Marketing has many definitions. Definitions that focus on customer needs and that are customer-oriented can be used to explain the success of an organization much more clearly. Marketing can be defined as the process through which potential clients and customers who are willing and able to buy are enticed to buy your products or services. According to American Marketing Association, marketing is defined as “the process, the activity, and set of institutions for communicating, creating, exchanging and delivering offerings that have value for clients, customers, partners, and society at large.” According to the Chartered Institute of Marketing, marketing is defined as “The process of management used to identify, anticipate and satisfy customer requirements with the aim of making profits.” Importance of Marketing in an Organization An organization can only succeed when proper marketing strategies are put in place. Marketing determines the nature of an organization’s production and distribution channels for Continue reading
Marketing Management Basics
Macro Environment in Marketing
The Company’s Macro Environment The company and all of the other actors operate in a larger macro environment of forces that shape opportunities and pose threats to the company. There are six major forces (outlined below) in the company’s macro environment. There are six major forces (outlined below) in the company’s macro environment. Demographic. Economic. Natural. Technological. Political. Cultural. a. Demographic Environment Demography is the study of human populations in terms of size, density, location, age, sex, race, occupation, and other statistics. It is of major interest to marketers because it involves people and people make up markets. Demographic trends are constantly changing. Some more interesting ones are. 1). The world’s population (though not all countries) rate is growing at an explosive rate that will soon exceed food supply and ability to adequately service the population. The greatest danger is in the poorest countries where poverty contributes to the difficulties. Continue reading
Knowledge of Sub-Cultural Groups and Market Segmentation
The segmentation of the market involves the dividing of entire market into small customers groups who have different type of responses for different marketing strategies for particular service or product. In this way the organization can design the marketing policies according to the particular needs and requirements of each segment in order to have more profitability by more generating favorable responses than by simply applying a single marketing policy for whole market. The market segmentation is mostly done at the level of customers. But in case of international marketing sometimes markets are also segmented on the basis of whole countries by considering the aspects that are common among countries. This type of segmentation is not proved that much successful as countries have great variation in them and it is difficult to take meaningful averages. The most suitable basis that is used to segment the markets is customers and their unique Continue reading
Product Concept and Selling Concept in Marketing
The term marketing can be described as the management process through which goods and services move from concept to the customer. As a philosophy, marketing is based on thinking about the business in terms of customer needs and their satisfaction. In other definition, Marketing is the process of teaching consumers in terms of choosing the products which brings benefits to them and can be described as an organizational function and a set of process for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in various ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders. As for organizations or sales person, marketing is everything that the consumer encounters when it comes to your business. For examples such as advertising, to what they hear, to the customer service that they receive, to the follow-up care that you provide. It’s all known as the part of marketing subjects or criteria Continue reading
Market Research – Definition, Classification and Process
World is changing very rapidly with every passing day. The things which people only dreamed about a few years back are appealing reality today. Companies, their functions and their operations have improved tens of times and this advancement is increasing with every passing day. Same happened with people. Their level of awareness towards products and behavior is now quite thoughtful and demanding. Today’s buyers have forced all the business to make necessary changes. They are very cautious and take a lot of time to make decisions and want everything to be quick and easy. Understanding customer satisfaction, product launches, effectiveness of pricing, product, distribution and promotion activities, countering competitors techniques, assessing market potential, and predicting consumer behavior etc. have become extremely challenging and is often a cause of the decline of an organization. To deal with such problems, organizations conduct Market Research. Market research is an evaluation system which helps Continue reading
Word-Of-Mouth Marketing – Meaning and Importance
In the present age, when skipping of television commercials is merely a matter of pushing a button of television remote and traditional advertisements reach fewer number of people, marketing professionals are increasingly moving away from mass media to word-of-mouth marketing. In addition to the traditional word-of-mouth communications, emerging marketing channels like blogs, buzz, viral and e-mails are gaining popularity as the new electronic word-of-mouth. While a positive word-of-mouth accelerates the acceptance of brands in new markets and reduces brand promotional expenses in existing markets, a negative word-of-mouth may hamper a brand’s acceptance and tarnish its reputation. Since word-of-mouth marketing has been playing a major role in marketing of organizations and some of its aspects are still evolving and have strong potential in future marketing campaigns of organizations, the focus of this article would be to explore issues related to word-of-mouth marketing in developing a strategic marketing plan for an organization. Continue reading