Great Course-Critical biz skills-Marketing

Question 1

Marketing: business principle that create value for customers. The value is defined by customer when they decide to buy the products or services.
Marketing turns the potential for creating value into something that actually create values.

Answer 1

Values of a product/service should be always considered through customers’ eyes.
sources of values:
1. functional value
2. monetary value
3. social value
4. psychological value: appreciation, affiliation, status, role, autonomy
they are not equally important for all customers at the same time.

Question 2

Strategic questions for marketing strategy:
who are my customers?
what do they value?
How do I deliver these values to my customers compared with my competitors?

Answer 2

Tactical questions for strategy implementation:

Branding, communication, pricing

Question 3

Ep.2 how to segment customers?
Re-segment customers should take place periodically. should be MECE: mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive
Segments should be based on what people value, not demographic characteristics/age/geography.
Savvy marketers use psychographic segmentation - groups people based on what they value

Answer 3

Segmentation Methods:
1. User-based segmentation analysis to derive value-based segments from types of potential users. i.e. military users, NGOs, business executives
the outcome of the analysis should be a preference structures per a type of customer
each segment should have distinct value profiles. if two group have overlapped preferences, they should be combined.

Question 4

Segmentation Methods:
2. benefits-based segmentation: derives esgments
from the benefits of the goods/servicesthat different groups appreciate

i.e. cereals (sweet, easy to bite, …). how each group pf people value the benefit.

Answer 4

haiku

Question 5

Is customer loyalty same as the customer buying habits?

Answer 5

No. Habits trigger by psychological cues. when cues disappear, the buying habits won’t happen. it’s different from customers’ loyalty to a brand.

Question 6

what types of values we can create for customers?

Answer 6

Functional value, monetary (branding serves as a reference frame of price point), social (facilitate customers’ relationships with others using the brand i.e. increase social acceptance), psychological values (it’s not constant over time. internal psychological value- brand affects how we feel about ourselves through life-style branding, external value - brand affects how we define ourselves to the world)

Question 7

What informations are important when setting up pricing products?

Answer 7

1. internal information: cost involved in creating a product
2. external information: competitors’ prices (using the right set of competitors that the customers compare the product with, make sure the price is apple-to-apple)
3. values that customers place on your offering (customers will consider what you are selling is worth what you are asking for.) when different groups of customers value the products and services differently, company can use price discrimination to charge different prices based on the values customers perceive. i.e. flights during weekend is usually cheaper than flights during the week since airlines differentiate leisure and business travelers.

Question 8

what are the dangers of competing on prices?

Answer 8

1. price war
   - competitors are always much more sensitive to your price change than your customers).
   - the only way to win the price war is that you have the lowest cost and have significant cost advantage in the market.
   - when a company has to win NEW customers through price war, the company is likely having targeting and positioning problems. the NEW customers they win over the lower price can be the most unloyal customers - they are one-time bargain hunters.
2. quality inferences
   customers usually associate low price with low quality.
3. price war can lead to leaving money on the table. customers often use external price references (also “ context-based price comparison) to make the decisions. they might not expect any price cut in the first place by only comparing the price offering in the market.

Question 9

what is extremeness aversion?

Answer 9

customers tend to avoid most expensive and least expensive options.

Question 10

what is price image?

Answer 10

it’s reputation of price. Customers will assume the price by hearing about the brands. i.e. Walmart has low price image. wholefoods has high price image.

Question 11

what is targeting and positioning?

Answer 11

targeting: Targeting in marketing is a strategy that breaks a large market into smaller segments to concentrate on a specific group of customers within that audience. knows which group of customers to sell to
positioning: Market position refers to the consumer’s perception of a brand or product compared to competing brands.

Question 12

what is communication plan steps?

Answer 12

1. set an appropriate goal (i.e. increase sales by raising awareness, information of new features, persuasion)
2. develop a strategy (specific benefits to promote)
3. develop tactics (i.e. interactive ad. billboards, online mass media, etc.)
   Creativeness is not the end of the marketing.

Question 13

How to capture attention of customers?

Answer 13

1. always have news/new information to share i.e. have trivia information for people to talk about - serves as conversation currency)
2. allow room for innovation/reinvention if the ad loses traction after some time. a way to do is to build some templates with core messages unchanged over the time but allowing for changes in some elements so to keep consistent but innovative and refreshing