Introduction

The focus of this lesson is to introduce you to the field of marketing and the marketing strategy planning process. I suspect that at this early point in the first marketing course, you may have a little idea about the variety of the important issues and decision areas that fall into the marketing domain. In this lesson, you will be introduced to the orientation of marketing and why this orientation should guide every decision of an organization. Our primary focus is to examine the process of how organizations accomplish their goals by anticipating customer needs, offering products to those needs, and establishing long-term relationships with their target customers.

Moreover, it is crucial for marketers to plan, implement, and control the marketing decisions for a successful outcome. Therefore, we will also go through an overview of the key ideas and decision areas that shape marketing strategy planning. A key challenge of marketing strategy planning is to figure out what the focus and priorities should be. We will focus on the specific strategy decisions that need to be made to differentiate company by offering the target market superior customer value and gain a competitive advantage.

Lesson 1 Objectives

After completing this lesson you should be able to do the following:

• Define what marketing is.
• Explain the importance of customer satisfaction.
• Explain what the marketing orientation is and how it differs from production orientation.
• Identify the key elements of customer-driven marketing strategy.
• List and describe 4Ps of marketing.
• Explain differentiation and competitive advantage.
• Describe how social responsibility and marketing ethics relate to the marketing orientation.