International marketing and sales book Q1
Chapter 1: Marketing: creating customer value and engagement
Learning objectives:
You will be able to define marketing and outline the steps in the marketing process.
What is marketing?
You will be able to explain the importance of understanding the marketplace and
customers and identify the five core marketplace concepts. Understanding the
marketplace and customer needs.
You will be able to identify the key elements of a customer value-driven marketing
strategy and discuss the marketing management orientations that guide marketing
strategy. Designing a customer value-driven marketing strategy and plan.
You will be able to discuss customer relationship management and identify
strategies for creating value for customers and capturing value from customers in
return. Building customer relationships.
You will be able to describe the major trends and forces that are changing the
marketing landscape in this age of relationships. The changing marketing
landscape.
What is marketing?
Marketing is engaging customers and managing profitable customer relationships. The
two-fold goal of marketing is to attract new customers by promising superior value and to
keep and grow current customers by delivering value and satisfaction. Sound marketing is
critical to the success of every organization. Profit and non-profit companies all use
marketing. Today’s marketeers want to become a part of your life and enrich your
experience with their brands.
Marketing defined:
We define marketing as the process by which companies engage customers, build strong
customer relationships, and create customer value in order to capture value from
customers in return.
It must be understood in the new sense of satisfying customer needs. If the marketeer
engages consumers effectively, understands their needs, develops products that provide
superior customer value, and prices, distributes and promotes them well, these products
will sell easily. The aim of marketing is to make selling unnecessary. Selling and
advertising are only part of a larger marketing mix. (a set of marketing tools that work
together to engage customers, satisfy their needs and build customer relationships.)
The marketing process
understand the marketplace and customer needs and wants
design a customer driven marketing strategy
construct an integrated marketing program that delivers superior value
build profitable relationships and create customer delight
capture values from customers to create profits and customer equity
(first 4 are creating value for consumers and build customer relationships, the last one is
about capturing value from consumers in return)
,Understanding the marketplace and customer needs
5 core customer and marketplace concepts:
1. Customer needs, wants and demands
- Human needs are states of felt deprivation. These needs are not created, they are basic
understanding of human life.
- Wants are the form human needs take as they are shaped by culture and individual
personality. Wants are shaped by one’s society and are described in terms of objects that
will satisfy those needs.
- When backed by buying power, wants become demands. People demand products and
services with benefits that add up the most value and satisfaction.
2. Market offerings (goods, services and experiences)
- Customers’ needs and wants are fulfilled through market offerings, these don’t have to
be just physical products but can also be services.
- More broadly, market offerings also include other entities, such as persons, places,
organizations, information and ideas.
- Marketing myopia is the mistake of paying more attention to the specific products a
company offers than to the benefits and experiences produced by these products.
- Smart marketers look beyond the attributes of the products and services they sell. By
orchestrating several services and products, they create brand experiences for consumers.
3. Value and satisfaction
Marketers must be careful to set the right level of expectations. If they set expectations too
low, they may satisfy those who buy but fail to attract enough buyers. If they set
expectations too high, buyer will be disappointed. Customer value and customer
satisfaction are key building blocks for developing and managing customer relationships.
4. Exchanges and relationships
- Exchange is the act of obtaining a desired object from someone by offering something in
return. The response may be more than simply buying or trading product and services.
- Marketing consists of actions taken to create, maintain and grow desirable exchange
relationships with target audiences involving a product, service, idea or other object.
- Companies want to build strong relationships by consistently delivering superior
customer value.
5. Markets
A market is the set of actual and potential buyers of a product or service. These buyers
share a particular need or want that can be satisfied through exchange relationships. We
normally think of marketing as being carried out by sellers, buyers also carry out
marketing. Consumers market when they search for products, interact with companies to
obtain information and make their purchases.
A modern
marketing system
, Designing a customer value-driven marketing strategy and plan
To design a winning marketing strategy, the company must first decide whom it will serve.
It does this by dividing the market into segments of customers (market segmentation) and
selecting which segments it will cultivate (target marketing). Next, the company must
decide how it will serve targeted customers (how it will differentiate and position itself in
the marketplace).
Marketing management can adopt one of the five competing market orientations.
The production concept holds that management tasks is to improve production
efficiency and bring down prices.
The product concept holds that consumers favor products that offer the most in
quality, performance and innovative features; thus, little promotional effort is
required.
The selling concept holds that consumers will not buy enough of an organization’s
products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort.
The marketing concept holds that achieving organizational goals depends on
determining the needs and want of target markets and delivering the desired
satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors do.
The societal marketing concept holds that generating customer satisfaction and
long-run societal well-being through sustainable marketing strategies is key to
both achieving the company’s goals and full-fulling its responsibilities.
Building customer relationships
Broadly defined, customer relationship management is the process of engaging
customers, and building and maintaining profitable customer relationships by delivering
superior customer value and satisfaction. In addition to being good at customer
relationship management, marketers must also be good at partner relationship
management – working closely with others inside and outside the company to joinly
engage and bring more value to the customers.
Customer-engagement marketing aims to make a brand a meaningful part of
consumers’ conversations and lives through direct and continuous customer involvement
in shaping brand conversations, experiences and community.
One form of customer-engagement marketing is consumer-generated marketing,
here the brand exchanges are created by consumers themselves – both invited and
uninvited- by which consumers are playing an increasing role in shaping their own
brand experiences and those of other consumers.
The aim of customer relationship management and customer-engagement management
is to produce high customer equity, the total combined customer lifetime values of all of
the company’s customers.
The key to building lasting relationships is the creation of superior customer value and
satisfaction. In return for creating value for targeted customers, the company capture
value from customers in the form of profits and customer equity.