CHAPTER 2: THE BASICS OF MARKETING

• The marketing concept focuses on identifying and satisfying the needs of customers during the development and marketing of a product or service.
• • Applying the marketing concept to the planning, production, pricing, distribution, and promotion of products and services. 
• Market Planning involves identifying target markets (consumers or businesses that a company wants to serve) and developing an effective marketing strategy. 
• Product and Service Management involves creating products and services that meets the needs of customers. 
• Distribution involves determining the best methods and procedures to use so that customers can locate, obtain, and use a product or service. 
• Promotion is the communication of information about products and services to potential customers. 
• Selling is direct personal communication with prospective customers that involves assessing needs, explaining how the business’s products and services can satisfy those needs and following up to ensure satisfaction. 
• Marketing-information management involves collecting and managing the information needed to make marketing decisions. 
• Financing has two components:` First, businesses must budget to ensure they have the financial resources needed to carry out their marketing strategies. Second, businesses may need to provide financial assistance to customers to enable them to buy products and services.
• Risk management involves identifying potential risks associated with marketing decisions and activities and developing a strategy for dealing with and reducing the risks. 
• The marketing plan is a written description of the marketing objectives and the plan marketing strategies and activities required to meet those objectives
• Target market which is a specific group of consumers to whom the business wants to sell its products or services.
• The target market may be defined in terms of age, gender, income level, ethnicity, religion, location, or lifestyle.
• Undifferentiated strategy by viewing the market as one big market rather than as segmented market. This strategy lowers marketing cost but increases to dangers of competition. 
• Concentrated strategy is used for niche market, which is a smaller market that has a unique set of needs.
• Multiple-segment strategy choose to serve two or more target markets. A business may offer different products for different target markets. For example, a department store may sell clothing, sportswear, shoes, cookware, and cosmetics.
• A market segment is a top group of individuals within a larger market who share one or more characteristics 
• Mass marketing is the process of appealing to an entire market rather than one targeted group 
• Market segmentation is the process of dividing a large group of consumers into meaningful subgroups based on identifiable and similar characteristics and needs.
• Mass marketing is an attempt to appeal to a large, general group of consumers 
• Geographic segmentation is based on where consumers live.
• Demographics include consumer characteristics such as age, gender, race, marital status, income, educational level, and occupation 
• Generational marketing defines consumers by age but also considers their social and economic backgrounds and lifestyles to create a more accurate picture of the target market 
• Cohort marketing takes generational marketing a step further by targeting people who underwent the same experience and events while growing up
• Psychographics describes consumers based on their interest, attitudes, opinions, and lifestyles 
• Lifestyles and social interest influence the types of products and services offered to a market segment. An indoor rock climbing facility caters to adventure seeking enthusiast 
• Product usage refers to the amount of a product purchase and use. Product usage information can help determine the value of a market segment. 
• Benefit segmentation groups consumers based on specific benefits they expect to receive from a product or service. 
• Benefit segmentation focuses on the consumers needs and wants more than any other type of segmentation.
• Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is a strategy used to plan, execute, and monitor all promotional messages about a product to ensure consistency among all those messages.