marketing concepts unit 1 - summary

Global Marketing Management -



Today's marketplace is driven by a variety of factors --your customers, your
competition, technology, and the market forces affecting your industry
on a global scale. To survive, you must constantly rethink and reinvent
your company's approach to and relationship with its critically
important customers.

Global Marketing Management focuses on competitive strategy,
particularly in a global context. Issues include understanding
customers, value delivery, relationship management, and communication
strategy.

Strategic Market Planning

A major challenge for marketing-oriented companies as they respond
to the rapidly changing marketplace is to engage continuously in
market-oriented strategic planning. They must learn how to develop and
maintain a viable fit among their objectives, resources, skills, and
opportunities. Corporate strategic planning involves four planning
activities.

1. Develop a clear sense of the company's mission in terms of its
   industry scope, products and applications scope, competence scope,
   market segment scope, vertical scope, and geographical scope.
   
2. Identify the company's strategic business units (SBUs).
   
   
3. Allocate resources to the various SBUs based on their market attractiveness and business strength.
   
   
4. Expanding present businesses and develop new products to fill the strategic planning gap.

Marketing plans focus on a product/market and consist of the
detailed marketing strategies and programs for achieving the product's
objectives in a target market. The marketing planning process consists
of five steps: analyzing market opportunities; researching and
selecting target markets; designing market strategies; planning
marketing programs; and organizing, implementing, and controlling the
marketing effort. The resulting document consists of and executive
summary, current market situation, opportunity and issue analysis,
objectives, marketing strategy, action programs, projected profit and
loss statement, and controls.

Measuring Demand & Scanning the Environment

Marketing information is a critical element in effective marketing
as a result of the trend toward global marketing, the transition from
buyer needs to buyer wants, and the transition from price to non-price
competition. All firms operate some form of marketing information
system that may consist of four subsystems: an internal records system,
a marketing intelligence system, marketing research, and a Marketing
Decision Support System (MDSS marketing system). These systems allow
marketing managers to estimate current and future demand.

Change in the macroenvironment is the primary basis for market
opportunity. Organizations/firms must start the search for
opportunities and possible threats with their macroenvironment. The
macroenvironment consists of all the actors and forces that affect the
organization's operations and performance. They need to understand the
trends and megatrends characterizing the current macroenvironment. This
is critical to identify and respond to unmet needs and trends in the
marketplace. The macroenvironment consists of six major forces:
demographic, economic, natural, technological, political/legal, and
social/cultural.

Analyzing Consumer and Business Markets' Buyer Behavior

In addition to a company's marketing mix and factors present in the
external environment, a buyer is also influenced by personal
characteristics and the process by which he or she makes decisions. A
buyer's cultural characteristics, including values, perceptions,
preferences, and behavior learned through family or other key
institutions, is the most fundamental determinant of a person's wants
and behavior. The buyer's behavior is influenced by four major factors:
cultural, social, personal, and psychological.

Business markets consist of individuals and organizations that buy
goods for purposes of further production, resale, or redistribution.
Businesses (including government and nonprofit organizations) are a
market for raw and manufactured materials and parts, installations,
accessory equipment, and supplies and services. The variables impacting
the business buyer are similar to those of the consumer buyer in some
ways but very different in others. In general, the business buyer is
much more technical, price-oriented, educated for the job, and
risk-averse than the consumer buyer. In addition, with the
business-buying environment, there is more concern for the status and
power of potential vendors, and persuasiveness and empathy play
relatively lower roles. Consumer and business markets and buying
behavior have to be understood before sound marketing plans can be
developed.