Strategies

Events

Marketers promote time-based events, such as Olympics, company anniversaries, major trade shows, sports events, and artistic performances. There is a whole profession of meeting planners who work out the details of an event and make sure it comes off perfectly.

Persons

Celebrity marketing is a major business. Years ago, someone seeking fame would hire a press agent to plant stories in newspapers and magazines. Today every major film star has an agent, a personal manager, and ties to a public relations agency. Artists, musicians, CEOs, physicians, high-profile lawyers and financiers, and other professionals are also getting help from celebrity marketers. People like Madonna and the late Andy Warhol have done a masterful job of marketing themselves. Management consultant Tom Peters, himself a master at self-branding, has advised each person to become a “brand.”

Places

Places – cities, states, regions, and whole nations – compete actively to attract tourists, factories, company headquarters, and new residents. Stratford, Ontario, in Canada was fairly run-down city with one asset: its name and a river called Avon. This became the basis for an annual Shakespeare festival that put Stratford on the tourist map. Ireland has been an outstanding place marketer, having attracted more than 500 companies to locate their plants there. It operates the Irish Development Board, the Irish Tourist Board, and the Irish Export Board, responsible for inward investment, tourists, and exports, respectively. Place marketers include economic development specialists, real estate agents, commercial banks, local business associations, and advertising and public relations agencies.

Organizations

Organizations actively work to build a strong, favorable image in the minds of their target publics. Companies spend money on corporate identity ads. Philips, the Dutch electronics company, puts out ads with the tag line “Let’s Make Things Better.” The Body Shop and Ben & Jerry’s gained attention by promoting social causes. Other companies owe their visibility to a dramatic leader, such as Virgin’s Richard Branson or Nike’s Phil Knight. Universities, museums, and performing arts organizations all use marketing to boost their public images and to compete for audiences and funds.

Information

Information can be produced and marketed as a product. This is essentially what schools and universities produce and distribute at a price to parents, students, and communities. Encyclopedias and most notification books market information. Magazines such as Road and Track and Byte supply information about the car and computer worlds, respectively. We buy software and CDs and we visit the Internet for information. The production, packaging, and distribution of information is one of our society’s major industries.

Ideas

Every market offering includes a basic idea. Charles Revlon observed: “In the factory, we make cosmetics; in the store we sell hope.” Products and services are platforms for delivering some idea or benefit. Social marketers are busy promoting such ideas as “Say no to drugs,” “Save the rainforest,” “Exercise daily,” or “Avoid fatty foods.”

Core Marketing Concepts
Target Markets and Sagmentation

A marketer can rarely satisfy everyone in a market. Not everyone likes the same soft drink, hotel room, restaurant, automobile, college, and movie. Therefore, marketers start by dividing up the market. They identify and profile distinct groups of buyers who might prefer or require varying product services mixes. Market segments can be identified by examining demographic, psychographic, and behavioral differences among buyers. The marketer then decides which segments present the greatest opportunity – which are its target markets. For each chosen target market, the firm develops a market offering. The offering is positioned in the minds of the target buyers as delivering some central benefit(s). For example, Volvo develops its cars for buyers to whom automobile safety is a major concern. Volvo, therefore, positions its car as the safest a customer can buy. Traditionally, a “market” was a physical place where buyers and sellers gathered to buy and sell goods. Economists now describe a market as a collection of buyers and sellers who transact over a particular product or product class ( the housing market or grain market); but marketers view the sellers as constituting the industry and the buyers as constituting the market.

Market Place Market Space and Meta Market

Businesspeople often use the term market to cover various groupings of customers. They talk about need markets (the diet – seeking market), product markets (the shoe market), demographic markets (the youth market), and geographic markets (the French market) ; or they extend the concept to cover other markets, such as voter markets, labor markets, and donor markets.

Marketers and Prospects

A marketer is someone seeking a response (attention, a purchase, a vote, a donation) from another party, called the prospect. If two parties are seeking to sell something to each other, we call them both marketers.

Needs,Wants and Demands

The marketer must try to understand the target market’s needs, wants, and demands. Needs are the basic human requirements. People need food, air, water, clothing, and shelter to survive. People also have strong needs for recreation, education, and entertainment. These needs become wants when they are directed to specific objects that might satisfy the need. An American needs food but wants a hamburger, French fries, and a soft drink. A person in Mauritius needs food but wants a mango, rice, lentils, and beans. Wants are shaped by one’s society. Demands are wants for specific products backed by an ability to pay. Many people want a Mercedes; only a few are able and willing to buy one. Companies must measure not only how many people want their product but also how many would actually be willing and able to buy it.

These distinctions shed light on the frequent criticism that “Marketers do not create needs” or “marketers get people to buy things they don’t want”. Marketers do not create needs. Needs preexist marketers. Marketers, along with other societal factors, influence wants. Marketers might promote the idea that a Mercedes would satisfy a person’s need for social status. They do not, however, create the need for social status.

Product, Offering, and Brand

Companies address needs by putting forth a value proposition, a set of benefits they offer to customers to satisfy their needs. The intangible value proposition is made physical by an offering, which can be combination of products, services, information, and experiences. A brand is an offering from a know source. A brand name such as McDonald’s carries many associations in the minds of people: hamburgers, fun, children, fast food, Golden Arches. These associations make up the brand image. All companies strive to build brand strength – that is, a strong, favorable brand image.

Value and Satisfaction

The offering will be successful if it delivers value and satisfaction to the target buyer. The buyer chooses between different offerings on the basis of which is perceived to deliver the most value. Value can be seen as primarily a combination of quality, and service, and price (QSP), called the customer value triad. Value increases with quality and service and decreases with price.