Marketing Strategy Narrative Essay Example

products that meet minimum requirements, build trust for loyalty, establish realistic prices using internet technology, offer accurate information, exhibit commitment to service throughout the organization, and involve customers in creating experiences. Customer satisfaction is determined by how effectively a good or service fulfills their needs and expectations. Companies can increase their market share by attracting new customers, expanding business with existing customers, and retaining current customers. Relationship marketing aims to enhance and maintain relationships with current customers through a culture that prioritizes customer focus, effective training programs, and empowering employees to efficiently address customer problems. Teamwork involves collaborative efforts where individuals work together towards a shared objective.
Sale-focused companies define their business based on the goods and services they offer, while market-focused companies define their business based on the benefits that customers seek. When customers spend money, time, and energy, they expect more than just products and services – they also expect benefits. While a sale-focused organization targets its products towards everyone or the average customer, a market-focused organization recognizes the different needs and desires of specific customer groups.

The primary objective of a sale-focused organization is to achieve profitability through sales volume and persuading potential customers to make purchases. In contrast, a market-focused organization prioritizes creating customer value, providing satisfaction, and building long-term relationships in order to generate profits.

Sale-focused organizations heavily rely on promotional activities such as personal selling and advertising to achieve their goals. On the other hand, market-oriented organizations make decisions in various areas including product, place, promotion, and pricing to reach their objectives.

Effective promotion involves international coordination to communicate with current and potential customers about the organization and its products. This requires gathering

information on customers, competitors, and markets in order to identify opportunities for delivering superior customer value through sensory decisions that enhance the overall customer experience.Research indicates that the sound of a luxury sports car plays a significant role in brand selection for 4% of consumers, while bottle design influences 40% of perfume purchases. The marketing mix encompasses controlled activities in product, pricing, distribution, and promotion to meet consumer needs within a specific target market. Studying marketing is essential as it has a crucial role in society and impacts effective strategies for businesses. Additionally, it offers promising career opportunities and influences everyday life in various ways.

Chapter 21 focuses on customer relationship management (CRM), which aims to optimize profitability, revenue, and customer satisfaction through targeted marketing efforts towards specific customer groups. Implementing CRM involves restructuring the company around customer segments, tracking interactions, promoting satisfying behaviors, and linking all processes from customers to suppliers to manage relationships across all points of contact. Data availability and management are vital in this process to enhance the customer experience, fulfill their needs, and increase profitability through segmentation. The objective is to gain a larger share of the customer's wallet and encourage repeat business while minimizing churn. This is accomplished through a closed-loop system that revolves around customers without any predefined starting or end point.Prioritizing customers and managing relationships across all touchpoints are crucial for any organization. The initial step in implementing a CRM system involves identifying customer relationships, where companies focus on customization based on data derived from customer interactions. Successful examples of CRM systems can be found at http://www.Youth.Com/watch?=wJ63PqPIJcM.

A customer-centric company values satisfying and retaining valuable customers by engaging in

a learning process. This process includes gathering feedback and comments regarding product or service performance from customers. To improve the relationship between customers and the organization, this knowledge is centralized and shared through knowledge management to overcome departmental interests.

For high investment products, an individualized approach based on product value is implemented. This approach involves collecting various types of information such as experiential observations, customer comments, actions, and qualitative facts. The interaction between customers and company representatives plays a vital role in this customer-centric approach.

Customers have the ability to specify their preferences which guide the organization in designing products and services aligned with these preferences to deliver the desired experience. Granting more autonomy to company representatives increases the chances of achieving satisfactory outcomes for customers during interactions.The company aims to understand its customer base by identifying various communication channels, including point of sale visits, kiosks usage, website visits, purchasing patterns, surveys participation, and product registration activities. This comprehensive understanding is crucial for meeting their needs effectively. It also emphasizes the importance of capturing and storing customer data for efficient customer interactions. The value of customer data depends on the storage system and data accuracy. Different types of customer data can be obtained through interactions and information technology, utilizing data warehouses and databases. Two specific types of customer lists are response lists and compiled lists. Response lists include individuals who have responded to offers through different channels like mail, telephone, direct response television, product rebates, contests or sweepstakes, or billing inserts. These lists are valuable as they indicate past behavior that can predict future behavior. On the other hand, compiled lists are created by collecting names and

addresses from telephone directories and membership rosters.The utilization of public records such as census data, auto registrations, birth announcements, business start-ups, or bankruptcies can further enhance compiled lists. Companies engage in database enhancement to gain a better understanding of customer needs and assess their potential responsiveness to marketing programs. This process involves acquiring demographic, lifestyle, or behavioral data on customers or prospects. Enhancing a database has the potential to improve marketing programs and facilitate the identification of new prospects.

Customer relationship management (CRM) entails managing interactions between a company and its customers through personalized strategies tailored to individual customer needs. Data mining techniques are employed to uncover concealed patterns and relationships within customer data stored in a data warehouse.

By incorporating response and compiled lists, enhancing databases, and implementing CRM practices, organizations can identify their top customers and customize marketing programs accordingly. This approach involves analyzing characteristics associated with specific customers or customer groups using methods like customer segmentation—dividing large customer groups into smaller, more homogeneous segments.

Regency-frequency-monetary analysis (RFM) focuses on customers who have recently made frequent high-value purchases, as they are more likely to make future purchases. Customer lifetime value (LTV) analysis predicts the future value of a customer over multiple years, highlighting the profitability of marketing to repeat customers compared to first-time buyers. This approach helps determine necessary expenditure for retaining customers and targeting lucrative new ones. Predictive modeling uses past occurrences to forecast future events.

Customer information can be used to enhance relationships through various strategies. Campaign management involves creating personalized offers for specific customer segments at attractive prices and effectively communicating them. Interactions with customers should focus on their individual experiences, expectations,

and desires. Retaining loyal customers can be achieved through loyalty programs that reward them for multiple purchases and aim to establish long-term advantageous relationships between the company and its key customers.

Marketers can use customer information to identify cross-selling opportunities by matching product profiles with consumer profiles in a database. Internet companies often employ customer profiling to find cross-selling opportunities while customers browse their websites. Customer data allows for the customization of marketing communications, tailoring messages based on customers' engagement with products and services. Customers can be categorized as infrequent users, moderate users, and heavy users, allowing for the development of a segmented communication strategy. Communication efforts for infrequent users may focus on promoting repeat purchases through incentives like limited-time price discounts. Moderate users may receive communications that provide lesser incentives while reinforcing previous purchase decisions. Heavy users would be targeted with communications that emphasize loyalty and reinforce purchase decisions without offering price promotions (5). CRM provides an opportunity for marketers to express appreciation for customers' purchases and highlight their significance in establishing a long-term, profitable relationship.In addition to keeping customers informed about their orders, postal emails also provide opportunities for additional customer service or cross-selling. Marketing managers often use demographic and behavioral data along with existing customer information to create detailed customer profiles, which help evaluate prospects and attract new customers. CRM databases give manufacturers insights into their product's consumer base, improving distribution channel marketing effectiveness. Radio frequency technology reduces theft and loss during merchandise shipments and enables tracking within the distribution channel, allowing marketers to gather important data on product usage and consumption for enhanced customer service. However, marketers need to consider consumer reactions

to increased database use in order to address privacy concerns while maintaining effective customer relationship management. Strategic planning is crucial for aligning organizational objectives, resources, and evolving marketing opportunities with the ultimate goal of safeguarding and expanding firm resources. Strategic business units (SUB) are subgroups within an organization that have a distinct mission, target market, control over resources, and independent plans.The text discusses the shared and dedicated resources of companies, including manufacturing facilities and distribution channels, as well as accounting, engineering, manufacturing, and marketing. It presents several strategic alternatives for selecting strategies based on expected profits. The Nation's strategic opportunity matrix is introduced, which involves aligning products with markets. The matrix outlines four strategies: market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification. Each strategy is explained concisely while highlighting associated risks and profitability. The Boston Consulting Group model is mentioned as a resource allocation tool for products or strategic business units by considering their relative market share and growth rate. Relative market share compares a company's share to that of its biggest competitor. Rapidly growing market leaders are referred to as "Stars," like Apple's current star product - the E.G. Pad. While Stars generate substantial profits, they require significant financial support due to their rapid expansion. Marketing tactics used for these stars include reinvesting earnings into product improvement, enhancing distribution channels, increasing promotion efforts, and improving production efficiency. Additionally, management should focus on capturing new users entering the market.The text explains different market positions and strategies for product allocation. "Cash cows" are products that generate excess cash and have dominant market shares in low-growth markets. The strategy for cash cows focuses on maintaining dominance through

competitive pricing and technological advancements. Excess cash should be allocated towards high-growth potential product categories.

On the other hand, "problem children" or question marks experience rapid growth but have limited profit margins and small market shares in high-growth industries. They require significant financial support to avoid becoming "dogs," which are products with low growth potential and small market shares that may eventually leave the marketplace.

To address these distinct market positions, companies can make substantial investments to improve market share, acquire competitors to attain necessary market share, or discontinue the product altogether. For example, a mainframe computer might adopt a harvest or divest strategy.

There are four essential strategies for allocating future resources:
- Build: This strategy is appropriate for Stars as it involves sacrificing short-term profits and utilizing financial resources to achieve goals.- The "Hold" strategy is suitable for Cash Cows, where the current position is maintained without significant changes.
- The "Harvest" strategy is suitable for Subs (excluding Stars), aiming to increase short-term cash returns without excessive concern for long-term impact.
- The "Divest" strategy is often used to eliminate Subs with low shares in low-growth markets and applies particularly to problem children and dogs.
- In the General Electric model, business position refers to an organization's ability to capitalize on market opportunities. This model evaluates both market attractiveness and company strength.
- The vertical axis measures quantitative and qualitative market attractiveness. It is advisable to avoid Red cells if the organization does not currently serve them. If it does, then harvesting or divesting should be considered in these markets. Yellow cells should be selectively maintained but withdrawal should be considered if attractiveness declines. Green cells are the best candidates

for investment.
- A marketing plan involves designing activities related to marketing objectives and determining strategies for achieving organizational objectives in the future.
- Writing a marketing plan allows businesses to analyze both the marketing environment and their internal operations simultaneously.The marketing plan, once written, acts as a benchmark for assessing future activities and offers insights into potential opportunities and challenges in the marketplace. To create and select effective marketing plans, it is crucial to have a reliable marketing information system, competitive intelligence, and rely on managerial intuition. The business's mission statement is derived from extensive analysis of desired customer benefits and assessment of environmental conditions, with a focus on markets rather than specific goods or services. Avoiding marketing myopia is important to avoid having a narrow and short-term perspective that defines the business solely based on its products or services. Careful consideration of factors such as product, economic, and social aspects help determine the nature of the firm's business. Conducting a situation analysis through techniques like SWOT analysis aids marketers in comprehending the current and potential environment for their product or service. Environment scanning involves gathering and interpreting external factors that may impact an organization or its marketing plan.The text discusses the concept of competitive advantage and its significance in business. It explains that competitive advantage occurs when a company and its products are seen as superior to competitors by the target market. The text also highlights three types of competitive advantages: cost competitive advantage, production innovations, and new methods of service delivery. Additionally, specific examples and strategies for achieving competitive advantage are mentioned, including experience curves, efficient labor, no-frills goods and services, government subsidies, and

production innovations.

Furthermore, the importance of building a sustainable competitive advantage that cannot be easily replicated by competitors is emphasized. The text states that tomorrow's competitive advantages will stem from an organization's skills and assets such as patents, copyrights, locations, equipment technology customer service, and promotion.

It also emphasizes the significance of setting realistic and measurable marketing objectives that align with organizational priorities for success. These carefully defined objectives serve various purposes: communicating marketing management philosophies and guidance to lower-level marketing managers for integration and consistency.In addition, these objectives act as motivators by establishing goals that drive employees to perform exceptionally. Moreover, specific objectives aid executives in clarifying their thoughts and serve as a foundation for monitoring and assessing the effectiveness of a plan. Lastly, marketing strategy entails recognizing and explaining target markets, along with creating and overseeing a marketing mix that fosters mutually beneficial interactions with those target markets.