According to the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) in the UK, the largest marketing body in the world in terms of membership, marketing is the "management process of anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer requirements profitably".
The Four Ps of marking:
Product: The Product management and Product marketing aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual good or service, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants. - Incl. market research
Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts.
Promotion: refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.
Promotion comprises four subcategories:
1. Advertising
4. Publicity and public relations
Placement or distribution refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point of sale placement or retailing.
Determines what its potential customers desire, and then builds the product or service.
· customers use a product/service because they have a need, or because a product/service has a perceived benefit.
Types of marketing research
Marketing research techniques come in many forms, including:
· test marketing - in a small, test market
· concept testing - to test the acceptance of a concept by target consumers
· mystery shopping -
· interviews/surveys - of potential customers or distributors
· segmentation research - to determine the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics of potential buyers
· positioning research - how does the target market see the brand relative to competitors? - what does the brand stand for?
· brand name testing - what do consumers feel about the names of the products?
· advertising and promotion research - how effective are ads - do potential customers recall the ad, understand the message, and does the ad influence consumer purchasing behavior?
The word market originally meant the place where the exchange between seller and buyer took place.
When strategizing specialists in marketing comment about markets they are usually referring to the different groups of people and/or organizations. The four major market groups are 1) consumer, 2) business to business, 3) institutional, and 4) reseller.
Branding refers to the sum total of your company's value-proposition: products, services, people, advertising, positioning, culture, and partner relationships.