Fundamentals of marketing
Kotler & Keller 2016
Chapters: 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18
Chapter 2: Marketing strategies and plans
Learning objectives:
1. How does marketing affect customer value?
The value delivery process:
a. Fase 1: Choosing value à segment the market, select appropriate
target and develop value positioning (STP)
b. Fase 2: Providing the value à identify specific product features, prices
and distribution
c. Fase 3: communicating the value à utilize internet, advertisement,
sales force etc. to announce and promote the product
d. The value delivery process begins before there is a product and
continues through development after launch.
The value chain of Michael Porter
e. 1. Inbound logistics / bringing materials into the business
f. 2. Operations / converting materials into final products
g. 3. Outbound logistics / shipping out final products
h. 4. Marketing (includes sales)
i. 5. Service
j. Support activities
i. Procurement
ii. Technology development
iii. Human resource management
iv. Firm infrastructure
- Core business processes:
o Market-sensing process à gathering and acting upon information about
the market
o New-offering realization process à researching, developing, launching
new high quality offerings quicky within budget
o Customer acquisition process à defining target markets and
prospecting for new customers
o Customer relationship management process à building deeper
understanding of relationships with and offerings for individual
customers
o Fulfillment management process à receiving and approving orders,
shipping goods on time, and collecting payment
Strong companies are reengineering their work flows and building cross-functional
teams to be responsible for each process.
Many companies have partnered with specific suppliers and distributors to create a
superior value delivery network/supply chain.
Core competencies
Three characteristics of a core competency:
- It is a source of competitive advantage and makes a significant contribution to
perceived customer benefits
- It has applications in a wide variety of markets
- It is difficult for competitors to imitate
o Competitive advantage accompanies distinctive capabilities
, 2. How is strategic planning carried out at different organizational levels?
Marketeers prioritize strategic planning in three areas.
- Managing their business as an investment portfolio
- Assessing market’s growth rate and company’s position in the market
- Establishing a strategy
Organizational levels:
- Corporate à design a corporate strategic plan to guide the whole enterprise,
makes decisions on the number of recourses, which business (not) to start
o 1. Defining the corporate mission à Mission statement= developed
collaboratively with and shared with managers, employees, and often
customers, provides a shared sense of purpose, direction, and
opportunity à focus on limited number of goals, stress the firm’s major
policies and values, and define the major competitive spheres within
which the firm will operate.
o 2. Establishing strategic business units à 3 characteristics of a
strategic business unit
§ It is a single business, or a collection of related businesses that
can be planned separately from the rest of the company
§ It has its own set of competitors
§ It has a manager responsible for strategic planning and profit
performance who controls most of the factors affecting profit
• Purpose à to develop separate strategies and assign
appropriate funding
o 3. Assigning resources to each unit
§ Management must decide how to allocate corporate recourses to
each unit
o 4. Assessing growth opportunities.
§ 1st option: identify opportunities for growth with current
businesses
§ 2nd option: to build or acquire businesses related to current
businesses
§ 3rd option: to add attractive unrelated businesses
§ Intensive growth à product-market expansion grid
• Market-penetration strategy à growth opportunities in
terms of current and new products and markets
• Market-development strategy à find or develop new
markets for its current products
• Product-development strategy à develop new products
for its current markets
• Diversification strategy à develop new products for new
markets
§ Integrative growth à increase sales and profits through
backward integration, forward integration or horizontal integration
§ Diversification growth à when good opportunities exist outside
the present business, the industry is highly attractive and the
company has the right mix of business strengths to succeed
• New products that are in someway aligned with current
products
• Unrelated new products to attract new customers
, • New businesses with no relationship to its current
Corporate culture= the shared experiences, stories, beliefs, and norms that
characterize an organization
à adapting the culture is often key to successfully implementing new strategy.
Scenario analysis = which develops plausible representations of a firms possible
future using assumptions about forces driving the market and different uncertainties
- Division à establishes a plan covering the allocation of funds to each
business unit within the division
- Business unit à develops a strategic plan to carry that business unit into a
profitable future
o SWOT-analysis à strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats
§ External environment / opportunity and threats à monitor key
macroenvironment forces and factors that affect its ability to earn
profits
Marketing opportunity= an area of buyer need and interest that a company has a
high probability of profitability satisfying.
Three main sources of market opportunities:
- To offer something that is short in supply
- To supply an existing product or service in a new superior way
o Problem detection method = ask customers for their suggestions
o Ideal method= imagine an ideal version of the product
o Consumption chain method= to chart their steps in acquiring, using and
disposing the product
- A totally new product or service
Marketeers need to spot opportunities created from:
- Converging industry trends à these may open opportunities to introduce
hybrid products or services
- Making a buying process more convenient or efficient à
- Meeting the need for information and advice
- Customizing an offering
- Introducing a new capability
- Delivering products or services faster
- Offering a much lower price
Market opportunity analysis:
- Can we articulate the benefits convincingly to the defined target market?
- Can we locate the target market and reach them with cost-effective media and
trade channels?
- Does our company possess or have access to the critical capabilities and
resources we need to deliver the customer benefits?
- Can we deliver the benefits better than any actual or potential competitor?
- Will the financial rate of return meet or exceed our required threshold for
investment?
Environmental threat= a challenge posed by an unfavorable trend or development,
that in the absence of defensive marketing action, would lead to lower sales or profit.
Internal environment (strengths and weaknesses) analysis
Each business needs to evaluate its internal strengths and weaknesses
Goal formulation
Strategy= a game plan for getting there
- Marketing strategy, technology strategy, sourcing strategy
, Three generic strategies that provide a good starting point for strategic thinking:
- Overall cost leadership à lowest production and distribution costs for
underpricing competitors and win market share
- Differentiation à concentrates on achieving superior performance in an
important customer benefit area
- Focus à focusses on one or more narrow market segments, knows them
intimately, pursues either cost leadership or differentiation
Strategic group= competing firms directing the same strategy to the same target
market
Competitors can quickly copy the operationally effective company using
benchmarking
Partner relationship management= to keep strategic alliances thriving, firms are
developing organizational structures to support them, and many have come to view
the ability to form and manage partnerships
Strategy and implementation
Strategy à what/why of marketing programs and activities
Implementation à who, where, when, how.
o Strategy formulation
o 7 s: Strategy, structure, systems, style, skills, staff and shared values.
§ Strategy, structure and systems = hardware of success
§ Style, skills, staff and shared values = software
- Product à develops a marketing plan for achieving its objects.
Marketing plan= the central instrument for directing and coordinating the marketing
effort
Strategic marketing plan= lays out the target markets and the firm’s value
proposition, based on analysis of the best market opportunities
Tactical marketing plan= specifies the marketing tactics, including product features,
promotion, merchandising, pricing, sales, channels, and service
3. What does a marketing plan include?
Marketing plan= a written document that summarizes what the marketeer has
learned about the marketplace and indicates how the firm plans to reach its
marketing objectives.
- Executive summary and table of contents
- Situation analysis (background data like sales, costs, market, competitors
macroenvironment and SWOT-analysis
- Marketing strategy à mission, marketing and financial objectives, needs the
market has and competitive positioning
- Marketing tactics à marketing activities achieve the marketing strategy
- Financial projections à sales forecast, expense forecast, break-even analysis
- Implementation controls à the controls for monitoring activities and
implementation (goals and budget)
4. How can companies monitor and improve marketing activities and
performance?
Marketing implementation = the process that turns marketing plans into action
Marketing metrics measure the actual outcome of a marketing program to see
whether the company is moving towards the goal.
Marketing-mix modelling analyzes data from different sources to understand the
effects of specific marketing activities.
