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

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12. Pricing strategies

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

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

MARKETING PLANNING AND STRATEGIES

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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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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 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

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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.