Graduate School of Management

Written Report on

Marketing Process

Marketing Principles and Dynamic Saturday, 3:00PM to 6:00PM, GA 204

Submitted to: DR. Cecile Santiago Garcia

Submitted by: Angela A. Animo

Introduction Marketing plays an important role in the companys strategic planning. It is related with strategic planning through understanding and managing the links between the business and the environment. Further, marketing play key roles in strategic planning in several ways. First, marketing provides a guiding philosophy through marketing concept that suggests that company should focus in building profitable relationships with important consumer groups. Second, marketing provides inputs in identifying attractive market opportunities and assessing the firm's potentials to take advantage of these opportunities. Finally, marketing designs strategies for reaching the goal and objectives of the organization. To understand the marketing process, we must first understand the business process. The objective of business is to deliver value to the market at a profit. This concept has two views the traditional physical process sequence and the value creation and delivery sequence. The traditional view is that firm produces a product and them sells it. The value creation view puts marketing at the beginning of the business process. Instead of make sell view, process involves choosing the value, providing the value and communicating the value. With this, the first step in the business planning is the marketing step, where the target market and product-positioning strategy are defined and sales goals and needed resources are established for achieving the goals.

Marketing process consists of the above steps. In other references, steps are simply classified as illustrated on the right side. Marketing process can be defined as a process whereby an organization allocates is marketing mix resources to reach its target markets. Analyzing Marketing Opportunities / Situation Analysis A thorough analysis of the situation in which the firm finds itself serves as the basis for identifying opportunities to satisfy unfulfilled customer needs. In addition to identifying the customer needs, the firm must understand its own capabilities and the environment in which it is operating.

The situation analysis thus can be viewed in terms an analysis of the external environment and an internal analysis of the firm itself. The external environment can be described in terms of macroenvironmental factors that broadly affect many firms, and micro-environmental factors closely related to the specific situation of the firm. The situation analysis should include past, present, and future aspects. It should include a history outlining how the situation evolved to its present state, and an analysis of trends in order to forecast where it is going. Good forecasting can reduce the chance of spending a year bringing a product to market only to find that the need no longer exists. If the situation analysis reveals gaps between what consumers want and what currently is offered to them, then there may be opportunities to introduce products to better satisfy those consumers. Hence, the situation analysis should yield a summary of problems and opportunities. From this summary, the firm can match its own capabilities with the opportunities in order to satisfy customer needs better than the competition. There are several frameworks that can be used to add structure to the situation analysis: 5 C Analysis - company, customers, competitors, collaborators, climate. Company represents the internal situation; the other four cover aspects of the external situation PEST analysis - for macro-environmental political, economic, societal, and technological factors. A PEST analysis can be used as the "climate" portion of the 5 C framework. SWOT analysis - strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats - for the internal and external situation. A SWOT analysis can be used to condense the situation analysis into a listing of the most relevant problems and opportunities and to assess how well the firm is equipped to deal with them.

Researching and selecting target markets / Designing marketing strategies / Marketing Strategy This stage involves identifying the areas where the companys capabilities and resources will enable it to fulfill identified customer needs better than its competitors. This requires estimating the markets overall size, growth, profitability and risk. Market research will provide specific market information that will permit the firm to select the target market segment and optimally position the offering within that segment. The result is a value proposition to the target market. The marketing strategy involves the following stages: Segmentation: is the process of dividing a market into distinct groups of buyers who have different needs, characteristics, or behaviors, and who might require separate products or marketing programs. Targeting: is the process of evaluating each target markets attractiveness and selecting one or more segments to enter. A market niche is the few and special target market that major competitors overlook or ignore. A firm may decide to serve this type of target market. Example of this is Ferrari. Not all types of buyers would want to buy the expensive cars they made. The few buyers are considered the market niche.

Differentiation: differentiating the market offering to create superior customer value. The offering or the product or service must have the features that are desirable and different from competitors. Example of this, is making the computer you are making, more user friendly than other brands. Positioning: is arranging for a product to occupy a clear, distinctive, and desirable place relative to competing products in the minds of target consumers. As an example, as the most consumers are becoming conscious about health and healthy living, they would be more conscious on food and lifestyle. Supposed you are a manufacturer of mayonnaise, you would want to position you product by innovating and advertising your product be more low fat through using organic raw materials, etc. Planning Marketing Programs / Marketing Mix Decisions Marketing program is accomplished by making decisions on marketing expenditures, marketing mix and marketing allocation. Marketing strategies must be transformed into a marketing program. Marketing expenditures are also called marketing budgets. Marketing budgets are necessary to achieve the marketing objectives. Companies typically establish their marketing budget based on sales goals. Marketing mix is the set of marketing tools that the firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives in the target markets. It involves detailed tactical decisions which are required to turn the marketing strategy into reality. The most popular marketing mix is the four (4) Ps Product, Price, Place and Promotion. The 4 Ps represent the view of the seller, however it has a counterpart which is the buyers or customers view. According to Robert Lauterborn, 4 Ps respond to customers 4Cs Customer needs and wants or customer solution, Cost, Convenience, and Communication. The marketing department or marketers must decide on the allocation of marketing expenditures to various products, channels, promotion media, and sales areas. Organizing, implementing and controlling marketing effort / Implementation and control The final step in the marketing process is organizing the marketing resources and implementing and controlling the marketing plan. The company must build a marketing organization that is capable in implementing the marketing plan. The marketing process does not end with implementation. Continual monitoring and adaptation is needed to fulfill customer needs consistently over the long term. In other words, the process will not be complete without the feedback or control system. Marketing control is the process of measuring and evaluating the results of marketing strategies and plans and taking corrective actions to ensure that objectives are achieved. Close monitoring of the plans is necessary as the market changes. With this, marketing strategies, including marketing mix must be adjusted to adapt or accommodate the changes in environment. Often, small changes in consumer wants can be addressed by changing the advertising message. As the changes become more significant, product redesign or an entirely new product may be needed.

To summarize the Marketing Process, the illustration below indicates the factors that influence and shape the companys marketing strategy.

References: Principles of Marketing by Philip Kotler Marketing Management, 8th Edition, by Philip Kotler, pp. 91-100 http://www.netmba.com/marketing/mix/ http://www.ukessays.com/mba/marketing/the-marketing-process.php