LECTURE 1
Course Objectives:
1) Introduce the fundamentals of contemporary marketing
- Marketing analysis
- Marketing strategy: segmentation, targeting, positioning
- Marketing tactics: 4 P’s (Product, Place, Promotions and Price)
2) Critical thinking skills = analysis of real word cases and phenomenon
3) Newest developments in marketing (Digital/social media, Neuromarketing)
Why is Nike Successful?
Some possible reasons…
• Taps into a single, powerful, universal motive = It applies to everyone. It’s about
achievement, success, motivation, effort. Things that we all share, and aspire to do
• Nike sells the benefits of their products rather than the product themselves. Be fit, have a
community. It doesn’t convince you about the product itself
• They continuously create profit through customer’s satisfaction.
Nike is successful creating quality products that meet people’s needs, that make them feel good
about themselves, that make them came back and be customers in the long term. Therefore, they
are successful in the long term
Companies are successful for two reasons: Marketing and Innovation
If you do these two things right, you’re in the path of success
Not all companies are Nike… (later)
WHAT IS MARKETING?
Identifying and serving customer needs profitably
Successful companies can do this consistently and often effectively
What can be marketed?
• Goods, products
• Services
• Ideas = religion, the environment, health. These ideas are more sophisticatedly communicated
to people
• Experiences
• Events
• Properties
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,• People = Famous people (Trump, Ronaldo etc.) have public images which has been constructed
and cultivated to try to communicate a specific message, idea, emotion. These people are
marketing themselves to appeal to a particular segment of customers, fan, voters.
• Place = example: Rotterdam. “13 reasons why Rotterdam may be Europe’s new capital of cool”
The images are focused on modernity, technology, architecture
• Organizations = for example no profit. What they care about is to create an image of trust,
effectiveness, of help. Things that are not easily communicated
What marketing should be
a) Marketing = Creating value for all stakeholders (easiest definition)
When marketing is done well is win-win scenario for everyone. The firm gets customers and profit;
the customer gets a product that they like, that is meaningful to them, that improves their life.
This is the goal of marketing. NOT sell cheap products. This is a successful way to do marketing in
the long term: provide a benefit to people, they want to be around, they are not forced
b) Orientation = External, costumer-focuses
A good marketing is always externally focused: focused on the customer, not the firm itself
c) Goal = Profit through customer satisfaction in a way that creates relationship in a long term,
people sustain your business model in the long term NOT convincing people to buy more/ pay
more
You’re going to succeed if you do these 3 things well
To do so, you have to determinate the needs and the wants of your customers. What it is that
people need. Importantly then you must deliver something that meets those needs more
effectively than competitors
d) Means = Determinate the needs and wants of customers. Deliver the desired benefits more
effectively than competitors
It’s all about understanding the customers
• “The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous”
• “To know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells
itself. Ideally marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy”
NOT meaning that you are so convincing that they are going to buy something that they don’t
want or need BUT that you have put so much though in what the needs are, that you don’t have to
do much else
• “There are only 2 important functions in business: Marketing and Innovation. Everything
else is cost”
Corporate finance, HR etc. they are not making money, but spend efficiently money
- It’s all about understanding the customers:
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,It sounds simple but…
1) Businesses often focus on self or focus on competitors narrowly defined
Company orientation towards the marketplace/ Alternative Business Orientation
a) Production concept = “Do what you can to cut costs”. Companies are focused on their
production capability. Focus of their strategies. Cutting cost. The focus is about the production,
more efficient mechanism
b) Product concept = “Design a technically superior product”. The focus is designing and creating
product technically superior to others.
c) Selling concept = “Sell more of what we make” it’s not important who is going to buy it. The
focus is on selling most of the product. You don’t’ care about the products, the customers.
None of them sounds like an effective and sustainable way to run a business
d) Marketing concept = “Meet customers’ needs better than competitors”. Most modern and
effective way of thinking. Identifying the Customer needs and use them to identify opportunity
in the marketplace
You care about the other things, but not in the exclusion of the customers’ needs. Instead of
focusing internally, you focus on the externally, on the customer
a) Product orientation: The focus is on production capabilities (how cheaply you can do it,
transport it)
b) Sales orientation: The focus is on aggressive sales effort
c) Customer orientation: Market concept = The focus is to identify the customers’ needs
Examples of Product VS customer - centric view of business
How a simple shift in focus from internal company focus to an external focus can change the
direction of the company and their success
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, Railroad = in the US. Their focus was “We operate a railroad”. As railroad became less appealing of
a way to transport people/things, they had a problem. Instead, they should had been focused of
the customer needs (being transported, transport things, be able to be flexible)
2) Insights into needs are often hard to uncover: Stated VS Latent needs
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” – Henry Ford
“You can’t just ask customers what they want and try to give that to them. By the time you get it
built, they’ll want something new” – Steve Jobs
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