Contents
Chapter 1: Marketing.............................................................................................................................2
Chapter 3: Analyzing the Marketing Environment................................................................................11
Chapter 5: Consumer Markets and Buyer Behavior.............................................................................18
Chapter 4: Managing Marketing Information.......................................................................................25
Chapter 7: Customer Value–Driven Marketing Strategy.......................................................................34
Chapter 8: Products, Services, and Brands...........................................................................................41
Chapter 10: Pricing...............................................................................................................................50
Chapter 12: Marketing Channels..........................................................................................................55
Chapter 14: Engaging Consumers and Communicating Customer Value..............................................64
Chapter 20: Sustainable Marketing......................................................................................................71
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,Chapter 1: Marketing
What is marketing?
OBJECTIVE 1-1 Define marketing and outline the steps in the marketing process.
The simplest definition: Marketing is engaging customers and managing profitable customer
relationships. The twofold 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. Marketing comes to you in traditional
forms: You see it in the abundance of products and the ads that fill your TV screen. But in recent
years, marketers have assembled new marketing approaches, everything from imaginative websites
and smartphone apps to online videos and social media. Today’s marketers want to become a part of
your life and enrich your experiences with their brands. They reach you directly, personally, and
interactively.
Marketing Defined
Today, marketing must be understood not in the sense of making a sale but in the sense of satisfying
customer needs. If the marketer 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.
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.
The Marketing Process
Understanding the Marketplace and Customer Needs
OBJECTIVE 1-2 Explain the importance of understanding the marketplace and customers and
identify the five core marketplace concepts.
Five core customer and marketplace concepts:
1. Needs, wants, and demands
2. Market offerings (products, services, and experiences)
3. Value and satisfaction
4. Exchanges and relationships
5. Markets
Customer Needs, Wants, and Demands
The most basic concept underlying marketing is that of human needs. Human needs are states of felt
deprivation. They include physical, social and individual needs.
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,Wants are the form human needs take as they are shaped by culture and individual personality.
Wants are described in terms of objects that will satisfy those needs. When backed by buying power,
wants become demands.
Companies go to great lengths to learn about and understand customer needs, wants, and demands.
They conduct consumer research, analyze customer data, and observe customers as they shop and
interact, offline and online.
Market Offerings—Products, Services, and Experiences
Consumers’ needs and wants are fulfilled through market offerings — some combination of
products, services, information, or experiences offered to a market to satisfy a need or a want. More
broadly, market offerings also include other entities, such as persons, places, organizations,
information, ideas, and causes.
Many sellers make the mistake of paying more attention to the specific products they offer than to
the benefits and experiences produced by these products. These sellers suffer from marketing
myopia. They are so taken with their products that they focus only on existing wants and lose sight of
underlying customer needs. They forget that a product is only a tool to solve a consumer problem.
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.
Customer Value and Satisfaction
Customers form expectations about the value and satisfaction that various market offerings will
deliver and buy accordingly. Satisfied customers buy again, dissatisfied customers not
Marketers must be careful to set the right level of expectations. Customer value and customer
satisfaction are key building blocks for developing and managing customer relationships.
Exchanges and Relationships
Marketing occurs when people decide to satisfy their needs and wants through exchange
relationships. Exchange is the act of obtaining a desired object from someone by offering something
in return. Marketing consists of actions taken to create, maintain, and grow desirable exchange
relationships with target audiences involving a product, service, idea, or other object.
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.
Marketing means managing markets to bring about profitable customer relationships. Activities such
as consumer research, product development, communication, distribution, pricing, and service are
core marketing activities.
Consumers do marketing when they search for products, interact with companies to obtain
information, and make their purchases. In addition to customer relationship management, marketers
must also deal effectively with customer-managed relationships. Marketers have to deal with how
customers influence them and each other.
Companies research the market and interact with consumers to understand their needs. Then they
create and exchange market offerings and other marketing content, either directly or through
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, marketing intermediaries. Each party in the system is affected by major environmental forces. Each
party in the system adds value for the next level.
Designing a Customer Value–Driven Marketing Strategy and Plan
OBJECTIVE 1-3 Identify the key elements of a customer value– driven marketing strategy and
discuss the marketing management orientations that guide marketing strategy.
Customer Value–Driven Marketing Strategy
Marketing management: the art and science of choosing target markets and building profitable
relationships with them. The marketing manager’s aim is to engage, keep, and grow target customers
by creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value. Two important questions:
1. What customers will we serve?
2. How can we serve these customers best?
Selecting Customers to Serve
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 go after (target marketing).
You cannot serve all customers, so that is why you make a selection. Marketing management is
customer management and demand management.
Choosing a Value Proposition
A brand’s value proposition is the set of benefits or values it promises to deliver to consumers to
satisfy their needs. Value propositions differentiate one brand from another. They answer the
customer’s question: “Why should I buy your brand rather than a competitor’s?”
Marketing Management Orientations
Marketing management wants to design strategies that will engage target customers and build
profitable relationships with them. There are five alternative concepts under which organizations
design and carry out their marketing strategies
1. The production concept - consumers will favor products that are available and highly
affordable. Management should focus on improving production and distribution efficiency.
Companies adopting this orientation run a major risk of focusing too narrowly on their own
operations and losing sight of satisfying customer needs and building customer relationships.
2. The product concept - consumers will favor products that offer the most in quality,
performance, and innovative features. Under this concept, marketing strategy focuses on
making continuous product improvements. Focusing only on the company’s products can
also lead to marketing myopia.
3. The selling concept - consumers will not buy products unless it undertakes a large-scale
selling and promotion effort. It focuses on creating sales transactions rather than on building
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