Give a Note on Marketing Concept for SMU MBA MB0046 Assignment

It is the solved assignment of “Give a note on marketing concept.” It is the solved assignment of MB0046 (Marketing Management) for SMU MBA. You may read Process of Developing New Product and Product Mix Pricing Strategies also.

The Marketing Concept proposes that a company’s task is to create, communicate and deliver a better value proposition through its marketing offer, in comparison to its competitors; to its target segment and that is customer oriented approach only can lead to success in the market place.

Today, marketing function is seen as one of the most important function in the organization. Many marketers put the customers at the centre of the company and argue in favor of such a customer orientation where all functions work together to respond, serve and satisfy the customer.

Many successful and well known multinational companies have adopted marketing concept as their business and marketing philosophies. Many Indian companies in the banking and other service sectors follow customer orientation and service as their motto. According to this concept, a company’s marketing effort must start right from identifying through Market Research, exact needs & wants of the target market.

In the recent years, we have been witnessing a lot of complaints about products and packaging that are harmful to health and ecology. Marketers must come forward to protect the interest of both the customers and the environment and this they can achieve by adopting or following the societal marketing concept.

Marketing as a concept has evolved over a period of time and has witnessed changes and modifications in its philosophy. There are five concepts which describe this development and offer ways to companies on how to conduct their business – Production Concept, Product Concept, Selling Concept, Marketing Concept and Societal Marketing Concept.

Product Mix Pricing Strategies for SMU MBA MB0046 Assignment

There is the solved assignment of “Explain the different product mix pricing strategies.” It is the solved assignment of MB0046 (Marketing Management) for SMU MBA. You may read Process of Developing New Product and Requisites of an Effective Segmentation also.

1. Product line pricing: strategy of setting the price for entire product life marketer differentiate the price according to the range of products i. e. suppose the company is having three products n low, middle and high end segment and prices the three products say Rs. 10, Rs. 20 and Rs. 30 respectively. In this condition, all the three products cater to the different segments low, middle and high income group respectively.

2. Optional product pricing strategy is used to set the price of optional or accessory products along with a main product.

3. Captive product pricing: setting a price for a product that must be used along with a main product. For example, Gillette sells low priced razors but make money on the replacement cartridges.

4. By-product pricing is determining the price for by-products in order to make the main products price more attractive. For example, L. T. Overseas manufacturers of Dawaat basmati rice, found that processing of rice results in two by precuts i.e. rice husk and rice brain oil. If the company sells husk and brain oil to other consumers, then company is adopting by-product pricing.

5. Product bundle pricing is offering companies several products together at the reduced price. This strategy helps companies to generate more volume, get rid of the unused products and attract the price conscious consumer. This also helps in locking the customer from purchasing the competitors products. For example, Anchor toothpaste and brush are offered together at lower prices.

Above mentioned are basic principles of product mix pricing strategies for SMU MBA MB0046 assignment.

Process of Developing New Product for SMU MBA Assignment of MB0046 for Marketing Management

It is the solved assignment of “Explain briefly what are the several processes involved in new product development.” The assignment has been solved for MB0046 (Marketing Management) of SMU MBA. You may see International Market Entry Strategies and Requisites of an Effective Segmentation also.

New Product Development:

New products are essential for existing firms to keep the momentum and for new firms they provide the differentiation. New product doesn’t mean that absolutely new to the world. It may be modification, or offered in the new market, or differentiate from existing products. Therefore it is necessary to understand what are new products?

New Products:

They are really innovative: Google’s Orkut a networking site which revolutionized social networking. In this site people can meet like-minded people; they can form their own groups and many more.

They are very different from others: Haier launches path-breaking 4-door Refrigerators first time in India.

They are imitative: these products are not new to the market but new to the company. For example, Cavin Kare launched ruche pickles. This product is new to Cavin Kare but not to the market.

New Product Development Process:

Stage 1: Idea generation: new product idea can be generated either from the internal sources or external sources. The internal sources include employees of the organization and data collected from the market. The external sources include customers, competitors and supply chain members.

Stage 2: Idea screening: Organization may have various ideas but it should find out which of these ideas can be translated into concepts.

Stage 3: Concept development:

Stage 4: Concept testing: at this stage concept was tested with the group of target customers.

Stage 5: Marketing strategy development: the marketing strategy development involves three parts.

Stage 6: Business analysis: it is the analysis of sales, costs and profit estimated for a new product to find out whether these align with company mission and objective.

Stage 7: Product development:

Stage 8: Test marketing

Stage 9: commercialization: in this stage product is completely placed in the market and aggressive communication program is carried out to support it.

Requisites of an Effective Segmentation for MB0046 Assignment of SMU MBA

It is the solved assignment of “List out the 5 important requisites of an effective segmentation by giving suitable examples”. It is the assignment of MB0046 (Marketing Management) for SMU MBA. You may view Define Customer Relationship Management and International Market Entry Strategies also.

Requisites of Effective Segmentation:

1. Measurable and Obtainable: The size, profile and other relevant characteristics of the segment must be measurable and obtainable in terms of data. If the information is not obtainable, no segmentation can be carried out. For example, Census of India provides the data on migration and education level, but do not specifies how many of the migrated employees are educated and if educated how many are there in white color jobs.
2. Substantial: The segment should be large enough to be profitable. For consumer markets, the small segment might disproportionably increase the cost and hence products are priced too high. For example, when the cellular services started in India cost of the incoming calls and outgoing calls were charged at Rs. 12/minute. As the number of subscribers grew, incoming calls become free.
3. Accessible: The segment should be accessible through existing network of people at a affordable cost. For example, Majority of the rural population still not able to access the internet due to high cost and unavailability of connections and bandwidth.
4. Differentiable: The segments are different from each other and require different 4Ps and programs. For example, Life Insurance Corporation of India needs separate marketing programs to sell their insurance plans, unit plans, pension plans and group schemes.
5. Actionable: The segments which a company wishes to purse must be actionable in the sense that there should be sufficient finance, personnel and capability to take them all.

Segmentation of market is the biggest task in our country for the diversity. The task always changes with the region, state and community.

Define Customer Relationship Management (CRM) from MB0046 of SMU MBA Assignment

There is the solved assignment of “Define Customer Relationship Management (CRM)”. The MB0046 (Marketing Management) assignment has been solved for SMU MBA assignment. You may view International Market Entry Strategies and Product Life Cycle also.

In the marketing world managers quite often says ‘retaining customer is more important than acquiring one’. We will examine the importance of this sentence. The organization uses communications tools to make their product and brand aware among the consumer. It uses its supply chains and human resources to sell their products. Each stage costs for the company. In this competitive world organizations want to reduce the cost and develop the database which helps in creating loyalty programs. There it is very essential for the organizations to use software to pile up big database of customer. Many Indian companies like Infosys, Wipro and others started offering CRM software to companies.

Definitions of Customer Relations Management (CRM):

Bery and Parasurman define CRM as “attracting, developing and retaining customer relationships.”

In industrial marketing, Jackson defines CRM as “marketing oriented toward strong, lasting relationships with individual accounts.”

Doyle and Roth define CRM as “the goal of relationship selling is to earn the position of preferred supplier by developing trust in key accounts over a period of time.”

The sequence of activities for performing relationship marketing would include developing core services to build customer relationship, customization of relationship, augmenting core services with extra benefits, and enhancing customer loyalty and fine-tuning internal marketing to promote external marketing success.

Christopher considers relationship marketing as “a tool to turn current and new customers into regularly purchasing clients and then progressively moving them through being strong supports of the company and its products to finally being active and vocal advocates for the company.”

From the above definitions, it could be concluded that Customer Relationship Management refers to all activities directed towards establishing, developing and sustaining long lasting, trusting, win-win, beneficial and successful relational exchanges between the focal firm and all its supporting key stakeholders.

CRM is not a new concept but an age-old practice, which is on the rise because of the benefits others, especially in the present marketing scenario. So, CRM today is a discipline as well as a set of discrete software and technology which focuses on automating and improving the business process associated with managing customer relationships in the area of sales, marketing, customer service and support.

Product Life Cycle for MBA Assignment of SMU MB0046

The solved assignment has been prepared for “State the meaning of Product life cycle and explain the different stages involved in it”. It is the solved assignment of MB0046 (Marketing Management) for SMU MBA. You should take a view of Micro Environmental Forces of Marketing and International Market Entry Strategies too.

The product which is introduced into the market will undergo some modifications over the period. Its sales also fluctuate. Therefore marketer is interested in finding out how sales changes over period? And what strategies best suits at that point? A product life cycle can be graphed by plotting aggregate sales volume for a product category over time.

Generally the curve resembles bell shaped curve but it is not the only one type of curve. We can obtain style, fashion or fad style of product life cycles also.

According to the type of cycle of product passes through five stages:

1. Product development stage: In this stage company indentifies the viable idea and develops it. Sales in this stage are zero but require huge research and development budget.

2. Introduction stage: Company introduces the product into the market. As the product is new to the market, awareness is usually very low.

3. Growth stage: Company gets experience over the period and now tries to get the maximum market share. Sales will grow rapidly resulting in lesser cost and better profit.

4. Maturity stage:

• a. Peak sales
• b. Low cost per customer
• c. High profits
• d. Competition based pricing
• e. Communicating the product differentiation to consumer
• f. Improving supply chain efficiency
• g. Defend the market share
• h. Industry experiences the consolidation

5. Decline stage: In this stage, product and profit declines. Company should phase out weak items from their product mix.

Some Other Product Life Cycles:

1. Style: a style is a basic and distinctive mode of expression appears in the field of human behavior.

2. Fashion: currently accepted or popular style in a given field for example, cargo jeans are now fashion with college going students.

3. Fad: a fashion that enters quickly, adopted with great zeal, peaks early and decline very fast for example, when the pager is introduced, everybody would like to have the product. But when people found mobile as alternative the demand for the product went down drastically.

International Market Entry Strategies for MB0046 SMU MBA Assignment

The solved assignment has been prepared for “What are the different market entry strategies if a company wants to enter international markets?” It is the solved assignment of SMU MBA for MB0046 (Marketing Management). You should take a view of Micro Environmental Forces of Marketing also.

Companies should evaluate each country against the market size, market growth and cost of doing business, competitive advantage and risk level before entering in international markets.

There are the checklists of country evaluation that should be evaluated by companies before entering in any international market.

Checklist for Country Evaluation:

1. Political Rights
2. Civil Liberties
3. Control of Corruption
4. Government Effectiveness
5. Rule of Law
6. Health Expenditure
7. Education Expenditure
8. Regulatory Quality
9. Cost of Starting a Business
10. Days to Start a Business
11. Trade Policy
12. Inflation
13. Fiscal Policy
14. Consumption
15. Competition

Companies should evaluate these eliminates with their weightages and they should give score also for those elements. Companies can enter in international market from any one of the following strategies.

• Exporting
• Licensing
• Contract Manufacturing
• Management Contract
• Joint Ownership
• Direct Investment

Exporting:

It is the technique of selling the goods produced in the domestic country in a foreign country with some modifications.

Licensing:

According to Philip Kotler licensing is a method of entering a foreign market in which the company enters into an agreement with a license in the foreign market, offering the right to use a manufacturing process, trademark, patent, or other item of value for a fee or royalty.

Contract Manufacturing:

Company enters the international market with a tie up between manufacturer to produce the product or the service.

Management Contracting:

In this type a company enters the international market by providing the knowhow of the product to the domestic manufacturer.

Joint Ownership:

A form of joint venture in which an international Company invests equally with a domestic manufacturer.

Direct Investment:

In this method of international market entry Company invest in manufacturing or assembling.

Micro Environmental Forces of Marketing for Marketing Management Assignment of SMU MBA

It is the solved assignment of “Explain the different micro-environmental forces with examples.” The assignment is solved for SMU MBA of MB0046 (Marketing Management). You can read other solved assignments also - Measures to Improve Employee Morale and Wage and Salary Administration Policies in India.

Marketing department let alone cannot satisfy all the needs of customer. Therefore it is essential to integrate the functions of suppliers, publics, company departments and intermediaries in creating the value to the customer. These forces are known as organization’s micro environment.

Microenvironment: The forces which are very close to company and have impact on value creation and customer service.

Forces in the micro-environment:



The Company:

Remember in the previous unit we discussed about the strategic and marketing planning. Deducing a strategic plan in to specific marketing plan require coordination of other functions like finance, Human resource, production, and research and development.

Intermediaries:

Marketing intermediaries: The firms which distribute and sell the goods of the company to consumer.

Marketing intermediaries plays an important role in the distribution, selling and promoting the goods and services.

Publics:

These are microenvironment groups, which helps company to generate the financial resources, creating the image, examining the companies’ policy and developing the attitude towards the product.

Competitors:

A company should monitor its immediate competitor. The product should be positioned differently and able to provide better services.

Suppliers:

Suppliers are the first link in the entire supply chain of the company. Hence any problems or cost escalation in the stage will have direct effect on the company. Many companies adopted supplier relation management system to manage them well.

Customers:

A company may sell their products directly to the customer or use marketing intermediaries to reach them. Direct or indirect marketing depends on what type of marketing company serves. Generally we can divide the markets into five categories.