Marketing

Some “Don’ts” to avoid while completing the assignment: Don’t wait until an hour before the assignment is due to get started. The assignment takes more time than that. Don’t respond with two or three sentences of your opinion only. Don’t forget to proofread your work – grammar counts! While you will use your textbook to answer the questions, don’t copy verbatim – answer in your own words. Don’t forget to cite an outside source for your example/application of the concept in question. Don’t attempt to submit the assignment late; it will not be accepted. Now, some “DO’s” for success with the assignment: Do carefully read each question stem to be sure you understand what is being asked. Do use your textbook to “answer the questions.” Read and review the material in question, then begin your response with answering the questions in your own words (based on the textbook). Do some outside research. Find an example of an organization (profit or nonprofit), product, or brand for the concept within each question. Be sure to cite the source (your choice of citation). Explain the example or application. Finally, do share your thoughts on the question, organization, etc. CHECK YOUR WORK – there should be no grammatical nor typographical errors. Do submit your work ON OR BEFORE the deadline. Fully respond to each question using your textbook, content browser resources, and power points (no need to cite the book as a source). Answers should be in your own words and should be at least one full page each. Be sure to use outside resources (cite them) and add your own thoughts. Read each question carefully to ensure that you understand what is being asked and can respond appropriately. Assignments will be run through TurnItIn.com, so be sure that this is your own work. GOOD LUCK and do your best! I look forward to reading your essays. List and DESCRIBE IN DETAIL the seven steps of the marketing research process (in order). Use this from textbook:Marketing research is the process of planning, collecting, and analyzing data relevant to a marketing decision. The results of this analysis are then communicated to management. Thus, marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information. Marketing research plays a key role in the marketing system. It provides decision makers with data on the effectiveness of the current marketing mix and with insights for necessary changes. Furthermore, marketing research is a main data source for management information systems. In other words, the findings of a marketing research project become data for decision making by management. Marketing research can help managers in several ways. First, it improves the quality of decision making, allowing marketers to explore the desirability of various alternatives before arriving at a path forward. Second, it helps managers trace problems. Was the initial decision incorrect? Did an unforeseen change in the external environment cause the plan to fail? How can the same mistake be avoided in the future? Questions like these can be answered through marketing research. Third, marketing research can help managers understand very detailed and complicated relationships. Most importantly, sound marketing research can help managers serve both current and future customers accurately and efficiently. This in turn can mean greater revenue and profits for the firm. The seven steps involved in the marketing research process. The steps are as follows: identify and formula the problem/opportunity, plan the research the design and gather secondary data, specify the sampling procedures, collect primary data, analyze the data, prepare and present the report, and follow up. This example illustrates an important point about problem/opportunity definition. The marketing research problem involves determining what information is needed and how that information can be obtained efficiently and effectively. The marketing research objective, then, is the goal statement. The marketing research objective defines the specific information needed to solve the marketing problem and provides insightful decision-making information. This requires specific pieces of information needed to solve the marketing research problem. Managers must combine this information with their own experience and other information to make proper decisions. The research problem of the online retailer being discussed was to determine what factors led to greater online views, click-throughs to add to cart sales, and add-on sales. The marketing research objective was to increase sales through a rebuilt website.By contrast, the management decision problem is action oriented. Management problems tend to be much broader in scope and far more general than marketing research problems, which must be narrowly defined and specific if the research effort is to be successful. Sometimes several research studies must be conducted to solve a broad management problem. The online retailers management decision problem was determining whether a rebuilt website would increase the firms market share and profits. Describe in DETAIL the four major categories of customers in BUSINESS marketing. Give examples of companies or organizations in each category. Use this from textbook: The business market consists of four major categories of customers: producers, resellers, governments, and institutions.The producer segment of the business market includes profit-oriented individuals and organizations that use purchased goods and services to produce other products, to incorporate into other products, or to facilitate the daily operations of the organization. Examples of producers include construction, manufacturing, transportation, finance, real estate, and foodservice firms. In the United States, there are more than 13 million firms in the producer segment of the business market. Some of these firms are small, and others are among the worlds largest businesses.Producers are often called original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs. This term includes all individuals and organizations that buy business goods and incorporate them into the products they produce for eventual sale to other producers or to consumers. Companies such as General Motors that buy steel, paint, tires, and batteries are said to be OEMs. The reseller market includes retail and wholesale businesses that buy finished goods and resell them for a profit. A retailer sells mainly to final consumers; wholesalers sell mostly to retailers and other organizational customers. There are approximately 1.5 million retailers and 500,000 wholesalers operating in the United States. Consumer product firms like P&G, Kraft Foods, and Coca-Cola sell directly to large retailers and retail chains and through wholesalers to smaller retail units. Retailing is explored in detail in Chapter 14. A third major segment of the business market is government. Government organizations include thousands of federal, state, and local buying units. Collectively, these government units account for the greatest volume of purchases of any customer category in the United States. The federal government alone spent nearly $4 trillion in the 2017 fiscal year. Marketing to government agencies can be an overwhelming undertaking, but companies that learn how the system works can position themselves to win lucrative contracts and build lasting, rewarding relationships.Marketing to government agencies traditionally has not been an activity for companies seeking quick returns. The aphorism hurry up and wait is often cited as a characteristic of marketing to government agencies. Contracts for government purchases are often put out for bid. Interested vendors submit bids (usually sealed) to provide specified products during a particular time. Sometimes the lowest bidder is awarded the contract. When the lowest bidder is not awarded the contract, strong evidence must be presented to justify the decision. Grounds for rejecting the lowest bid include lack of experience, inadequate financing, or poor past performance. Bidding allows all potential suppliers a fair chance at winning government contracts and helps ensure that public funds are spent wisely.Name just about any good or service and chances are that someone in the federal government uses it. The U.S. federal government buys goods and services valued at more than $875 billion per year, making it the worlds largest customer. Although much of the federal governments buying is centralized, no single federal agency contracts for all the governments requirements, and no single buyer in any agency purchases all that the agency needs. We can view the federal government as a combination of several large companies with overlapping responsibilities and thousands of small independent units. One popular source of information about government procurement is FedBizOpps. Until recently, businesses hoping to sell to the federal government found the document (previously called Commerce Business Daily) unorganized, and it often arrived too late to be useful. The online version (www.cbd-net.com) is timelier and allows contractors to find leads using keyword searches. Other examples of publications designed to explain how to do business with the federal government include Doing Business with the General Services Administration, Selling to the Military, and Selling to the U.S. Air Force.Selling to states, counties, and cities can be less frustrating for both small and large vendors than selling to the federal government. Paperwork is typically simpler and more manageable than it is at the federal level. But vendors must decide which of the more than 89,000 government units are likely to buy their wares. State and local buying agencies include school districts, highway departments, government-operated hospitals, housing agencies, and many other departments and divisions.The fourth major segment of the business market consists of institutions that seek to achieve goals other than the standard business goals of profit, market share, and return on investment. This segment includes schools, hospitals, colleges and universities, churches, labor unions, fraternal organizations, civic clubs, foundations, and other so-called nonbusiness organizations. Some institutional purchasers operate similarly to governments in that the purchasing process is influenced, determined, or administered by government units. Other institutional purchasers are organized more like corporations. To be useful, a segmentation scheme must produce segments that meet four basic criteria. Name and describe in DETAIL each of these four criteria. Use this from textbook: Marketers segment markets for three important reasons. First, segmentation enables marketers to identify groups of customers with similar needs and to analyze the characteristics and buying behavior of these groups. Second, segmentation provides marketers with information to help them design marketing mixes specifically matched with the characteristics and desires of one or more segments. Third, segmentation is consistent with the marketing concept of satisfying customer wants and needs while meeting the organizations objectives.To be useful, a segmentation scheme must produce segments that meet four basic criteria: Substantiality: A segment must be large enough to warrant developing and maintaining a special marketing mix. This criterion does not necessarily mean that a segment must have many potential customers. For example, marketers of custom-designed homes and business buildings, commercial airplanes, and large computer systems typically develop marketing programs tailored to each potential customers needs. In most cases, however, a market segment needs many potential customers to make commercial sense. In the 1980s, home banking failed because not enough people owned personal computers. Today, a larger number of people own computers, and home banking is a thriving industry. Identifiability and measurability: Segments must be identifiable and their size measurable. Data about the population within geographic boundaries, the number of people in various age categories, and other social and demographic characteristics are often easy to get, and they provide fairly concrete measures of segment size. Suppose that a social service agency wants to identify segments by their readiness to participate in a drug and alcohol program or in prenatal care. Unless the agency can measure how many people are willing, indifferent, or unwilling to participate, it will have trouble gauging whether there are enough people to justify setting up the service.Accessibility: The firm must be able to reach members of targeted segments with customized marketing mixes. Some market segments are hard to reachfor example, senior citizens (especially those with reading or hearing disabilities), individuals who do not speak English, and the illiterate.Responsiveness: Markets can be segmented using any criteria that seem logical. Unless one market segment responds to a marketing mix differently than other segments, however, that segment need not be treated separately. For instance, if all customers are equally price conscious about a product, there is no need to offer high-, medium-, and low-priced versions to different segments.