Introduction to Marketing and Strategy Planning
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Introduction to Marketing and Strategy Planning
Sample Syllabus
Sample Lesson
    1. Introduction to Marketing and Strategy Planning
    2. Introduction and Objectives
    3. Lesson Road Map
    4. What is Marketing?
    5. Importance of Customer Satisfaction
    6. The Marketing Concept and Marketing Orientation
    7. Elements of Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy
    8. Four Ps of a Marketing Mix
    9. Competitive Advantage and Differentiation
    10. Social Responsibility and Marketing Ethics
    11. Concluding Remarks
    12. Activities

Concluding Remarks

This lesson introduced the marketing concept—the philosophy that motivates modern marketing thinking. Acceptance and implementation of the marketing concept creates customer value. In the pursuit of satisfying customer needs, marketing managers are often faced with the challenges of sorting out who will do the marketing functions that are required to get a product to the market. Naturally, some of you might think that the primary idea of marketing is the development of innovative new products. However, it is equally important that you see the opportunities which can arise by identifying new target markets, new approaches for resolving old problems, or new ways to share responsibility for marketing functions across different members of the distribution channel.

The conceptual foundations you’ve learned in this lesson provide a basic framework for organizing and thinking about the broad issues in marketing. The target marketing, customer satisfaction, and four Ps concepts are some of the foundations. These frameworks are the basic tools that marketing managers use to analyze marketing situations and solve marketing problems.

Customer satisfaction takes the customer’s point of view, and customer equity focuses on the point of view of the individuals who own the company. Attention is paid to the lifetime value of customers—acquiring new customers and keeping the ones they already have (and perhaps expanding the business/revenue/profits from those customers). The company's overall success is due not only to its product, but to a well-integrated marketing strategy. The target market is clearly defined and the whole marketing mix is responsive to the target market's needs. The marketing mix helps to overcome problems related to physical distributions that have typically existed in these channel systems. Intermediaries are attracted by demand for the product itself, but also by the fact that they can reduce costs and carry smaller inventories and still provide a high level of availability and selection (i.e., a good level of physical distribution service). All of these elements have to come together so that consumers are satisfied and willing to pay a price that is profitable for the producer and other channel members.