Book

• Marketing


  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
• Marketing


  • Discovers the needs and wants of prospective customers
  • Satisfies the needs and wants of prospective customers
• Exchange


  The trade of things of value between a buyer and a seller so that each is better off after the trade
• Factors needed for marketing to occur

  • Two or more parties (individuals or organizations) with unsatisfied needs
  • Desire and ability on their part to have their needs satisfied
  • A way for the parties to communicate
  • Something to exchange
• Marketers often use customer surveys, concept tests, and other forms of marketing research to better understand customer ideas
• Many firms also use "crowdsourcing" or "innovation tournaments" to solicit and evaluate ideas from customers
• LEGO Ideas products


  • Voltron robot
  • Women of NASA set
  • Big Bang Theory model
  • Minecraft video game set
• It takes 3,000 raw ideas to generate one commercial success
• 38,000 new products are introduced worldwide each month
• About 40 percent of new product launches fail
• Robert M. McMath's suggestions to prevent product failures

  • Focus on what the customer benefit is
  • Learn from past mistakes
• The solution to preventing product failures is to find out what consumers need and want, and produce what they need and want
• Smart Glasses


  Head-mounted device with Internet capabilities, camera, phone, speaker, microphone, touchpad, and a heads-up display
• Google launched smart glasses called Google Glass


  The new product did not attract a mass market
• Showstoppers for Google Glass included its $1,500 price tag, a general perception that it looked "nerdy", and concerns that wearing the device might violate privacy rights
• Google discontinued the product, although it has recently reintroduced the concept as an Enterprise Edition for businesses, and other brands such as Focals and Vuzix are offering models that are trying to attract the consumer market
• Coca-Cola Stevia No Sugar


  Soda sweetened with stevia leaf extract rather than aspartame
• Potential showstopper: In the past consumers reported that products with stevia sweetener had a bitter aftertaste. Will Coca-Cola Stevia be different?
• Universal Yums Subscription


  Subscription service that delivers a selection of snacks from a different country every month, including a guidebook with trivia, games, and recipes
• Potential showstoppers: The competition is growing—there are already 400–600 subscription box services in the United States. Consumers may tire of receiving new products each month, particularly if they find several brands that meet their needs.
• Firms spend billions of dollars annually on marketing and technical research that significantly reduces, but doesn't eliminate, new-product failure
• Need


  When a person feels deprived of basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter
• Want


  A need that is shaped by a person's knowledge, culture, and personality
• Effective marketing, in the form of creating an awareness of good products at fair prices and convenient locations, can clearly shape a person's wants
• Even psychologists and economists still debate the exact meanings of need and want, so the terms will be used interchangeably throughout the book
• Market


  People with both the desire and the ability to buy a specific offering
• Target market


  One or more specific groups of potential consumers toward which an organization directs its marketing program
• The four Ps of the marketing mix

  • Product
  • Price
  • Promotion
  • Place
• Uncontrollable environmental forces


  Social, economic, technological, competitive, and regulatory forces that affect a marketing decision
• Recent studies and marketing successes have shown that a forward-looking, action-oriented firm can often affect some environmental forces by achieving technological or competitive breakthroughs
• Customer value


  The unique combination of benefits received by targeted buyers that includes quality, convenience, on-time delivery, and both before-sale and after-sale service at a specific price
• Firms now actually try to place a dollar value on the purchases of loyal, satisfied customers during their lifetimes
• Three value strategies


  • Best price
  • Best product
  • Best service
• Relationship marketing


  Links the organization to its individual customers, employees, suppliers, and other partners for their mutual long-term benefit
• Information technology, along with cutting-edge manufacturing and marketing processes, better enable companies to form relationships with customers today
• Relationship marketing


  Involves a personal, ongoing relationship between the organization and its individual customers that begins before the sale and may evolve through different types of relationships after the sale
• Information technology, manufacturing, and marketing processes

  • Better enable companies to form relationships with customers today
• Smart, connected products


  Elements of "the Internet of Everything" that help create detailed databases about product usage
• Data analytics


  The examination of data to discover relevant patterns that can provide insights into how products create value for customers
• Companies using data analytics

  • BMW
  • General Electric
  • Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company