Summary of Marketing Management Course (Limited to Discussed Issues)

in the Term

Instructor: Arash Najmaei

Outline of the summary:

1. Marketing management

2. Components of a holistic marketing program

3. Environmental issues

4. Marketing planning and strategies

5. consumer ad their behavior

6. segmentation, targeting

7. positioning and branding

8. competition

9. communication and IMC

10. network, intermediaries and channels

11. personal communication, direct marketing and e-marketing

12. Pricing strategies

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MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Marketing is all about creating, communicating and delivering customer value

which in return satisfies both the organization and its all stakeholder. In the

marketing the concept of establishing and maintaining a long term relationship

with all customers either ordinary people or businesses is of the main

importance. In creating and management of such relationships firms firstly must

understand the needs and demands of different customer.

COMPONENTS OF A HOLISTIC MARKETING PROGRAM

Marketing is a broad and multifaceted concept. To understand marketing fully

an organization should pay attention to four pillars of marketing as internal

marketing, integrated marketing, social responsibility marketing and relationship

marketing. An effective marketing must use these aspects comprehensively in a

unified manner in order to create and sustain competitive advantages and make

customers and all stakeholders satisfied.

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Any business faces two environments as internal or microenvironment and

external or macro-environment. A manger must fully understand these two

environments in order to make proper decisions and formulate appropriate

strategies. Perhaps the must important model in this sense is SWOT analysis. In

this model S and W sand for firm’s strengths and weaknesses that are internal

and controllable. Whereas, O and T are opportunities and threats posed in the

macro environment and thus are uncontrollable. The model to grab O and T is

common factors of PESTDG which firms must monitor and extract O and T

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from them and link them to its S and W for understanding the marketing process

and policies.

MARKETING PLANNING AND STRATEGIES

To manage the firms’ general marketing process a comprehensive marketing

planning is requires. This marketing planning should show the ways to explore,

create and deliver customer value based on the capabilities of the firm,

competition and also customers’ latent and existing needs. This planning is

divided into two successive phases. The first phase begins with vision, mission

and setting objectives which is the strategic part of the plan and the second is

tactical that is all about planning marketing mix components or traditional four

P. the core concept here is the process of creating, communicating and

delivering value based on the vision by four Ps. thus marketing strategies are the

main decisions that determine the marketing behavior of the firms based on its

marketing plan.

CONSUMER AD THEIR BEHAVIOR

Business is all about consumers and consumer as individuals shape the world

market. Understanding their behavior not only shows the effectiveness of

marketing process but illustrate the future movements for decisions of

marketers. Personal factors, social cultural factors and marketing factors such as

promotions and advertising affect the behavior of consumers. however,

consumers have three general behaviors as pre-purchase, purchase and post

purchase in this sense consumers firstly recognize a need then search for

information about different ways of satisfying need, find some alternatives,

evaluate them, purchase the product by choosing the time, place, brand and

method of payment in shopping and finally use product and discard it.

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SEGMENTATION, TARGETING

Markets are not homogenous, consumers are varying widely across the globe,

their needs, wants and expectation are different so firms must choose right

profitable customers based on their abilities and competencies. The process of

dividing markets into different parts is named segmentation and is the core

action of a marketing process. This process can be carried out on the basis of

consumers’ psychological factors such as attitudes and perceptions or

demographical factors such as life style, gender, age, education or geographical

such as the climate and population of a region of finally combination of them.

Then company targets customers in each segment by appropriate value offerings

based on their different demands and wants. a workable segment to target must

be measurable, sustainable, responsive, actionable and accessible . Firms can

customize offerings for segments or develop a unified offering for all segments

in the form of mass-marketing. The main issue is the careful process of entering

into a segments and targeting appropriate customers by suitable offering.

POSITIONING AND BRANDING

To position a company based on its value offering in the minds ad hearts f its

targeted customers is technically named positioning or creating a brand. Here,

brand is the name, logo, slogan which differentiates one company and its

products from others and branding is therefore a differentiating action by value.

Brand creates value for the firms and brand equity is the total added value to the

product by the brand. To create a strong sustainable brand equity firms must

design all brand factors such as name and slogan carefully and manage them. all

marketing activities of the organization are reflected into brand and the effective

management of a brand is the process of creating and delivering customer value

in branded products and services. In the sense brand resonance model clearly

shows the process of branding and also the concepts of point of parity and point

of difference explain how a firm can improve and sustain its brand.

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COMPETITION

Competition is the activity of creating an advantage. Competition is either based

on the market or the industry. In this sense, an industry is a group of firms which

product similar products and the best model to understand the mechanism of

competition in an industry is the famous framework of Michael porter (Porter

Five forces Model). Based on the number of sellers a market can be monopoly,

monopolistic, oligopoly or pure market and finally based on the hypothetical

structure of a market a market is shared by leader firm, challenger firms,

follower firms and finally nicher firms. These kinds of firms develop products

and compete in order to create a competitive advantage. Competitive advantage

is the ability to gain an above average rate of return and sustainable competitive

advantage is the ability to sustain that profit. firms can develop different

strategies to compete such as focus, cost-leadership or differentiation and in

developing these strategies wither in the for, of offensive, defensive, proactive,

preemptive, flank or even withdrawal the manger must fully understand its value

chain and firm’s strengths and weaknesses.

COMMUNICATIONAND IMC

Communication is the process of sending the right message to the right audience

at a right time. In the marketing communication the audiences are all

stakeholders and the objective of communication is to inform, support and

encourage positive behavior of all receivers about the product, brand and all

marketing activities of the firm. In this regard integrated marketing

communication comes to picture (IMC). The IMC process direct affects brand

equity and the content, content, time, person and place of sending message is

very important in an effective communication. thus IMC can be personal of

mass-communication, online of offline, in an event or general and many other

tactics.

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NETWORK, INTERMEDIARIES AND CHANNELS

Since the process of marketing is so complicated, the value a firm offers is made

in a network of firms. This is value network in which all intermediates and

channels as the means of creating, adding and delivering value matter equally.

Intermediaries are the firms which intermediate the process of creating and

delivering customer value directly or indirectly. Intermediaries are in different

forms such as facilitators, wholesalers, retailers and agents. Firms can employ

different intermediaries of even no intermediaries for different segments. But the

process of developing and selecting intermediaries is a complex sequence of

actions which requires a careful and full understanding of the advantages and

disadvantages, cost, abilities, time and speed and market coverage of each

intermediary for a specific market. Exclusive sellers, selective seller or intensive

sellers are some of approaches in this respect.

PERSONAL COMMUNICATION, DIRECT MARKETING AND E-

MARKETING

Using customer direct channel is at the heart of the process of personal

communication. Direct marketing and direct selling in this context are

important. In these approaches firms use different techniques from a person-to-

person channel from mail, catalog and brochure to communicate and deliver

value. Nowadays internet is another tool for this purpose and using interactive

sites as e-business, e-marketing and e-commerce websites are becoming globally

common for the firms to target customers who surf the web. a marketing website

must be easy to use, secure, comprehensive and attractive ( the7Cs model of

content, content, community, connection, customization, commerce and

communication). and finally firms also use individuals as their sale force who do

different function such as delivering product, taking order, promoting brand and

creating goodwill, solving technical problems, creating new social ands

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interactive ways of sale and finding and addressing problems faced by different

customers and businesses. In this process selecting individual, training, them to

greet, communicate, target and deliver value, evaluating them, motivating them

and eventually compensating them are some of critical activities to go through.

PRICING STRATEGIES

Price is the only component of marketing mix which renders profit. Price is easy

to change, adjust and also so important for competition. Price is directly related

to the perceived quality of the product. in the process of pricing a firm must pay

attention to the demand of its products, the demand elasticity, cost of production

and sale, customers needs and wants and also competitors reactions to price

change. Price can be set high initially and gradually decrease as the skimming

strategy or set low and increase steadily as penetrating method. price can be cut

or suddenly increased and finally price can be changes for maximizing profit,

increasing market share, survival or minimizing competition. all these issues

must be intelligently analyzed.

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