Critical Analysis about Marketing

Marketing satisfies these needs and wants through exchange processes and building long term relationships.

It is the process of communicating the value of a product or service through positioning to customers. Marketing can be looked at as an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, delivering and communicating value to customers, and managing customer relationships in ways that also benefit the organization and Its shareholders.Marketing Is the science of choosing target markets through market analysis and market segmentation, as well as understanding consumer buying behavior and providing superior customer value. There are five competing concepts under which organizations can choose to operate their business; the production concept, the product concept, the selling concept, the arresting concept, and the holistic marketing concept. The four components of holistic marketing are relationship marketing, internal marketing, integrated marketing, and socially responsive marketing.

The set of engagements necessary for successful marketing management includes, capturing marketing insights, connecting with customers, building strong brands, shaping the market offerings, delivering and communicating value, creating long-term growth, and developing marketing strategies and plans. B) Explain two (2) major trends and forces that can change the marketing landscape and challenging marketing strategy Major Trends And Forces That Can Change The Marketing Landscape As the world spins into the 21 SST century, dramatic changes are occurring in the marketing arena.The explosive growth in computer, telecommunications, information, transportation, and other technologies has had a major impact on marketing. The technology has created exciting new ways to learn about customers, and to create products and services tailored to Individual customer needs. In an Increasingly smaller world, many marketers are now connected globally with their customers and marketing partners. Today, almost every company, large or mall, is touched in some way by global competition.

Thus, managers in countries company's industry, competitors, and opportunities.Today's marketers are also re-examining their social values and social responsibilities. As the worldwide consumerism and environmentalism movements mature, marketers are being called upon to take greater responsibility for the social and environmental impacts of their actions. Corporate ethics and social responsibility have become hot topics for almost every business.

Few companies can ignore the renewed and very demanding environmental movement. In the past, marketing has been most widely applied in the for-profit business sector.In recent years, however marketing has also become a major power of the strategies of many non-profit organizations, such as colleges, hospitals, museums, symphony orchestras, and even churches. Finally, the major new developments in marketing can be summed up in a single word: relationships.

Today, smart marketers of all kinds are taking advantage of new opportunities for building relationships with their customers, their marketing partners, and the world around them. Challenging Marketing StrategyMarketing strategies serve as the fundamental underpinning of marketing plans designed to fill market needs and reach marketing objectives. Plans and objectives are generally tested for measurable results. Commonly, marketing strategies are developed as multi-year plans, with a tactical plan detailing specific actions to be accomplished in the current year. Time horizons covered by the marketing plan vary by company, by industry, and by nation, however, time horizons are becoming shorter as the speed of change in the environment increases.

Marketing strategies are dynamic and interactive. They are partially planned and partially unplanned. See strategy dynamics. Marketing strategy needs to take a long term view, and tools such as customer lifetime value models can be very powerful in helping to simulate the effects of strategy on acquisition, revenue per customer and churn rate. Marketing strategy involves careful scanning of the internal and external environments.

Internal environmental factors include the marketing mix and marketing mix modeling, plus performance analysis and strategic constraints. External environmental factors include customer analysis, competitor analysis, target market analysis, as well as evaluation of any elements of the technological, economic, ultra or political/legal environment likely to impact success. A key component of marketing strategy is often to keep marketing in line with a company's overarching mission statement.Once a thorough environmental scan is complete, a strategic plan can be constructed to identify business alternatives, establish challenging goals, determine the optimal developing a marketing strategy is to create a plan to monitor progress and a set of contingencies if problems arise in the implementation of the plan.

Marketing Mix Modeling is often used to help determine the optimal marketing edged and how to allocate across the marketing mix to achieve these strategic goals. Moreover, such models can help allocate spend across a portfolio of brands and manage brands to create value. ) Marketers need to understand customer needs and want and the marketplace within which they operate. Describe the five (5) core concept of marketing.

Most successful firms today practice the marketing concept - that is, marketers first identify customer needs and then provide products that satisfy those needs, ensuring firms long term profitability. 1. Needs, Wants and Demands The most basic concept here is the human needs, human needs are nothing but state of felt deprivation, this include physical, social and individual needs.The form which human needs take are called as wants, these are shaped by culture and individual personality, for instance and Indian when he feels hungry he would look for a road side, whereas a person in US would look for a Burger or McDonald.

When a need is backed by buying power it becomes demand. 2. Market Offerings Consumer needs and wants are fulfilled by market offerings - some combination of products, services, information, or experiences offered to a market to satisfy a need r a want. Market offerings are not limited to physical products.They also include services - activities or benefits offered for sale that are essentially intangible and do not result in the ownership of anything. Examples include banking, airline, hotel, tax preparation, and home repair services.

More broadly, market offerings also include other entities, such as persons, places, organizations, information, and ideas. Many sellers make the mistake of paying more attention to the specific products they offer than to the benefits and experiences produced by these products. These sellers suffer from marketing myopia.Marketing myopia is defined as the mistake of paying more attention to the specific products a company offers than to the benefits and experiences produced by these products. They are so taken with their products that they focus only on existing wants and lose sight of underlying customer needs.

3. Value and satisfaction Consumers usually face a broad array of products and services that might satisfy a given need. How do they choose among these many market offerings? Customers form expectations about the value and satisfaction that various market offerings will deliver and buy accordingly.Satisfied customers buy again and tell others about their good experiences. Dissatisfied customers often switch to competitors and disparage the product to others. Marketers must be careful to set the right level of expectations.

If they set expectations too low, they may satisfy those who buy but fail to attract enough buyers. If they set expectations too high, buyers will be disappointed. Customer value and customer satisfaction are key building blocks for developing and managing customer relationships 4. Exchanges and Relationship relationships.

Exchange is the act of obtaining a desired object from someone by offering something in return. In the broadest sense, the marketer tries to bring about a response to some market offering. The response may be more than simply buying or trading products and services. Marketing consists of actions taken to build and maintain desirable exchange relationships with target audiences involving a product, service, idea, or other object.

Beyond simply attracting new customers and creating transactions, companies want to retain customers and grow their businesses.Marketers want to build strong relationships by consistently delivering superior customer value 5. Markets 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 or service. 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 their needs, design good market offerings, set prices for them, promote them, and store and deliver them.Activities such as consumer research, product development, communication, distribution, pricing, and service are core marketing activities. The below figure represents the marketing system Marketing involves serving a market of final consumers in the face of competitors. The company and competitors research the market and interact with consumers to understand their needs. Then they create and send their market offerings and messages to consumers, either directly or through marketing intermediaries.

Each party in the system is affected by major environmental forces (demographic, economic, natural, technological, political, and social/cultural).The arrows represent relationship that must be developed and managed to create customer value and profitable customer relationship Each party in the system adds value. Wall-Mart cannot fulfill its promise of low prices unless its suppliers provide low costs. Ford cannot deliver a high quality car-ownership experience unless its dealers provide outstanding service. A) Describe the four (4) types of consumer buying behavior.

1) Complex buying behavior - when the consumer is highly involved in the buying and there is significant differences between brands then it is called complex buying behavior.So in this case the consumer must collect proper information about the product features and the marketer must provide detailed information regarding the product attributes. For egg. Consumer while buying a motor cycle is highly involved in the purchase and has the knowledge about significant differences between brands.

2) Variety seeking behavior - in this case consumer involvement is low while buying the product but there are significant differences between brands. Consumers generally buy different products not due to dissatisfaction from the earlier product but due to seek variety.Like every time they buy different washing detergent Just for variety. So it is the duty of the marketer to encourage the consumer to buy the product by offering them discounts, free samples and by advertising the product a ) Dissonance buying behavior - here consumer is highly involved in the purchase but there are few differences between brands. Like consumer while buying a floor tiles buy them quickly as there are few differences between brands. 4) Habitual buying behavior - in this case there is low involvement of the consumer and there are few differences between brands.

The consumer buys the product quickly. For egg. Toothpaste. B) Mr..

Karee is a managing director of a software company and he is planning to purchase a new car for his family. Identify and demonstrate the stages in his buying decision process. Problem/Need Recognition Problem/Need Recognition is the first and most important step in the Buying Decision Process. Without the recognition of the need, a purchase cannot take place.

The need can be triggered by internal stimuli (e. G. Hunger, thirst) or external stimuli (e. G. Advertising).Abraham Moscow dictates that needs are arranged in a hierarchy.

According to Mason's hierarchy, only when a person has fulfilled the needs at a certain stage, can he or she move to the next stage. Information Search The Information Search stage is the next step customers may take after they have solution. This is buyers' effort at searching the internal and external business environments to identify and observe information sources related to the focal buying decision. A consumer can rely on print, visual and voice media for getting information.Evaluation of Alternatives At this stage, consumers evaluate different products/brands on the basis of varying product attributes, those have the ability to deliver the benefits that the customer is seeking. This stage is heavily influenced by one's attitude, as "attitude puts one in a frame of mind: liking or disliking an object, moving towards or away from it".

Another factor that influences the evaluation process is the degree of involvement. For example, if the customer involvement is high, then he/she will evaluate a number of brands; whereas if it is low, only one brand will be evaluated.Purchase Decision This is the fourth stage, where the purchase takes place. According to Philip Kettle, Keller, Kooky and Shah (2009), the final purchase decision can be disrupted by two factors: negative feedback from other customers and the level of motivation to comply or accept the feedback. For example, after going through the above three takes, a customer chooses to buy a Nixon DID DSL camera. Although, because his very personal friend, who is also a photographer, gives him negative feedback, he will then be bound to change his preference.

Secondly, the decision may be disrupted due to unanticipated situations such as a sudden Job loss or the closing of a retail store. Post-purchase Behavior These stages are critical to retain customers. In short, customers compare products with their expectations and are either satisfied or dissatisfied. This can then greatly affect the decision process for a similar purchase from the same company in the true, mainly at the information search stage and evaluation of alternatives stage.