Name: Steven P Sanderson II

Date: 7-11-06
Class: Intro to Business BA11 5040
Professor: McNamara

This reaction paper will be discussing topics that were discussed in chapter 13 on
the topic of Marketing: Building customer and Stakeholder relationships. To be able to
discuss marketing we first need a definition. Our text defines marketing as the process of
planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of goods and
services to facilitate exchanges that individual and institutional objectives. Many people
only think of marketing as selling and advertising while these certainly are parts of
marketing they are only parts of the larger aforementioned process. Marketing as
suggested by the American Marketing Association is an organizational function and a set
of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for
managing customer relationships in ways that benefit an organization and its
stakeholders. Stakeholders as we remember are all the people who stand to gain or lose
by the policies and activities of a business. On the other hand Christian Gronross, in the
context of a move to relationship marketing summarized a rather different European view
of a definition given by Philip Kotler, Christian stated “Marketing is to establish,
maintain and enhance long term customer relationships at a profit, so that the objectives
of the parties involved are met”. This is done by mutual exchange and fulfillment
promise. The most widely accepted definition comes from Charted Institute of Marketing
(CIM) in the UK which is the largest marketing body in the world in terms of
membership. The definition claims marketing to be the “Management process of
anticipating identifying and satisfying customer requirements profitably”.

Prior to the advent of market research most companies were product focused,
employing teams of sales people to push their products into or onto the open market
regardless of desire, which from reading the chapter we understand that this type of
marketing is not the best since a good marketing department will see problems then come
up with solutions that are attainable and viable for their customers. An emerging area of
study and practice concerns Internal Marketing, or how employees are trained and
managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and
retention of customers. Today marketing methods are informed by many of the social
sciences, particularly psychology, sociology and economics. Today anthropology is a
small but growing influence.

The word market originally meant the place where the exchange between buyer
and seller took place. Today we speak of a market as a region where goods and services
are bought and sold. There are four major market groups and they are: Consumer,
business to business, institutional and reseller. Branding refers to the sum total of your
company’s value proposition: products, services, people, advertising, positioning, culture
and end-user partner relationships. As stated in the chapter the four P’s of marketing are
product, pricing, promotion and placement. Since we already understand the four P’s of
marketing I will only discuss the seven P’s or sometimes referred to as extra or expanded
parts of the marketing mix. These are as follows: People, process and physical evidence.
People would include any person coming into contact with customers that can have an
overall impact on customer satisfaction. Whether as part of a supporting service to a
product or involved in a total service people are particularly important because in the
customer’s eyes, they are generally inseparable form the total service. As a result of this
they must be appropriately trained, well motivated and the right type of person. Process
is the sixth P and is defined as the process is involved in providing a service and the
behavior of people, which can be crucial to customer satisfaction. Physical evidence
unlike a product, a service cannot be experienced before it is delivered, which makes it
intangible. This therefore means that potential customers perceive risk when deciding
whether or not to use a service. To reduce the feeling of risk thus improving the chance
of success, it is often vital to offer potential customers the chance to see what the service
would be like this is done by providing physical evidence, such as case studies and
testimonials.

Some aspects of marketing are especially promotion are the subject of criticism.
It is especially problematic in classical economic theory, which is based on supply and
demand, being independent; however, product promotion is an attempt coming from the
supply side to influence demand. In this way producer market power is attained as
measured by profits that would not be realized under a free market. Then the argument
follows that non-free markets are imperfect and lead to production and consumption of
suboptimal amounts of product. This in my opinion is the way things are due to the fact
that some businesses do fail and actually need to fail. If no businesses failed then there
would be a large market in many where over production would be a problem.