evolving environment.

THE MARKETING PROCESS
Planning at the corporate, division, and business levels is an integral part of planning
for the marketing process. To understand that process fully, we must first look at how
a company defines its business.
The task of any business is to deliver value to the market at a profit. There are at
least two views of the
value-delivery process.18 The traditional view is that the firm makes
something and then sells it (Figure 1-8). In this view, marketing takes place in the second
half of the value-delivery process. The traditional view assumes that the company
knows what to make and that the market will buy enough units to produce profits for
the company.
Companies that subscribe to this traditional view have the best chance of succeeding
in economies marked by goods shortages in which consumers are not fussy
about quality, features, or style. But the traditional view of the business process will not
work in more competitive economies in which people face abundant choices. The
“mass market” is actually splintering into numerous micromarkets, each with its own
wants, perceptions, preferences, and buying criteria. The smart competitor therefore
must design the offer for well-defined target markets.

The Value-Delivery Sequence
This belief is at the core of the new view of business processes, which places marketing
at the beginning of the planning process. Instead of emphasizing making and selling,
companies see themselves involved in a three-phase value creation and delivery
sequence (Figure 1-8).
The first phase, choosing the value, represents the strategic “homework” that
marketing must do before any product exists. The marketing staff must segment the
market, select the appropriate market target, and develop the offer’s value position
specifications
and services, set a target price, then make and distribute the product.
Developing specific product features, prices, and distribution occurs at this stage and
is part of
tactical marketing. The task in the third phase is communicating the value.
Here, further tactical marketing occurs in utilizing the sales force, sales promotion,
advertising, and other promotional tools to inform the market about the product.
Thus, as Figure 1-8 shows, the marketing process actually begins before there is a product
and continues while it is being developed and after it becomes available.

Steps in the Marketing Process
The
marketing process consists of analyzing market opportunities, researching and
selecting target markets, designing marketing strategies, planning marketing programs,
and organizing, implementing, and controlling the marketing effort. The four
steps in the marketing process are:

1.
Analyzing market opportunities. The marketer’s initial task is to identify potential longrun
opportunities given the company’s market experience and core competencies.
To evaluate its various opportunities, assess buyer wants and needs, and gauge market
size, the firm needs a marketing research and information system. Next, the firm studies
consumer markets or business markets to find out about buying behavior, perceptions,
wants, and needs. Smart firms also pay close attention to competitors and look
for major segments within each market that they can profitably serve.

2.
Developing marketing strategies. In this step, the marketer prepares a positioning strategy
for each new and existing product’s progress through the life cycle, makes decisions
about product lines and branding, and designs and markets its services.

3.
Planning marketing programs. To transform marketing strategy into marketing programs,
marketing managers must make basic decisions on marketing expenditures,
marketing mix, and marketing allocation. The first decision is about the level of marketing
expenditures needed to achieve the firm’s marketing objectives. The second

Design
product
Advertise/
promote Procure Make Price Sell Distribute Service
Make the Product Sell the Product
Customer
segmentation
(b) Value creation and delivery sequence
Strategic marketing Tactical marketing​
(a) Traditional physical process sequence
Value
positioning
Market
selection/
focus
Product
development
Service
development
Sales
promotion Pricing
Making Servicing
Sourcing Distributing
Sales force Advertising
Choose the Value Provide the Value Communicate the Value
Two Views of the Value-Delivery Process
decision is how to divide the total marketing budget among the various tools in the
marketing mix:
product, price, place, and promotion.19 And the third decision is how to
allocate the marketing budget to the various products, channels, promotion media,
and sales areas.

4.
Managing the marketing effort. In this step (discussed later in this chapter), marketers
organize the firm’s marketing resources to implement and control the marketing
plan. Because of surprises and disappointments as marketing plans are implemented,
the company also needs feedback and control.

Figure 1-9 presents a grand summary of the marketing process and the factors
that shape the company’s marketing strategy.
The Nature and Contents of a Marketing Plan
The
marketing plan created for each product line or brand is one of the most important
outputs of planning for the marketing process. A typical marketing plan has eight sections:

Executive summary and table of contents: This brief summary outlines the plan’s main
goals and recommendations; it is followed by a table of contents.

Current marketing situation: This section presents relevant background data on sales,
costs, profits, the market, competitors, distribution, and the macroenvironment,
drawn from a fact book maintained by the product manager.

Opportunity and issue analysis: This section identifies the major opportunities and
threats, strengths and weaknesses, and issues facing the product line or brand.

Objectives: This section spells out the financial and marketing objectives to be achieved.

Target
customers
Product
Marketing
Intermediaries
Competitors
Suppliers Publics
Promotion
Price Place
Demographic/
economic
environment
Political/
legal
environment
Technological/
physical
environment
Social/
cultural
environment
Marketing
information
system
system
Marketing
planning
Marketing
organization
Marketing
control
system
and
implementation
system

 

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MP Guru
Product- or Brand-Management Organization
Companies that produce a variety of products and brands often establish a product-
(or brand-) management organization as another layer of management within the
marketing function. A product manager supervises product category managers, who
in turn supervise specific product and brand managers. A product-management organization
makes sense if the firm’s products are quite different, or if the sheer number
of products is beyond the ability of a functional marketing organization to handle.
In both consumer and industrial markets, product and brand managers are
responsible for product planning and strategy; preparing annual marketing plans and
sales forecasts; working with advertising and merchandising agencies to create programs
and campaigns; stimulating support among sales reps and distributors; ongoing
research into product performance, customer and dealer attitudes, opportunities and
threats; and initiating product improvements to meet changing market needs.
The product-management organization allows the product manager to concentrate
on developing a cost-effective marketing mix for each product, to react more
quickly to marketplace changes, and to watch over smaller brands. On the other hand,
it can lead to conflict and frustration when product managers are not given enough
authority to carry out their responsibilities effectively. In addition, product managers
become experts in their product but rarely achieve functional expertise. And appointing
product managers and associate product managers for even minor products can
bloat payroll costs. Finally, brand managers normally move up in a few years to another
brand or transfer to another company, leading to short-term thinking that plays havoc
with long-term brand building.
To counter these disadvantages, some companies have switched from product
managers to product teams. For example, Hallmark uses a triangular marketing team
consisting of a market manager (the leader), a marketing manager, and a distribution
manager; 3M uses a horizontal product team consisting of a team leader and representatives
from sales, marketing, laboratory, engineering, accounting, and marketing
research.
Another alternative is to introduce category management, in which a company focuses
on product categories to manage its brands. Kraft has changed from a classic brand-management
structure, in which each brand competed for resources and market share, to a
category-based structure in which category business directors (or “product integrators”)
lead cross-functional teams of representatives from marketing, R&D, consumer promotion,
and finance. These category teams work with process teams dedicated to each product
category and with customer teams dedicated to each major customer.20 Still, category
54 CHAPTER3 WINNING MARKETS THROUGH STRATEGIC PLANNING, IMPLEMENTATION, AND CONTROL
management is essentially product-driven, which is why Colgate recently moved from
brand management (Colgate toothpaste) to category management (toothpaste category)
to a new stage called “customer-need management” (mouth care). This last step finally
focuses the organization on a basic customer need.21
Market-Management Organization
Many companies sell their products to a diverse set of markets; Canon, for instance,
sells fax machines to consumer, business, and government markets. When customers
fall into different user groups with distinct buying preferences and practices, a market
management organization is desirable. A markets manager supervises several market
managers (also called market-development managers, market specialists, or industry
specialists). The market managers draw upon functional services as needed or may
even have functional specialists reporting to them.
Market managers are staff (not line) people, with duties similar to those of product
managers. This system has many of the same advantages and disadvantages of product
management systems. Its strongest advantage is that the marketing activity is organized
to meet the needs of distinct customer groups. This is why Xerox converted from
geographic selling to selling by industry, as did IBM, which recently reorganized its
employees into 14 customer-focused divisions. In fact, several studies have confirmed
the value of market-centered organization: Slater and Narver found a substantial positive
effect of market orientation on both commodity and noncommodity businesses.22
Product-Management/Market-Management Organization
Companies that produce many products that flow into many markets tend to adopt a
matrix organization. Consider DuPont, a pioneer in developing the matrix structure. Its
textile fibers department consists of separate product managers for rayon and other
fibers plus separate market managers for menswear and other markets. The product
managers plan the sales and profits for their respective fibers, each seeking to expand
the use of his or her fiber; the market managers seek to meet their market’s needs
rather than push a particular fiber. Ultimately, the sales forecasts from the market
managers and the product managers should add to the same grand total.
A matrix organization would seem desirable in a multiproduct, multimarket
company. However, this system is costly and often creates conflicts as well as questions
about authority and responsibility. By the early 1980s, a number of companies had
abandoned matrix management. But matrix management has resurfaced and is again
flourishing in the form of “business teams” staffed with full-time specialists reporting
to one team boss. The major difference is that companies today provide the right context
in which a matrix can thrive—an emphasis on flat, lean team organizations
focused around business processes that cut horizontally across functions.23
Corporate-Divisional Organization
As multiproduct-multimarket companies grow, they often convert their larger product
or market groups into separate divisions with their own departments and services. This
raises the question of what marketing services and activities should be retained at corporate
headquarters. Some corporations leave marketing to each division; some have
a small corporate marketing staff; and some prefer to maintain a strong corporate
marketing staff.
The potential contribution of a corporate marketing staff varies in different
stages of the company’s evolution. Most companies begin with weak marketing in their
divisions and often establish a corporate staff to bring stronger marketing into the divisions
through training and other services. Some members of corporate marketing
Managing The Marketing Process 55
might be transferred to head divisional marketing departments. As divisions become
strong in their marketing, corporate marketing has less to offer them. Some companies
then decide corporate marketing has done its job and proceed to eliminate the
department.24
Global Organization
Companies that market internationally can organize in three ways. Those just going
global may start by establishing an export department with a sales manager and a few assistants
(and limited marketing services). As they go after global business more aggressively,
they can create an international division with functional specialists (including marketing)
and operating units structured geographically, according to product, or as
international subsidiaries. Finally, companies that become truly global organizations have
top corporate management and staff plan worldwide operations, marketing policies,
financial flows, and logistical systems. In these organizations, the global operating units
report directly to top management, not to the head of an international division.
Building a Companywide Marketing Orientation
Many companies are beginning to realize that their organizations are not really marketand
customer-driven—they are product or sales driven. Companies such as Baxter,
General Motors, and Shell are working hard to reorganize themselves into true marketdriven
companies. The task is not easy: it requires changes in job and department defi-
nitions, responsibilities, incentives, and relationships.
To create a market- and customer-focused company, the CEO must: convince
senior managers of the need to be more customer-focused; appoint a senior marketing
officer and marketing task force; get outside help and guidance; change reward
measurement and system to encourage actions that build long-term customer satisfaction;
hire strong marketing talent; develop strong in-house marketing training programs;
install a modern marketing planning system; establish an annual marketing
excellence recognition program; consider restructuring as a market-centered organization;
and shift from a department focus to a process-outcome focus.
DuPont successfully made the transition from an inward-looking to an outwardlooking
orientation when it began building a “marketing community” by reorganizing
divisions along market lines and holding marketing management training seminars
for thousands of managers and employees. The company also established a marketing
excellence recognition program and honored employees from around the world who
had developed innovative marketing strategies and service improvements.25 It takes a
great deal of planning and patience to get managers to accept customers as the foundation
and future of the business—but it can be done, as the DuPont example shows.
Marketing Implementation
Organization is one factor contributing to effective marketing implementation, the
process that turns marketing plans into action assignments and ensures that such
assignments are executed in a manner that accomplishes the plan’s stated objectives.26
This part of the marketing process is critical, because a brilliant strategic marketing
plan counts for little if it is not implemented properly. Whereas strategy addresses the
what and why of marketing activities, implementation addresses the who, where, when,
and how. Strategy and implementation are closely related in that one layer of strategy
implies certain tactical implementation assignments at a lower level. For example, top
management’s strategic decision to “harvest” a product must be translated into specific
actions and assignments.
56 CHAPTER3 WINNING MARKETS THROUGH STRATEGIC PLANNING, IMPLEMENTATION, AND CONTROL
Bonoma identified four sets of skills for implementing marketing programs:
(1) diagnostic skills (the ability to determine what went wrong); (2) identification of
company level (the ability to discern whether problems occurred in the marketing
function, the marketing program, or the marketing policy); (3) implementation skills
(the ability to budget resources, organize effectively, motivate others); and (4) evaluation
skills (the ability to evaluate results).27 These skills are as vital for nonprofits as
they are for businesses, as the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater has discovered.
Like many nonprofit cultural organizations, the company founded by Alvin
Ailey in 1958 always seemed to be operating in the red—despite its ability to attract
full houses—because of the high costs of mounting a production. But Judith
Jameson, the principal dancer who succeeded Ailey as director after his death, has
been able to keep the company in the black, thanks largely to her skill at motivating
others to carry out marketing efforts. The nonprofit implements its marketing plan
through a high-powered board of directors and a group of businesses that want to
associate with the Ailey company for their own marketing purposes. For example,
Healthsouth Corporation provides free physical therapy to the dancers and benefits
from the association when marketing its sports medicine clinics. With an audience
that is almost half African American and 43 percent of which is between the ages of
19 and 39, Ailey provides access to an important market for its corporate partners,
earning their enthusiastic support.28
Evaluating and Controlling the Marketing Process
To deal with the many surprises that occur during the implementation of marketing
plans, the marketing department has to monitor and control marketing activities continuously.
Table 1.1 lists four types of marketing control needed by companies: annualplan
control, profitability control, efficiency control, and strategic control.
Annual-Plan Control
The purpose of annual-plan control is to ensure that the company achieves the sales,
profits, and other goals established in its annual plan. The heart of annual-plan control
is the four-step management by objectives process in which management (1) sets
monthly or quarterly goals; (2) monitors the company’s marketplace performance;
(3) determines the causes of serious performance deviations; and (4) takes corrective
action to close the gaps between goals and performance.
This control model applies to all levels of the organization. Top management
sets sales and profit goals for the year that are elaborated into specific goals for each
lower level. In turn, each product manager commits to attaining specified levels of
sales and costs; each regional district and sales manager and each sales representative
also commits to specific goals. Each period, top management reviews and interprets
performance results at all levels, using these five tools:
➤ Sales analysis. Sales analysis consists of measuring and evaluating actual sales in
relation to goals, using two specific tools. Sales-variance analysis measures the relative
contribution of different factors to a gap in sales performance. Microsales analysis
looks at specific products, territories, and other elements that failed to produce
expected sales. The point of these analyses is to determine what factors (pricing,
lower volume, specific territories, etc.) contributed to a failure to meet sales goals.
➤ Market-share analysis. Company sales do not reveal how well the company is
performing relative to competitors. To do this, management needs to track its
market share. Overall market share is the company’s sales expressed as a percentage
Managing The Marketing Process 57
of total market sales. Served market share is its sales expressed as a percentage of
the total sales to its served market—all of the buyers who are able and willing to buy
the product. Relative market share can be expressed as market share in relation to
the largest competitor; a rise in relative market share means a company is gaining
on its leading competitor. A useful way to analyze market-share movements is in
terms of customer penetration, customer loyalty, customer selectivity, and price
selectivity.
➤ Marketing expense-to-sales analysis. This is a key ratio because it allows management to
be sure that the company is not overspending to achieve sales goals. Minor
fluctuations in the expense-to-sales ratio can be ignored, but major fluctuations are
cause for concern.
Type of Prime Purpose of
Control Responsibility Control Approaches
I. Annual-plan control
II. Profitability control
III. Efficiency control
IV. Strategic control
Top management
Middle management
Marketing
controller
Line and staff
management
Marketing
controller
Top management
Marketing auditor
To examine whether
the planned results
are being achieved
To examine where the
company is making
and losing money
To evaluate and
improve the spending
efficiency and impact
of marketing
expenditures
To examine whether
the company is
pursuing its best
opportunities in
markets, products, and
channels
■ Sales analysis
■ Market-share
analysis
■ Marketing expenseto-
sales analysis
■ Financial analysis
■ Market-based
scorecard analysis
Profitability by:
■ product
■ territory
■ customer
■ segment
■ trade channel
■ order size
Efficiency of:
■ sales force
■ advertising
■ sales promotion
■ distribution
■ Marketiingeffectiveness
review
■ Marketing audit
■ Marketing
excellence review
■ Company ethical
and social
responsibility review
Table 1.1 Types of Marketing Control
58 CHAPTER3 WINNING MARKETS THROUGH STRATEGIC PLANNING, IMPLEMENTATION, AND CONTROL
➤ Financial analysis. Management uses financial analysis to identify the factors that
affect the company’s rate of return on net worth.29 The main factors are shown in
Figure 1-10, along with illustrative numbers for a large chain-store retailer. To
improve its return on net worth, the company must increase its ratio of net profits
to its assets or increase the ratio of its assets to its net worth. The company should
analyze the composition of its assets (i.e., cash, accounts receivable, inventory, and
plant and equipment) and see if it can improve its asset management.30
➤ Market-based scorecard analysis. Companies should also prepare two market-based
scorecards that reflect performance and provide possible early warning signals of
problems. A customer-performance scorecard records how well the company is doing on
such customer-based measures as new customers, dissatisfied customers, lost customers,
target market awareness, target market preference, relative product quality, and
relative service quality. A stakeholder-performance scorecard tracks the satisfaction of
constituencies who have a critical interest in and impact on the company’s
performance: employees, suppliers, banks, distributors, retailers, and stockholders.31
Profitability Control
Successful companies also measure the profitability of their products, territories, customer
groups, segments, trade channels, and order sizes. This information helps management
determine whether any products or marketing activities should be expanded,
reduced, or eliminated. The first step in marketing-profitability analysis is to identify
the functional expenses (such as advertising and delivery) incurred for each activity.
Next, the firm measures how much functional expense was associated with selling
through each type of channel. Third, the company prepares a profit-and-loss statement
for each type of channel.
In general, marketing-profitability analysis indicates the relative profitability of
different channels, products, territories, or other marketing entities. However, it does
not prove that the best course of action is to drop the unprofitable marketing entities,
1.5%
3.2
Asset turnover
Profit margin
Net profits
–––––––
Net sales
4.8% =
Return on assets
Net profits
–––––––
Total assets
2.6 x
Financial
leverage
Total assets
–––––––
Net worth
12.5% =
Rate of return
on net worth
Net profits
–––––––
Net worth
Net sales
–––––––
Total assets
Figure 1-10 Financial Model of Return on Net Worth
Managing The Marketing Process 59
nor does it capture the likely profit improvement if these marginal marketing entities
are dropped. Therefore, the company must examine its alternatives closely before taking
corrective action.
Efficiency Control
Suppose a profitability analysis reveals poor profits for certain products, territories, or
markets. This is when management must ask whether there are more efficient ways to
manage the sales force, advertising, sales promotion, and distribution in connection
with these marketing entities. Some companies have established a marketing controller
position to work on such issues and improve marketing efficiency.
Marketing controllers work out of the controller’s office but specialize in the
marketing side of the business. At companies such as General Foods, DuPont, and
Johnson & Johnson, they perform a sophisticated financial analysis of marketing
expenditures and results, analyzing adherence to profit plans, helping prepare brand
managers’ budgets, measuring the efficiency of promotions, analyzing media production
costs, evaluating customer and geographic profitability, and educating marketing
personnel on the financial implications of marketing decisions.32
Strategic Control
From time to time, companies need to undertake a critical review of overall marketing
goals and effectiveness. Each company should periodically reassess its strategic approach
to the marketplace with marketing-effectiveness reviews and marketing audits.
➤ The marketing-effectiveness review. Marketing effectiveness is reflected in the degree to
which a company or division exhibits the five major attributes of a marketing
orientation: customer philosophy (serving customers’ needs and wants), integrated
marketing organization (integrating marketing with other key departments), adequate
marketing information (conducting timely, appropriate marketing research), strategic
orientation (developing formal marketing plans and strategies), and operational efficiency
(using marketing resources effectively and flexibly). Unfortunately, most companies
and divisions score in the fair-to-good range on measures of marketing effectiveness.33
➤ The marketing audit. Companies that discover marketing weaknesses should
undertake a marketing audit, a comprehensive, systematic, independent, and
periodic examination of a company’s (or SBU’s) marketing environment, objectives,
strategies, and activities to identify problem areas and opportunities and
recommend a plan of action for improving the company’s marketing
performance.34 The marketing audit examines six major marketing components:
(1) the macroenvironment and task environment, (2) marketing strategy,
(3) marketing organization, (4) marketing systems, (5) marketing productivity, and
(6) marketing function (the 4 Ps).
Highly successful companies also perform marketing excellence reviews and ethicalsocial
responsibility reviews to gain an outside-in perspective on their marketing activities.
➤ The marketing excellence review. This best-practices excellence review rates a firm’s
performance in relation to the best marketing and business practices of highperforming
businesses. The resulting profile exposes weaknesses and strengths and
highlights where the company might change to become a truly outstanding player
in the marketplace.
➤ The ethical and social responsibility review. In addition, companies need to evaluate
whether they are truly practicing ethical and socially responsible marketing.
Business success and continually satisfying customers and other stakeholders are
60 CHAPTER3 WINNING MARKETS THROUGH STRATEGIC PLANNING, IMPLEMENTATION, AND CONTROL
intimately tied to adoption and implementation of high standards of business and
marketing conduct. The most admired companies abide by a code of serving
people’s interests, not only their own. Thus, the ethical and social responsibility
review allows management to determine how the firm is grappling with ethical
issues and exhibiting a “social conscience” in its business dealings.
Effective control of the marketing process ultimately depends on accurate,
timely, and complete information about markets, demand, and the marketing environment—
 

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Market-oriented strategic planning is the managerial process of developing and maintaining
a viable fit among the organization’s objectives, skills, and resources and its
changing market opportunities. The aim of strategic planning is to shape the company’s
businesses and products to yield the targeted profits and growth. Strategic planning
takes place at four levels: corporate, division, business unit, and product.
The corporate strategy establishes the framework within which the divisions and
business units prepare their strategic plans. Setting a corporate strategy entails defining
the corporate mission; establishing strategic business units (SBUs), assigning
resources to each SBU based on its market attractiveness and business strength, and
planning new businesses and downsizing older businesses. Strategic planning for SBUs
entails defining the business mission, analyzing external opportunities and threats,
analyzing internal strengths and weaknesses, formulating goals, formulating strategy,
formulating programs, implementing the programs, and gathering feedback and
exercising control.
The marketing process consists of four steps: analyzing market opportunities,
developing marketing strategies, planning marketing programs, and managing marketing
effort. Each product level within a business unit must develop a marketing plan
for achieving its goals. The marketing plan is one of the most important outputs of the
marketing process. It should contain an executive summary and table of contents, an
overview of the marketing situation, an analysis of opportunities and threats, a summary
of financial and marketing objectives, an overview of marketing strategy, a
description of action programs, a projected profit-and-loss statement, and a summary
of the controls for monitoring the plan’s progress.
In managing the marketing process, companies can organize the marketing
department according to function, geographic area, products, or customer markets.
Companies that market in other countries can create an export department, an international
division, or a global organization. Marketing implementation is the process
that turns marketing plans into action assignments and ensures that such assignments
are executed in a manner that accomplishes the plan’s stated objectives. To manage
the marketing process, companies can apply four types of control: annual-plan control,
profitability control, efficiency control, and strategic control.
 

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MP Guru
The marketing environment is changing at an accelerating rate. Given the following
changes, the need for real-time market information is greater than at any time in the
past:
From local to national to global marketing: As companies expand their geographical market
coverage, their managers need more information more quickly.
From buyer needs to buyer wants: As incomes improve, buyers become more selective in
their choice of goods. To predict buyers’ responses to different features, styles, and
other attributes, sellers must turn to marketing research.
From price to nonprice competition: As sellers increase their use of branding, product differentiation,
advertising, and sales promotion, they require information on these marketing
tools’ effectiveness.
Fortunately, the exploding information requirements have given rise to impressive new
information technologies: computers, microfilm, cable television, copy machines, fax machines,
tape recorders, video recorders, videodisc players, CD-ROM drives, the Internet.1
Some firms have developed marketing information systems that provide company management
with rapid and incredible detail about buyer wants, preferences, and behavior.
For example, the Coca-Cola Company knows that we put 3.2 ice cubes in a glass, see 69
of its commercials every year, and prefer cans to pop out of vending machines at a temperature
of 35 degrees. Kimberly-Clark, which makes Kleenex, has calculated that the average
person blows his or her nose 256 times a year. Hoover learned that we spend about
35 minutes each week vacuuming, sucking up about 8 pounds of dust each year and using
6 bags to do so.2 Marketers also have extensive information about consumption patterns
in other countries. On a per capita basis within Western Europe, for example, the
Swiss consume the most chocolate, the Greeks eat the most cheese, the Irish drink the
most tea, and the Austrians smoke the most cigarettes.3
Nevertheless, many business firms lack information sophistication. Many lack a marketing
research department. Others have departments that limit work to routine forecasting,
sales analysis, and occasional surveys. In addition, many managers complain about not
knowing where critical information is located in the company; getting too much information
that they can’t use and too little that they really need; getting important information
too late; and doubting the information’s accuracy. In today’s information-based society,
companies with superior information enjoy a competitive advantage. The company can
choose its markets better, develop better offerings, and execute better marketing planning.
H E C O M P O N E N T S O F A M O D E R N M A R K E T I N G
I N F O R M A T I O N S Y S T E M
Every firm must organize a rich flow of information to its marketing managers. Competitive
companies study their managers’ information needs and design marketing information
systems (MIS) to meet these needs.
■ A marketing information system (MIS) consists of people, equipment,
and procedures to gather, sort, analyze, evaluate, and distribute needed,
timely, and accurate information to marketing decision makers.
To carry out their analysis, planning, implementation, and control responsibilities,
marketing managers need information about developments in the marketing environment.
The role of the MIS is to assess the manager’s information needs, develop
the needed information, and distribute that information in a timely fashion. The in-
Analyzing
Marketing
Opportunities 100
 

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MP Guru
How do companies compete in a global marketplace? One part of the answer is a
commitment to creating and retaining satisfied customers. We can now add a second
part: Successful companies know how to adapt to a continuously changing marketplace
through strategic planning and careful management of the marketing
process.
In most large companies, corporate headquarters is responsible for designing a
corporate strategic plan to guide the whole enterprise and deciding about resource
allocations as well as starting and eliminating particular businesses. Guided by the corporate
strategic plan, each division establishes a division plan for each business unit
within the division; in turn, each business unit develops a business unit strategic plan.
Finally, the managers of each product line and brand within a business unit develop a
marketing plan for achieving their objectives.
However, the development of a marketing plan is not the end of the marketing
process. High-performance firms must hone their expertise in organizing, implementing,
and controlling marketing activities as they follow marketing results closely,
diagnose problems, and take corrective action when necessary. In today’s fast-paced
business world, the ability to effectively manage the marketing process—beginning to
end—has become an extremely important competitive advantageCORPORATE AND DIVISION STRATEGIC PLANNING
Marketing plays a critical role in corporate strategic planning within successful companies.
Market-oriented strategic planning is the managerial process of developing
and maintaining a viable fit among the organization’s objectives, skills, and resources
and its changing market opportunities. The aim of strategic planning is to shape the
company’s businesses and products so that they yield target profits and growth and
keep the company healthy despite any unexpected threats that may arise.
Strategic planning calls for action in three key areas. The first area is managing a
company’s businesses as an investment portfolio. The second area involves assessing
each business’s strength by considering the market’s growth rate and the company’s
position and fit in that market. And the third area is the development of strategy, a
game plan for achieving long-term objectives. The complete strategic planning, implementation,
and control cycle is shown in Figure 1-4.
Corporate headquarters starts the strategic planning process by preparing statements
of mission, policy, strategy, and goals, establishing the framework within which the
divisions and business units will prepare their plans. Some corporations allow their business
units a great deal of freedom in setting sales and profit goals and strategies. Others
set goals for their business units but let them develop their own strategies. Still others set
the goals and get involved heavily in the individual business unit strategies.1 Regardless
of the degree of involvement, all strategic plans are based on the corporate mission.
Defining the Corporate Mission
An organization exists to accomplish something: to make cars, lend money, provide a
night’s lodging, and so on. Its specific mission or purpose is usually clear when the business
starts. Over time, however, the mission may lose its relevance because of changed market
conditions or may become unclear as the corporation adds new products and markets.
When management senses that the organization is drifting from its mission, it
must renew its search for purpose. According to Peter Drucker, it is time to ask some
fundamental questions.2 What is our business? Who is the customer? What is of value to the
customer? What will our business be? What should our business be? Successful companies
continuously raise these questions and answer them thoughtfully and thoroughly.A well-worked-out mission statement provides employees with a shared sense of
purpose, direction, and opportunity. It also guides geographically dispersed employees
to work independently and yet collectively toward realizing the organization’s
goals. The mission statement of Motorola, for example, is “to honorably serve the
needs of the community by providing products and services of superior quality at a fair
price to our customers; to do this so as to earn an adequate profit which is required for
the total enterprise to grow; and by so doing provide the opportunity for our employees
and shareholders to achieve their reasonable personal objectives.”
Good mission statements focus on a limited number of goals, stress the company’s
major policies and values, and define the company’s major competitive scopes.
These include:
➤ Industry scope: The industry or range of industries in which a company will operate.
For example, DuPont operates in the industrial market; Dow operates in the
industrial and consumer markets; and 3M will go into almost any industry where it
can make money.
➤ Products and applications scope: The range of products and applications that a
company will supply. St. Jude Medical aims to “serve physicians worldwide with highquality
products for cardiovascular care.”
➤ Competence scope: The range of technological and other core competencies that a
company will master and leverage. Japan’s NEC has built its core competencies in
computing, communications, and components to support production of laptop
computers, televisions, and other electronics items.
➤ Market-segment scope: The type of market or customers a company will serve. For
example, Porsche makes only expensive cars for the upscale market and licenses its
name for high-quality accessories.
➤ Vertical scope: The number of channel levels from raw material to final product and
distribution in which a company will participate. At one extreme are companies
with a large vertical scope; at the other extreme are firms with low or no vertical
integration that may outsource design, manufacture, marketing, and physical
distribution.3
➤ Geographical scope: The range of regions or countries in which a company will
operate. At one extreme are companies that operate in a specific city or state. At the
other extreme are multinationals such as Unilever and Caterpillar, which operate in
almost every one of the world’s countries.
A company must redefine its mission if that mission has lost credibility or no
longer defines an optimal course for the company.4 Kodak redefined itself from a film
company to an image company so that it could add digital imaging;5 Sara Lee rede-
fined itself by outsourcing manufacturing and becoming a marketer of brands. The
corporate mission provides direction for the firm’s various business units.
 

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MP Guru
Lesson – 1
PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING
Understanding Marketing:
Marketing: It is the process of creating consumer value in the form of goods, services, or ideas
that can improve the consumer’s life.
Marketing is the organizational function charged with defining customer targets and the best way
to satisfy needs and wants competitively and profitably. Since consumers and business buyers face
an abundance of suppliers seeking to satisfy their everyday need, companies and nonprofit
organizations cannot survive today by simply doing a good job. They must do an excellent job if
they are to remain in the increasingly competitive global marketplace. This is what we say that
survival of the fittest. Many studies have demonstrated that the key to profitable performance is to
know and satisfy target customers with competitively superior offers. This process takes place
today in an increasingly global, technical, and competitive environment.
MGT - 301
Principles of Marketing – MGT301 VU
What is Marketing?
Marketing is not only restricted to
selling and advertising as is
perceived but is More than it
advertising it identifies and
satisfies customers needs. it
functions revolve around wide
variety and range of tasks and
activities mostly termed as functions
related to 4ps i.e. Product, price,
place and promotion. Marketing is:
a. Creating customer value and
satisfaction are at the very
heart of modern marketing
thinking and practice.
b. A very simple definition of
marketing is that it is the delivery of customer satisfaction at a profit.
c. Sound marketing is critical to the success of every organization.
Marketing can also be defined as 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.”
Simple Marketing System
The concept of Marketing System
brings one full circle to the concept of
marketing.
Simple marketing system comprises of
different actors and factors like
producer/seller, product/service
something valuable to exchange in
return of product/service (money),
consumer/customer, communication
process to have two way
communication like to provide
information about product or service
to customer or consumer and to have
feedback in same regard from the customer. Fig presents an example of a very simple marketing
system. Marketing system has following basic activities:
1) Sellers must search for buyers, identify their needs, design good products and services, set
prices for them, promote them, and store and deliver them.
2) A modern marketing system includes all of the elements necessary to bring buyers and
sellers together. This might include such activities as product development, research,
communication, distribution, pricing, and service..
3) Each of the major actors in a marketing system adds value for the next level of the system.
There is often critical interdependency among network members.
To learn more about marketing fist we should learn about some basics that are some time termed
as 4ps(Product, price, place, promotion) and some times even 6 or 7ps (Product, price, place
promotion, position, personal relations, people and profit) lets have some definitions in this regard:
Simple Marketing Simple Marketing
System System
What is What is
Marketing, Marketing,
anyway? anyway?
Advertising
Sales
Promotions
Public
relations
Sponsorships
Pricing
Retailing
Direct mail
Catalogues
Billboard
s
E-commerce
Shopping
chan
nels
Packaging
Delivery
Service
Research
Coupons
• Price—what is your pricing strategy?
• Place or distribution—how are you
distributing your product to get it into the
marketplace?
• Promotion—how are you telling
consumers in your target group about your
product?
• Positioning—what place do you want your
product to hold in the consumer’s mind?
• Personal relationships—how are you building relationships with your target consumers?
• People: public who can have impact on organization or can be affected by organization.
• Profits: the basic objective of organization that to have something valuable in return of
product or service mostly it is in form of money.
Marketing assumes that it will proceed in accordance with ethical actives. It Identifies the 4
marketing variables i.e. product, price, promotion, and distribution it also states that the public, the
customer, and the client determine the marketing program. Marketing mainly emphasizes on
creating and maintaining relationships and applies for both non-profit organizations and profitoriented
businesses. Major activities that are performed in marketing process include:
Personal selling Advertising, Making products available in stores and Maintaining inventories. Any
thing like goods, services, experiences, events, persons, places, organizations, information and
ideas can be marketed to the customers in return of something of value.
How Does an Organization Create a Customer?
Organizations (producer/ seller) can create the customers by Identifying customer needs,
designing goods and services that meet those needs than communicating information about those
goods and services to prospective buyers Making the goods or services available at times and
places that meet customers’ needs Pricing goods and services to reflect costs, competition, and
customers’ ability to buy and finally providing for the necessary service and follow-up to ensure
customer satisfaction after the purchase
How is Marketing Done?
According to Peter F. Drucker If we want to
know what a business is, we have to start
with its purpose. And its purpose must lie
outside the business itself. In fact, it must lie
in society since a business enterprise is an
organ of society. There is one valid
definition of business purpose: to create a
customer.
Reasons for Studying Marketing:
Marketing is part of all of our lives and
touches us in some way every day. To be
successful each company that deals with
customers on a daily basis must not only be customer-driven, but customer-obsessed. The best
way to achieve this objective is to develop a sound marketing function within the organization.
Major reason to study marketing is:
• Marketing plays an important role in society
Product Price
Place Promotion
Customers
Costs
About 50% of total
product costs are
marketing costs
Contributions to
Individual Organizations
Critical to the success
of a firm
Careers
About 25 to 33% of
the work force hold
marketing positions.
Contributions to Society
Marketing decisions affect
the lives of individual
consumers and society as
a whole
Why Study
Marketing ?
• It is Vital to business
• Marketing offers outstanding career opportunities
• Marketing effects your life every day
What do Marketers think about?
To have clearer concept in this regard lets consider an example of Opening a Book Shop on
campus. To do so we have to answer different questions like:
1. Is there a need? (Of having book shop)
2. What is my target market? (Who will be buying products from your book shop)
3. What is my product?(Basic items to be sold)
4. How can I produce and deliver a “product” better than my competitors?
5. How shall I promote my product?
6. How can I insure customer loyalty?
Mostly before starting any activity of above-mentioned type marketer performs an analysis termed
as SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat). Marketing is a process of getting the
right products to the right people at the right price and at the right place and time with the right
promotion. But this requires solution to certain simple question: like
Simple Questions, Hard Answers
1. Who are our customers? (Target Market)
2. What important & unique benefits do we provide? (Product/service)
3. Are these benefits sustainable? (Long-term competitive advantage)
These questions are apparently very simple but are very difficult to be answered theses questions
like it is really difficult to define basic characteristics to be produced in product and services as per
demands and requirements pf the customers; and then to precisely define your target market and
to have long-term competitive advantage through customer satisfaction.
 
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