MANAGEMENT NOTES

                      BRAND EQUITY          Brand Equity is the financial value of a brand. Brand equity is the value a brand adds to a product. Brands vary in the amount of power and value they have in the marketplace. At once extreme are brands that are not known by most buyers. Then there are brands for which buyers have a fairly high degree of brand awareness. The word ‘Reebok’ on a shoe adds value to it. Beyond a product’s value is its potential to do what it’s supposed to do. A brand adds value to that product through its name awareness and its favourable perception. Brand equity has a positive aspects of a product. If the brand adds nothing or detracts from the value of a basic product than a brand will lack equity or even have negative equity. Brand evokes a strong set of belief and values like the ‘Mercedes’ stands for high technology, performance, and success.   ...

COMPETITIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES           Marketing has come to play an increasingly important role in the industries. At the core of the business is the marketing concept. The concept of strategy has been derived from the Greek word ‘strategos’ which means ‘the art of the general’. It is associated with determining the position of an organisation in relation to its environment and then achieving its goals. Increased competition and environmental change have forced organisation to plan more carefully for the future. Most organisation have several options for achieving their mission and objectives. Strategy is concerned with deciding which option is to be used. Strategy includes the determination and evaluation of alternative paths to achieve an organisation’s objectives and mission.              There is no single definition of strategy which is universally accepted. Vari...

ROLE OF STRATEGIC MARKETING PLAN          A strategic marketing plan is useful to a business. The strategic marketing plan is the means of communicating the strategy to top executive on the basis of which they take critical decisions relating to allocation of resources. Strategic marketing plan helps in following: 1. It measure performance. 2. It inform stakeholders in the business. 3. It provides resources needed to build the business. 4. It gain commitment to a strategy. 5. It identify source of competitive advantage. 6. It stimulates change and provide building block for next plan. 7. It assist bench-marking & Performance monitoring. 8. It explain the business to others in order to inform, motivate & involve.                  A strategic plan should not be confused with a business plan. Strategic plan is likely to be a sho...

WHAT IS STRATEGIC MARKETING PLAN                  On the basis of strategic marketing planning a written document known as marketing plan is generated which includes the implementation, evaluation and control of marketing activities. A marketing plan is a written document that specifies the organisation’s resources, objectives, marketing strategy implementation and control effort planned for use in marketing its operations. The marketing plan describe the organisation’s current position or situation, establishes marketing goals or objectives and specifies how the organisation will attempt to achieve these objectives. A strategic market plan is not the same as a marketing plan; it is a plan of all aspects of an organisation’s strategy. A marketing plan deals primarily with implementing the market strategy as it relates to target markets and the marketing mix.             A strat...

STRATEGIC MARKETING PLANNING           Strategic marketing planning is concerned about the overall direction of the business. It is concerned with marketing, of course. But it also involves decision-making about production and operations, finance, human resource management and other business issues. The objective of a strategic plan is to set the direction of a business and create its shape so that the products and service it provides meet the overall business objectives. It is managerial process of developing and maintaining a fit between the organisation’s objectives, skill and resource and market opportunities. Marketing has key role to play in strategic planning, because it is the job of marketing management to understand and manage the links between the business and the “environment”.                Strategic planning is done at three organisation levels – T...

ESSENTIAL  AN EFFECTIVE MARKETING CONTROL SYSTEM               Marketing managers should employ an effective control system to make sure that activities and result confirm plans. Effective marketing control system should be based on the following characteristics: 1. Forward Looking: Effective marketing control should not confine to post-mortem of events or things. It should always aim at future. It should provide a framework for future planning. 2. Corrective Actions: Control should lead to corrective actions. It must be perspective and operational. It must disclose where failure are occurring, who is responsible for them and what should be done about them. It must focus on action rather than on information. 3. Objective: The control systems should be objective. Subjective control may influence judgement hence there may be an element of bias in decisions leading to ineffective performance. Theref...

BENEFITS OF MARKETING CONTROL            Marketing control plays an important role in marketing planning and its successful implementations. The benefits of control are listed below: 1. It helps in marketing decision-making. 2. It helps in coordination of the activities of various departments. 3. It helps in provide information for marketing planning and revision of marketing standard. 4. It helps in improving the performance of marketing department. 5. Effective control system help marketing manager to delegate his authority to the lowest possible extent. 6. It minimize the chances of mistakes being reputed in future by suggest preventive straps. 7. Marketing control helps in keeping all marketing operations in right direction. 8. It helps in better utilization of marketing resources resulting in increase in the productivity and profitability of marketing department, which contributes significantly...

CONTROL OF MARKETING OPERATION                  Marketing control is an essential part of the marketing function. All the marketing activities are planned and implemented with the objective of achieving marketing goals. Marketing control provides the means whether the desired goals have been achieved or not and if necessary, applying corrective measure so that the performance takes place according to plans. It involves determination of standard and yardsticks, gathering information on marketing performance, doing comparison to identify deviations and suggest corrective measure whenever these are needed. OBJECTIVE OF MARKETING CONTROL              The purpose of marketing control is to keep the marketing activities on the right track and align them with the plans and goals of the organisation. It ensure whether marketing plans are execu...

RURAL MARKETING STRATEGIES               The marketing strategy has to be formulated taking into consideration the difference between rural and urban markets. Till recently marketers have exposure mostly to urban markets. They have to reorient themselves to rural markets. A deeper understanding of the rural milieu in needed. The behavior of marketers while conducting business in villages should be respectful and humble. Rural buyers take a long time to make up their mind to buy. Therefore, marketer need to exercise more patience in dealing with less educated rural traders and consumers. Conventional marketing focus on satisfaction of customer needs. 1. Market Segment Strategy: Rural markets are more complicated and fragmented. In rural India consumer are not so independent in consumption. Demonstrations and direct marketing tools are important in rural markets. Marketers look for appropriate variable to segment the ...

PROBLEMS OF RURAL MARKETING               World’s rural market is unpredictable as rain. The rural market may be alluring but it is not without its problems: Low per capita disposable incomes is half the urban disposable income. In addition to it there are large number of daily wage earner, acute dependence on the monsoon. 1. Physical Distribution: The problems of physical distribution adversely affect the service as well as the cost aspect. Physical distribution includes transportation problem, warehousing problem and communication problem. Roads are not in proper conditions to transport the goods easily. Markets at the rural market places are not connected well be the roads. Warehousing problems include the lack of proper godowns and cold storage facilities. 2. Channel Management: Long distance and scattered locations also pose the problems. The companies with relatively fewer resource can go in for synd...

CHARACTERISTICS OF RURAL MARKETS 1. Seasonal Demand: Rural demand is harvest linked as well as festival linked. The festival are often coinciding with the harvest. Rural villagers tend to buy for short segments of time. 2. Collective Decision-Making: Decision-making process is collective in rural areas. Television advertising has brought brand awareness among rural households. 3. Substantial Share: Traditionally rural consumers were consuming only traditional product. Rural India now accounts for a sizable share of the total consumption for a variety of consumer goods. 4. Agricultural Dependent: Rural economy is still agriculturally dependent. Demand of rural population is heavily dependent on agriculture. Rural income vary depending on monsoon. 5. Large and Scattered Market: Rural market of world is a very large market. It consist of more than 1.8 billion consumer. Geographically it is a vast and highly scattered market. There are around 9,80,000 public dis...

ELEMENTS OF E-MARKETING 1. Product/ Service: It is a virtual product shown on the website. In e-commerce multimedia presentation of the product is given on the web pages. It is not possible in displaying actual product. 2. Place: Website are used to display products. 3. Visit of Website: Search engine and other linkage helps in researching to websites. 4. Accept Orders: Orders are accepted through websites. Order forms are made available on the websites. 5. Accept money: Electronic fund transfer facilities are used for payments in e-commerce. Information of payments is routed through value added networks. 6. Shipping Products: The shipment of product are made through third party. Companies have chain of suppliers in various localities.

FEATURE OF E-MARKETING 1. Ubiquity: The marketplace is extended beyond traditional boundaries in e-marketing. 2. Global Reach: Marketing is enabled across cultural and national boundaries. 3. Richness: Video, audio, and text marketing message can be integrated in e-marketing. 4. Interactivity: Consumer are co-participant in the process of delivering goods. 5. Information density: Information becomes cheap, and accurate. 6. Customization : Personalisation of marketing message is possible in e-marketing.

EVOLUTION OF E-MARKETING              The history of e-commerce can be divided into two periods. The E-commerce I era was a period of explosive growth, beginning in 1995 with first widespread use of the Web to advertise products, and lending in 2000 when stock market valuation for dot.com companies began to collapse. E-commerce I period was driven largely by vision of profiting from new technology. The source of financing was venture capital funds. The emphasis was on destroying traditional distribution channels and disinter-mediating existing channels, using new pure online companies who aimed to achieve first mover advantages.             The E-Commerce II era begun in January 2001, by which time a reassessment of e-commerce companies had occurred. E-commerce II period continues an extremely rapid pace of growth in customers and revenue, it is clear that many o...

                        E-MARKETING           The internet has changed the way companies conduct business. The traditional link between the flow of the product and the flow of product-related information is broken. Information is not limited to traditional physical methods of delivery. Customer can find out about products on their own the Web. Traditional channels for providing product information have become unnecessary. The internet and the Web have vastly increased the total amount and quality of information available to all market participants.                E-marketing is perhaps the most important new development in the history of marketing. Marketing is undergoing a revolution as a result of the explosion of information technology and world wide web. It is integration of information technology and ...

PROBLEMS IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING (1) Marketing Infrastructure: Marketing infrastructure varies from nation to nation. In developed countries, marketing facilities are available in a fine manner while poor marketing facility or infrastructure may be seen in the most of the developing nations. It also creates many problems in international marketing. (2) Economic Difference: Economic environment of a nation affects international marketing to a large extent which may change country to country. In each nation different economic environment is found in which include the nature and development of the economy, economic resources, size of the economy system and policies, trade restrictions, economic condition, nature and trends in foreign trade. (3) Language Difference: An international marketer often encounter problems arising out of the difference in language. Terpstra says that “language is the initial cultural difference that comes to mind when one think of foreign mar...

CHALLENGES IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING         Many problems and challenges are arise in international marketing in which unfamiliarity with foreign market, law, cultural, diversity, language difference, fashion buying pattern etc. are main. But these problems may also arise in domestic marketing in fact, there is no basic difference between domestic marketing and international marketing because the principle of marketing are universal. Some difference are arise due to special problems or feature of international marketing. Kotler, in this context opines that “most companies would prefer to remain domestic if their domestic markets were large enough. Manager would not need to learn other languages, and laws, deal with volatile currencies, face political and legal uncertainties, on design their product to suit different customer needs and expectations. Business would be safe and easier.” A. C. Neilson a marketing research organisation, has develop...

SCOPE OF INTERNATIONAL MARKET         The essence of international marketing is export marketing. An exporter company can help in international marketing in the following ways: 1. Import Trade: In import trade, goods are imported from various countries by international marketing companies and are sold to his home country. Such activity is done due to non-availability of goods in sufficient quantity or its lower comparative cost. 2. Re-export Trade: In it, raw material or semi-finished goods are imported by marketing company from other countries and are converted it in finished goods. Then such finished goods are export to other countries. 3. Export Trade: In it, domestic marketing companies or firms sell or export their product to other countries. In fact, export marketing holds an important place in international marketing.      

NEED AND IMPORTANCE OF INTERNATIONAL MARKETING        Need and importance of international marketing has been increasing due to liberalization, privatization and globalization. With faster communication, transportation and financial flows the world is rapidly shrinking. Product developed in one country are finding enthusiastic acceptance in others. Lee Adler is the opinion that the following factors have made the opportunities of international marketing more comprehensive or wide: (a) Increase in urbanization. (b) Rapid growth of developing or underdeveloped countries. (c) Increase in standard of living. (d) Increase in consumer’s buying power and knowledge. (e) Continuous increase in customer’s desires.        Kotler opines that many companies may prefer to remain in domestic marketing if their domestic markets are enough large. They do not need to learn other languages and laws, deal with volatile...