Title Unit 1-4 Notes .pdf ✅

Core Marketing Concepts • Needs: These are basic human requirements, such as food, water, clothing, and shelter. They also include higher-level needs like recreation, education, and entertainment. • Wants: When needs are directed towards specific products or objects, they become wants. Wants are shaped by society and cultural influences. For example, a U.S. consumer needs food, but they may want a specific type of food, like a Chicago-style "deep-dish" pizza and a craft beer. • Demands: Demands are wants backed by the ability to pay for specific products. While many people may want a luxury car like a Mercedes, only a few may be able to afford it. • Segmentation: Marketers identify distinct segments of buyers based on demographic, psychographic, and behavioural differences. They divide the market into groups with similar characteristics and needs. For example, Volvo targets buyers who value safety as a major concern. • Target Markets: For each segment, the firm develops a market offering that positions itself in the target buyers' minds as delivering key benefits. Porsche, for instance, targets buyers who seek pleasure and excitement in driving and want to make a statement about their wheels. • Positioning: Positioning involves creating a specific perception of a brand or product in the minds of the target customers relative to competitors. For example, Volvo positions its cars as the safest option available, appealing to safety-conscious buyers. Similarly, Porsche positions itself as a brand that offers excitement and pleasure in driving, attracting enthusiasts who want a thrilling experience. • Offerings: A combination of products, services, information, and experiences that address customer needs and deliver value to them. • Brands: A brand is an offering from a known source that carries various associations in customers' minds. For instance, Apple's brand is associated with creativity, innovation, and ease of use. • Communication Channels: These deliver and receive messages from target buyers and can include traditional media like TV, radio, and print, as well as digital channels like the internet and social media. • Distribution Channels: These help display, sell, or deliver physical products or services to buyers. They can be direct or indirect, involving distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and agents. • Service Channels: These include entities like warehouses, transportation companies, banks, and insurance companies that facilitate transactions with potential buyers. • Paid Media: This includes advertising channels where marketers pay to display their ads or brand, such as TV ads, magazine ads, and sponsored content. • Owned Media: These are communication channels that marketers own and control, such as company websites, blogs, and social media profiles.
• Earned Media: This is generated voluntarily by consumers or the press, such as word-of- mouth, buzz, or viral marketing. Companies like Chipotle have leveraged earned media to reduce reliance on traditional paid media. • Impressions: This metric tracks the scope or breadth of a communication's reach, such as the number of views or exposures to an ad or content. It indicates the potential audience. • Engagement: Engagement goes beyond impressions and measures the extent of a customer's attention and active involvement with a communication. It includes actions like "likes," comments, sharing, and interactions with brands. • Value: Value is the customer's perception of the sum of tangible and intangible benefits minus the costs. It's primarily influenced by quality, service, and price (customer value triad). • Satisfaction: Satisfaction reflects a customer's judgment of a product's perceived performance compared to their expectations. It can lead to delight, satisfaction, or disappointment. • Supply Chain: ➢ The supply chain is a channel stretching from raw materials to finished products carried to final buyers. ➢ Ethiopian farmers grow coffee beans that are sold through Fair Trade cooperatives, processed, and then transported to developed countries for sale directly or via retail channels. • Competition: ➢ Competition includes actual and potential rival offerings and substitutes that buyers might consider. ➢ An automobile manufacturer can buy steel from different sources, like U.S. Steel or Nucor, or use aluminium parts from Alcoa. • Marketing Environment: ➢ Task Environment: It includes actors involved in producing, distributing, and promoting offerings, such as suppliers, distributors, dealers, and target customers. ➢ Broad Environment: It consists of demographic, economic, social-cultural, natural, technological, and political-legal components. Companies must adapt their strategies to changes and trends in these environments. For example, Pinterest has emerged as a fast-growing social media site, integrating social media strategies and reducing paid media expenditures. Evolution in Marketing: 1. Technology: The rapid advancements in technology have dramatically changed the marketplace, leading to the rise of e-commerce, mobile Internet, and web penetration in emerging markets. Massive amounts of information and data are now available to consumers and marketers, influencing marketing strategies and communication channels.