Factors of the marketing manacement process

UNIT 3

MARKETING MANAGEMENT PROCESS

TEXT A

FACTORS OF THE MARKETING MANACEMENT PROCESS

As it is already known the strategic plan defines the company's overall mission and objectives. Within each business unit, marketing plays a role in helping to accomplish overall strategic objectives. Marketing's role and activities in the organization are shown in Figure 1, which summarizes the entire marketing management process and the forces influencing company marketing strategy.

Target consumers stand in the center. The company identifies the total market, divides it into smaller segments, selects the most-premising segments, and focuses on serving and satisfying these segments. It designs a marketing mix made up of factors under its control—product, price, place, and promotion. To find the best marketing mix and put it into action, the company engages in mar­keting analysis, planning, implementation, and control. Through these activities, the company watches and adapts to the marketing environment. We will now look briefly at each factor in the mar­keting management process. Target Consumers

To succeed in today's competitive marketplace, companies must be customer centered, winning customers from competitors by delivering greater value. But before it can satisfy consumers, a company must first understand their needs and wants. Thus, sound marketing requires a careful analysis of consumers. Suppose a company looking at possible markets for a potential new product. The company first needs to make a careful estimate of the current and future size of the market and its vari­ous segments. To estimate current market size, the company would identify all competing products, estimate their current sales, and deter­mine whether the market is large enough.

Equally important is future market growth. Companies want to enter markets that show strong growth prospects. Growth potential may depend on the growth rate of certain age, income, and nation­ality groups that use the product more than others. Growth may alsо be related to larger developments in the environment, such as economic conditions, advances in technology, and life-style changes. For example, the future market for quality children's toys

and clothing is strongly related to current birthrates, trends in consumer affluence, and projected family life styles. Forecasting—predicting what consumers are likely to do under a given set of conditions—is difficult, but it must be performed in order to make a decision about the market. The company's marketing information specialists will probably use complex techniques to measure and forecast demand.

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