MAR110 Marketing Concepts

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There are no formal requirements to blog about this particular subject but I'll add some stuff here anyway because it's looking like a really interesting subject. :)

It's the end of week 1 and so far we've covered "What is Marketing?".  Following are some key points I've noted for the week.

There are 5 steps in the marketing process, each of which we'll cover off in more detail in coming weeks. They are:

1. Market Analysis - Understand the marketplace & customer needs & wants. Buyer behaviour, micro/macro environment, market research & information systems.
2. Marketing Strategy - Design a customer-driven marketing strategy. Segmentation, targeting, positioning.
3. Marketing Mix - Construct an integrated marketing program that delivers superior value. Product, People, Physical Evidence, Process, Place, Price, Promotion.
4. Manage Relationships - Build profitable relationships and create customer delight. Value, satisfaction, ethics, sustainability, social/green marketing.
5. Customer Equity & Profits - Capture value from customers to create profits and customer equity. Loyalty, retention, market share.

The first four create value FOR customers, the fifth captures value FROM customers.

And here are some interesting excerpts from the course notes and the reading which I can use in my marketing efforts going forward:

• An important part of marketing is analysing the environment, and identifying market needs.  You can't successfully sell or promote a product if you don't know who the potential customers are and what's important to them (course notes).
• "Selling focuses on the needs of the seller, marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller's need to convert the product into cash, marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering, and, finally, consuming it." - Levitt
• "The view that an industry is a customer-satisfying process, not a goods-producing process, is vital for all businesspeople to understand. An industry begins with the customer and his or her needs, not with a patent, a raw material, or a selling skill. Given the customer's needs, the industry develops backwards, first concerning itself with the physical delivery of customer satisfactions. Then it moves back further to creating the things by which these satisfactions are in part achieved. How these materials are created is a matter of indifference to the customer, hence the particular form of manufacturing, processing, or what have you cannot be considered as a vital aspect of the industry. Finally, the industry moves back still further to finding the raw materials necessary for making it's products." - Levitt
• "it should be obvious that building an effective customer-oriented company involves far more than good intentions or promotional tricks; it involves profound matters of human organization and leadership" - Levitt

Levitt, Theodore 2004 (reprint of 1960 article. Marketing Myopia. Harvard Business Review Vol. 82 Issue 7/8, p.138-149.