Marketing

What is a Market?

A market is any situation where buyers and sellers come into contact. For example, street
markets, newspaper sellers, supermarkets, and taxi firms are face-to-face markets. A key feature
of most markets is that there is some element of competition.

However, a market does not necessarily involve face-to-face interaction. Increasingly, purchases
and sales are being made online as a result of e-commerce (trading on the Internet).

The term e-tailer refers to a company selling goods and services online. There are lots of
different types of markets, as outlined below:

Examples of markets

Street markets
Finance Markets (for borrowers and lenders of money and other financial products)
The Market consists of tourists and those selling goods and services to tourists.
Online Electronic Marketplaces
The market for bus travel
Fish Markets
Supermarkets
What is marketing?

Marketing involves identifying and anticipating customer requirements and making a profit.
This involves the following aspects:

 Identifying: Finding out what customers want, when, where, how many, and what price
they are willing to pay.
 Anticipating: Predicting future customer requirements.
 Discovering customer requirements: finding out what specific products customers are
looking for and the features involved, such as the model or type, where it can be
purchased, how it is packaged, whether you can buy it in bulk, etc.
  Meeting these requirements: Responding to customer requirements by giving customers
what they want.
 Making a profit: Marketing activity such as marketing research will enable a business to
predict whether it will make a profit, and roughly how big that profit will be.

A company can carry out its market research, or it might choose to employ a market-research
company like Clarocision Research and Marketing, a company that has a branch in Jamaica that
provides market information relating to the Greater and Lesser Antilles.

Mass Markets and Niche Markets

Most markets can be divided into several segments. Each segment consists of similar types of
customers with similar characteristics, such as being in the same age group or having similar
hobbies and tastes. Niche marketing targets specific segments of the whole market, such as fruit
tea drinkers who are part of the larger tea market. Niche marketing activity seeks to identify who
these fruits-tea drinkers are and what they are looking for.

In contrast, a mass marketing approach ignores this segmentation and seeks to cover the whole
market. In this situation, products are designed to appeal to the whole market.

New Trends in Marketing

Today, marketing activity makes it possible to find out more about customer requirements than
ever before. The term data mining refers to finding patterns in large sets of data, such as in
purchases made by consumers.

The use of electronic media also makes it possible for companies to use integrated marketing.
This refers to creating a unified experience for customers when they interact with a company
through a range of communication channels, including advertising, sales promotion, direct
marketing, and social media marketing. A company will plan its interactions with customers
using a clear set of objectives, which are consistent across all of the ways it interacts with them.

Social media marketing is a form of Internet marketing that uses social networking websites. In
2018, about three billion customers around the world accessed marketing material through
websites such as Facebook and Youtube. Nearly all marketers state that they use these tools as
the key form of digital marketing.
One great advantage of social media sites is that marketing messages can spread like wildfire.
Adverts produced by companies like Nike will be shared by millions of social media users, so
the messages are shared through the grapevine of social media exchange.

Market research

Market research means carefully gathering and analyzing data about a market for particular
goods or services. Research undertaken by a marketing department or market research agency is
aiming to find out important information that will help a business decide which products to
supply and how to market them. This information focuses on three main factors.

Factors of Description
Marketing
Activity
Consumer Taste Consumer tastes are concerned with what consumers are looking for in the products
they buy and how their tastes are changing. By finding out about new patterns of
demand, fast-food companies like McDonald’s have been able to offer alternatives
such as fresh salads, and reduce the sugar, fat, and salt content of its products, to stay
relevant to consumer tastes.
Competition A company needs to know what other companies are offering consumers- and what
their plans are- to stay relevant and at the top of the market. At the same time, a
company needs to differentiate itself from the competition and find out what makes it
different from the competition. A successful company will continue to differentiate
itself from rivals by providing new products and services that customers want.
Consumer behavior Consumer behavior concerns the factors that influence consumers to buy one product
instead of another, and how this behavior might change over time.
Market research can either be quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative research is research that
can be measured in numbers by asking questions such as: How much? How many? How often?
Quantitative research often uses a questionnaire to gather information. It can be used to gather
and analyze data from large numbers of people.
In contrast, qualitative research seeks to expose customers’ views and opinions. Typically this
will involve a relatively small sample. Qualitative research makes it possible to answer questions
such as “Why do you like (a particular good or service)?”

Pricing

Pricing involves determining the price level for new and existing products. It is often likely to
have a major impact on consumer behavior. Internal factors that influence pricing include the
cost of producing or selling goods, whether goods need to be sold at a certain price to maximize
sales or profits, and whether a company might want to project a certain image through its pricing.

External factors that influence pricing include price decisions made by competitors, and the state
of the economy. Consumer views on pricing are largely outside the control of the company. The
government may also seek to limit the prices that producers can charge to protect consumers.

Packaging

Packaging refers to the materials used to pack and protect goods. The marketing department is
often involved in deciding which packaging is best for each product, as this step is part of
marketing and selling the product to consumers, and the colors and logos used on the packaging
can help to promote the brand’s image. Customers look for different forms of packaging for
different products.

Branding

A brand is a unique, consistent, and well-recognized image for a product or set of products. The
term “branding” relates to establishing a distinct brand, and large companies often spend millions
of dollars on this process. The term “brand image” refers to the set of beliefs that consumers
hold about a specific brand. The idea is that the consumer is not just purchasing the
product/service, but is also buying into the image associated with that product/service.

Sales Promotion

Sales promotion consists of activities and techniques designed to increase the sales of a product.
 Advertising

Advertising is a means of communicating with the buyers or users of a product and is usually
paid for by the firm offering the goods or services. It includes any form of paid, formal
communication about goods or services. There are many different ways of communication
through advertising, including through television, radio, websites, social media sites, posters,
newspapers, and flyers pushed through people’s doors or handed out in the street. The
advertising method needs to be appropriate to the size of the firm and the type of products.

Distribution

Distribution is the movement of goods from a source through a distribution channel so that the
goods reach the consumers. Or users.

Marketing Mix

The marketing mix relates to the four key decisions that must be taken in the effective
marketing of a product. These four key decisions are often called the “4 Ps”:

 Product
 Price
 Promotion
 Place

A mix is made up of ingredients that are blended for a purpose. Think of the ingredients used
to make a cake. They have to be blended to make a successful cake. In the same way that
there are many cakes to suit all tastes, a marketing mix can be designed to suit the precise
requirements of the market.

Product
The most important part of the marketing mix is the produce, and it must meet identified
consumer needs. We like products because they provide us with benefits. It also provides the
benefits of being able to communicate through calls and texting, as well as giving us access to
data information such as weather reports and the latest football scores. Products have several
features. For example, your cellphone has:
 Shape
 Design
 Colour
 Size
 Packaging
The Product life cycle
The life of a product is the period over which a product appeals to customers. At the
introduction stage, sales growth is slow as only a small number of people know about the
product or understand its benefits. Profits start to rise in the growth phase when more and
more people find out about the product and want to purchase it. In the maturity phase, most
of the potential customers have been reached. However, there may be lots of repeat
purchases. In the decline stage, the product becomes “old” and sales start to fall. An updated
or replacement product may have entered the market.
Giving new life
To prolong the life cycle, new life needs to be injected into the marketing mix.