Marketing Management — notes

• Market: all the actual and potential buyers of a product (the old meaning was a place).
• Marketer: the party that takes more initiative in creating the exchange.
• Marketing: a social process of identifying needs and creating, offering and exchanging products of value to satisfy them.
• Features: needs and wants; creating a market offering; customer value; exchange mechanism.
• Conditions of exchange: two or more parties; something of value on each side; communication; freedom to accept or reject.

Marketing vs selling: selling is a part of marketing; it starts after production and earns through volume. Marketing starts with needs, includes the whole mix and after-sale service, and earns through satisfaction.

1. Gathering and analysing market information — needs, tastes, buying power, competition.
2. Marketing planning — marketing objectives and the action programme.
3. Product designing and development — features and quality that suit the target buyers.
4. Standardisation and grading — producing to fixed specifications; sorting produce into quality classes.
5. Packaging and labelling.
6. Branding.
7. Customer support services — installation, repairs, complaints, credit.
8. Pricing.
9. Promotion.
10. Physical distribution, transportation, storage and warehousing.

Marketing mix: product, price, place, promotion.

Product classes: consumer products (convenience, shopping, speciality; durable and non-durable) and industrial products.

Branding. Brand, brand name (spoken part), brand mark (symbol), trade mark (registered). Advantages to marketers: differentiation, help in advertising, differential pricing, easier launch of new products. To customers: easy identification, assurance of quality, status. A good brand name is short and easy to say and remember, suggestive, distinctive, adaptable and registrable.

Packaging. Levels: primary, secondary, transportation. Importance today: health and sanitation standards, self-service retail, innovational opportunity, product differentiation. Functions: identification, protection, convenience, promotion.

Labelling. Describes the product and its use, identifies it, grades it, helps promotion, and gives information required by law.

Factors affecting price: product cost (floor), utility and demand (ceiling), extent of competition, government and legal regulations, pricing objectives (profit maximisation, market share leadership, surviving competition, product quality leadership), marketing methods used.

Channels: zero level (direct), one level (retailer), two level (wholesaler and retailer), three level (agent, wholesaler, retailer). Factors in choice: product, company, competition, market, environment.

Physical distribution components: order processing; transportation (place utility); warehousing (time utility); inventory control (level of stock, balancing service and cost).

Advertising: paid, impersonal, identified sponsor. Merits: mass reach, customer confidence, expressiveness, economy per person. Limitations: less forceful, no feedback, inflexible, low effectiveness for some buyers. Objections (cost, social values, confusion, inferior goods, bad taste) each have a reply.

Personal selling: face to face, two-way, flexible, builds relationships; suits technical or costly goods. Qualities of a good salesperson include product knowledge, courtesy, persuasiveness and honesty.

Sales promotion: short-term incentives such as rebate, discount, refund, product combination, quantity gift, instant or lucky draw, usable benefit, full finance at zero per cent, sampling and contests.

Public relations: press relations, product publicity, corporate communication, lobbying and counselling, protecting image and goodwill.