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Marketing

10.1: Introduction

Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organisational objectives. It is a total system of interacting activities designed to plan, price, promote and distribute products to present and potential customers.

10.2: Role of Marketing

To achieve the goal of profit, the marketing plan should be the focus of all short-term planning for three reasons:

It outlines the strategies to be used to bring the buyer and seller together. The business needs to be able to identify:

	where the market is
	who will buy the product
	why they will buy the product

The core of marketing is satisfying existing customer wants, which should lead to repeat sales.

Marketing is the revenue-generating activity of any business. Nothing is achieved until a sale is made.

10.3: Identifying the target market

the total market is usually too large and fragmented (diverse) to be a viable target for a firm's marketing efforts. As a result, the business needs to select a target market- a group of customers with similar characteristics who are currently, or who may in the future, purchase the product. There are two broad approaches that can be used to select a target market:

Total market approach- a firm targets the total market for a particular product. This is only useful in a limited number of situations.

Market segmentation approach- the total market is subdivided into groups of people who share one or more common characteristics. There are 4 main variables that can be used when segmenting:

	demographic
	geographic
	product-related
	psychographic

10.4: Overview of the marketing mix- the four Ps

The marketing Mix refers to the combination of the four Ps:

Product- including brand name, packaging, positioning and warranties

	quality
	design
	name
	warranty and guarantee
	packaging
	labeling
	exclusive features

Price- including list price, discounts, credit terms and payment road

	Cost plus margin
	Market price
	Competitor's price
	Discount price

Promotion- including advertising, sales promotion and publicity

	Personal selling
	Sales promotion
	Publicity
	Advertising

Place- location of markets, warehousing, distribution, transport and inventory.