Strategic Marketing (MBA module 2 of 8)

 Marketing process

1. Understand the marketplace and customer needs and wants
2. Design a customer value-driven marketing strategy
3. Construct an integrated marketing program that delivers superior value
4. Build profitable relationships and create customer delight
5. Create value for customers and build customer relationships

Marketplace

• Needs / wants / demands

Marketing value

• Market offerings are some combination of products, services, information, or experiences offered to a market to satisfy a need or a want.
• Marketing myopia is focusing only on existing wants and losing sight of underlying consumer needs.
• Value is benefits received by the consumer from a product relative to total costs.
• Customer perspective
• Value is the ratio of perceived benefits to perceived costs.
• Value proposition includes the whole bundle of benefits the firm promises to deliver, not just the benefits of the product itself.
• Seller perspective
• Value for the seller can take many forms.
• What is the economic value of a single customer?
• Marketers should look to increase value through co-creation.
• Value chain
• Understand the value proposition
• Determine the value propositions different customers want
• Develop the value proposition for the customer
• Deliver and communicate the value proposition

Customer strategy

• Marketing management is the art and science of choosing target markets and building profitable relationships with them.
• Market segmentation refers to dividing the markets into segments of customers.
• Target marketing refers to which segments to go after.
• Integrated marketing program is a comprehensive plan that communicates and delivers the intended value to chosen customers.
• Value-driven strategy
• Production concept
• Product concept
• Selling concept
• Marketing concept
• Societal concept
• Society: human welfare
• Consumer: want satisfaction
• Company: profits
• Customer relationship management is the overall process of building and maintaining profitable customer relationships by delivering superior customer value and satisfaction.
• Customer lifetime value is the value of the entire stream of purchases that the customer would make over a lifetime of patronage.

Corporate strategy

• Strategic planning is the process of developing and maintaining a strategic fit between the organisation’s goals and capabilities and its changing marketing opportunities.
• Steps
1. Defining the company mission
2. Setting company objectives and goals
• Build profitable customer relationships
• Invest in research
• Improve profits
• Increase market share
• Create local partnerships
• Increase promotion
3. Designing the business portfolio
4. Planning marketing and other functional strategies
• BCG growth-share matrix
• High market growth rate + high relative market share = star
• Low market growth rate + high relative market share = cash cow
• Low market growth rate + low relative market share = dog
• High market growth rate + low relative market share = question mark
• Product/market expansion grid
1. Existing products + existing markets = market penetration
2. Existing products + new market = market development
3. New product + existing markets = product development
4. New product + new market = diversification
• Downsizing is the reduction of the business portfolio by eliminating products or business units that are not profitable or that no longer fit the company’s overall strategy.
• Value delivery network is made up of the company, suppliers, distributors and ultimately customers who partner with each other to improve performance of the entire system.

Marketing Mix

• Market segmentation is the division of a market into distinct groups of buyers who have different needs, characteristics or behaviour and who might require separate products or marketing mixes.
• Market segment is a group of consumers who respond in a similar way to a given set of marketing efforts.
• Market targeting is the process of evaluating each market segment’s attractiveness and selecting one or more segments to enter.

4Ps/7Ps

• Product: anything that can be offered in a market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption that might satisfy a need or want.
• Level of products
• Core: the fundamental need or want
• Tangible: attributes absolutely necessary to function and buyers normally expect
• Augmented: additional features, benefits, to differentiate from competitors
• Variety
• Quality
• Design
• Features
• Brand name
• Packaging
• Functionality
• Appearance
• Packaging
• Brand
• Warranty
• Support
• Service: a product that consists of activities, benefits or satisfaction that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything.
• Why product fail?
• Overestimation of market size.
• Product design problems.
• Incorrectly positioned, priced, or advertised.
• Pushed by high level executives despite poor marketing research findings.
• Excessive development costs.
• Competitive reaction.
• Creating new product by
• Acquisition: buying of a whole company, a patent or a license to produce someone else’s product.
• New product development: development of original products, product improvements, product modifications and new brands through the firm’s own product development efforts.
• Stages in new product development
• Idea generation
• Internal
• External
• Crowdsourcing
• Idea screening (using R-W-W screening framework)
• Is it Real?
• Can we Win?
• Is it Worth doing?
• Concept development and testing
• Product idea
• Product concept
• Product image
• Concept testing
• Marketing strategy development
• Description of the target market
• Value proposition
• Sales and profit goals
• Business analysis
• Review of the sales, costs and profit projections to find out whether they satisfy the company’s objectives.
• Product development
• Involves the creation and testing of one or more physical versions by the R&D or engineering departments.
• Requires an increase in investment. 
• Shows whether the product idea can be turned into a workable product.
• Test marketing
• Standard test market
• Controlled test market
• Simulated test market
• Commercialisation
• When to launch
• Where to launch
• Planned market rollout
• Successful new product development
• Customer-centred
• New ways to solve customer problems and create more customer satisfying experiences.
• Team-based
• Various company departments work closely together, overlapping the steps in the product development process to save time and increase effectiveness.
• Systematic
• Creates an innovation-oriented culture.
• Yields a large number of new product ideas.
• Product life-cycle
• Product development 
• Sales are zero and investment costs mount.
• Introduction 
• Slow sales growth
• Little or no profit
• High distribution and promotion expense.
• Growth
• Sales increase
• New competitors enter the market
• Price stability or decline to increase volume
• Consumer education 
• Profits increase
• Promotion and manufacturing costs gain economies of scale
• Maturity 
• Slowdown in sales
• Many suppliers
• Substitute products
• Overcapacity leads to competition
• Increased promotion and R&D to support sales and profits
• Market modifying
• Product modifying
• Marketing mix modifying
• Decline
• Maintain the product
• Harvest the product
• Drop the product
• Fads are temporary periods of unusually high sales driven by consumer enthusiasm and immediate product or brand popularity.
• Price: the amount of money charged for a product or service; the sum of the values that consumers exchange for the benefits of having or using the product or service
• List price
• Discounts
• Allowances
• Payment period
• Credit terms
• Financing
• Leasing options
• Cost-based pricing involves setting prices based on the costs for producing, distributing and selling the product plus a fair rate of return for effort and risk.
• Fixed costs (overheads)
• Rent
• Heat
• Interest
• Executive salaries
• Variable costs
• Packaging
• Raw materials
• Total costs
• Pricing strategy
• Cost-plus pricing adds a standard markup to the cost of the product
• Sellers are certain about costs
• Prices are similar in industry and price competition is minimised
• Buyers feel it is fair
• Ignores demand and competitor prices
• Steps
1. Design a good product
2. Determine product costs
3. Set price based on cast
4. Convince buyers of product's value
• Competition-based pricing
• Setting prices based on competitors’ strategies, prices, costs and market offerings. 
• Consumers will base their judgements of a product’s value on the prices that competitors charge for similar products.
• Pure competition
• Monopolistic competition
• Oligopolistic competition
• Pure monopoly
• The market and demand
• Before setting prices, the marketer must understand the relationship between price and demand for its products.
• The demand curve shows the number of units the market will buy in a given period at different prices.
• Normally, demand and price are inversely related
• Higher price = lower demand
• For prestige (luxury) goods, higher price can equal higher demand when consumers perceive higher prices as higher quality
• Price elasticity of demand illustrates the response of demand to a change in price
• Inelastic demand occurs when demand hardly changes when there is a small change in price.
• Elastic demand occurs when demand changes greatly for a small change in price
• Customer value-based pricing
• Understanding how much value consumers place on the benefits they receive from the product and setting a price that captures that value
• Value-based pricing is customer driven
• Cost-based pricing is product driven
• Steps
1. Assess customer needs and value perception
2. Set taget price to match customer perceived value
3. Determine costs that can be incurred
4. Design product to deliver desired value at target price
• Good-value pricing offers the right combination of quality and good service at a fair price.
• Everyday low pricing (EDLP) involves charging a constant everyday low price with few or no temporary price discounts.
• High–low pricing involves charging higher prices on an everyday basis but running frequent promotions to lower prices temporarily on selected items.
• Value-added pricing attaches value-added features and services to differentiate a company’s offers and charging higher prices.
• New product pricing strategy
• Market-skimming pricing: high initial prices to ‘skim’ revenue layers from the market
  • Product quality and image must support the price
  • Buyers must want the product at the price
  • Costs of producing the product in small volume should not cancel the advantage of higher prices
  • Competitors should not be able to enter the market easily
• Market-penetration pricing: low price for a new product to attract a large number of buyers and a large market share
• Price sensitive market
• Inverse relationship of production and distribution cost to sales growth
• Low prices must keep competition out of the market
• Other pricing considerations
• Product line pricing: cost differences between products in the line, customer evaluation of their features and competitors’ prices
• Optional-product pricing: optional or accessory products along with the main product
• Captive-product pricing: involves products that must be used along with the main product
• By-product pricing: products with little or no value produced as a result of the main product. Producers will seek little or no profit other than the cost to cover storage and delivery
• Product bundle pricing: combines several products at a reduced price
• Dynamic pricing/real time pricing: prices are adjusted continually to meet the characteristics and needs of the individual customer and situations
• Auctions/price bidding: price is determined by the highest bid
• Promotion
• Advertising: non-personal communication from an identified sponsor using mass media.
• Practice dates to ancient Greece and Rome
• Personal selling
• Sales promotion
• Social media: Internet-based platforms that allow users to create their own content and share it with others who access these sites
• Social networks: sites that connect people with other people
• Virtual worlds: Online highly engaging digital environments where avatars “live” and interact with other avatars in real time
• Public relations: marketers create and manage publicity, which is unpaid media exposure about a company
  • Crisis management: (the most important PR function) the process of managing a firm’s reputation when a negative event threatens the organization’s image
• Message
• Media
• Budget 
• Integrated marketing communication (IMC) involves the planning, execution, and evaluation of coordinated, brand communication programs over time to targeted audiences.
• Mass (one-to-many) communication
• Advertising
• Consumer sales promotion
• Public relations
• Personal (one-to-one) communication
• Personal selling
• Direct mail
• Telemarketing
• Direct marketing
• Promotional plan
1.  Identify the Target Audience(s)
• News media
• Friends and family
• Producers of competitive products
• Social Media
2. Establish the communication objectives
• Messages are designed to move the consumer closer to purchase, and hopefully, loyalty through a series of steps known as the hierarchy of effects
• Awareness
• Knowledge
• Desire
• Purchase
• Loyalty
3. Determine the marketing communication budget
• Traditional media advertising
• Digital media advertising
• Sales promotion
• Social media marketing
• Direct marketing
• Personal selling
• Public relations
• Top-down budgeting techniques
• Percentage-of-sales method
• Competitive-parity method
• Bottom-up budgeting techniques
• Objective-task method
4. Design the promotion mix
• Determining communication tools to be used
• Specifying  message to be communicated
• Determining the communication channels to be used
5. Evaluate the effectiveness of the communication program
• Measure brand awareness, recall of product benefits communicated, and image of the brand before and after an ad campaign
• Guerrilla marketing: “ambushing” consumers with promotional content in places they don’t expect to encounter such messages
• Ambient advertising
• Staging “flash mobs”
• IBM painted hundreds of “Peace Love Linux” logos on sidewalks in San Francisco.
• BK affordable “Wallet Drop” campaign in Singapore
• Buzz marketing: word-of-mouth communication that customers view as authentic
• Location-based social networks: GPS technology that enables users to alert friends of their exact whereabouts via their mobile phone
• Augmented reality (AR): real world enhanced or altered by computer-generated sounds, videos, graphics or GPS data
• Viral marketing: activities aimed at increasing brand awareness or sales via many-to-many communication
• Apple implements viral marketing when it inserts the message “Sent from my iPad/iPhone” in a text
• The Internet of Things (IoT): network of physical things, vehicles, buildings, devices which have embedded sensors, electronics, and network connectivity that can collect data and communicate it to each other—the many-to-many of things
• Direct marketing
• Mail order
• Catalog
• Direct mail
• Telemarketing
• Do not call registry
• Direct response advertising
• Direct-response TV (DRTV)
• Informercial
• M-commerce
• Short-messaging system (SMS) marketing
• Personal selling occurs when a company rep interacts directly with a customer or prospective customer to communicate about a good or service
• Far more intimate form of promotion compared to mass-media material
• Salespeople are the eyes and ears of firm
• Place
• Intermediaries
• Retailer: channel intermediary that sells mainly to customers
• Merchant wholesaler: an institution that buys goods from manufacturers, takes title to goods, stores them, and resells and ships them
• Agents and brokers: wholesaling intermediaries who facilitate the sale of a product by representing channel members
• Channel functions
• Transactional functions
• Contacting/promotion
• Negotiating
• Risk taking
• Logistical functions
• Physically distributing
• Storing
• Sorting
• Facilitating functions
• Researching
• Financing
• Distribution intensity
• Intensive
• Achieve mass market selling or convenience goods
• Selective
• Work with selected intermediaries or shopping goods
• Exclusive
• Work with single intermediary or specialty goods
• Push strategy
1. Manufacturer promotes to wholesaler
2. Wholesaler promotes to retailer
3. Orders to manufacturer
4. Retailer promotes to consumer
5. Consumer buys from retailer
• Pull strategy
1. Manufacturer promotes to customer
2. Consumer demands product from retailer
3. Retailer demands product from wholesaler
4. Wholesaler demands product from manufacturer
5. Orders to manufacturer
• Locations
• Inventory
• Transportation
• Logistics
• Channel members
• Information
• Promotion
• Contact
• Matching
• Negotiation
• Physical distribution
• Financing
• Risk taking
• Channel motivation
• Channel level
• Physical flow of products
• Flow of ownership
• Payment flow
• Information flow
• Promotion flow
• Market coverage
• Service levels
• Supply chain
• Upstream partners: raw material suppliers, components, parts, information, finances and expertise to create a product or service
• Downstream partners: the marketing channels or distribution channels that look toward the customer
• Supply chain: ‘make and sell’ view includes the firm’s raw materials, productive inputs and factory capacity
• Demand chain: ‘sense and respond’ view suggests that planning starts with the needs of the target customer, and the firm responds to these needs by organising a chain of resources and activities with the goal of creating customer value
• Value delivery network: a network composed of the company, suppliers, distributors and, ultimately, customers who ‘partner’ with each other to improve the performance of the entire system in delivering customer value
• Intermediaries: offer producers greater efficiency in making goods available to target markets. Through their contacts, experience, specialisation and scale of operations, intermediaries usually offer the firm more than it can achieve on its own
• Conventional distribution channels consist of one or more independent producers, wholesalers and retailers, each a separate business seeking to maximise its own profits, perhaps even at the expense of profits for the system as a whole
• Vertical marketing systems (VMSs): provide channel leadership and consist of producers, wholesalers and retailers acting as a unified system
• Corporate vertical marketing system integrates successive stages of production and distribution under single ownership
• Contractual vertical marketing system consists of independent firms at different levels of production and distribution who join together through contracts to obtain more economies or sales impact than each could achieve alone. The most common form is the franchise organisation
• Franchise organisation links several stages in the production-distribution process
• Manufacturer-sponsored retailer franchise system
• Manufacturer-sponsored wholesaler franchise system
• Service firm-sponsored retailer franchise system
• Administered vertical marketing system has a few dominant channel members without common ownership. Leadership comes from size and power
• Horizontal marketing systems (HMSs):  two or more companies at one level join together to follow a new marketing opportunity. Companies combine financial, production or marketing resources to accomplish more than any one company could alone
• Multi-channel distribution systems (hybrid marketing channels): a single firm sets up two or more marketing channels to reach one or more customer segments
• Disintermediation occurs when product or service producers cut out intermediaries and go directly to final buyers, or when radically new types of channel intermediaries displace traditional ones
• Channel designs
• Analysing consumer needs
• Setting channel objectives
• Targeted levels of customer service
• What segments to serve
• Best channels to use
• Minimising the cost of meeting customer- service requirements
• Identifying major alternatives
• Types of intermediaries
• Number of intermediaries
• Responsibilities of channel members
• Intensive distribution
• Exclusive distribution
• Selective distribution
• Evaluating the major alternatives
• Economic criteria
• Control
• Adaptive criteria
• Channel management
• Selecting channel members
• Managing channel members
• Motivating channel members
• Evaluating channel members 
• Exclusive distribution:the seller allows only certain outlets to carry its products
• Exclusive dealing: the seller requires that the sellers not handle competitor’s products
• Exclusive territorial agreements: producer or seller limit territory
• Tying agreements: the dealer must take most or all of the line
• Major logistics functions
• Warehousing
• How many?
• What types?
• Where to locate?
• Warehouses
• Distribution centres
• Stock management
• Just-in-time systems
• RFID: knowing exact product location
• Smart shelves: placing orders automatically
• Transport
• Truck
• Rail
• Water
• Pipeline
• Air
• Internet
• Logistics information management 
• Electronic data interchange (EDI)
• Vendor-managed inventory (VMI)
• Integrated logistics management is the recognition that provide customer service and trimming distribution costs requires teamwork internally and externally
• Third-party logistics is the outsourcing of logistics functions to third-party logistics providers (3PLs)
• People
• Contractors
• Salespeople
• Customer service
• Influencers
• R&D
• Staff marketers
• Production scheduling
• Physical evidence
• Interaction between an employee and customers
• Brochures
• Company stationery
• Business cards
• Reports
• Company website
• Process
• Activities
• Procedures
• Protocols

Marketing analysis

• Strengths
• Internal capabilities that may help the company reach its objectives.
• Weakness
• Internal limitations that may interfere with the company's ability to achieve its objectives.
• Opportunities
• External factors that the company may be able to exploit to its advantages.
• Threats
• Current and emerging external factors that may challenge the company's performance.

Marketing plan

• Executive summary
• Current marketing situation
• Threats and opportunities analysis
• Objectives and issues
• Marketing strategy
• Action programmes
• Budgets
• Controls

Marketing management

• Marketing implementing is the process that turns marketing plans into marketing actions to accomplish strategic marketing objectives.
• Marketing control is the measurement and evaluation of results and the taking of corrective action as needed to ensure the objectives are achieved.
• Return on marketing investment (marketing ROI) is the net return from a marketing investment divided by the costs of the marketing investment. Marketing ROI provides a measurement of the profits generated by investments in marketing activities.

Competition

• Competitor analysis is the process of identifying key competitors; assessing their objectives, strategies, strengths and weaknesses and selecting which competitors to attack or avoid.
1. Identifying the company's competitors.
2. Accessing competitors' objectives, strategies, strengths and weaknesses and reaction patterns.
3. Selecting which competitors to attack or avoid.
• Competitor's objectives
• Profitability
• Market share growth
• Cash flow
• Technological leadership
• Service leadership
• Competitor's strategies
• Strategic group offers the strongest competition.
• Competitor's strengths and weaknesses
• What can our competitors do?  
• Benchmarking
• Estimating competitor’s reactions
• What will our competitors do?
• Attack or avoid
• Strong or weak competitors.
• Close or distant competitors.
• Good or bad competitors.
• Customer value analysis determines the benefits that target customers value and how customers rate the relative value of various competitors’ offers.
• Identification of major attributes that customers value and the importance of these values.
• Assessment of the company’s and competitors’ performance on the valued attributes.
• Blue ocean strategy, where there are no direct competitors.
• Competitive intelligence system
• Identifies competitive information and the best sources of this information.
• Continually collects information.
• Checks information for validity and reliability.
• Interprets information.
• Organises information.
• Sends key information to relevant decision makers.
• Responds to inquiries about competitors.
• Competition strategies
• Entrepreneurial marketing involves visualising an opportunity and constructing and implementing flexible strategies.
• Formulated marketing involves developing formal marketing strategies and following them closely.
• Intrepreneurial marketing involves the attempt to re-establish an internal entrepreneurial spirit and refresh marketing strategies and approaches.
• Michael Porter's 4 competitive positioning strategies
• Overall cost leadership
• A company achieves the lowest production and distribution costs and allows it to lower its prices and gain market share.
• Differentiation
• When a company concentrates on creating a highly differentiated product line and marketing program so it comes across as an industry class leader.
• Focus
• When a company focuses its effort on serving few market segments well rather than going after the whole market.
• Middle-of-the-roaders
• Companies without a clear strategy like this would not succeed.
• Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema 3 strategies (value disciplines)
• Operational excellence
• Providing value by leading its industry in price and convenience by reducing costs and creating a lean and efficient value delivery system.
• Customer intimacy
• Providing superior value by segmenting markets and tailoring products or services to match the needs of the targeted customers.
• Product leadership
• Providing superior value by offering a continuous stream of leading edge products or services. Product leaders are open to new ideas and solutions and bring them quickly to the market.
• Competitive positions
• Market leader
• Firm with the largest market share and leads the market price changes, product innovations, distribution coverage and promotion spending.
• Expand total demand
• New users.
• New uses.
• More usage of its products.
• Protect their current market
• Fixing or preventing weaknesses that provide opportunities to competitors.
• Maintain consistent prices that provide value.
• Keep strong customer relationships.
• Continuous innovation.
• Expand market share
• Increasing profitability with increasing market share in served markets.
• Producing high-quality products.
• Creating good service experiences.
• Building close relationships.
• Market challenger
• Firms fighting to increase market share.
• Second-mover advantage: challenger observes what has made the leader successful and improves on it.
• Market follower
• Firms that want to hold onto their market share. 
• Play along with competitors and avoid rocking the boat.
• Copy or improve on leader’s products and programmes with less investment.
• Bring distinctive advantages.
• Keep costs and prices low or quality and services high.
• Market nicher
• Firms that serve small market segments not being pursued by other firms.
• Specialisation.
• Continuous improvements
• Competitor-centred company
• Spends most of its time tracking competitors’ moves and market shares and trying to find ways to counter them.
• Advantage is that the company is a fighter.
• Disadvantage is that the company is reactive.
• Customer-centred company
• Spends most of its time tracking competitors’ moves and market shares and trying to find ways to counter them.
• Advantage is that the company is a fighter.
• Disadvantage is that the company is reactive.
• Market-centred company
• Spends most of its time focusing on both competitor and customer developments in designing strategies.

Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP)

• Segmentation: dividing a market into smaller segments with distinct needs, characteristics or behaviour that might require separate marketing strategies or mixes. 
• Segmenting consumer markets
• Segmenting business markets
• Segmenting international markets
• Requirements for effective segmentation
• Geographic segmentation
• Nation
• State
• Region
• Country
• City
• Postal Code
• Climate
• Demographic segmentation
• Age
• Gender
• Income
• Social class
• Family lifecycle
• Stage
• Psychographic segmentation
• Attitude
• Value
• Lifestyle
• Personality
• Behavioural segmentation
• Benefits sought
• Occasion
• Usage rate
• Response to a product
• Buying status (Loyalty)
• Geodemographic segmentation
• Usage-situation segmentation
• Benefits segmentation
• Multiple segmentation
• International market segmentation
• Geographic location
• Economic factors
• Political and legal factors
• Cultural factors
• Intermarket segmentation
• Effective segmentation:
• Measurable
• Accessible
• Substantial
• Differentiable
• Actionable
• Targeting: consists of a set of buyers who share common needs or characteristics that the company decides to serve.
• Segment size and growth.
• Segment structural attractiveness.
• Company objectives and resources.
• Undifferentiated marketing targets the whole market with one offer.
• Mass marketing.
• Focuses on common needs rather than what’s different.
• Differentiated marketing targets several different market segments and designs separate offers for each.
• Goal is to achieve higher sales and stronger position.
• More expensive than undifferentiated marketing.
• Concentrated marketing targets a small share of a large market.
• Limited company resources.
• Knowledge of the market.
• More effective and efficient.
• Micromarketing is the practice of tailoring products and marketing programs to suit the tastes of specific individuals and locations.
• Local marketing.
• Individual marketing.
• Local marketing involves tailoring brands and promotion to the needs and wants of local customer groups.
• Cities
• Neighbourhoods
• Stores
• Individual marketing involves tailoring products and marketing programs to the needs and preferences of individual customers.
• One-to-one marketing
• Mass customisation
• Markets-of-one marketing
• Positioning: the way the product is defined by consumers on important attributes—the place the product occupies in consumers’ minds relative to competing products.
• Physical positioning: factual information
• Perpetual positioning: mental perception
• Perceptions
• Impressions
• Feelings
• Positioning maps show consumer perceptions of their brands versus competing products on important buying dimensions.
• Competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by offering consumers greater value, either through lower prices or by providing more benefits that justify higher prices.
• Important
• Distinctive
• Superior
• Communicable
• Pre-emptive
• Affordable
• Profitable
• Product differentiation
• Services differentiation
• Channel differentiation
• People differentiation
• Image differentiation
• Value proposition is the full mix of benefits upon which a brand is positioned.
• More benefits are perceived as better proposition.

Social media marketing

• Omnichannel: cross-channel content strategy that organisations use to improve their user experience and drive better relationships with their audience across points of contact
• Customer experience (CX): the complete set of interactions and engagements that a customer has with a brand, including online touchpoints such as video views, mobile and desktop content consumption, ecommerce transactions and emerging technologies such as chatbots and connected IoT devices, as well as online touchpoints such as in-store, in-branch, outdoor and experiential advertising. 
• Personalisation (drive growth & scrutiny) = data improves engagement + experiences
• Influencer marketing
• Hiring such influencers allows companies to reach a vast network of potential customers: Mr Ronaldo has a combined following of 240m people across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
• Social media offer brands their best opportunity to reach cord-cutting millennials: Snapchat, another picture-sharing app, reaches 40% of all American 18- to 34-year-olds every day
• Consumers feel they have gained unprecedented access to the lives of the rich and famous
• Sponsors interact with their target audiences in ways that traditional advertising cannot match. In turn, demand from marketers for these channels has made social media lucrative territory for people with large online followings
• Influencer marketing plan
1. Confirm your objectives, target channels and align some measurable KPIs
2. Define your target influencers
3. Define your budget
4. Build an influencer list and do your research
5. Base your pitch on the individual and clearly list the essentials 
• Social network
• Marketers monitor social networks to learn what consumers are thinking about the brand and the competition
• Marketers reach influential opinion leaders by participating in social media conversations
• Social networks provide an opportunity to create a brand community

Service marketing

• Levels of Customer Contact
• Search properties are those elements that help customers to evaluate an offering prior to purchase. Physical products tend to have high search attributes that serve to reduce customer risk and increase purchase confidence
• Experience properties do not enable evaluation prior to purchase. Sporting events, holidays, and live entertainment can be imagined, they can be explained, and they can be illustrated, but only through the experience of the performance or feel of sitting in an audience of 100,000 people can an evaluation of the service experience be made
• Credence properties relate to those service characteristics that even afterpurchase and consumption customers find difficult to evaluate. Good examples are complex surgery and legal services demonstrate the point
• Service marketing strategies
• Extended Marketing Mix
• Service profit chain
• Internal marketing
• Interactive marketing
• Service profit chain
• Internal service quality
• Satisfied and productive service employees
• Greater service value
• Satisfied and loyal customers
• Healthy service profits and growth
• Internal marketing: the firm must orient and motivate its customer-contact employees and supporting service people to work as a team to provide customer satisfaction
• Interactive marketing means that service quality depends heavily on the quality of the buyer–seller interaction during the service encounter
• Service differentiation
• Service quality
• Service productivity.
• Managing service differentiation creates a competitive advantage from the offer, delivery and image of the service
• Offer can include distinctive features(Customisation)
• Delivery can include more able and reliable customer contact people, environment or process
• Image can include symbols and branding
• Managing service quality provides a competitive advantage by delivering consistently higher quality than its competitors
• Performance measures: derived from the manufacturing sector this approach simply asks customers to rate the performance of a service encounter. SERVPERF is the standard measurement technique.
• Disconfirmation: this approach is based on the difference between what was expected from a service and was delivered, as perceived by the customer. SERVQUAL is the standard measurement technique
• Importance-Performance: seeks to compare the performance of the different elements that make up a service with the customer’s perception of the relative importance of these elements. IPA (importance-performance analysis) is the standard measurement technique
• GAPS approach
• Reliability: the accuracy and dependability of repeated performances of service delivery
• Responsiveness: the helpfulness and willingness of staff to provide prompt service
• Assurance: the courtesy, confidence and competence of employees
• Empathy: the ease and individualised care shown towards customers
• Tangibles: the appearance of employees, the physical location and any facilities and equipment, and the communication materials
• Managing service productivity refers to the cost side of marketing strategies for service firms
• Employee recruiting, hiring and training strategies
• Service quantity and quality strategies
• Goods-dominant (G-D) logic
• Purpose of economic activity is to make and distribute units of output, preferably tangible (i.e., goods)
• Goods are embedded with utility (value) during manufacturing
• Goal is to maximise profit through the efficient production and distribution of goods 
• Goods should be standardised, produced away from the market, and inventoried till demanded
• Services
• Intangibility
• Heterogeneity (non-standardization)
• Inseparability (of production and consumption)
• Perishability
• Limitations
• Standardisation ignores individual preferences
• Value (customer determined) is very is perishable 
• Inventory of tangible goods is resource depleting
• Benefits
• Accuracy: It is precisely service that we are talking about
• What is exchanged is the “application of specialized knowledge and skills (competences) for the benefit of another party”—i.e., Service
• Thought-leadership: Service marketing concepts and insights transforming marketing thought
• Transaction → Relationship
• (Manufactured) Quality → Perceived (Service) Quality
• Brand Equity → Customer Equity
• Consumer → Prosumer (co-producer of value)
• Continuity: Does not require rejecting the exchange paradigm
• Just change in focus from units of outputs to processes
• Normatively Compelling: The purpose of economic exchange is mutual service
• Implies managerial, macro, and ethical standards
• Purpose of the firm is to serve
• Transitions
• Goods → Services → Service
• Products → Offerings → Experiences
• Feature/attribute → Benefit → Solution
• Value-added → Co-production → Co-creation of value
• Profit maximisation → Financial Engineering → Financial feedback/learning
• Price → Value delivery → Value proposition
• Equilibrium systems → Dynamic systems → Dynamic systems
• Supply Chain → Value-Chain → Value-creation network/constellation
• Promotion → Integrated Marketing Communications → Dialog
• To Market → Market to → Market with
• Product orientation → Market Orientation → Service-Dominant Logic (Consumer and relational) 
• Implications
• Making “services” more “goods-like” (tangible, separable, etc.) may not be correct normative marketing goal
• Make goods more service-like
• Reconsider the primary nature of the firm
• From manufacturing (make and sell) to marketing
• resource utilization for service provision
• Outsource and other non-core competences
• Virtual, “on demand” modular marketing organizations
• Selling service flows rather than ownership, even when goods are involved
• Shifting to Value-Based Pricing
• Based on value-in-use 
• Network to network marketing
• Resource integration for resource integrators

PESTEL analysis

• Political
• Change of government
• Wars & civil wars
• Social unrest
• Corruption
• Investment
• Regulations
• Terrorism
• Economic
• GDP
• Recession
• Inflation
• Exchange rates
• Interest rates
• Living costs
• Disposable income
• Unemployment
• Social
• Demographics
• Culture
• Beliefs system
• Values & attitude
• Lifestyle
• Women’s roles
• Education
• Consumption
• Technology
• Infrastructure
• Blockchain
• M-Commerce
• www (Internet)
• Remote work
• Technological transfer
• Research & development
• Environmental
• Go green campaigns
• Sustainability
• Lobby groups
• Pollution
• Animal testing
• Environmental
• Protection
• Recyclable produces
• Legal
• Business law
• Competition law
• Taxation
• Trade barriers
• Foreign ownership
• Enforcement of law
• Consumer & employee protection

Porter's 5 forces (industry analysis)

• Industry rivalry
• Sustainable competitive advantage
• Innovation development
• Mind share and advertising expense
• Type of competitive strategy
• Firm concentration ratio
• Bargaining power of customers
• Nature of product/services
• Buyer information availability
• Price sensitivity
• Availability of product (scarcity)
• Differential advantage (uniqueness) of product
• Bargaining power of suppliers
• Nature of raw materials (input)
• Presence of substitute inputs
• Switching costs
• Strength of distribution channel
• Supplier competition - by forward integration
• Threat of new entrants
• Capital requirement & start up cost
• Special licensing and permits
• Government intervention
• Customer loyalty to established brands
• Access to distribution network
• Threat of substitutes
• Perceived level of differentiation
• Low cost products
• Free products
• Ease of substitution
• Information-based ‘products’ are more prone to substitution