Marketing Concepts

 *Dr.P.Shanmukha Rao  **Dr.N.V.S.Suryanarayana

Market:  The concepts of exchange and relationships lead to the concept of a market.  A market is the set of actual and potential buyers of a product.  These buyers share a particular need or want that can be satisfied through exchange relationships.

Marketing means managing markets to bring about profitable customer relationships. However, creating these relationships takes work.  Sellers must search for buyers, identify must first create a need-satisfying marketing offer (product). It must decide how much it will charge for the offer (price) and how it will make the offer available target consumers (place).  Finally, it must communicate with the target customers about the offer and persuade them of its merits (promotion).

Marketing: Marketing is the business function that identifies customer needs and wants. Creating customer value and satisfaction are the heart of modern marketing thinking and practice. Marketing is the delivery of customer satisfaction at a profit.

             Many people think of marketing only as selling & advertising. But selling & advertising are only the tip of marketing. Marketing means managing markets to bring about exchanges and relationships for the purpose of creating value and satisfying needs & wants.

Today, marketing must be understood not in the old sense of making a sale – ‘’telling and selling” – but in the new sense of satisfying customer needs.  If the marketer does a good job of understanding consumer needs; develops products that provide superior value; and prices, distributes, and promotes them effectively, these products will sell very easily.  Thus, selling and advertising are only part of a larger ‘’marketing mix” – a set of marketing tools that work together to satisfy customer needs and build customer relationships.

Broadly defined, marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging value with others.  In a narrower business context, marketing involves building profitable, value – laden exchange relationships with customers.  Hence, we define marketing as the process by which companies create value for customers and build strong relationships in order to capture value from customers in return.

Customer Needs, Wants, and Demands:

The most basic concept underlying marketing is that of human needs.  Human needs are states of felt deprivation.  They include basic physical needs for food, clothing, warmth, and safety: social needs for belonging and affection: and individual needs for knowledge and self – expression.  These needs were not created by marketers: they are a basic part of the human makeup.

           

                        Wants are the form human needs take as they are shaped by culture and individual personality. An American needs food but wants a              Big Mac, French fries, and a soft drink. A person in Mauritius needs food but wants a mango. Rice, lentils, and beans.  Wants are shaped by buying power, wants become demands.  Given their wants and resources, people demand products with benefits that add up to the most value and satisfaction.

       

Marketing Management: 

The analysis, planning, implementation and control of programs design to create, build and maintain beneficial exchanges with target buyers for the purpose of achieving organizational objectives.

Marketing Management Concepts

Production

Product

Selling

Marketing

Societal

   

 

Production concept:

 

Management should focus on improving production and distribution efficiency. When the demand for a product exceeds the supply, management should looks for ways to increase production. When the products cost is too high, improved productivity is needed to bring it down.

Product concept:

                 Consumer will favour products that offer the most quality, performance and innovative features. Thus, an organization should devote energy to making continues product improvements. 

Selling concept:

            Consumers will not buy enough of the organizations products unless its under takes large-scale selling and promotion effort. 

                        Existing           Selling &         Profits through

Factory            products          promoting        sales volume

Selling:

Selling is also important function of marketing. It is the process where by goods and services finally flow to the customers who need them. Selling focuses on the needs of the seller.

Marketing concept:

 

                        Customer         Integrated       Profits through

Market             needs               marketing        customer satisfaction

            The marketing concept holds that achieving organizational goals depends on determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfaction more effectively and efficiently than to competitors.

Marketing means obtaining customers. Marketing focuses on the needs of the purchaser. Makes profits by creating long term customer relationships based on customer value and satisfaction. 

Societal concept:

 

            The societal marketing concept holds that the organization

Society

(Human welfare)

Consumers

(Want satisfaction)

Company

(Profits)

should determine the needs, wants and interests of target markets.

                                                                                                         

                                                                                                     

 

 

Marketing Mix (4 Ps):

            Marketing mix includes the set of controllable, tactical marketing tools in the target market.

• Ø  Product means the goods and services combination the company offer to the target market. Ex: Nuts & Bolts, Spark plugs, Pens & Pencils etc.

• Ø  Price is the amount of money customers have to pay to obtain the product.

• Ø  Place includes company activities that make the product available to target consumers

• Ø  Promotion means activities that communicate the merits of the product and persuade target customers to buy it. Ford spends money each year for advertising to tell consumer about the company and its product.

Product

Product variety

Quality & Design

Features

Brand name

Packaging & Services

Warranties & Returns

Price

List price

Discounts

Allowances

Payment period

Credit terms

Place

Channels

Coverage & Locations

Assortments

Inventory

Transportations

Logistics

Promotion

Advertising

Personal selling

Sales promotion

Public relations

Target

Customers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marketing effort / Marketing control:

            The company wants to design and put in to action the marketing mix that will best achieves its objectives in its target markets.

Planning

Develop strategic plans

Develop marketing plans

Implementation

Carry out plans

( The company turns the plans

in to action )

Control

Measure results

Evaluate results

Take corrective action

Analysis

Source by S.R.PADALA & NVS SURYANARAYANA

Renovate: restore or make new, reinvigorate, refresh or revive.

Now is the time to renovate your marketing strategies. By renovating your marketing strategies you will be investing in your future, making the most of the current economy and bringing in more revenue than your competitors.

Many businesses are cutting back on marketing due to the economy. They look at the budget and feel that marketing is a good place to cut. I believe this is the worst thing we can do as business owners during a tough economy. We need to be out in front of our clients now more than ever! In a good economy there is enough for all of us and sometimes it comes without much effort on our part. But in a tough economy, when people are carefully deliberating on each and every purchase – we can not afford to hide. We must be out in front of our clients and potential clients.

If we are not out in front of our target market – you can bet your competitors will be. But marketing does not have to look like what it has in the past. By taking on a marketing renovation project, you look at what is working, what can be cut and determine how you can use more low-cost or no-cost marketing solutions.

A marketing renovation isn’t about starting over – it’s about keeping what works, getting rid of what doesn’t and adding a few new pieces that will work better. It’s about refreshing or reinvigorating your current strategies to make them more effective and in the end bring in more revenue.

Our goal with marketing must be to stay in front of our target market consistently and effectively. We must stand out from our competition by sharing what makes us unique and by telling potential clients why they will benefit from working with us.

Now is the time to Renovate Your Marketing. Now is the time to be committed to growing your business. To making the changes needed to survive this economy. And to bring in more revenue. Now is the perfect time to renovate.

For more information about marketing renovation, contact Michelle at 207-847-3438 or e-mail michelle@michelleneujahr.com

Source by Michelle Neujahr

The marketing practices are century’s old, but systematic marketing concept as a distinct discipline has been evolved in the beginning of 20th century. “Customer are main decider of business” – this concept is getting ultimate importance from this century. The motive of any business was profit maximization through volume of business according to Selling Concept, but in later years of 20th century, the motive of business has been shifted toward profit maximization through customer satisfaction. In today’s competitive world each and every company has to face cutthroat competition with other competitors for a foothold in ever slippery market. That is why mere customer satisfaction is not assuring loyalty towards any brand. As prospects are having many choices and they are more price sensitive now, companies need to do something additional to make its customers retail. Previously companies used to offer differentiated products and services to retain their customers. But in today’s world imitation of new features and offers are very common and that is why product and service differentiation are tough. So, not only creation of new customers but also retention of old customers is very vital step for profit maximization.

The emphasis on relationship is now a key to successful business and the traditional concept of making sales is being replaced by making long time win – win relationship with customers. It is emerging as the core marketing activity for business operating in fiercely competitive environments. On average, business spends six times more to acquire customers than they do to keep them (Gruen, 1997). Therefore most of the firms are now paying more attention to their relationships with existing customers to retain them and increase their share of customers’ purchases. 

Relationship marketing can be defined as “process of attracting, maintaining, and in multi service organizations, enhancing customer relationship” – Berry (1983).

The underlying concept is that to keep the loyal customer retained within the company and to honour their long term performance.

Shani and Chalsani (1992) viewed relationship marketing as ‘ an integrated effort to identify, maintain and build up a network with individual customers and to continuously strengthen the network for mutual benefits of both the sides, through interactive, individualized and value added contracts over a long period of time.

Intensifying competition and technological developments made businesses look for ways to reduce cost and improve their effectiveness. The practice of relationship marketing has the potential to improve marketing productivity through marketing efficiencies and effectiveness (Sheth and Parvaliyar, 1995).

The benefits of relationship marketing and CRM come through lower costs of retention and increased profits due to longer defection rates (Reichheld & Sasser, 1990).

The developing economies now calculate on service industries. There is a shift to service economy from industrial economy. In this labour intensive sector relationship plays an important role. The major service organizations like banks, hospitals, hotels, IT and telecoms requires regular interaction of marketers and customers, so that the bond and understanding between both will become strong.

According to market Line Associates, the top 20% of typical bank customers produce as much as 150% of overall profit, while the bottom 20% drain about 50% from bank’s bottom line and the revenues from the rest just meeting their expenses.

Berry (1993) recommended the following five strategies for practicing relationship marketing:-

1. Developing a core service around which to build a customer relationship
2. Customizing relationship to the individual customer
3. Augmenting the core service with extra benefits
4. Pricing service to encourage customer loyalty
5. Marketing to employees so that they will perform well for customers

Development of relationship orientation of marketing in post industrial era is the rebirth of direct marketing between producers and consumers. Several environmental and organizational development factors are responsible for their rebirth. Development in information technology, data warehousing, data mining have made it possible for firms to maintain a one to one relationship with their customers.

Service firms are always been relationship oriented. The nature of service business is relationship based. A service is a process or performance where the customer is involved, sometimes for a long period of time, sometime only for a short time, and sometime on regular basis. There is always a direct contact between a customer and the service firms. This contact makes it possible to create a relationship between service provider and customer. In growing service businesses, the customer was turned from a relationship partner into market share statistics.

There are certain important issues for understanding customers and maintain a long term mutually trusted relationship with them. These issues are as follows –

1. CRM initiatives undertaken by firms
2. Development of those programs
3. Identifying important (key) customers
4. Measurement of effectiveness

CRM initiatives –

IT and Telecom, Banking, Hotel, Hospital sectors are adopting various CRM initiatives. In case of It and telecom the customer care centres are the initial receiver of customer complaints and processed that for the other levels of management for solution. In case of Banking, Hotels and Hospital sectors the feed back opportunity is one of the forms of getting customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction level. In customer centric marketing, marketers assess each customer individually to determine whether to serve that customer directly or indirectly. Also customer centric marketers determine whether to create an offering that customizes the product or service of the marketing mix or standardize the offering.

Process –

Information from customers is collected systematically over a period of time. This can be done through regular surveys and during customer interaction noting down the important points. This information has to be combined with the organizations experiences with customers to build rich customer profiles, buying behaviours, preferences and usage patterns.

Identifying Key Customers –

When it comes to combining customer information with experiences, service firms seem to be economizing. Most of them seem to be doing it for selected customers. Hotels do it for their regular guests specially those who have enrolled for their membership schemes. Financial service providers selectively do it for their high net worth individuals who typically use multiple offerings of the service provider.

Measurement of Effectiveness –

Most service firms rely on periodic surveys to understand their customers’ expectations and also understand and anticipate the behaviour of customers. Many service firms have indicated that they work with their customers as a team to ensure that their expectations are to exceeded. Research has constantly indicated that one of the major reasons for poor quality service is the gap between perception of managers about the customer expectations and customers’ real or actual expectations (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1985). Roger and Dorf (1999) have recommended a four stage process of Identification, Differentiation, Interaction, and Customization for implementing one to one relationship with customers. After analyzing the information and findings company must go for implementing those key elements and again they need to follow up the result.

References –

1. Gronroos, C.(1995) ‘Relationship marketing: The Strategy Continuum’, Journal of Academy of Management Science, Vol 23, No. 4, pp 252 – 254
2. Parasuraman,A.,Zeithaml,V.A., & Berry, L.(1985), “A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research”, Journal of marketing, Fall, pp-40 – 50
3. Shainesh, G., Mohan, R., “Status of Customer Relationship in India” – www.decisioncraft.com
4. Kotler,P., Keller, K.L., Koshy, A., Jha, M., ‘Marketing Management – A South Asian Perspective’ – 13th edition pp – 22 -24, Pearson Education Ltd.

Source by Sunetra Paul Maitra

DATABASE MARKETING ITS ADVANTAGES

AND DISADVANTAGES

BY

Miss. P. PIRAKATHEESWARI, Lecturer in Commerce,

Sri Sarada College for Women (Autonomous), Salem – 16.

 “Knowledge is a process of pilling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification”

–         Alexander Graham Bell

 Introduction

           The database Marketing is the process of building, maintaining and utilizing the databases (on the customer, products, suppliers and resellers) for the purpose of contacting, transacting and building relationships.  The database marketing is an interactive approach to marketing, which uses the individually addressable marketing media and channels such as mail, telephone and the sales force.

 Features

 The salient features of database marketing include:

ü      Extending help to a company to reach its target audience;

ü      Stimulating the customer demand; and

ü      Recording and maintaining an electronic database of the customer, and all commercial contacts, so that the business firm could improve their future contacts and devise a more realistic marketing strategy.

 Characteristics of Database Marketing 

1. Each actual or potential customer is identified as a record on the marketing database.
2. Each customer record contains information (used to identify the likely purchases of particular products and how they should be approached) on:

• Identification and access (eg. Name, address, telephone No)
• Customer needs & characteristics (demographic and psychographic information about customers, the industry type and decision making unit information for the industrial customers)
• Campaign Communications (whether the customer has been exposed to particular marketing communication campaigns)
• Customers past responses to communications done as a part of the campaigns
• Past transactions of customers (with the company and possibly with the competitors).

1. This enables the firm to decide on how to respond to the customer needs.
2. The database is used to record the responses of the customer to the firm’s initiatives. (e.g. marketing communications or sales campaigns).
3. The information is also made available to the company’s marketing policy makers which enables them to decide:

• The target markets or segments appropriate for each product or service.
• The marketing mix (price, marketing communications, distributions channel, etc) appropriate for each product in each target market.

1. This step is vital in relationship marketing.
2. The marketing campaigns are devised in such a manner to provide the most relevant information that the company is seeking.

 The growth of database marketing has been facilitated by:

• The powerful processing capability and the immense storage capacity of state-of-the-art computers; and
• The manner in which the telecommunication technology is harnessed to make the customer and market data available to the wide variety of staff involved in the marketing and sales offices.

 Advantages of Database Marketing

             The one-on-one marketing, which directs the customized offerings to individual customers, has provided an additional thrust to database marketing.  It has employed the database to capture the interactions between a firm and its customers at each point of time and utilizes the data analysis to search for patterns in these interactions.  These patterns provide the most attractive potential customers besides providing clues in customizing the products, pricing and promotions of a product.  When utilized in the proper manner, the database marketing could provide insights into the customer’s buying behavior across the product categories, so that the companies could devise their programmes and plans to the “whole customer”, then the customer seen only through the narrow view of their own products and brands.

 Disadvantages of Database Marketing 

• The cost incurred in setting up the software and hardware requirements has made the database marketing expensive in its establishment.
• The database often demands new skills and organizations from new analytical and decision-making skills in sales and marketing to a revamped information system organization that could support the entirely new class of users.
• The database marketing depends on the data quality.  While the observational data is powerful, the corrupted observational data could be ‘powerful misleading’.  The quality also depends on the quality of analysis and the extent to which the databases are linked.
• Till now, the database marketing has been primarily used as a tactical tool.

 Conclusion        

The application of technologies to great more customer added value and to facilitate the coordinating of networks is of particular importance for a modern organisation and its networks.  A well-integrated application of technology and staff along with experience that could respond to the customer needs, encourage the customers to use a whole range of products/services of firm rather than confine to just a few.

The new technologies have radically altered the ways in which many service organizations deal with their customers.  The most powerful force for change today comes from the integration of computers and telecommunications.  The digitization allows text, graphics, video and audio to be manipulated, stored and transmitted in the digital language of computers.  The faster and more powerful software enables firms to create relational databases that combine the information’s about customers with details of all their transactions.  The firms could utilize these databases for a) insights into new trends, b) new approaches to segmentation and c) new marketing opportunities.  The technological change affects many other types of services too from airfreight to hotels to the retail stores.

Source by P. Pirakatheeswari

Graphic design is not just about style. It’s about finding the best way to communicate your message. Many company’s help you produce materials that speak to your audiences in strong and clear ways: from stationery systems and direct mailers to annual reports and corporate brochures and they develop strategic communications pieces that reflect your brand’s personality.

The graphic design work should be geared to match your existing brand image, or they should help you to define a new look for all your communications with a complete corporate identity.

Graphic Design Capabilities
•    Brochure Design and Catalogs
•    Web Design
•    Print Layout Design
•    Logo Design, Corporate ID
•    Print Ad Design
•    Flyer Design
•    Posters
•    DVD/CD Covers
•    Product Packaging
•    Newsletter Design
•    Powerpoint Presentations
•    Postcard Design
•    Direct Mail
•    Annual Reports
•    Pocket Folders
•    Email Newsletter
•    Printing
•    Trade Show Displays
•    Catalogs
•    Consumer Packaging
•    Copy Writing

marketing materials and graphics:

Brochures

With just a few seconds to seal the deal, you need a design that really calls out to your target market. Do your marketing materials convey the strength and uniqueness of your firm’s abilities?

A brochure is typically created to help brand your company, showing benefits and features of your firm. And if the text is created with a marketing purpose, it should invoke a response from your reader. After the copy is developed, it should make you want to call your firm for more information. A brochure should help you create a warm lead.

Trade Show Displays

Utilizing the space in your trade show booth to its optimal selling power is crucial to getting a passerby to stop and take a look at what you have to offer. Each person spends about 3 seconds to take in what you are promoting. If they don’t get your marketing message in that amount of time, you’ve lost them for good. By putting your company on display in the most professional and attention grabbing manner, your marketing dollars will prove worthwhile. The companies should guide you through the process to determine what size trade show display is most appropriate for your exhibit space and advise you on what marketing message, graphics, and promotional products will be most successful.

Catalogs

Want to liven up the next issue of your catalog? The service providers catalog design services for print and online include project coordination, content development, writing, editing, photography, design, printing, binding and fulfillment. They should even publish your catalog in print, for web, e-book, e-commerce or request for quote.

They should work with you to determine which products are critical to your success, which are new and untested and where and how to position products in the catalog for maximum sales. If you have an existing catalog, they help you with a catalog performance analysis and what they learned should be implement your new catalog.

Consumer Packaging

With the right consumer packaging, your product will grab the attention of shoppers while building your brand’s credibility. Your service provider should create package designs that deliver important product information in an easy to read format. Additionally, their consumer package designs should comply with the important federal packaging laws.

Source by Circle Limit Media