Marketing must play the leading role in shaping business strategy as Philip Kettle said, marketing is the social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging product and value with others, A product is anything that can be offered to a market for attention, use or assumption that might satisfy a want or need. It includes physical objects, services, persons, places, organization and ideas.
Marketing holds that achieving organizational goals depends on determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfaction ore effectively and efficiently than competitors do. Thus marketing starts with identifying consumer needs , then the product and services are planned according to the needs of the customer rather than the availability of materials and machinery. The goal Of marketing is to attract new customers and keeping them by delivery satisfaction. The focus of this concept is on customer orientation.
MARKETING RESEARCH A company obtained hundreds of idea from internal and external customers, sales people etc, in order to ascertain the need for producing a new product through market research activities. Marketing research is a link between nonuser and public to the marketer through information that is used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems, to generate, refine and evaluate marketing action, to monitor marketing performance, and to improve understanding of the marketing process.
For instance apple computer wants to know how many and what kind of people or companies will buy its new ultra light personal computer. Marketing research specify the information need to address marketing issues, design the method tort collecting information,manage and implement the data collection process,analyses the results and communicate he findings and their implication.
FORECASTING The organization must plan and predict what will happen in the few years to come and how they are likely to affect the company’s products or services consumers taste and preferences keep changing The company therefore predicts whether a particular product /service is going to gain market share and adjust tactics so as to develop products that will be able to compete in the market and help the company survive. MARKET AUDIT The marketing audit is a systematic assessment Of the organization’s marketing objectives, strategies, and performance.
It provides the foundation for setting realistic Objectives and defining realistic strategies. It is divided into two parts. Firstly, it looks outside the organization to make sense of the environment the organization operates in,and identifies opportunities and threats. The external environment looks at political, economic, social and technological issues (the PEST analysis). Political: Marketing decisions are strongly affected by developments in the political environment.
The marketer must take these into consideration: k What laws affect our marketing practice? K Is the law likely to change? Is the government likely to change? K Is this likely to affect our business? Economic issues: The economic environment consist of factors that affect consumers purchasing power and spending patterns. * Will the level Of inflation or unemployment affect our business? *Will interest rate go up or down? * How will income distribution and changes in purchasing power and changing consumer spending patterns affect or favor us?
Social issues: Are consumer lifestyles changing and do we need to respond to this? The recent increase emphasis on ethics and social responsibility, how will we reduce the product to conform to these standards Technological issues: * What changes are taking place from a technological perspective? *Will our competitors have an advantage over us through new technology? Tater thoroughly analyses these issues, the organization does internal assessment. Do we have enough raw materials ? * Can we obtain them locally or import them? K Do eve have adequate, trained and skilled personnel to carry out the new product development or we have to employ new staff, * Do we machinery instead of human * Do eve have enough capital to produce new products MARKET SEGMENTATION Means dividing a market into distinct groups of buyers vivid different needs, characteristics or behaviors’ Who might require separate product or marketing mix. The company identifies different ways to segment the market and develop profiles Of the resulting market segments. Consumer markets can be segmented by many variables: * Geographic :nations, states, regions, countries etc * Demographic age. Ex, gender, family etc * Socio-economic: income, occupation, education etc. Having segmented the market, the company will know which segment to target and the components in that market. The product that will be relevant to their needs and the means by which the company can serve them better. POSITIONING TEST MARKET Test marketing gives the marketer experience with the marketing the product before going to the great experience of full introduction, It lets the company test the product and its entire marketing programs COMMERCIALISM’S Fifth product is successful, then the product needed to be launch.
There are certain factors to be considered before launching a product. That is, timing : How the product is to be launched. K Where the product will be launched and When the product will be launched All these start before the product is produce and continues after launching the product, management wants the product to enjoy along and happy life They want to recover a decent profit to cover all the effort and risk that went into launching it.
Marketing start long before a product is produce and continue through the product life cycle(PL) trying to find new customers and keep kind customers. The product life cycle is a course that a product’s sales camp; profits take over its lifetime. The PL tryst to find new customers, improve product, appeal camp: performance, learn from product sales result. The product passes through the PL where a new product progresses through a sequence of stages from introduction to growth, maturity and decline.
Product development; this begins when the company finds and develop a new product idea. Introduction stage is a period of slow growth as the product is being introduce in the market. Grooving stage : is a period of rapid market acceptance and increasing profits, Maturity stage : is a period of slow down in sales growth because the product has achieved acceptance why most potential buyers Decline stage: is the period hen sales tall off and profit drop. Because the company don’t want to die, they do re-purchase to keep effective relationship.
