Key Marketing Concepts: Definitions and Strategies
Key Marketing Concepts
Business Subsystem in the Company
An interrelated set of elements and variables in which the business function of the company is developed.
Marketing
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
Environment
The environment is the set of direct and indirect, controllable and uncontrollable forces that are likely to exert influences from a microeconomic and macroeconomic level, in all actions, decisions, and results.
Microenvironment
The microenvironment is the set of forces that influence directly the management of the company and its terms of trade, in order to satisfy market needs.
Macro Environment
The macro environment includes forces and institutions more distantly related to the company, but still can condition it.
Product
A product is the set of physical (tangible) and psychological (intangible) attributes that the consumer considers a product/service has, in order to satisfy their wants or needs.
Kotler states there are five levels:
- Core product: The basic need or want that is satisfied.
- Generic product: The basic version of the product.
- Expected product: The qualities of the product.
- Augmented product: Additional factors that set it apart from the competition (brand identity and image).
- Potential product: Transformations the product may undergo in the future.
Total product.
Positioning
Positioning is the image that the product projects, based on certain attributes in connection with other competing products or even from the same company. It refers to the place of a product or brand as perceived by consumers, in relation to other competitive products or brands or an ideal product.
Differentiation
Differentiation is a strategy used for clearer positioning. A company can position itself as providing superior value to selected target markets, either by offering lower prices than competitors do or by providing more benefits to justify higher prices, it gains competitive advantage.
Market Segmentation
Market segmentation means dividing a market into distinct groups of buyers with different needs, characteristics, or behaviors, who might require separate products or marketing mixes. The company identifies different ways to segment the market and develops profiles of the resulting market segments. Market targeting involves evaluating each market segment’s attractiveness and selecting one or more of the market segments to enter.
Brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.
Price
Price is a marketing variable with direct influence on the economic performance of the organization.
Place
Place is a set of institutions necessary to transfer the title to goods and to move goods from the point of production to the point of consumption and, as such, which consists of all the institutions and all the marketing activities in the marketing process.
Promotion
Promotion is not only a tool but a mix of several tools. Integrated Marketing Communications coordinates all promotion tools to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message.