Unit 3 marketing management process text a
FACTORS OF THE MARKETING MANACEMENT PROCESS
As it is already known the strategic plan defines the company's overall mission and objectives. Within each business unit, marketing plays a role in helping to accomplish overall strategic objectives. Marketing's role and activities in the organization are shown in Figure 1, which summarizes the entire marketing management process and the forces influencing company marketing strategy.
Target consumers stand in the center. The company identifies the total market, divides it into smaller segments, selects the most-premising segments, and focuses on serving and satisfying these segments. It designs a marketing mix made up of factors under its control—product, price, place, and promotion. To find the best marketing mix and put it into action, the company engages in marketing analysis, planning, implementation, and control. Through these activities, the company watches and adapts to the marketing environment. We will now look briefly at each factor in the marketing management process. Target Consumers
To succeed in today's competitive marketplace, companies must be customer centered, winning customers from competitors by delivering greater value. But before it can satisfy consumers, a company must first understand their needs and wants. Thus, sound marketing requires a careful analysis of consumers. Suppose a company looking at possible markets for a potential new product. The company first needs to make a careful estimate of the current and future size of the market and its various segments. To estimate current market size, the company would identify all competing products, estimate their current sales, and determine whether the market is large enough.
Equally important is future market growth. Companies want to enter markets that show strong growth prospects. Growth potential may depend on the growth rate of certain age, income, and nationality groups that use the product more than others. Growth may alsо be related to larger developments in the environment, such as economic conditions, advances in technology, and life-style changes. For example, the future market for quality children's toys
and clothing is strongly related to current birthrates, trends in consumer affluence, and projected family life styles. Forecasting—predicting what consumers are likely to do under a given set of conditions—is difficult, but it must be performed in order to make a decision about the market. The company's marketing information specialists will probably use complex techniques to measure and forecast demand.
Market Segmentation
The market consists of many types of customers, products, and needs, and the marketer has to determine which segments offer the best chance in which to achieve company objectives. Consumers can be grouped in various ways based on geographic factors (regions, cities), demographic factors (sex, age, income, education), psycho-graphic factors (social classes, life styles), and behavioral factors (purchase occasions, benefits sought, usage rates). The process of classifying customers into groups with different needs, characteristics, or behaviors is called market segmentation.
A market segment consists of consumers who respond in a similar way to a given set of marketing stimuli. In the car market, for example, consumers who choose the biggest, most comfortable car regardless of price make up one market segment. Another market segment would be customers who care mainly about price and operating economy. It would be difficult to make one model of car that was the first choice of every consumer. Companies are wise to focus their efforts on meeting the distinct needs of one or more market segments. They should study the geographic, demographic, behavioral, and other characteristics of each market segment to evaluate its attractiveness as a marketing opportunity.