Authors:
Judith H. Washburn, Ph.D.
Chapters:
Marketing Planning
Understanding Buyer Behavior
Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning
Product and Promotion Strategy
Distribution and Pricing Strategy
Audience: Designed for incoming MBA or MS MKT students or practicing managers who have not completed a Principles of Marketing course within the last few years.
Abstract: This package provides managers or those who aspire to be managers a framework to understand the role of marketing in an organization’s planning activities. The focus is on key marketing principles, theories, models and terminology.
Chapter 1 provides a framework that summarizes the process of developing and implementing marketing strategy. The chapter defines the concept of marketing and reviews the history of how this concept has evolved into today’s marketing practices. The chapter also discusses the interplay between a marketing organization’s internal and external environments and illustrates that a thorough understanding of the marketing environment is the first step in the Marketing Planning Process.
Chapter 2 provides an explanation of buyer behavior by considering consumers, who purchase products for their own personal use, and business buyers, customers who purchase products for an organization’s use. The chapter details factors that influence customers? buying decisions. It further discusses the marketing research process, the mechanism by which companies gather information about customers’ and their buying habits.
Chapter 3 introduces the important marketing concepts of segmentation, targeting and positioning. It details the process organizations use to segment markets and describes how a company selects and attempts to satisfy its target market(s).
In Chapter 4 the discussion focuses on product and promotion strategies, two of the four elements in an organization’s Marketing Mix. Product strategy decisions revolve around a company’s product mix, branding, packaging and labeling. The promotional strategy discussion provides information on how a company can effectively communicate with its target market(s) about products through Integrated Marketing Communications.
Chapter 5 introduces the final two pieces of the Marketing Mix : distribution and pricing strategies. Distribution decisions discussed include composition of the distribution channel and the physical and ownership transfers involved in moving the product from producer to customer. Discussion of the pricing component involves both strategic and tactical decisions regarding setting the product’s selling price.