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Saturday, December 8, 2007

Two levels of marketing
Strategic Marketing attempts to determine how an organization competes against its competitors in a market place. In particular, it aims at generating a competitive advantage relative to its competitors.
Operational Marketing executes marketing functions to attract and keep customers and to maximize the value derived for them, as well as to satisfy the customer with prompt services and meeting the customer expectations. Operational Marketing includes the determination of the marketing mix.

Four Ps
Main article: Marketing mix
In the early 1960 Professor Neil Borden at Harvard Business School acknowledged a number of company performance actions that can influence the consumer decision to purchase goods or services. Borden suggested that all those actions of the company represented a “Marketing Mix”. Professor E. Jerome McCarthy, also at the Harvard Business School in the early 1960s, suggested that the Marketing Mix contained 4 elements: product, price, place and promotion.
In popular usage, "marketing" is the promotion of products, especially advertising and branding. However, in professional usage the term has a wider meaning which recognizes that marketing is customer-centered. Products are often developed to meet the desires of groups of customers or even, in some cases, for specific customers. E. Jerome McCarthy divided marketing into four general sets of activities. His typology has become so universally recognized that his four activity sets, the Four Ps, have passed into the language.
The four Ps are:
Product: The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants. The scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support.
Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary - it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, psychology or attention.
Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.
Placement or distribution refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point of sale placement or retailing. This fourth P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or services is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc.
These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix,[1] which a marketer can use to craft a marketing plan. The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Industrial products, services, high value consumer products require adjustments to this model. Services marketing must account for the unique nature of services. Industrial or B2B marketing must account for the long term contractual agreements that are typical in supply chain transactions. Relationship marketing attempts to do this by looking at marketing from a long term relationship perspective rather than individual transactions.
As a counter to this, Morgan, in Riding the Waves of Change (Jossey-Bass, 1988), suggests that one of the greatest limitations of the 4 Ps approach "is that it unconsciously emphasizes the inside–out view (looking from the company outwards), whereas the essence of marketing should be the outside–in approach". Nevertheless, the 4 Ps offer a memorable and workable guide to the major categories of marketing activity, as well as a framework within which these can be used.


Seven Ps
As well as the standard four Ps (Product, Pricing, Promotion and Place), services marketing calls upon an extra three, totaling seven and known together as the extended marketing mix. These are:
People: Any person coming into contact with customers can have an impact on overall 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 from the total service . As a result of this, they must be appropriately trained, well motivated and the right type of person. Fellow customers are also sometimes referred to under 'people', as they too can affect the customer's service experience, (e.g., at a sporting event).
Process: This is the process(es) involved in providing a service and the behaviour 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 could perceive greater risk when deciding whether to use a service. To reduce the feeling of risk, thus improving the chance for success, it is often vital to offer potential customers the chance to see what a service would be like. This is done by providing physical evidence, such as case studies, testimonials or demonstrations.
Web 2.0 and Marketing New 4Ps
The original 4Ps concept idea was developed to help marketers manage the four most important aspect of marketing. With the Internet and the Web 2.0, marketers have needed to adapt a broader perspective on these elements. Idris Mootee devised a “New 4Ps” model in 2001 to supplement the traditional marketing 4Ps.[2] They are Personalization, Participation, Peer-to-Peer and Predictive Modeling.
Personalization: The author here refers to customization of products and services through the use of the Internet. Early examples include Dell on-line and Amazon.com, but this concept is further extended with emerging social media and advanced algorithms. Emerging technologies will continue to push this idea forward.
Participation: This is to allow customer to participate in what the brand should stand for; what should be the product directions and even which ads to run. This concept is laying the foundation for disruptive change through democratization of information.
Peer-to-Peer': This refers to customer networks and communities where advocacy happens. The historical problem with marketing is that it is "interruptive" in nature, trying to impose a brand on the customer. This is most apparent in TV advertising. These "passive customer bases" will ultimately be replaced by the "active customer communities". Brand engagement happens within those conversations. P2P is now being referred as Social Computing and will likely to be the most disruptive force in the future of marketing.
Predictive modeling: This refers to predictive algorithms, such as neural network, that are being successfully applied in marketing problems (both a regression as well as a classification problem).
MARKETING

Marketing is a societal process that is needed to discern consumers' wants; focusing on a product/service to those wants, and to mould the consumers towards the products/services. Marketing is fundamental to any businesses growth. The marketing teams (Marketers) have the task to create the consumer awareness of the products/services through marketing techniques; if a business does not pay attention to their products/services and their consumers' demographics, the business would not be able to endure longevity.
Marketing tends to be seen as a creative industry, which includes advertising, distribution and selling. It is also concerned with anticipating the customers' future needs and wants, often through market research.
Its specialist areas include:
Advertising and Branding
Direct Marketing
International Marketing
Public Relations
Communications
Strategic Management
Market Research
Events Organization
Database Marketing
Search Engine Marketing


Introduction

A market-focused, or customer-focused, organization first determines what its potential customers desire, and then builds the product or service. Marketing theory and practice is justified in the belief that customers use a product or service because they have a need, or because it provides a perceived benefit.
Two major factors of marketing are the recruitment of new customers (acquisition) and the retention and expansion of relationships with existing customers (base management). Once a marketer has converted the prospective buyer, base management marketing takes over. The process for base management shifts the marketer to building a relationship, nurturing the links, enhancing the benefits that sold the buyer in the first place, and improving the product/service continuously to protect the business from competitive encroachments.
For a marketing plan to be successful, the mix of the four "Ps" must reflect the wants and desires of the consumers in the target market. Trying to convince a market segment to buy something they don't want is extremely expensive and seldom successful. Marketers depend on marketing research, both formal and informal, to determine what consumers want and what they are willing to pay for it. Marketers hope that this process will give them a sustainable competitive advantage. Marketing management is the practical application of this process. The offer is also an important addition to the 4P's theory.
Within most organizations, the activities encompassed by the marketing function are led by a Vice President or Director of Marketing. A growing number of organizations, especially large US companies, have a Chief Marketing Officer position, reporting to the Chief Executive Officer.
The American Marketing Association (AMA) states, “Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives".
Marketing methods are informed by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, sociology, and economics. Anthropology is also a small, but growing, influence. Market research underpins these activities. Through advertising, it is also related to many of the creative arts. Marketing is a wide and heavily interconnected subject with extensive publications. It is also an area of activity infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture.
Marketing is a very essential part of any business.

now its great time to invest

Market share

Market share, in strategic management and marketing, is the percentage or proportion of the total available market or market segment that is being serviced by a company.
It can be expressed as a company's sales revenue (from that market) divided by the total sales revenue available in that market. It can also be expressed as a company's unit sales volume (in a market) divided by the total volume of units sold in that market.
It is generally necessary to commission market research (generally desk/secondary research, although sometimes primary research) to estimate the total market size and a company's market share
Increasing market share is one of the most important objectives used in
business. The main advantage of using market share is that it abstracts from industry-wide macroenvironmental variables such as the state of the economy, or changes in tax policy. According to the national environment, the respective share of different companies changes and hence this causes change in the share market values; the reason can be political ups and downs, any disaster, any happening or mis-happening.
Other objectives include
return on investment (ROI), return on assets (ROA), and target rate of profit. Market share has the potential to increase profits as profit leads to more customers with a higher demand for a particular product.

Marketing Management

Marketing management is a business discipline focused on the practical application of marketing techniques and the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities. Marketing managers are often responsible for influencing the level, timing, and composition of customer demand in a manner that will achieve the company's objectives

Definition and scope

There is no universally accepted definition of the term. In part, this is due to the fact that the role of a marketing manager can vary significantly based on a business' size, corporate culture, and industry context. For example, in a large consumer products company, the marketing manager may act as the overall general manager of his or her assigned product category or brand with full profit & loss responsibility. In contrast, a small law firm may have no marketing personnel at all, requiring the firm's partners to make marketing management decisions on a largely ad-hoc basis.
Vispy Doctor of Ormax (www.ormaxworld.com) , India's leading marketing strategy expert, defines marketing management as applying available resources to create or change the perception of a product or service in the eyes of its target audience by the application of research and communication media.
In the widely used text Marketing Management (2006),
Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller define marketing management as "the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value." [1]
From this perspective, the scope of marketing management is quite broad. The implication of such a definition is that any activity or resource the firm uses to acquire customers and manage the company's relationships with them is within the purview of marketing management. Additionally, the Kotler and Keller definition encompasses both the development of new products and services and their delivery to customers.
Noted marketing expert
Regis McKenna expressed a similar viewpoint in his influential 1991 Harvard Business Review article "Marketing is Everything." McKenna argued that because marketing management encompasses all factors that influence a company's ability to deliver value to customers, it must be "all-pervasive, part of everyone's job description, from the receptionists to the Board of Directors." [2]
This view is also consistent with the perspective of management guru Peter Drucker, who wrote: "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only these two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business."[3]
But because many businesses operate with a much more limited definition of marketing, such statements can appear controversial, or even ludicrous to some business executives. This is especially true in those companies where the marketing department is responsible for little more than developing sales brochures and executing advertising campaigns.
The broader, more sophisticated definitions of marketing management from Drucker, Kotler and other scholars are therefore juxtaposed against the narrower operating reality of many businesses. The source of confusion here is often that inside any given firm, the term marketing management may be interpreted to mean whatever the marketing department happens to do, rather than a term that encompasses all marketing activities -- even those marketing activities that are actually performed by other departments, such as the
sales, finance, or operations departments.[4] If, for example, the finance department of a given company makes pricing decisions (for deals, proposals, contracts, etc.), that finance department has responsibility for an important component of marketing management -- pricing.