Posts

Showing posts with the label KOTLER & KELLER

Featured Entry

MANAGING PROJECTS

-
Projects represent nonroutine business activities that often have long-term strategic ramifications for a firm. In this chapter, we examined how projects differ from routine business activities and discussed the major phases of projects. We noted how environmental changes have resulted in increased attention being paid to projects and project management over the past decade. In the second half of the chapter, we introduced some basic tools that businesses can use when planning for and controlling projects. Both Gantt charts and network diagrams give managers a visual picture of how a project is going. Network diagrams have the added advantage of showing the precedence between activities, as well as the critical path(s). We wrapped up the chapter by showing how these concepts are embedded in inexpensive yet powerful software packages such as Microsoft Project. If you want to learn more about project management, we encourage you to take a look at the Web site for the Proj...
2 comments
Read more

Managing a Holistic Marketing Organization for the Long Run

-
The modern marketing department has evolved through the years from a simple sales department to an organizational structure where marketers work mainly on cross-disciplinary teams. Some companies are organized by functional specialization; others focus on geography and regionalization, product and brand management, or market-segment management. Some companies establish a matrix organization consisting of both product and market managers. Effective modern marketing organizations are marked by customer focus within and strong cooperation among marketing, R&D, engineering, purchasing, manufacturing, operations, finance, accounting, and credit. Companies must practice social responsibility through their legal, ethical, and social words and actions. Cause marketing can be a means for companies to productively link social responsibility to consumer marketing programs. Social marketing is done by a nonprofit or government organization to directly address a social pr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tapping into Global Markets

-
Despite shifting borders, unstable governments, foreign-exchange problems, corruption, and technological pirating, companies selling in global industries need to internationalize their operations. Upon deciding to go abroad, a company needs to define its international marketing objectives and policies. It must determine whether to market in a few or many countries and rate candidate countries on three criteria: market attractiveness, risk, and competitive advantage. Developing countries offer a unique set of opportunities and risks. The “BRIC” countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—plus other significant markets such as Indonesia and South Africa are a top priority for many firms. Modes of entry are indirect exporting, direct exporting, licensing, joint ventures, and direct investment. Each succeeding strategy entails more commitment, risk, control, and profit potential. In deciding how much to adapt their marketing programs at the product level, firms ca...
Post a Comment
Read more

Introducing New Market Offerings

-
Once a company has segmented the market, chosen its target customer groups and identified their needs, and determined its desired market positioning, it is ready to develop and launch appropriate new products and services. Marketing should participate with other departments in every stage of new-product development. Successful new-product development requires the company to establish an effective organization for managing the development process. Companies can choose to use product managers, new-product managers, newproduct committees, new-product departments, or new-product venture teams. Increasingly, companies are adopting cross-functional teams, connecting to individuals and organizations outside the company, and developing multiple product concepts. Eight stages take place in the new-product development process: idea generation, screening, concept development and testing, marketing strategy development, business analysis, product development, market testing,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Managing Personal Communications: Direct and Interactive Marketing, Word of Mouth, and Personal Selling

-
Direct marketing is an interactive marketing system that uses one or more media to effect a measurable response or transaction at any location. Direct marketing, especially electronic marketing, is showing explosive growth. Direct marketers plan campaigns by deciding on objectives, target markets and prospects, offers, and prices. Next, they test and establish measures to determine the campaign’s success. Major channels for direct marketing include face-to-face selling, direct mail, catalog marketing, telemarketing, interactive TV, kiosks, Web sites, and mobile devices. Interactive marketing provides marketers with opportunities for much greater interaction and individualization through well-designed and executed Web sites, search ads, display ads, and e-mails. Mobile marketing is another growing form of interactive marketing that relies on text messages, software apps, and ads. Word-of-mouth marketing finds ways to engage customers so they choose to talk with ot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Managing Mass Communications: Advertising, Sales Promotions, Events and Experiences, and Public Relations

-
Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. Advertisers include not only business firms but also charitable, nonprofit, and government agencies. Developing an advertising program is a five-step process: (1) Set advertising objectives, (2) establish a budget, (3) choose the advertising message and creative strategy, (4) decide on the media, and (5) evaluate communication and sales effects. Sales promotion consists of mostly short-term incentive tools, designed to stimulate quicker or greater purchase of particular products or services by consumers or the trade. In using sales promotion, a company must establish its objectives, select the tools, develop the program, pretest the program, implement and control it, and evaluate the results. Events and experiences are a means to become part of special and more personally relevant moments in consumers’ lives. Events can broaden and deepen th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Designing and Managing Integrated Marketing Communications

-
Modern marketing calls for more than developing a good product, pricing it attractively, and making it accessible to target customers. Companies must also communicate with present and potential stakeholders and with the general public. The marketing communications mix consists of eight major modes of communication: advertising, sales promotion, public relations and publicity, events and experiences, direct marketing, interactive marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, and personal selling. The communications process consists of nine elements: sender, receiver, message, media, encoding, decoding, response, feedback, and noise. To get their messages through, marketers must encode their messages in a way that takes into account how the target audience usually decodes messages. They must also transmit the message through efficient media that reach the target audience and develop feedback channels to monitor response to the message. Developing effective communications...
Post a Comment
Read more

Managing Retailing, Wholesaling, and Logistics

-
Retailing includes all the activities involved in selling goods or services directly to final consumers for personal, nonbusiness use. Retailers can be understood in terms of store retailing, nonstore retailing, and retail organizations. Like products, retail-store types pass through stages of growth and decline. As existing stores offer more services to remain competitive, costs and prices go up, which opens the door to new retail forms that offer a mix of merchandise and services at lower prices. The major types of retail stores are specialty stores, department stores, supermarkets, convenience stores, discount stores, extreme value or hard discount store, off-price retailers, superstores, and catalog showrooms. Although most goods and services are sold through stores, nonstore retailing has been growing. The major types of nonstore retailing are direct selling (one-to-one selling, one-to-many party selling, and multilevel network marketing), direct marketing...
Post a Comment
Read more