MARKETING EXAM STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER 1
1. Marketing is the activity for creating, communicating, delivering and
exchanging offerings that benefit its customers, the organization, its
stakeholders, and society at large.
2. Marketing seeks to:
a. Discover the needs and wants of prospective customers
b. Satisfy them
3. The key to achieve these two keys: exchange: the trade of things of
value between a buyer and a seller so that each is better off after the
trade.
4. Diverse elements influence marketing actions:
a. The Organization Itself and Its Department: the marketing
department is responsible for facilitating relationships,
partnerships, and alliances with the organizations customers, its
shareholders, suppliers, and other organizations.
b. Society: affected by and also have impact on the society.
c. Environmental Forces: social, economic, technological,
competitive, and regulatory considerations.
5. What is needed for marketing to occur?
a. >= 2 parties with Unsatisfied Needs: the companies and
customers
b. Desire and Ability to satisfy these needs
c. A way for the Parties to communicate
d. Something to exchange
6. How marketing discovers consume needs
a. Discover customer needs
b. Most new products fail
c. Suggestions:
i. Focus on the consumer benefit
ii. Learn from past mistakes
d. Showstoppers: factors that may doom the products
e. Consumer needs >< Wants
i. Need: occurs when a person feels deprived of basic
necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter.
ii. Want: a need that is shaped by a persons knowledge,
culture, and personality.
f. Market consists of people with both the desire and the ability to
buy a specific offering. All markets ultimately are people.

g.
h. Target market: one or more potential groups of consumers
toward which an organization directs its marketing program.
i. The Four Ps: Controllable Marketing Mix Factors.
i. Product: A good, service, or idea to satisfy the consumers
needs.
ii. Price: What is exchanged for the product.
iii. Promotion: A means of communication between the seller
and buyer.
iv. Place: A means of getting the product to the consumer.
v. All 4 are the elements of the marketing mix. These four
elements are the controllable factors that can be used by
the marketing manager to solve a marketing problem. The
marketing mix elements are called controllable factors
because they are under the control of the marketing
department in an organization.
j. Customer value proposition: a cluster of benefits that an
organization promises customers to satisfy their needs.
k. Uncontrollable Environmental Forces: Social, Competitive,
Economic, Regulatory, Technological
7. The Marketing Program: How Customer relationships are built.
a. Customer value: unique combination of benefits received by
targeted buyers that includes quality, convenience, on-time
delivery, and both before-sale and after-sale service at a specific
price.
b. Relationship marketing: The hallmark of developing and
maintaining effective customer relationships, which links the
organization to its individual customer.

c. Marketing program: a plan that integrates the marketing mix to

provide a good, service or idea to prospective buyers.
d. Market segments: relatively homogeneous groups of prospective
buyers that
i. Have common needs
ii. Will respond similarly to a marketing action
8. How marketing became so important:

a.
b. Customer Relationship Management (CRM): the process of
identifying prospective buyers, understanding them intimately,
and developing favorable long-term perceptions of the
organization and its offerings so that buyers will choose them in
the marketplace.
c. Customer Experience:
i. What firms think they offer customers
ii. What customers say they receive
d. Ethics: Many companies have developed codes of ethics to assist
managers.
e. Social responsibility Societal marketing concept: the view that
organizations should satisfy the needs of consumers in a way
that provides for societys well-being.
f. Who markets? Every organization.
g. What is marketed?
i. Goods: physical objects,
ii. Services: intangible items such as airline trips, financial
advice,...
iii. Ideas: thoughts about concepts, actions or causes.
h. Who uses and buys the marketed products: Both individuals and
organizations buy and use products that are marketed.

i. Ultimate consumers are the people who use the products

and services purchased for a household.
ii. Organizational buyers: manufacturers, wholesalers,
retailers and government agencies that buy products and
services for their own use or resale.
i. Who Benefits: consumers who buy, organizations that sell, and
society as a whole.
j. How do consumers benefit:
i. Utility: the benefits or customer value received by users of
the product and is the result of the marketing exchange
process and the way society benefits from marketing.
1. Form utility: production of the product or service
2. Place utility: having the offering available where
consumers need it
3. Time utility having it available when needed.
4. Possession utility: value of making an item easy to
purchase through the provision of credit cards or
financial arrangements

CHAPTER 2
1. Todays organization
a. Kinds of organization
i. An organization is a legal entity that consists of people
who share a common mission.
ii. Offerings: goods, services and ideas that create value
for both the organization and its customers by satisfying
their needs and wants.
iii. Three types:
1. For-profit/business firm: privately own
organization
a. Profit: the money left after a for-profit
organization subtracts its total expenses
from its total revenues and is the reward for
the risks it undertakes in marketing its
offerings.
2. Non-profit: nongovt org that serves its customers
but does not have profit as an organizational goal.
Instead, its goals may be operational efficiency
and customer satisfaction.
3. Government Agency: is a federal, state, county or
city unit that provides a specific service to its
constituents.

iv. Industry consists ogs that develop similar offerings

b. Strategy: is an organization long-term course of action
designed to deliver a unique customer experience while
achieving its goals.
c. Structure:

i.
ii. Corporate Level: where top management (Board of
directors, or senior management offices) directs overall
strategy for the entire organization.
iii. Business unit-level strategy: managers set a more
specific strategic direction for their business than
1. Strategic Business Unit (SBU): a subsidiary,
division, or unit of an organization that markets a
set of related offerings to a clearly defined target
market.
iv. Functional level: where groups of specialists actually
create value for the organization. Directions become its
most specific and focused.
1. Department: specialized functions: marketing and
finance.
2. Cross-functional Team: small number of people
from different departments who are mutually
accountable to accomplish a task or a common
set of performance goals.
2. Strategy in Visionary Organizations

a.
b. Visionary Organizations:
i. Establish a foundation
1. Core values: fundamental, passionate and
enduring principles that guide its conduct over
time.
2. Mission: a statement of the organizations function
in society that often identifies its customers,
markets, products, and tech.
3. Organization culture: the set of values, ideas,
attitudes, and norms of behavior that is learned
and shared among the members of an
organization.
ii. Set a direction
1. Business describes a clear, broad, underlying
industry or market sector of an organizations
offering. To help define its business, an
organization looks at the set of organizations that
sell similar offerings.
a. Business model: the strategies an org
develops to provide value to the customers
it serves.
2. Goals or objectives: are statements of an
accomplishment of a task to be achieved, often by
a specific time. Goals convert an orgs mission
and business into long and short term
performance targets.
3. Types of goals:
a. Profit: maximize profits
b. Sales (dollars or units): If profits are
acceptable, a firm may elect to maintain or
increase its sales even though profits may
not be maximized.
c. Market share (the ratio of sales revenues of
the firm to the total sales revenue of all
firms in the industry, including the firm itself
d. Quality: may offer highest quality

e. Customer satisfaction: vital importance.

f. Employee welfare
g. Social responsibility: balance the conflicting
goals of stakeholders to promote their
overall welfare, even at the expense of
profits.
h. Efficiency for non-profit orgs.
4. Goals or objectives: SMART
a. Specific
b. Measurable
c. Attainable
d. Relevant
e. Time-based
iii. Create strategies to successfully develop and market
their offerings.
1. Variation by level: Corporate, SBU, Functional
2. Variation by Offering: Product, Service, Idea
a. Marketing Plan: is a road map for the
marketing actions of an organization for a
specified future time period.
c. Tracking Strategic Performance
i. Marketing Dashboard: is the visual computer display of
the essential information related to achieving a
marketing objective
ii. Marketing Metric: a measure of the quantitative value or
trend of a marketing action or result.
1. Data visualization: presents information about an
organizations marketing metrics graphically so
marketers can quickly
a. Spot deviations from plans during the
evaluation phase
b. Take correcting actions
3. Setting Strategic Directions
a. Where are we now?
i. Competencies: its special capabilities (skills, techs, and
resources) that distinguish it from other organizations
and provide customer value.
1. Competitive advantage: a unique strength relative
to competitors that provides superior returns,
often based on quality, time, cost, or innovation.
b. Where do we want to go?
i. Business Portfolio Analysis: BCG Matrix

ii.
iii. Technique that managers use to quantify performance
measures and growth targets to analyze their firms SBU
as though they were a collection of separate
investments. Purpose is to determine which SBU or
offering generates cash and which one requires cash to
fund the organizations growth opportunities.
iv. Market growth rate: annual rate of growth of the SBUs
industry
v. Relative market share: sales of the SBU divided by the
sales of the largest firm in the industry.
Stars: SBUs with high share of
high-growth marets that may need
extra cash to finance their own rapid
future growth. If slow => cash cows.
Cash cow: SBUs that generate
large amounts of cash, far more
than they can use.

Question Marks: SBUs with a

share of high-growth markets.
require large injections of cash
maintain their market share, m
less increase it.
Dogs: SBUs with low shares o
growth markets. May not beco
winners for the organizations.
Dropping may be required.

vi. Diversification Analysis

1.
Markets
Current

Products
Current
Market
Penetration:
marketing

New
Product
development
: marketing

strategy to
increase sales
of current
products.
New

strategy of
selling new
products to
current
markets.
Market
Diversificati
development on: marketing
: marketing
strategy to
strategy to
develop new
sell current
products and
product to
to sell them in
new markets
new markets.

4. The Strategic Marketing Process

a. How do we allocate our resources to get to where we want to
go?
b. Convert our plans into actions?
c. How do our results compare with our plans and do deviations
require new plans?

d.
e. STEP 1: SITUATION ANALYSIS (SWOT)
i. Situation Analysis: taking stock of where the firm or
product has been recently, where it is now, and where is
is headed in terms of the orgs marketing plans and the
external forces and trends affecting it.
ii. SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities,
Threats.
1. Four areas:
a. Identify Industry Trends
b. Analyze Competitors
c. Assess the Organization
d. Research present and prospective
customers
2. Actions:

a.
b.
c.
d.

Build on a Strength
Correct a Weakness
Exploit an Opportunity
Avoid a Disaster-laden Threat.