Agricultural marketing

Agricultural marketing covers the services involved in moving an agricultural product from the farm to the consumer. Numerous interconnected activities are involved in doing this. Agricultural marketing is best carried out by the private sector rather than governments and all stages of the chain must show a profit for the participants. Support to developing countries with agricultural marketing development is carried out by the agricultural marketing section of FAO ^[1] and various donor organizations. Activities include market information development, marketing extension, training in marketing and infrastructure development. Recent trends have seen the rise of supermarkets and a growing interest in contract farming.

Contents [hide] 1 Agricultural marketing 2 Agricultural marketing in developing countries 2.1 Agricultural advisory services and the market 2.2 Market infrastructure 2.3 Market information 2.4 Marketing training 2.5 Enabling Environments 2.6 Recent developments 3 References 4 Further reading 5 External links

[edit] Agricultural marketing

Agricultural marketing can best be defined as series of services involved in moving a product from the point of production to the point of consumption. Thus agricultural marketing is a series of inter-connected activities involving: planning production, growing and harvesting, grading, packing, transport, storage, agro- and food processing, distribution and sale. Such activities cannot take place without the exchange of information and are often heavily dependent on the availability of suitable finance. Marketing systems are dynamic. They are competitive and involve continuous change and improvement. Businesses that have lower costs, are more efficient and can deliver quality products are those that prosper. Those who have high costs, do not adapt to changes in market demand and provide poorer quality are often forced out of business. Marketing has to be customer oriented and has to provide the farmer, transporter, trader, processor, etc. with a profit. This requires those involved in marketing chains to understand buyer requirements, both in terms of product and business conditions.

[edit] Agricultural marketing in developing countries

Several organizations provide support to developing countries to develop their agricultural marketing systems, including FAO's agricultural marketing unit

and various donor organizations. There has also recently been considerable interest by NGOs to carry out activities to link farmers to markets. Improvement of marketing systems necessitates a strong private sector backed up by appropriate policy and legislative frameworks and effective government support services. Such services can include provision of market infrastructure, supply of market information, and agricultural extension services able to advise farmers on marketing. Training in marketing at all levels is also needed. One of many problems faced in agricultural marketing in developing countries is the latent hostility to the private sector and the lack of understanding of the role of the intermediary. “Middleman” has become very much a pejorative word.

[edit] Agricultural advisory services and the market

Promoting market orientation in agricultural advisory services aims to provide for the sustainable enhancement of the capabilities of the rural poor to enable them to benefit from agricultural markets and help them to adapt to factors which impact upon these. As a study by the Overseas Development Institute demonstrates, a value chain approach to advisory services indicates that the range of clients serviced should go beyond farmers to include input providers, producers, producer organisations and processors and traders. ^[2]

[edit] Market infrastructure

Efficient marketing infrastructure such as wholesale, retail and assembly markets and storage facilities is essential for cost-effective marketing, to minimise post-harvest losses and to reduce health risks. Markets play an important role in rural development, income generation, food security, developing rural-market linkages and gender issues. Planners need to be aware of how to design markets that meet a community's social and economic needs and how to choose a suitable site for a new market. In many cases sites are chosen that are inappropriate and result in under-use or even no use of the infrastructure constructed. It is also not sufficient just to build a market: attention needs to be paid to how that market will be managed, operated and maintained. ^[3] In most cases, where market improvements were only aimed at infrastructure upgrading and did not guarantee maintenance and management, most failed within a few years. ^[4]

Rural assembly markets are located in production areas and primarily serve as places where farmers can meet with traders to sell their products. These may be occasional (perhaps weekly) markets, such as haat bazaars in India and Nepal, or permanent. Terminal wholesale markets are located in major metropolitan areas, where produce is finally channelled to consumers through trade between wholesalers and retailers, caterers, etc. The characteristics of wholesale markets have changed considerably as retailing changes in response to urban growth, the increasing role of supermarkets and increased consumer spending capacity. These changes require responses in the way in which traditional wholesale markets are organized and managed.

A typically chaotic market in Africa

Retail marketing systems in western countries have broadly evolved from traditional street markets through to the modern hypermarket or out-of-town shopping centre. Despite the growth of supermarkets there remains considerable scope to improve agricultural marketing in developing countries by constructing new retail markets. However, there is little point in undertaking market development improvements unless they result in a positive socio-economic impact. Effective regulation of markets is essential. Inside the market, both hygiene rules and revenue collection activities have to be enforced. Of equal importance, however, is the maintenance of order outside the market. Licensed traders in a market will not be willing to cooperate in raising standards if they face competition from unlicensed operators outside who do not pay any of the costs involved in providing a proper service. ^[5]

[edit] Market information

Efficient market information can be shown to have positive benefits for farmers and traders. Up-to-date information on prices and other market factors enables farmers to negotiate with traders and also facilitates spatial distribution of products from rural areas to towns and between markets. Most governments in developing countries have tried to provide market information services to farmers, but these have tended to experience problems of sustainability. Moreover, even when they function, the service provided is often insufficient to allow commercial decisions to be made because of time lags between data collection and dissemination.^[6] Modern communications technologies open up the possibility for market information services to improve information delivery through SMS on cell phones and the rapid growth of FM radio stations in many developing countries offers the possibility of more localised information services. In the longer run, the internet may become an effective way of delivering information to farmers. However, problems associated with the cost and accuracy of data collection still remain to be addressed. Even when they have access to market information, farmers often require assistance in interpreting that information. For example, the market price quoted on the radio may refer to a wholesale selling price and farmers may have difficulty in translating this into a realistic price at their local assembly market. ^[7] Various attempts have been made in developing countries to introduce commercial market information services but these have largely been targeted at traders, commercial farmers or exporters. It is not easy to see how small, poor farmers can generate sufficient income for a commercial service to be profitable although in India a new service introduced by Thompson Reuters was reportedly used by over 100,000 farmers in its first year of operation. Esoko in West Africa attempts to subsidize the cost of such services to farmers by charging access to a more advanced feature set of mobile-based tools to businesses.

[edit] Marketing training

Farmers frequently consider marketing as being their major problem. However, while they are able to identify such problems as poor prices, lack of transport and high post-harvest losses, they are often poorly equipped to identify potential solutions. Successful marketing requires learning new skills, new techniques and new ways of obtaining information. Extension officers working with ministries of agriculture or NGOs are often well-trained in horticultural production techniques but usually lack knowledge of marketing or post-harvest handling. ^[8] Ways of helping them develop their knowledge of these areas, in order to be better able to advise farmers about market-oriented horticulture, need to be explored. While there is a range of generic guides and other training materials available from FAO and others, these should ideally be tailored to national circumstances to have maximum effect.

[edit] Enabling Environments

Agricultural marketing needs to be conducted within a supportive policy, legal, institutional, macro-economic, infrastructural and bureaucratic environment. Traders and others cannot make investments in a climate of arbitrary government policy changes, such as those that restrict imports and exports or internal produce movement. Those in business cannot function if their trading activities are hampered by excessive bureaucracy and form filling. Inappropriate law can distort and reduce the efficiency of the market, increase the costs of doing business and retard the development of a competitive private sector. Poor support institutions, such as agricultural extension services, municipalities that operate markets inefficiently and export promotion bodies, can be particularly damaging. Poor roads increase the cost of doing business, reduce payments to farmers and increase prices to consumers. Finally, the ever-present problem of corruption can seriously impact on agricultural marketing efficiency in many countries.

[edit] Recent developments

New marketing linkages between agribusiness, large retailers and farmers are gradually being developed, e.g. through contract farming, group marketing and other forms of collective action.^[9] Donors and NGOs are paying increasing attention to ways of promoting direct linkages between farmers and buyers.^[10] The growth of supermarkets, particularly in Latin America and East and South East Asia, is having a significant impact on marketing channels for horticultural, dairy and livestock products ^[11] Nevertheless, “spot” markets will continue to be important for many years, necessitating attention to infrastructure improvement such as for retail and wholesale markets.

[edit] References

1. ^ FAO's agricultural marketing section
2. ^ "Agricultural advisory services and the market
   ". Overseas Development Institute. April 2008. http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/download/1145.pdf
   .
3. ^ John Tracey-White [1]
   , Planning and Designing Rural Markets, FAO, Rome, 2003.
4. ^ Cecilia Marocchino[2]
   , A guide to upgrading rural agricultural retail markets, FAO, Rome, 2009.
5. ^ John Tracey-White [3]
   Retail markets planning guide. FAO, Rome, 1995.
6. ^ Andrew W. Shepherd [4]
   , Market information services – Theory and Practice. FAO, Rome, 1997
7. ^ Andrew W. Shepherd [5]
   , Understanding and Using Market Information. FAO, Rome, 2000
8. ^ Grahame Dixie [6]
   , Horticultural Marketing, Marketing Extension Guide 5, FAO, Rome, 2007.
9. ^ Helen Markelova and Ruth Meinzen-Dick[7]
   Collective action and market access for smallholders: A summary of findings. CAPRi/IFPRI 2007
10. ^ Andrew W. Shepherd [8]
    Approaches to linking producers to markets. FAO, Rome, 2007
11. ^ Reardon, T., C.P. Timmer, C.B. Barrett, J. Berdegue. “The Rise of Supermarkets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 85 (5), December 2003: 1140-1146.

[edit] Further reading

• Abbott, J.C.; Marketing Improvement in the Developing World. FAO, Rome, 1984
• Kaynak, E., editor; World Food Marketing Systems, Butterworths, London, 1984
• Padberg, E., Ritson, C. and Albisu, L.M., editors; Agro-food Marketing, CAB International, 1997.
• FARA; Innovative Farmer Advisory Systems, 2009

Asif Markrting Blog

Marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others.

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. [1] The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market, as in shopping, or going to a market to buy or sell goods or services.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as "The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably."[2]

Marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry in the past, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programmes. The overall process starts with marketing research and goes through market segmentation, business planning and execution, ending with pre and post-sales promotional activities. It is also related to many of the creative arts. The marketing literature is also infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture.


Seen from a systems point of view, sales process engineering views marketing as a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions[3], whose methods can be improved using a variety of relatively new approaches.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 The marketing concept
* 2 Marketing orientations
o 2.1 Product orientation
o 2.2 Sales orientation
o 2.3 Production orientation
o 2.4 Marketing orientation
+ 2.4.1 Customer orientation
+ 2.4.2 Organizational orientation
+ 2.4.3 Mutually beneficial exchange
* 3 The Four Ps
* 4 The marketing environment
o 4.1 The macro-environment
o 4.2 The micro-environment
* 5 Marketing research
* 6 Product
o 6.1 Branding
* 7 Marketing communications
o 7.1 Personal sales
o 7.2 Sales promotion
* 8 Customer focus
* 9 Product focus
* 10 Areas of marketing specialization
* 11 See also
* 12 Related lists
* 13 References
* 14 External links

[edit] The marketing concept

The term marketing concept pertains to the fundamental premise of modern marketing. This can be laid out as recognising consumer needs/wants, then designing products and services that correlate with consumer desires.

[edit] Marketing orientations

An orientation, in the marketing context, relates to a perception or attitude a firm holds towards its product or service, essentially concerning consumers and end-users. There exist several common orientations:

[edit] Product orientation

A firm employing a product orientation is chiefly concerned with the quality of its own product. A firm would also assume that as long as its product was of a high standard, people would buy and consume the product.

This works most effectively when the firm has good insights about customers and their needs and desires, as for example in the case of Sony Walkman or Apple iPod, whether these derive from intuitions or research.

[edit] Sales orientation

A firm using a sales orientation focuses primarily on the selling/promotion of a particular product, and not determining new consumer desires as such. Consequently, this entails simply selling an already existing product, and using promotion techniques to attain the highest sales possible.

Such an orientation may suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a good that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.

[edit] Production orientation

A firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given good. Thus, this signifies a firm exploiting economies of scale, until the minimum efficient scale is reached.

A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a good exists, coupled with a good certainty that consumer tastes do not rapidly alter (similar to the sales orientation).

[edit] Marketing orientation

The marketing orientation is perhaps the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It involves a firm essentially basing its marketing plans around the marketing concept, and thus forging products to suit new consumer tastes.

As an example, a firm would employ market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&D to develop a good attuned to the revealed information, and then utilise promotion techniques to ensure persons know the good exists. The marketing orientation often has three prime facets, which are:

[edit] Customer orientation

A firm in the market economy survives by producing goods that persons are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viability and even existence as a going concern.

[edit] Organizational orientation

All departments of a firm should be geared to satisfying consumer wants/needs.

[edit] Mutually beneficial exchange

In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus leads to more profits/market share/sales. A consumer on the other hand gains a need/want that is satisfied, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a good. As no one has to buy goods from any one supplier in the market economy, firms must entice consumers to buy goodswith contemporary marketing ideals.

[edit] The Four Ps
Main article: Marketing mix

In the early 1960s, Professor Neil Borden at Harvard Business School identified a number of company performance actions that can influence the consumer decision to purchase goods or services. Borden suggested that all those actions of the company represented a “Marketing Mix”. Professor E. Jerome McCarthy, at the Michigan State University in the early 1960s, suggested that the Marketing Mix contained 4 elements: product, price, place and promotion.

* Product: The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants. The scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support.
* Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary; it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, or attention. Methods of setting prices optimally are in the domain of pricing science.
* Placement (or distribution): refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point-of-sale placement or retailing. This third P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc. also referring to how the environment in which the product is sold in can affect sales.
* Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, including promotional education, publicity, and personal selling. Branding refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.

These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix,[4] which a marketer can use to craft a marketing plan.

The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Industrial products, services, high value consumer products require adjustments to this model. Services marketing must account for the unique nature of services.

Industrial or B2B marketing must account for the long term contractual agreements that are typical in supply chain transactions. Relationship marketing attempts to do this by looking at marketing from a long term relationship perspective rather than individual transactions.

As a counter to this, Morgan, in Riding the Waves of Change (Jossey-Bass, 1988), suggests that one of the greatest limitations of the 4 Ps approach "is that it unconsciously emphasizes the inside–out view (looking from the company outwards), whereas the essence of marketing should be the outside–in approach".

[edit] The marketing environment

The term "marketing environment" relates to all of the factors (whether internal, external, direct or indirect) that affects a firm's marketing decision-making/planning. A firm's marketing environment consists of three main areas, which are:

* The macro-environment, over which a firm holds little control
* The micro-environment, over which a firm holds a greater amount (though not necessarily total) control
* The internal environment

[edit] The macro-environment

A firm's marketing macro-environment consists of a variety of external factors that manifest on a large (or macro) scale. These are typically economic, social, political or technological phenomena. A common method of assessing a firm's macro-environment is via a PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Ecological) analysis. Within a PESTLE analysis, a firm would analyse national political issues, culture and climate, key macroeconomic conditions, health and indicators (such as economic growth, inflation, unemployment, etc.), social trends/attitudes, and the nature of technology's impact on its society and the business processes within the society.

[edit] The micro-environment

A firm's micro-environment comprises factors pertinent to the firm itself, or stakeholders closely connected with the firm.

[edit] Marketing research

Marketing research involves conducting research to support marketing activities, and the statistical interpretation of data into information. This information is then used by managers to plan marketing activities, gauge the nature of a firm's marketing environment, attain information from suppliers, etc.

A distinction should be made between marketing research and market research. Market research pertains to research in a given market. As an example, a firm may conduct research in a target market, after selecting a suitable market segment. In contrast, marketing research relates to all research conducted within marketing. Thus, market research is a subset of marketing research.

Marketing researchers use statistical methods (such as quantitative research, qualitative research, hypothesis tests, Chi-squared tests, linear regression, correlation co-efficients, frequency distributions, Poisson and Binomial distributions, etc.) to interpret their findings and convert data into information.

[edit] Product
Main article: New Product Development

[edit] Branding
Main article: Brand

A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes products and services from competitive offerings. A brand represents the consumers' experience with an organization, product, or service. A brand is more than a name, design or symbol. Brand reflects personality of the company which is organizational culture.

A brand has also been defined as an identifiable entity that makes a specific value based on promises made and kept either actively or passively.

Branding means creating reference of certain products in mind.

Co-branding involves marketing activity involving two or more products.

[edit] Marketing communications

Marketing communications breaks down the strategies involved with marketing messages into categories based on the goals of each message. There are distinct stages in converting strangers to customers that govern the communication medium that should be used.

[edit] Personal sales

Oral presentation given by a salesperson who approaches individuals or a group of potential customers:

* Live, interactive relationship
* Personal interest
* Attention and response
* Interesting presentation
* Clear and thorough.

[edit] Sales promotion

Short-term incentives to encourage buying of products:

* Instant appeal
* Anxiety to sell

An example is coupons or a sale. People are given an incentive to buy, but this does not build customer loyalty or encourage future repeat buys. A major drawback of sales promotion is that it is easily copied by competition. It cannot be used as a sustainable source of differentiation.

[edit] Customer focus

Many companies today have a customer focus (or market orientation). This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on consumer demands. Generally there are three ways of doing this: the customer-driven approach, the sense of identifying market changes and the product innovation approach.

In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is pursued until it passes the test of consumer research. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no point spending R&D funds developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures in spite of being technological breakthroughs.[5]

A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA[6] (Solution, Information, Value, Access). This system is basically the four Ps renamed and reworded to provide a customer focus.

The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4Ps supply side model (product, price, place, promotion) of marketing management.
Product → Solution
Promotion → Information
Price → Value
Placement → Access

[edit] Product focus

In a product innovation approach, the company pursues product innovation, then tries to develop a market for the product. Product innovation drives the process and marketing research is conducted primarily to ensure that profitable market segment(s) exist for the innovation. The rationale is that customers may not know what options will be available to them in the future so we should not expect them to tell us what they will buy in the future. However, marketers can aggressively over-pursue product innovation and try to overcapitalize on a niche. When pursuing a product innovation approach, marketers must ensure that they have a varied and multi-tiered approach to product innovation. It is claimed that if Thomas Edison depended on marketing research he would have produced larger candles rather than inventing light bulbs. Many firms, such as research and development focused companies, successfully focus on product innovation. Many purists doubt whether this is really a form of marketing orientation at all, because of the ex post status of consumer research. Some even question whether it is marketing.

* An emerging area of study and practice concerns internal marketing, or how employees are trained and managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and retention of customers (employer branding).
* Diffusion of innovations research explores how and why people adopt new products, services and ideas.
* A relatively new form of marketing uses the Internet and is called Internet marketing or more generally e-marketing, affiliate marketing, desktop advertising or online marketing. It tries to perfect the segmentation strategy used in traditional marketing. It targets its audience more precisely, and is sometimes called personalized marketing or one-to-one marketing.
* With consumers' eroding attention span and willingness to give time to advertising messages, marketers are turning to forms of permission marketing such as branded content, custom media and reality marketing.
* The use of herd behavior in marketing.

The Economist reported a recent conference in Rome on the subject of the simulation of adaptive human behavior.[7] It shared mechanisms to increase impulse buying and get people "to buy more by playing on the herd instinct." The basic idea is that people will buy more of products that are seen to be popular, and several feedback mechanisms to get product popularity information to consumers are mentioned, including smart-cart technology and the use of Radio Frequency Identification Tag technology. A "swarm-moves" model was introduced by a Florida Institute of Technology researcher, which is appealing to supermarkets because it can "increase sales without the need to give people discounts."

Marketing is also used to promote business' products and is a great way to promote the business.

Other recent studies on the "power of social influence" include an "artificial music market in which some 14,000 people downloaded previously unknown songs" (Columbia University, New York); a Japanese chain of convenience stores which orders its products based on "sales data from department stores and research companies;" a Massachusetts company exploiting knowledge of social networking to improve sales; and online retailers who are increasingly informing consumers about "which products are popular with like-minded consumers" (e.g., Amazon, eBay).

[edit] Areas of marketing specialization

* agricultural marketing
* advertising and branding
* communications
* CRM, Customer Relationship Management
* database marketing
* professional selling
* direct marketing
* event organization
* experiential marketing
* global marketing
* guerilla marketing
* integrated marketing
* international marketing
* internet marketing
* industrial marketing
* market research
* marketing strategy
* marketing plan
* political marketing
* product marketing
* promotional education
* proximity marketing
* public marketing
* retailing
* search engine marketing
* segmentation
* social media marketing
* sponsorship
* strategic management
* wholesale marketing

[edit] See also
Main article: Outline of marketing

* Advertising Research
* AIDA
* Article marketing
* Borderless Selling
* Brand
* Brand orientation
* Branded content
* Cause marketing
* Communal marketing
* Copywriting
* Customer relationship management
* Customer Segmentation
* Digital marketing
* Demand generation
* Early adopter
* Engagement marketing
* Evangelism marketing



* Fear, uncertainty, doubt
* Integrated Marketing Communications
* Macromarketing
* Market Segmentation
* Marketeer
* Marketing collateral
* Marketing co-operation
* Marketing Mix
* Marketing effectiveness
* Merchandising
* Mobile Marketing
* Multichannel Marketing
* Predictive analytics



* Product marketing
* Reality marketing
* Referral marketing
* Return on marketing investment
* Reverse marketing
* Sales techniques
* SEO Copywriting
* Services
* Sex in advertising
* Senior media creative
* Technical marketing*
* Trade marketing
* Value
* Visual brand language

Wikipedia Books Wikipedia:Books has a book on: Marketing

[edit] Related lists

See List of marketing topics for an extensive list of the marketing articles.

* List of management topics
* List of human resource management topics
* List of economics topics
* List of finance topics
* List of accounting topics
* List of information technology management topics
* List of production topics
* List of business law topics
* List of international trade topics
* List of business ethics, political economy, and philosophy of business topics
* List of business theorists

[edit] References

1. ^ Marketing definition approved in October 2007 by the American Marketing Association: [1]

.
2. ^ Definition of marketing

, Chartered Institute of Marketing
3. ^ Paul H. Selden (1997). Sales Process Engineering: A Personal Workshop. Milwaukee, WI: ASQ Quality Press. p. 23.
4. ^ "The Concept of the Marketing Mix" from the Journal of Advertising Research, June 1964 pp 2-7
5. ^ "Marketing Management: Strategies and Programs", Guiltinan et al., McGraw Hill/Irwin, 1996
6. ^ "In the Mix: A Customer-Focused Approach Can Bring the Current Marketing Mix into the 21st Century". Chekitan S. Dev and Don E. Schultz, Marketing Management v.14 n.1 January/February 2005
7. ^ "Swarming the shelves: How shops can exploit people's herd mentality to increase sales?". The Economist. 2006-11-11. p. 90.

Marketing Careers and Training

Are you interested in Marketing? Considering it as your career choice? Follow the information below to explore Marketing Careers in Advertising, Public Relations, Market Research, Product Management and Planning, Retailing and Non-Profit

Preliminaries: organization, strategy

A marketing plan is an action plan for a given period (one year usually)

to offer and promote on the market a range of products and services.

=> This action plan must fit in the broader and longer issue of:

Structuring the Selling activities

Organising the sales network

Organising the sales coaching and monitoring

=> Which have to be linked to:

A General strategy

A Marketing strategy

Tip: marketing should not be an isolated job, it must irrigate the whole business.

=> Any business strategy / organization should:

*

be based on the customers, as the focus of any business
*

start with a SWOT analysis (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)

Notes:

* No selling organization => no real marketing actions
* No detailed strategy => no plans
* No plan => no orientation to organize, supervise, monitor
* Strategies and plans have deep impacts on the firm's general organization

pi-separ.gif (1205 octets)

03 - Marketing Strategy

There are 4 steps to prepare a Marketing Strategy:

1. Identifies the market needs (market study)

*

Asks customers, prospects, sellers, market study units
*

A good strategy takes into account the knowledge that everyone in the firm can bring
*

Continuous relation with customers (interviews, blog...)
*

Prospective analysis (see analysis tables in ch. 12)
*

Careful: a cold blood analysis is not enough, be also a bit in love with your customers!

2. Choose market targets

*

Products + customer segments pairs. Ex: corporate credit card
*

Some of them exclusive niches (when possible)
*

Some of them priorities on which to focus efforts
*

With adequate positioning (low cost or upscale)

3. Define market shares goals
(or other market performance benchmarks, overall or for some products)

=> From them calculate Multi-annual sales growth objectives

4. Prepare adequate selling / distribution channels

Strategic models

Marketing participants often employ strategic models and tools to analyze marketing decisions. When beginning a strategic analysis, the 3Cs can be employed to get a broad understanding of the strategic environment. An Ansoff Matrix is also often used to convey an organization's strategic positioning of their marketing mix. The 4Ps can then be utilized to form a marketing plan to pursue a defined strategy.

Marketing in Practice

The Consumer-Centric Business

There are a many companies especially those in the Consumer Package Goods (CPG) market that adopt the theory of running their business centered around Consumer, Shopper & Retailer needs. Their Marketing departments spend quality time looking for "Growth Opportunities" in their categories by identifying relevant insights (both mindsets and behaviors) on their target Consumers, Shoppers and retail partners. These Growth Opportunities emerge from changes in market trends, segment dynamics changing and also internal brand or operational business challenges.The Marketing team can then prioritize these Growth Opportunities and begin to develop strategies to exploit the opportunities that could include new or adapted products, services as well as changes to the 7Ps.

Real-life marketing primarily revolves around the application of a great deal of common-sense; dealing with a limited number of factors, in an environment of imperfect information and limited resources complicated by uncertainty and tight timescales. Use of classical marketing techniques, in these circumstances, is inevitably partial and uneven.

Thus, for example, many new products will emerge from irrational processes and the rational development process may be used (if at all) to screen out the worst non-runners. The design of the advertising, and the packaging, will be the output of the creative minds employed; which management will then screen, often by 'gut-reaction', to ensure that it is reasonable.

For most of their time, marketing managers use intuition and experience to analyze and handle the complex, and unique, situations being faced; without easy reference to theory. This will often be 'flying by the seat of the pants', or 'gut-reaction'; where the overall strategy, coupled with the knowledge of the customer which has been absorbed almost by a process of osmosis, will determine the quality of the marketing employed. This, almost instinctive management, is what is sometimes called 'coarse marketing'; to distinguish it from the refined, aesthetically pleasing, form favored by the theorists.

Types of strategies

Marketing strategies may differ depending on the unique situation of the individual business. However there are a number of ways of categorizing some generic strategies. A brief description of the most common categorizing schemes is presented below:

* Strategies based on market dominance - In this scheme, firms are classified based on their market share or dominance of an industry. Typically there are three types of market dominance strategies:
o Leader
o Challenger
o Follower
* Porter generic strategies - strategy on the dimensions of strategic scope and strategic strength. Strategic scope refers to the market penetration while strategic strength refers to the firm’s sustainable competitive advantage. The generic strategy framework (porter 1984) comprises two alternatives each with two alternative scopes. These are Differentiation and low-cost leadership each with a dimension of Focus-broad or narrow.
o Product differentiation
o Market segmentation
* Innovation strategies - This deals with the firm's rate of the new product development and business model innovation. It asks whether the company is on the cutting edge of technology and business innovation. There are three types:
o Pioneers
o Close followers
o Late followers
* Growth strategies - In this scheme we ask the question, “How should the firm grow?”. There are a number of different ways of answering that question, but the most common gives four answers:
o Horizontal integration
o Vertical integration
o Diversification
o Intensification

A more detailed scheme uses the categories [6]:

* Prospector
* Analyzer
* Defender
* Reactor
* Marketing warfare strategies - This scheme draws parallels between marketing strategies and military strategies.
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