Online Marketing:
Online marketing is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. It ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising and sales. Online marketing is the process of promoting an organization using online media, typically with the goals of increasing sales and boosting profits. Internet marketing does not simply mean building or promoting a website nor does it mean simply putting a banner ad up on another website. Effective online marketing requires a comprehensive strategy that synergies a given company's business model and sales goals with their website function & appearance, focusing on their target market through proper choice of advertising type, media, and design.
Challenges faced by Online Marketing:
Limited consumer exposure and buying: Online marketing still reaches only a limited market space. Web users appear to do more window browsing than actual buying. Only an estimate 18 percent of web surfers actually use the web regularly for shopping or to obtain commercial services such as travel information.
Skewed user demographics and psycho graphics: Online users tend to be more upscale and technically oriented than the general population. This makes online marketing ideal for marketing computer hardware and software, consumer electronics financial prices, and certain other classes of products. It makes online marketing less effective for selling mainstream products.
Chaos and clutter: The Internet offers up millions of web sites and a staggering volume of information. Thus, navigating the Internet can be frustrating, confusing, and time consuming for consumers. In this chaotic and cluttered environment, many web ads and sites go unnoticed or unopened. Even when noticed, marketers will find it difficult to hold consumer attention.
Security: Consumers worry that unscrupulous snoopers will eavesdrop on their online transactions or intercept their credit card numbers and make unauthorized purchases. In turn, companies doing business online fear that others will use the Internet to invade their computer systems for the purposes of commercial espionage or even sabotage, Online marketers are developing solutions to such security problems. However, there appears to be never ending competition between the technology of security systems and the sophistication of those seeking to thwart them.
Ethical concerns: privacy is a primary concern. Marketers can easily track web site visitors, and many consumers who participate in web site activities provide extensive personal information. This may leave consumers open to information abuse of companies make unauthorized use of the information in marketing their products or exchanging electronic lists with other companies. There are also concerns about segmentation and discrimination. The Internet currently serves upscale consumers well. However, poorer consumers have less access to the Internet, laying them increasingly less informed about products, services, and prices.
Showing posts with label MBA-1: Principles of Marketing (PM). Show all posts
Showing posts with label MBA-1: Principles of Marketing (PM). Show all posts
What is marketing concept? Do all companies need to practice the marketing concept? What type of companies need it most? MP-2009
There are five alternative concepts under which organizations conduct their marketing activities: the production, product, selling, marketing and societal marketing concepts.
The Production Concept:
The production concept holds that consumers will favor products that are available and highly affordable; therefore, management should focus on improving production and distribution efficiency. This concept is one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers.
The production concept is still a useful philosophy in two types of situations: (1) When the demand for a product exceeds the supply, management should look for ways to increase production. (2) When the product’s cost is too high, improved productivity is needed to bring it down.
The Product concept:
Another major concept guiding sellers, the product concept, holds that consumers will favor products that offer the most quality, performance, and innovative features. Thus, an organization should devote energy to making continuous product improvements.
The product concept also can lead to marketing myopia. For instance, railroad management once though that users wanted trains rather than transportation and overlooked the growing challenge of airlines, busses, trucks, and automobiles. Many colleges have assumed that high school graduates want a liberal arts education and have thus overlooked the increasing challenge from vocational schools.
The Selling Concept:
Many organizations follow the selling concept, which holds that consumers will not buy enough of the organization’s products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort. The concept is practiced with unsought goods hose that buyers do not normally think of buying, such as encyclopedias or insurance. These industries must excel at tracking down prospects and selling them on product benefits.
Most firms practice he selling concept when they have overcapacity. Their am is to sell what they make rather than make what the market wants. Such marketing carries high risks. It focuses on creating sales transactions rather than on building long-term, profitable relationships with customers. It assumes that customers who are coaxed into buying the product will like it. Or, if they don’t like it, they will possibly forget their disappointment and buy it again later. These are usually poor assumptions to make about buyers.
The Marketing Concept:
The marketing concept holds that achieving organizational goals depends on determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than do competitors. JC Penny’s motto also summarizes the marketing concept: “To do all in our power to pack the customer’s dollar full of value, quality, and satisfaction.”
The selling concept and the marketing concept are sometimes confused. Figure compares the two concepts. The selling concept takes an inside-out perspective. It starts with the factory, focuses on the company’s existing products, and calls for heavy selling and promotion to obtain profitable sales. It focuses heavily on customers conquest getting short-term sales with little concern about who buys or why. In contrast, the marketing concept takes an outside-in perspective. It starts with a well defined market, focuses on customer needs, coordinates all the marketing activities affecting customers, and makes profits by creating long-term customer relationships based on customer value and satisfaction. Under the marketing concept, companies produce what consumers want, thereby satisfying consumers and making profits.
Many successful an well-known companies have adopted the marketing concept. Procter & Gamble, Disney, Wal-Mart, Marriott, Nordstrom, and McDonald’s follow it faithfully. LL Bean, the highly successful catalog retailer of clothing and outdoor sporting equipment, was founded on the marketing concept.
A customer is the most important person ever in this company in person or by mail. A customer is not dependent on us, we are dependent on him. A customer is not an interruption of our work; he is the purpose of it. We are not doing a favor by serving him; he is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so. A customer is not someone to argue or match wits with nobody ever won an argument with a customer. A customer is a person who brings us his wants. It is our job to handle them profitably to him and to ourselves.
Many companies claim to practice the marketing concept but do not. They have the forms of marketing, such as a marketing vice president, product managers, marketing plans and marketing research, but this does not mean that they are market focused and customer driven companies. The question is whether they are finely tuned to changing customer needs and competitor strategies. Formerly great companies General Motors, IBM, Sears, Zenith all lost substantial market share because they failed to adjust their marketing strategies to the changing marketplace.
Several years of hard work are needed to turn a sales-oriented company into a marketing-oriented company. The goal is to build customer satisfaction into the vary fabric of the firm. Customer satisfaction is no longer a fad.
The Societal Marketing Concept:
The societal marketing concept holds that the organization should determine the needs, wants, and interests of target markets. It should then deliver superior value to customers in a way that maintains to improves the consumer’s and the society’s well-being. The societal marketing concept is the newest of the five marketing management philosophies.
The societal marketing concept questions whether the pure marketing concept is adequate in an age of environmental problems, resource shortages, rapid population growth, worldwide economic problems, and neglected social services. It asks if the firm that senses, serves, and satisfies individual wants is always doing what’s best for consumers and society in the long run. According to he societal marketing concept, the pure marketing concept overlooks possible conflicts between consumer short-run wants and consumer long-run welfare.
Th societal marketing concept calls on marketers to balance three considerations in setting their marketing policies: company profits, consumer wants and society’s interests. Originally, most companies based their marketing decisions largely on short-run company profit. Eventually, they began to recognize the long-run importance of satisfying consumer wants and he marketing concept emerged. Now many companies are beginning to think of society’s interests when making their marketing decisions.
The Production Concept:
The production concept holds that consumers will favor products that are available and highly affordable; therefore, management should focus on improving production and distribution efficiency. This concept is one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers.
The production concept is still a useful philosophy in two types of situations: (1) When the demand for a product exceeds the supply, management should look for ways to increase production. (2) When the product’s cost is too high, improved productivity is needed to bring it down.
The Product concept:
Another major concept guiding sellers, the product concept, holds that consumers will favor products that offer the most quality, performance, and innovative features. Thus, an organization should devote energy to making continuous product improvements.
The product concept also can lead to marketing myopia. For instance, railroad management once though that users wanted trains rather than transportation and overlooked the growing challenge of airlines, busses, trucks, and automobiles. Many colleges have assumed that high school graduates want a liberal arts education and have thus overlooked the increasing challenge from vocational schools.
The Selling Concept:
Many organizations follow the selling concept, which holds that consumers will not buy enough of the organization’s products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort. The concept is practiced with unsought goods hose that buyers do not normally think of buying, such as encyclopedias or insurance. These industries must excel at tracking down prospects and selling them on product benefits.
Most firms practice he selling concept when they have overcapacity. Their am is to sell what they make rather than make what the market wants. Such marketing carries high risks. It focuses on creating sales transactions rather than on building long-term, profitable relationships with customers. It assumes that customers who are coaxed into buying the product will like it. Or, if they don’t like it, they will possibly forget their disappointment and buy it again later. These are usually poor assumptions to make about buyers.
The Marketing Concept:
The marketing concept holds that achieving organizational goals depends on determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than do competitors. JC Penny’s motto also summarizes the marketing concept: “To do all in our power to pack the customer’s dollar full of value, quality, and satisfaction.”
The selling concept and the marketing concept are sometimes confused. Figure compares the two concepts. The selling concept takes an inside-out perspective. It starts with the factory, focuses on the company’s existing products, and calls for heavy selling and promotion to obtain profitable sales. It focuses heavily on customers conquest getting short-term sales with little concern about who buys or why. In contrast, the marketing concept takes an outside-in perspective. It starts with a well defined market, focuses on customer needs, coordinates all the marketing activities affecting customers, and makes profits by creating long-term customer relationships based on customer value and satisfaction. Under the marketing concept, companies produce what consumers want, thereby satisfying consumers and making profits.
Many successful an well-known companies have adopted the marketing concept. Procter & Gamble, Disney, Wal-Mart, Marriott, Nordstrom, and McDonald’s follow it faithfully. LL Bean, the highly successful catalog retailer of clothing and outdoor sporting equipment, was founded on the marketing concept.
A customer is the most important person ever in this company in person or by mail. A customer is not dependent on us, we are dependent on him. A customer is not an interruption of our work; he is the purpose of it. We are not doing a favor by serving him; he is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so. A customer is not someone to argue or match wits with nobody ever won an argument with a customer. A customer is a person who brings us his wants. It is our job to handle them profitably to him and to ourselves.
Many companies claim to practice the marketing concept but do not. They have the forms of marketing, such as a marketing vice president, product managers, marketing plans and marketing research, but this does not mean that they are market focused and customer driven companies. The question is whether they are finely tuned to changing customer needs and competitor strategies. Formerly great companies General Motors, IBM, Sears, Zenith all lost substantial market share because they failed to adjust their marketing strategies to the changing marketplace.
Several years of hard work are needed to turn a sales-oriented company into a marketing-oriented company. The goal is to build customer satisfaction into the vary fabric of the firm. Customer satisfaction is no longer a fad.
The Societal Marketing Concept:
The societal marketing concept holds that the organization should determine the needs, wants, and interests of target markets. It should then deliver superior value to customers in a way that maintains to improves the consumer’s and the society’s well-being. The societal marketing concept is the newest of the five marketing management philosophies.
The societal marketing concept questions whether the pure marketing concept is adequate in an age of environmental problems, resource shortages, rapid population growth, worldwide economic problems, and neglected social services. It asks if the firm that senses, serves, and satisfies individual wants is always doing what’s best for consumers and society in the long run. According to he societal marketing concept, the pure marketing concept overlooks possible conflicts between consumer short-run wants and consumer long-run welfare.
Th societal marketing concept calls on marketers to balance three considerations in setting their marketing policies: company profits, consumer wants and society’s interests. Originally, most companies based their marketing decisions largely on short-run company profit. Eventually, they began to recognize the long-run importance of satisfying consumer wants and he marketing concept emerged. Now many companies are beginning to think of society’s interests when making their marketing decisions.
Answer the following questions in about 50 words each at one place. MP-2009
a. Marketing
Marketers must connect effectively with customers, others in the company and external partners in face of major environmental forces that influence these actors. A company’s marketing environment consists of actors and forces outside that affect marketing management’s ability to develop and maintain both opportunities and threats.
b. What is Marketing
Marketing is probably one of the most confusing terms used in business circles today. Its meaning is not often clear to people who use the word quite frequently. Even marketing authorities widely differ on the scope and subject matter of marketing – chiefly because this science can be applied to the entire business unit and yet it can simply be limited to the distribution of products only. According to Edward and David:
Marketing is the economic process by means of which goods and services are exchanged and their values determined in terms of money price.
In the words of Tousely, Clark and Clark, “Marketing consists of those efforts which affect transfers in the ownership of goods and services and which provide for physical distribution”.
Converse, Hugey and Mitchell define marketing as:
“Marketing includes those business activities which are involved in the flow of goods and services from production to consumption”.
c. Promotion Mix
A business total marketing communications programme is called the “promotional mix” and consists of a blend of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion and public relations tools. It is use to describe the set of tools that a business can use to communicate effectively the benefits of its products or services to its customers. It is a part of the wider marketing mix. It consists of:
· Advertising
· Public relations
· Sales promotion
· Direct Marketing
· Personal Selling
d. Steps in Target Marketing
1. Identify bases for segmenting the market
2. Develop profiles of resulting segments
3. Evaluate the attractiveness of each segment
4. Select the target segment(s)
5. Develop positioning for each target segment
6. Develop marketing mix for each target segment.
e. Branding
A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.
The objectives that a good brand will achieve include:
· Delivers the message clearly
· Confirms your credibility
· Connects your target prospects emotionally
· Motivates the buyer
· Concretes User Loyalty
To succeed in branding one must understand the needs and wants of the customers and prospects. This can be achieved by integrating our brand strategies through your company at every point of public contact.
f. Product Mix Decisions
A product mix consists of all the product lines and items that a particular seller offers for sale. Each product line consists of several sub lines. A company’s product mix has four important dimensions like width, length, depth and consistency. These product mix dimensions provide the handles for defining the company’.
g. Online Marketing
Online Marketing is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. It ties together creative and technical aspects of the internet, including design, development, advertising and sals. Online marketing methods and strategies encompass a wide range of services such as search engine marketing (SEM) which can be broken down into search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC), display advertising, test-based advertising, behavioral marketing, software-based as, e-mail marketing, newsletter marketing.
h. Product Life Cycle
A new product progresses through a sequence of stages from introduction to growth, maturity, and decline. This sequence is known as the product life cycle and is associated with changes in the marketing situation, thus impacting the marketing strategy and the marketing mix.
The product life cycle goes through many phases and involves many professional disciplines and requires many skills, tools and processes. Product life cycle (PLC) has to do with the life of a product in the market with respect to business/commercial costs and sales measures.
The different stages in a product life cycle are:
· Market Introduction state
· Growth stage
· Mature stage
· Decline or Stability stage
i. Sales Forecasting
Sales forecasting is the task of projecting the future sales of a firm. The sales forecast indicates how much of a product is likely to be sold during a specified future period in a specified market, at specified prices. Sales forecasting is a difficult area of management. Most managers believe they are good at forecasting.
Reasons for undertaking sales forecasts:
Businesses are forced to look well ahead in order to plan heir investments, launch new products, and decide when to close or withdraw products and so on. The sales forecasting process is a critical one for most businesses. Key decisions that are derived from a sales forecast include:
· Employment levels required
· Promotional mix
· Investment in production capacity
j. Product organization
Companies producing a variety of products and brands establish a product management organization. It serves as another layer of management. It makes sense if the company’s products are quite different or if the sheer number of products is beyond the ability of a functional department organization to handle.
Marketers must connect effectively with customers, others in the company and external partners in face of major environmental forces that influence these actors. A company’s marketing environment consists of actors and forces outside that affect marketing management’s ability to develop and maintain both opportunities and threats.
b. What is Marketing
Marketing is probably one of the most confusing terms used in business circles today. Its meaning is not often clear to people who use the word quite frequently. Even marketing authorities widely differ on the scope and subject matter of marketing – chiefly because this science can be applied to the entire business unit and yet it can simply be limited to the distribution of products only. According to Edward and David:
Marketing is the economic process by means of which goods and services are exchanged and their values determined in terms of money price.
In the words of Tousely, Clark and Clark, “Marketing consists of those efforts which affect transfers in the ownership of goods and services and which provide for physical distribution”.
Converse, Hugey and Mitchell define marketing as:
“Marketing includes those business activities which are involved in the flow of goods and services from production to consumption”.
c. Promotion Mix
A business total marketing communications programme is called the “promotional mix” and consists of a blend of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion and public relations tools. It is use to describe the set of tools that a business can use to communicate effectively the benefits of its products or services to its customers. It is a part of the wider marketing mix. It consists of:
· Advertising
· Public relations
· Sales promotion
· Direct Marketing
· Personal Selling
d. Steps in Target Marketing
1. Identify bases for segmenting the market
2. Develop profiles of resulting segments
3. Evaluate the attractiveness of each segment
4. Select the target segment(s)
5. Develop positioning for each target segment
6. Develop marketing mix for each target segment.
e. Branding
A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.
The objectives that a good brand will achieve include:
· Delivers the message clearly
· Confirms your credibility
· Connects your target prospects emotionally
· Motivates the buyer
· Concretes User Loyalty
To succeed in branding one must understand the needs and wants of the customers and prospects. This can be achieved by integrating our brand strategies through your company at every point of public contact.
f. Product Mix Decisions
A product mix consists of all the product lines and items that a particular seller offers for sale. Each product line consists of several sub lines. A company’s product mix has four important dimensions like width, length, depth and consistency. These product mix dimensions provide the handles for defining the company’.
g. Online Marketing
Online Marketing is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. It ties together creative and technical aspects of the internet, including design, development, advertising and sals. Online marketing methods and strategies encompass a wide range of services such as search engine marketing (SEM) which can be broken down into search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC), display advertising, test-based advertising, behavioral marketing, software-based as, e-mail marketing, newsletter marketing.
h. Product Life Cycle
A new product progresses through a sequence of stages from introduction to growth, maturity, and decline. This sequence is known as the product life cycle and is associated with changes in the marketing situation, thus impacting the marketing strategy and the marketing mix.
The product life cycle goes through many phases and involves many professional disciplines and requires many skills, tools and processes. Product life cycle (PLC) has to do with the life of a product in the market with respect to business/commercial costs and sales measures.
The different stages in a product life cycle are:
· Market Introduction state
· Growth stage
· Mature stage
· Decline or Stability stage
i. Sales Forecasting
Sales forecasting is the task of projecting the future sales of a firm. The sales forecast indicates how much of a product is likely to be sold during a specified future period in a specified market, at specified prices. Sales forecasting is a difficult area of management. Most managers believe they are good at forecasting.
Reasons for undertaking sales forecasts:
Businesses are forced to look well ahead in order to plan heir investments, launch new products, and decide when to close or withdraw products and so on. The sales forecasting process is a critical one for most businesses. Key decisions that are derived from a sales forecast include:
· Employment levels required
· Promotional mix
· Investment in production capacity
j. Product organization
Companies producing a variety of products and brands establish a product management organization. It serves as another layer of management. It makes sense if the company’s products are quite different or if the sheer number of products is beyond the ability of a functional department organization to handle.
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