Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emphasize in advertising; operation of advertising campaigns; attendance at trade shows and public events; design of products and packaging attractive to buyers; defining the terms of sale, such as price, discounts, warranty, and return policy; product placement in media or with people believed to influence the buying habits of others; agreements with retailers, wholesale distributors, or resellers; and attempts to create awareness of, loyalty to, and positive feelings about a brand. Marketing is typically done by the seller, typically a retailer or manufacturer. Sometimes tasks are contracted to a dedicated marketing firm or advertising agency. More rarely, a trade association or government agency advertises on behalf of an entire industry or locality, often a specific type of food, food from a specific area, or a city or region as a tourism destination.
Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about issues relating to marketing products and services. The goal is to identify and assess how changing elements of the marketing mix impacts customer behavior.
Positioning refers to the place that a brand occupies in the minds of the customers and how it is distinguished from the products of the competitors and different from the concept of brand awareness. In order to position products or brands, companies may emphasize the distinguishing features of their brand or they may try to create a suitable image through the marketing mix. Once a brand has achieved a strong position, it can become difficult to reposition it.
A marketing plan may be part of an overall business plan. Solid marketing strategy is the foundation of a well-written marketing plan so that goals may be achieved. While a marketing plan contains a list of actions, without a sound strategic foundation, it is of little use to a business.
In marketing, market segmentation is the process of dividing a broad consumer or business market, normally consisting of existing and potential customers, into sub-groups of consumers based on some type of shared characteristics.
Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness. Market research helps to identify and analyze the needs of the market, the market size and the competition. Its techniques encompass both qualitative techniques such as focus groups, in-depth interviews, and ethnography, as well as quantitative techniques such as customer surveys, and analysis of secondary data.
Salesforce management systems are information systems used in customer relationship management (CRM) marketing and management that help automate some sales and sales force management functions. They are often combined with a marketing information system, in which case they are often called CRM systems.
Marketing strategy is a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.
Business performance management (BPM), also known as corporate performance management (CPM) and enterprise performance management (EPM),) is a set of performance management and analytic processes that enables the management of an organization's performance to achieve one or more pre-selected goals. Gartner retired the concept of "CPM" and reclassified it as "financial planning and analysis (FP&A)," and "financial close" to reflect two concepts: increased focus on planning and the emergence of a new category of solutions supporting the management of the financial close.
A target audience is the intended audience or readership of a publication, advertisement, or other message catered specifically to said intended audience. In marketing and advertising, it is a particular group of considered within the predetermined target market, identified as the targets or recipients for a particular advertisement or message. Businesses that have a wide target market will focus on a specific target audience for certain messages to send, such as The Body Shops Mother's Day advertisements, which were aimed at the children and spouses of women, rather than the whole market which would have included the women themselves.
Cranfield School of Management, established in 1967, is a business school that is part of Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, United Kingdom. It was ranked Top 10 in the UK and 34th in Europe in the Financial Times European Business Schools 2021 rankings. Cranfield School of Management is triple accredited by the Association of MBAs (AMBA), EQUIS and AACSB. Cranfield University, the UK's only wholly postgraduate university, specialises in science, technology, engineering, and management.
Paul Baines is a British marketing academic, specialising in the topic of marketing for political parties and candidates. He is the professor in Political Marketing at Cranfield University. He was the former Director of Business Development at the Middlesex University Business School and the former the Director for the Baines Associates Limited, since 2008. In 2019 he joined the University of Leicester as Professor of Political Marketing and Associate Dean.
Customer analytics is a process by which data from customer behavior is used to help make key business decisions via market segmentation and predictive analytics. This information is used by businesses for direct marketing, site selection, and customer relationship management. Marketing provides services in order to satisfy customers. With that in mind, the productive system is considered from its beginning at the production level, to the end of the cycle at the consumer. Customer analytics plays an important role in the prediction of customer behavior.
The study of the history of marketing, as a discipline, is meaningful because it helps to define the baselines upon which change can be recognised and understand how the discipline evolves in response to those changes. The practice of marketing has been known for millennia, but the term "marketing" used to describe commercial activities assisting the buying and selling of products or services came into popular use in the late nineteenth century. The study of the history of marketing as an academic field emerged in the early twentieth century.
A target market is a group of customers within a business's serviceable available market at which a business aims its marketing efforts and resources. A target market is a subset of the total market for a product or service.
Business process management (BPM) is the discipline in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes. Any combination of methods used to manage a company's business processes is BPM. Processes can be structured and repeatable or unstructured and variable. Though not required, enabling technologies are often used with BPM.
Brian David Smith is a strategic management consultant, academic and author. His particular interests include the evolution of business models and competitive strategies in the life science sector, particularly pharmaceuticals and medical technology. His academic research on these topics informs both his consultancy and writing.
Beth Rogers was Head of the Marketing and Sales academic community at the University of Portsmouth Business School (2012–2017). She pioneered professional selling and sales management curricula for postgraduates, undergraduates and work-based learners at University of Portsmouth Business School. Portsmouth was the first UK business school listed as a "Top Sales School" by the University Sales Education Foundation. Dr Rogers chaired the steering group which launched National Occupational Standards for Sales in the UK (2005–2009) and was also a member of the Learning Advisory Group of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (2010–2016). She continues to contribute to HE and the sales profession as a visiting fellow at Cranfield School of Management and as an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Sales Professionals. Her recent book with sales development practitioner Dr Jeremy Noad, "Selling Professionally", is the IPS textbook for the UK L4 Sales Executive apprenticeship.
Demographic targeting is a form of behavioral advertising in which advertisers target online advertisements at consumers based on demographic information.
