Marketing Management

Introduction: The Art and Science of the Market

Marketing is much more than just selling or advertising. It is a comprehensive business function responsible for identifying, anticipating, and satisfying customer needs profitably. Marketing Management is the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping, and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value. This course is structured to provide a deep understanding of the core concepts of marketing, the strategic process of market analysis and selection, and the tactical tools used to implement marketing plans.

Module 1: Core Concepts of Marketing

1.1 Introduction to Marketing

This section introduces the fundamental concepts and philosophies that guide marketing practice.

• Meaning and Definition: Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others.
• Marketing Philosophies (Orientations): The evolution of marketing thought can be seen through several competing philosophies:
  • Production Concept: Focuses on production efficiency and wide distribution. Assumes consumers favor available and affordable products.
  • Product Concept: Focuses on making the best possible product. Assumes consumers favor products offering the most quality, performance, and features.
  • Selling Concept: Focuses on aggressive selling and promotion. Assumes consumers will not buy enough unless persuaded.
  • Marketing Concept: Focuses on understanding and satisfying customer needs better than competitors. It is an "outside-in" perspective.
  • Societal Marketing Concept: A modern philosophy that holds that marketing strategy should deliver value to customers in a way that maintains or improves both the consumer's and society's well-being.
• The Marketing Environment: Marketers operate in a complex and changing environment. This includes the Microenvironment (forces close to the company like suppliers, intermediaries, customers, competitors) and the Macroenvironment (larger societal forces like demographic, economic, natural, technological, political, and cultural forces - PESTEL analysis).

1.2 Understanding Consumer and Business Buyer Behaviour

The cornerstone of successful marketing is a deep understanding of the customer. This section explores the factors that influence purchasing decisions.

• Consumer Buyer Behaviour: The study of how individuals, groups, and organizations select, buy, use, and dispose of goods, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy their needs and wants.
  • Factors Influencing Consumer Behaviour: Cultural (culture, subculture), Social (reference groups, family), Personal (age, occupation, lifestyle), and Psychological (motivation, perception, learning, beliefs).
  • The Buyer Decision Process: A five-stage model: Need Recognition, Information Search, Evaluation of Alternatives, Purchase Decision, and Post-purchase Behaviour.
• Business Buyer Behaviour: The buying behaviour of organizations that buy goods and services for use in the production of other products and services or for the purpose of reselling or renting them to others at a profit. Business markets differ from consumer markets in terms of market structure, the nature of the buying unit, and the types of decisions.

Module 2: Marketing Strategy and Planning

This module covers the strategic process of analyzing market opportunities, selecting target markets, and developing a strategic plan to serve them.

2.1 Market Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning (STP)

STP is the strategic heart of marketing. Instead of trying to be all things to all people, companies use STP to focus their efforts on the customers they can serve best.

• Market Segmentation: The process of dividing a broad market into smaller subsets of consumers with common needs or characteristics. Common bases for segmentation include Geographic, Demographic, Psychographic, and Behavioural variables.
• Market Targeting: After segmenting the market, the firm evaluates the attractiveness of each segment and selects one or more segments to enter. Targeting strategies include undifferentiated (mass) marketing, differentiated (segmented) marketing, and concentrated (niche) marketing.
• Market Positioning: The process of creating a clear, distinctive, and desirable place for a product in the minds of target consumers relative to competing products. The positioning strategy is often communicated through a value proposition.

Module 3: The Marketing Mix (The 4 Ps)

The marketing mix is the set of tactical marketing tools that the firm blends to produce the response it wants in the target market. These are the levers a marketer can pull to implement their strategy.

3.1 Product Strategy

• Levels of a Product: Core benefit, actual product, and augmented product.
• Product Classifications: Consumer products (convenience, shopping, specialty) and industrial products.
• Product Life Cycle (PLC): The course of a product's sales and profits over its lifetime. The five stages are Product Development, Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline. Each stage requires different marketing strategies.
• Branding, Packaging, and Labeling: Key elements of product strategy that help to identify and differentiate the product. A strong brand is a valuable asset.

3.2 Price Strategy

• Pricing Objectives: Survival, profit maximization, market share leadership, etc.
• Factors Affecting Price: Internal factors (costs, objectives) and external factors (demand, competition).
• Pricing Strategies:
  • Cost-Based Pricing: Setting prices based on the costs of producing, distributing, and selling the product plus a fair rate of return.
  • Value-Based Pricing: Setting price based on buyers' perceptions of value rather than on the seller's cost.
  • Competition-Based Pricing: Setting prices based on competitors' strategies, prices, costs, and market offerings.
  • New Product Pricing: Market-Skimming (high initial price) and Market-Penetration (low initial price).

3.3 Place (Distribution) Strategy

• Marketing Channels: A set of interdependent organizations involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption.
• Channel Design Decisions: Analyzing customer needs, setting channel objectives, identifying major channel alternatives (direct vs. indirect), and evaluating them.
• Channel Management: Selecting, managing, and motivating individual channel members and evaluating their performance over time.
• Logistics (Physical Distribution): The tasks involved in planning, implementing, and controlling the physical flow of goods from points of origin to points of consumption.

3.4 Promotion (Marketing Communications) Strategy

• The Promotion Mix: The specific blend of promotion tools that the company uses to persuasively communicate customer value and build customer relationships. The five major tools are:
  1. Advertising: Any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.
  2. Sales Promotion: Short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service (e.g., discounts, coupons).
  3. Public Relations (PR): Building good relations with the company's various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and handling unfavorable rumors.
  4. Personal Selling: Personal presentation by the firm's sales force for the purpose of making sales and building customer relationships.
  5. Direct and Digital Marketing: Engaging directly with carefully targeted individual consumers and customer communities to both obtain an immediate response and build lasting customer relationships (e.g., email marketing, social media marketing).
• Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC): The concept of carefully integrating and coordinating the company's many communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the organization and its products.