PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

1. charecterstics of marketing:

 Social process:
Marketing is a social process because it involves people interacting with each
other to persuade them to act in a certain way, such as buying a product or
service. It's also considered a social process because it involves exchanging
products and values with others to obtain what people need and want.

 Managerial process:
Marketing is considered a managerial process because it involves planning,
promoting, and distributing products or services to meet organizational goals and
customer satisfaction.

 Exchange process:
Marketing is considered a utility creation process because it helps to ensure
that goods and services are available to consumers when and where they
need them. Marketing can also help to create time, place, and possession
utilities. For example, transportation creates place utility, storage creates time
utility, and advertisements create information utility.

 Consumer orientation process:

Customer orientation in marketing is a process that focuses on understanding

and meeting the needs and preferences of customers. The goal is to create a
better customer experience, which can lead to increased sales, brand loyalty,
and customer retention

 Utility creation process:

Marketing is considered an exchange process because it involves giving and

receiving between businesses and customers. In this process, a customer or
buyer exchanges something of value, like money or other resources, for a
desired object from a seller. The exchange process allows both parties to
evaluate the trade-offs they need to make to satisfy their wants and needs,
and ideally, both parties should end up with a satisfactory level of reward. The
exchange process involves at least two parties, each with something of value
to offer the other. The parties can communicate and deliver what they're
offering, and they're free to accept or reject what's offered. They also need to
trust and respect each other enough to take the exchange seriously.

 Profit earning process:

At its most basic level, marketing seeks to match a company's products and
services to customers who want access to those products. Matching products
to customers ultimately ensures profitability
Process of marketing:

Step 1: Understand Both the Marketplace and Customers

Before you can start the marketing process, you need to have a good idea of what
your marketplace looks like. This means answering some basic questions about your
customers, like who they are, their income and purchasing power, and how much
they’re likely to spend (particularly on your products or services). If you decide to
sell at lower prices in order to attain higher unit sales volume, your marketing
strategy would look very different than if you decided to sell fewer products at a
higher price.
Another way to approach this is to create separate brands and compete in both arenas.
Consider Volkswagen. You might immediately think of the VW Beetle or the Jetta,
but the company’s brand portfolio extends beyond VW passenger cars and SUVs. It’s
also the parent company for Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, and others, and
these vehicles sell at very different price points than VW passenger cars.

Step 2: Develop a Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy refers to a business’s overall “game plan” to focus its limited
resources in order to reach prospective customers and turn them into paying
customers, hopefully for the long run.
It’s said that there are two basic types of marketing strategy: a product-driven,
“build-it-and they-will-come” strategy and a customer-driven strategy, in which you
analyse prospective consumers and then—and only then—create something that they
want or need. We’re going to focus on the latter strategy. What happens in a
customer-driven marketing strategy is that the company shifts the focus from the
product or service itself to its users. Customers’ needs are the central focus and the
point of beginning, not an afterthought. Your primary goal in a customer-driven
marketing strategy is to determine what users want and/or need and then satisfy those
users. Instead of being product-centric, it’s about being customer-centric and
developing a mutually beneficial relationship with customers.
In a nutshell, it’s about establishing a connection and a relationship. It’s about
understanding who your customers are, what their needs and wants are, and how you
can best meet those needs and wants. It’s about knowing your target market better
than your competitors do and creating a strong value proposition for those users—a
promise of value that communicates the benefits of your company’s products or
services. In short, it’s what makes your product or service desirable to potential
customers, helps them understand why they should buy it, how your company’s
product or service differs from those of its competitors, and how your offerings are
superior to similar offerings from your competitors.

Step 3: Deliver High Customer Value

Customers have myriad buying options and alternatives today. Given that, how can a
company attract and—even more importantly—retain its customers? The answer is
relatively simple: you give them value for their money. By definition, customer value
is the ratio between the perceived benefits and costs incurred by the customer in
acquiring your products or services.
The mathematical formula is simple:
Value =Benefits Price(V=B/P)
But “value” from the customer’s perspective is a complex term, because we’re really
considering four different values types:
• Functional value: what the product “does” for the customer in terms of solving a
particular want or need
• Monetary value: what the product actually costs relative to its perceived worth
• Social value: how much owning the product allows the customer to connect
with others • Psychological value: how much that product allows the customer to
“feel better”
Value is increased by boosting the benefits (in the form of product, place, or
promotion) or minimizing the price.

Step 4: Grow Profitable Customer Relations

The bottom line is that profitable customer relationships are the “secret sauce” of any
business. This step in the marketing process is where marketers acquire, keep, and
grow customer relationships. Successful marketers know that acquiring customers is
one of the hardest (not to mention one of the most expensive) elements of marketing.
However, when you know clearly who those potential customers are, you can more
effectively determine how to reach them, thus maximizing your marketing dollars.
It isn’t enough to have a one-and-done sale. You want repeat buyers, so marketers
need to remind customers about the company’s products and/or services and how
those products and services have met their needs and improved their lives so they
make repeat purchases. Marketers need to consider how to reach customers about
their offerings and make it easy and convenient for those customers to make
continued purchases.
When customers have a positive relationship with a company or its products or
services, they’re more likely to become repeat buyers. Satisfied customers are also
more likely to be interested in buying additional products or services from your
company, and they tend to recommend products to others, further reducing the
company’s costs of getting new customers.

Step 5: Capture Customer Value in the Form of Profits

The goal of successful customer relationship management (CRM) is creating high
customer equity—the potential profits a company earns from its current and potential
customers. It’s a relatively simple concept: increasing customer loyalty results in
higher customer equity. Increasing customer equity is the goal of marketers because
it’s a bellwether for financial success. Think about it in simple terms: the higher a
company’s customer equity, the more profit the company generates, and the more
valuable that company (and its products or services) becomes on the market.
Micro and macro environment
 MARKETING MIX

Marketing mix is a combination of marketing tools

that a company used to satisfy their target
customers and achieving organizational goals.It
represents the total marketing programme.

Product
Price
Place
Promotion
PRODUCT:
A Product is anything that can be offered to a customer to
satisfy his/her need or want.
In simple words, product can be described as a bundle of
benefits which a marketer offers to the consumer for a
price.

The range of products offered by an organization

is called as product mix.
Some important variables of product mix are:

*Product design
*Product line
*Product branding
*Product labeling

PRICE:

Most important element in the marketing

mix.
Price is the only element in marketing mix
which produces revenue for the business
organization.

The factors have to kept in mind while

pricing a product are:

*Demand for a product

*Consumer’s ability to pay
 *Prices charged by competitors for similar
products .
PROMOTION

Promotion is done by means of personal

selling, advertising and sales promotion.
Advertising is the process of
communication about the product to
target market.
Personal selling is the promotion
activity consists of face to face meeting
between the buyer and seller.
Sales promotion is a form of indirect
advertising designed to stimulate sales.

The aims of promotion are to:

*Raise awareness
*Encourage sales
*Create or change a brand image
*Maintain market share
PLACE:

Goods must be available to the

consumers at place.
It involves a chain of individuals.
The channel though which the
products are distributed to the final
customer are known as channels of
distribution.
7 C’S OF MARKETING

Customer
Content
Context
Community
Convenience
Cohesion
Conversion

TYPES OF BUYING DECISION

BEHAVIOUR:

Complex buying behaviour

Dissonance reducing buying
behaviour
Habitual buying behaviour
Variety seeking buying behaviour
The Buyer Decision Process
Need Recognition:
• Occurs when the buyer recognizes a
problem or need triggered by:
– Internal stimuli
– External stimuli

Information Search:
Sources of Information
• Personal sources—family and friends
• Commercial sources—advertising,
Internet
• Public sources—mass media, consumer
organizations
• Experiential sources—handling,
examining, using the product

Evaluation of Alternatives:
• How the consumer processes
information to arrive at brand choices

Purchase Decision:
• The act by the consumer to buy the most
preferred brand
• The purchase decision can be affected
by:
– Attitudes of others
– Unexpected situational factors

Postpurchase Decision:
• The satisfaction or dissatisfaction that the
consumer feels about the purchase
• Relationship between:
– Consumer’s expectations
– Product’s perceived performance
• The larger the gap between expectation
and performance, the greater the
consumer’s dissatisfaction
• Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort
caused by a postpurchase conflict.

Post-Purchase Decision:
Customer satisfaction is a key to
building profitable relationships with
consumers—to keeping and growing
consumers and reaping their customer
lifetime value