Marketing and market orientation

A. Marketing :

Marketing is the process of planning, designing, pricing, promoting and distributing ideas, goods and
services, in order to satisfy customer needs so as to make a profit.

 Process: series of actions.

 Planning: making a program or a plan concerning the production process.

 Designing: scheming (doing a schema) the future product, working out his form.

 Pricing: deciding what price to charge on products (profit, competition, if people can afford to
buy…).

 Promoting: to encourage the sales or acceptance of a product by advertising.

 Distributing (ideas, goods and services): deciding where to distribute or sell: in small shops, in
supermarkets…etc

 The process of marketing has 2 purposes:

- Satisfy customers / Meet the customer’s needs.

- Make a profit / make a benefice.

Companies point out how the special characteristics or features of their products and services
possess particular benefits that satisfy the needs of the people who buy them.

 Features / Characteristics: elements that distinguish a product from another.

 Point out: draw attention to, emphasize, mention…

 This sentence shows the importance of taking into consideration what people need, to meet their
needs or satisfy them (give them what they want, or what they need).

Non-profit organizations have other social goals, such as persuading people not to smoke, or give
money to people in poor countries, but these organizations also use the techniques of marketing.

 Non-profit organizations: organizations that do not seek to gain benefits from their activities.

 Goals: expectations, objectives…

 Marketing which concerns non-profit organizations seeks to persuade people to do humanitarian

actions.

In some places, even organizations such as government departments are starting to talk about, or at
least think about their activities in terms of the marketing concept.

 Government departments: specialized division of the whole government authority.

 In terms of: according to.

 The concept of marketing can also be used in governmental activities.

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 B. The four Ps:

The four Ps are:

1. Product: deciding what to sell.

2. Price: deciding what prices to charge (make a person pay a certain price for a product).

3. Place: deciding how it will be distributed and where people will buy it.

4. Promotion: deciding how the product will be supported with advertising, special activities, etc…

Packaging (wrapping up) is a fifth P which is sometimes added: all the materials used to protect and
present a product before it is sold.

The four Ps are a useful summary of the marketing mix, the activities that you have to combine (put
together) successfully if you want to sell.

To market a product, is to make a plan based on this combination and put it into action. A marketer
(someone who markets products in order to attract customers and make them buy it) or marketeer is
someone who works in this area.

Marketeer can also be used to describe an organization that sells particular goods and services (it has
a meaning different from the usual concept of marketing).

C. Market orientation:

Marketers often talk about market orientation: the fact that everything they do is designed to meet the
needs of the market. They may describe themselves as market-driven, market-led or market-
oriented.

 Market: in this context, it means the consumers’ choices concerning the products.

 Orientation: direction or points of reference that will enable the company to market the product.

 “Market orientation” => every single decision or choice made by a company concerning the
process of marketing her product is led, driven, oriented by the market; it means that the points of
reference are customers’ preferences.

 Everything they do is designed to meet the needs of the market => the market tells you what to
do.

“Most people and many managers do not understand the role of marketing in modern
business”.

 In modern business, there are a lot of companies and their production is even bigger; so
competition is tough. Marketing a product is the only key to attract customers, and sell more that
the others.

Marketing is two things:

First, it is a strategy and a set of techniques to sell an organization’s products or services. This
involves choosing target customers and designing a marketing mix to get them to buy.

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 Strategy: plan put in long term to achieve something in the future.

 A set of: a group of.

 Involves: includes.

 Target customers: special people aimed at when selling, class of people you want to sell to.

 To get them to buy: to make them buy.

The mix may include a mix of brands, tempting prices, convenient sales outlets and a battery of
advertising and promotions.

 Brands: types of products made by a particular company.

 Tempting prices: low prices which attract.

 Convenient: easy to get to.

 Sales outlets: shops which sale products of a particular company.

 Battery: a variety, a large number of…

This concept of marketing as selling and persuasion is by far the most popular idea among both
managers and the public.

 Popular idea: common or familiar idea.

The second and by far more important concept of marketing focuses on improving the reality of what
is on offer. It is based on understanding customer’s needs and developing new solutions which are
better than those currently available.

 Reality of what is on offer: product put in the market.

 This concept of marketing includes all the things done to better the product that will be sold in the
market.

Doing this is not a department marketing problem, but one which involves the whole organization. For
example, for Rover to beat Mercedes for the customer’s choice involves engineering new models,
developing lean manufacturing processes and restructuring its dealer network.

 Dealer: shops.

 The entire organization is concerned by improving the reality of what is on offer. All the personnel
of the company is concerned, not just the marketing department.

Creating company-wide focus on the customer requires the continual acquisition of new skills and
technology. Marketing is rarely effective as a business function.

 Company-wide focus on the customer: it means that the company cares about knowing
everything in which concerns the need of the customer.

 Continual acquisition of new skills and technology: to be up-to-date in which concerns skills
and technology.

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 Effective: resourceful.

 Business function: business work.

As the chief executive of Hewlett Packard says:

“Marketing is too important to leave to the marketing department”.

 Marketing must be the business of all the company because it is not a job of just one department.

Such companies understand that everybody’s task is marketing. This concept of marketing offering
real customer value is what business is all about.

 Task: duty or mission.

 Offering real customer value: “the customer is a king”, we need to satisfy all his needs and take
care of him.

 Conclusion: Modern business is all about marketing.

I. Products and brands:

a. Word combination with “product”:

 PRODUCT catalogue (British)/catalog (American)/mix/portfolio: a company’s products as a

group.

 PRODUCT line/range: a company’s products of a particular type.

 PRODUCT lifecycle: the stages in the life of a product, and the number of people who buy it at
each stage (phase).

 PRODUCT positioning: how a company would like a product to be seen in relation to its other
products, or to competing products.

 PRODUCT placement: when a company pays for its products to be seen in films (when doing the
film, actors use products that are advertised, and the camera focuses on it to attract viewers) and
TV programmes (between the different sequences of the TV programmes).

b. Goods:

Goods can refer to the materials and components used to make products, or the products that are
made.

 Components: elements, constituents…

 Goods can be: products OR components of a product.

Here are some examples of these different types of goods:

Consumer goods that last a long time, such as cars and washing machines, are consumer durables.

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Consumer goods such as food products that sell quickly (rapidly) are fast moving goods, or fast
moving consumer goods “FMCG”.

c. Brands and branding:

A brand is a name a company gives to its products so they can be easily recognized. This may be the
name of the company itself: the make of the product.

 The make: named kind of a product. What make of cars does he drive?

For products like cars, you refer to the make and model, the particular type of car, for example, the
Ford (make) Ka (model).

Brand awareness or brand recognition is how much people recognize a brand. The ideas people have
about a brand is brand image. Many companies have a brand manager.

 Brand manager: a person who takes in charge everything related to the brand of a product.

Branding is creating brands and keeping them in customers’ minds through advertising, packaging,
etc…

A brand should have a clear brand identity so that people think of it in a particular way in relation to
other brands (a brand is very important when there is competition between companies, it attracts more
customers).

A product with the retailer’s own name on it is an own-brand product (British English) or own-label
product (American English).

 Retailer: seller.

Products that are not branded, those that do not have a brand name are generic products or generics.

II. Price:

a) Pricing:

X: Our goods are low-priced. Permanently low pricing means we charge low prices all the time.

 Low-priced: not expensive, cheap.

 Permanently: all the time.

Y: You mean cheap: your goods are poor quality. Our goods are high priced, but we give customer
service. And a lot of our goods are mid-priced: not cheap and not expensive.

 Cheap: here, it means poor quality not inexpensive goods.

X: Your goods are expensive. Customers don’t need service.

 Expensive: high price.

Y: You must be selling some goods at cost (what you pay for them), or at loss (even less).

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 Selling at cost: you sell them for the same price that you paid to buy or produce them.

 Selling at lost: you sell them at a lower price than what you have paid to buy or produce them.

X: yes, we have loss leaders (cheap items to attract customers in). But it’s all below the “official” list
price or recommended retail price. We have a policy of discounting, selling at a discount to the list
price.

 Discount: reduction in price.

 Official list: list made by the government to limit the increase in some products prices.

Y: If he goes undercutting us, we can’t stay in business.

 Undercutting us: charging lower prices than ours on the same products.

b) Word combination with “price”:

 PRICE boom: a good period for sellers, when prices are rising (getting higher) quickly.

 PRICE controls: government efforts to limit price increases.

 PRICE cut: a reduction in price.

 PRICE hike: an increase in price.

 PRICE war: when competing companies reduce prices in response (feed-back) to each other.

 PRICE leader: a company that is first to reduce or increase prices.

 PRICE tag: label attached to goods, showing the price; also means the price.

 Label: piece of paper or cloth, fixed to something to describe what it is, who owns it, etc…

c) Upmarket and downmarket:

Products, for example skis, exist in different models. Some are basic, some more sophisticated.

 Basic: simple.

 Sophisticated: complicated and advanced and refined.

The cheapest skis are low-end or bottom-end. The most expensive ones are high-ended or top-ended
products, designed for experienced users (or people with a lot of money).

 Cheapest: (superlative) the lowest priced.

 Most expensive: (superlative) the highest price.

 Low-end/Bottom-end: the end or purpose from using them is low (not advanced).

 High-end/Top-ended: the end or purpose from using them is high (very advanced).

The cheapest entry-level skis are for beginners who never bought skis before. Those between are
mid-range. If you buy cheaper skis after buying more expensive ones you trade down and move
downmarket.

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 Entry-level: the first level of options and sophistication of the product.

 Mid-range: between entry-level and those which are used by experienced people.

 Moving downmarket means buying something (the same good) expensive, then changing
it/trading it with a cheap one.

Downmarket can show disapproval. If a publisher takes a newspaper downmarket they make it more
popular, but less cultural, to, increase sale.

 Disapproval: dissatisfaction or displeasure.

 Taking a newspaper downmarket means: talking only about things that will attract people like
crimes and shocking events, instead of talking about cultural and scientific news.

Upmarket, downmarket => BrE: British English.

Upscale, downscale => AmE: American English.

d) Mass markets and niches:

Mass market describes goods that sell in large quantities and the people who buy them. For example,
family cars are a mass market product.

 Mass market is a term commonly used nowadays. It refers to 2 things: large quantity of goods +
large quantity of consumers.

A niche or niche market is a small group of buyers with special needs, which may be profitable to sell
to. For example, sports cars are a niche in the car industry.

 Niche market is more special than usual markets, it includes a little group of people who have the
same needs (usually rich ones), in order to make a big profit (like when selling diamonds for
example).

III. Place:

1. Distribution: wholesalers, retailers and customers:

 A wholesaler or shop selling a particular product, such as cars, is a dealer.

 A reseller sells computers.

 Wholesalers and retailers are distributors.

 Wholesalers are sometimes disapprovingly called middlemen.

 Disapprovingly: means that they do not approve it, they do not like it.

2. Shops:

A shop (BrE) or a store (AmE) is where people buy things.

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Companies may call it a retail outlet or sales outlet.

Here are some types of shops:

 Chain store: part of a group of shops, all with the same name.

 Convenience store: small shop in a residential area and open long hours.

 Deep discounter: a supermarket with very low prices.

 Department store: very large shop with a wide variety of goods, usually in a town centre.

 Drugstore: shop in a town centre in the US which sells medicine; you can also have coffer and
meals there.

 Hypermarket: very large shop with a wide variety of goods, usually outside a town.

 Supermarket: very large shop, selling mainly food.

In Britain, a shopping centre or shopping precinct is a purpose-built area or building in a town centre
with a number of shops. Outside towns, there are shopping malls, where it is easy to park.

 Purpose-built area: surface built for a reason: making a group of shops.

Franchises are owned by the people that run them (franchisees), but they sell the goods of one
company. That company (franchisor) provides goods, organizes advertising, and offers help and
support. In return, it takes a percentage of the profit of each franchisee. Many restaurants are also run
like this.

 Examples of franchises: Mc. Donald, Yves Rocher, Mr. Smith, Coca-Cola…etc

3. Direct marketing:

Hi, I’m Beatrice and I work in a direct marketing company in Brussels. We organize mailing for many
different products and services. This is direct mail but people often call it junk mail. We target our
mailing lists very carefully: for example, we don’t send mailshots for garden tools for people who live in
apartments!

 Direct marketing companies are companies that target a number of people (well chosen) and send
mailings to advertise goods and services.

We also do telemarketing, selling by telephone, including cold calls to people who had no contact with
us before. People are often rude to workers in our calls centers when they do this.

 People have difficulties to accept this new kind of advertising, they think it is inappropriate to call
them in their personal cellphones.