Late to class today. Overslept. Ended up on the elevator with two other people from my same class, also late.Professor is lively today. Talking about product plusses and minuses.
Relationships between companies and their customers should be win-win. Relationships between competitors will usually be win-lose.
To be successful in marketing, you need to identify a need that you can satisfy. Once the need is identified, you can identify a target market for your solution.
When market is identified, there are the Four Controllable Marketing Mix Factors, aka the Four Ps.
- Product – Actual differences in product
- Pricing – Cost
- Promotion – How product is advertised
- Place – How you get the product to the customer
The marketing program is formed around the target market and the four Ps.
It is useful to understand the value of individual customers. Loyal customers are incredibly valuable. Relationship marketing is building a positive relationship between the customer and the business. It’s easy to understand, but difficult to implement. Modern consumers are tending toward a default adversarial relationship; they don’t want to give out excess information.
Marketing as a discipline started in the late 19th century. The earliest era of market orientation is known as the production era. At this point, demand vastly outstripped production. Whatever could be produced would be sold. The next era was the sales era. This point came about when production outstripped local demand. At that point, it became viable to hire salespeople to take produced goods and find new cutomers for them. The thrid era is the marketing concept era. Companies began focusing on the needs of customers more; there was an effort to satisfy existing customers more and to compete for customers with other companies. Starting in the mid-1990s is the current era, also called the Customer Era. In the customer era, organizations as a whole become concerned with customers, not just the sales and marketing departments.
Who Markets? Everyone who wants customers. Goods, Services, Ideas, everything is marketed to some degree.
People who buy and use marketed things can be divided into ultimate consumers and organizational buyers.
Consumers benefit from marketing. There are four primary types of utility for consumers.
- Time utility — Time convenience
- Place utility — Location Convenience
- Form utility
- Possession utility — Make it easier to possess product