Professor Kotler's book, Marketing Management, is the world's most widely used graduate level textbook in marketing. His other textbooks include Principles of Marketing and management: An Introduction and they are also widely used around the world. Kotler developed new concepts in marketing including atmospherics, demarketing, megamarketing, turbomarketing and synchromarketing. He believes that marketing theory needs to go beyond price theory and incorporate the dynamics of innovation, distribution and promotion systems into analyzing, explaining and predicting economic outcomes. Kotler has worked for many large companies in the areas of marketing strategy, planning and organization, and international marketing. He presents seminars in major international cities and countries around the world on the latest marketing developments to companies and other organizations. "He is the father of Marketing Management". (Wikipedia)
This book was needed for my studies. It鈥檚 a heavy read, but obviously an important one. Still, it was not easy to find the information that was relevant to me.
I recommend to read this book after the fundamental books for the author. the authoer is going a little bit of practical marketing. 丕賳氐丨 亘賯乇丕亍丞 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 亘毓丿 賯乇丕亍丞 賰鬲亘 丕賱噩丕賲毓賴 丕賱丕爻丕爻賷賴 賷賲賷賱 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 亘毓囟 丕賱卮賷 丕賱賶 丕賱丨丕賱賱丕鬲 丕賱鬲胤亘賷賯賷賴 丕賱毓賲賱賷賴
If you are truly interested in understanding all the basic knowledge needed to become an impactful strategic marketing then this is a great and easy to understand book. Clear, well structured and only the essentials without any fluff. You can always read an infinite number of books of today's shiny object of marketing but you won't find many books who will stand the test of time as well as this book, despite the fact that some of the examples are outdated.
For those marketers who want to go beyond the buzz word of the day and are looking to make a true impact on the business that they are in.
Kotler has review the basic concepts and principles of marketing, which includes marketing strategy, marketing tactics and marketing management. Although the knowledge is comprehensive, I found it not really interesting and smoothly to read. When I read this book, I felt like reading an extended version of Principles of Marketing (a text book written by Kotler). In conclusion, this is still a must-read book, but I suggest that you should read it with high concentration to follow the flow of the books.
One of the few remaining books by Kotler that I have not read in Russian. In principle, if you have read Kotler's basic books, i.e., "Marketing Management" and/or "Principles of Marketing," then this book may not be read.
First of all, this book is not so relevant anymore because it was published back in the twentieth century. Although I often read business books that were published in the twentieth century and rate them very highly However, in this case, it is much better to read the latest edition of the aforementioned books. As for this book, the author writes almost nothing about the Internet, social media, etc. Yes, for a basic understanding of marketing, it's not that important. And here, we can move on to what this book is.
The main value of the book is that it describes all the basic marketing concepts in a more abbreviated version than has been done in Marketing Management and Principles of Marketing or any other university marketing textbook. Therefore, this book may come in handy for those readers who want to understand the basics of marketing but who do not want to read thick university textbooks. This book describes all the basic concepts extremely accurately, clearly and will be understandable to any non-professional. You could even say that this book, when it was first published, was the best example of marketing literature for the first introduction to marketing. However, now, in the year 2021, this book is very much outdated in terms of details.
Second, as you can understand from the above, the book is relevant only to beginners and, therefore, does not bring any valuable information to people who have either already read some university textbook on marketing or are professionals in marketing. Plus, the release date of this book completely negates any value of the book to those people.
Third, I liked the way this shortened book covered basic marketing topics. Even though everything the author writes about in this book I have known for a long time, it is nevertheless a pleasure to read the explanations of basic marketing topics. In fact, it is rare to find a book where such topics are described in vivid and clear language. Compared to Jean-Jacques Lambin's marketing textbook, Market-Driven Management: Strategic and Operational Marketing, which I read almost simultaneously with this book, Kotler's text is more interesting and less boring. Although Lambin's book offers the most extended overview of overall marketing, his text is so boring and complicated that I constantly had to fight against sleep. In Kotler's book, there was never any such thing. Yes, these books cannot be compared. But you can compare the explanations of the basic concepts separately, i.e., those points where the authors overlap.
Fourth, what about those who want to understand the basics of marketing but do not want to read the above-mentioned university textbooks? A good question to which I have no answer because I cannot think of any modern books that explain the basics of marketing as well and concisely. To read the aforementioned textbooks? I don't know. Probably, yes. One could try to borrow Principles of Marketing from the library. Otherwise, even in spite of the fact that this book was published in 1999, it is still partly relevant today because I cannot think of any other literature alternative to this book that contains the same topics. Such is the paradox.
Marketing is the art of identifying and fulfilling consumer needs 鈥� whether it鈥檚 a corporation trying to increase its revenue, a cultural institution trying to attract more visitors, or a politician trying to cultivate her public image. There are five steps to any successful marketing campaign: research market opportunities, choose your target market carefully, decide on a unique positioning, implement marketing tactics, and audit the results. This method forms a circular process, which you can continually put into action to adapt your marketing strategy to the ever-changing market.
Actionable Advice:
Create a marketing plan.
Planning might not be the most exciting activity on the agenda, but it gives managers an opportunity to brainstorm new ideas and communicate shared visions and goals with one another. Your marketing plan should be short and sweet 鈥� ideally no longer than a single page 鈥� so anyone in the company can learn the strategy at a glance. It should contain a summary of the current situation of the company and the market, the marketing department鈥檚 main objectives for the year, the chosen strategy, an action plan, and the methods for evaluation. As the saying goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail!
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The five steps in any successful marketing campaign are: research, target, position, implement, and evaluate.
Open a few books on marketing, and you鈥檒l notice a trend: most focus on for-profit marketing. While these follow this tradition as well, marketing needs extend far beyond commercial enterprises. All kinds of organizations face marketing problems 鈥� universities compete for students, political parties vie for votes, and churches try to attract parishioners.
What鈥檚 common to all of these organizations is the desire to attract resources from the public. These resources include money, sure 鈥� but also engagement, interest, votes, reviews, or good word-of-mouth. The challenge for any marketer is figuring out how to persuade people to hand them over.
We鈥檒l lay out a five-stage marketing method for doing just that. The strategy guiding this method is to offer people some perceived value in return for their resources.
The first stage, then, is research. Without research, a company enters the market blind. A newly launched product isn鈥檛 likely to meet with success if there isn鈥檛 a desire for it. That means that, prior to anything else, it鈥檚 essential to learn about consumers鈥� needs, tastes, and income levels 鈥� as well as about any likely competitors.
The next stage is to choose your target market. Consumers aren鈥檛 all the same, and not every consumer will be a profitable prospect. So, it pays to streamline your marketing efforts by targeting only those consumers that have the means, and the desire, to buy your product.
The third stage is to position your product to appeal to this market. Product positioning refers to how you plan on communicating the value of your offering to consumers. For example, the car manufacturer Volvo actively targets safety-conscious consumers by positioning their cars as the safest on the market.
At this point, it鈥檚 time to execute your vision by implementing marketing tactics. As we鈥檒l see later, firms can adapt the so-called Four P鈥檚 framework 鈥� that is, product, price, place, and promotion 鈥� to help choose effective marketing tactics.
Once you鈥檝e implemented your tactics, it鈥檚 time for the final stage: evaluation. You can鈥檛 rely on the same marketing strategy forever 鈥� it鈥檚 imperative to continuously test your marketing efforts to ensure they鈥檙e still effective. Successful companies are those that show a willingness to listen to customer feedback, undertake regular auditing, and adapt to good ideas wherever 鈥� and whenever 鈥� they emerge.
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Develop a more focused marketing campaign by selecting a target market.
Once you鈥檝e decided on a product to bring to market, the next step is to choose your target market.
Now, some products have a broad appeal 鈥� so old-school, mass-marketing methods like TV advertising could be an effective strategy. This pretty much describes Coca-Cola, which says its aim is to put a coke within an arm's reach of everybody.
But most products don鈥檛 have such a general appeal. And given the high cost of mass-marketing campaigns, it鈥檚 usually more efficient to practice target marketing 鈥� in other words, directing your product and promotional efforts at a specific segment of the market. For example, if you supply menstrual products, then your marketing is obviously only going to be effective on part of the population; it鈥檚 this group that you want to target.
One of the benefits of targeting is that it allows you to cater a more specific offering to your chosen market. This means you鈥檙e likely to have fewer direct competitors 鈥� and a greater chance of becoming the supplier of choice for this market.
On the other hand, if the target market you choose is too narrow, you risk not having enough customers to be able to service the market profitably. It鈥檚 the marketer鈥檚 responsibility to consider target markets carefully and select only those that are likely to be profitable.
The profitability of a target market depends on a number of factors 鈥� like how many people belong to that market, what their average income is, and how well their needs are currently being met.
With that in mind, the first step toward selecting your target market is to create a customer spreadsheet in which you divide all your potential customers into a myriad of smaller categories. There are countless possibilities for divvying up consumers, but popular choices include segmentation by demographic background, needs and desires, occupation, and income.
Once you鈥檝e created your customer spreadsheet, all that鈥檚 left for you to do is select the market segments that are likely to be the most profitable. When making your selection, there are really only two considerations you need to make. First, ask yourself whether a group is able and willing to buy your product. And, second, do you believe your product can serve this group in a superior way?
When you鈥檙e able to answer 鈥測es鈥� to these two questions, you have your target market.
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Use the Four C鈥檚 framework to help you choose effective marketing tactics.
In the past, marketers believed their most important function was to find new customers. But that meant firms often treated new customers better than their current ones 鈥� and many dissatisfied customers went elsewhere.
These days, the consensus among marketers is the complete opposite: maintaining and growing current customers is now the primary objective. This makes sense because, as we now know, customer retention is far cheaper and far more profitable in the long run than attracting new customers.
But, given this change in outlook, the old Four P鈥檚 model of focusing on product, price, place, and promotion needs to be updated, too. In today's economy, where customer is king, we should really be talking about the Four C鈥檚: customer value, cost, convenience, and communication. Let鈥檚 take a closer look.
The first P 鈥� product 鈥� now translates into customer value. This means you should recast your company, from an organization that produces goods to one that produces customer relationships. Products come and go, but loyal customers stick around. That鈥檚 how companies like Apple can have people queuing outside for products that haven鈥檛 released yet. Customers are loyal to Apple because the company offers tremendous customer value in the form of proven quality, great service, and a range of other perks.
The second P 鈥� price 鈥� is now cost. Why? Because from the point of view of the customer, price is not the only cost. There鈥檚 also the cost of effort and time that鈥檚 involved in acquiring, setting up, using, storing, and disposing of a product. It鈥檚 possible for a higher-priced product to remain competitive if you can find other ways to reduce customer cost by, say, providing free installation, training, or disposal.
Next, we have the third P 鈥� place 鈥� which should now be thought of as convenience. When you鈥檙e deciding on distribution methods, you should aim at making your product as easy as possible for the customer to purchase and acquire.
The final P 鈥� promotion 鈥� has become communication, which is about ensuring that the relevant information reaches the right consumers. On one hand, this means selecting channels of communication that are populated by your target market. On the other hand, it means the content of your promotional efforts should focus on how your product will fulfill your customers鈥� needs.
The benefit of the Four C鈥檚 marketing framework is that it helps you choose marketing tactics by thinking about them from the customer鈥檚 point of view.
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A marketing audit is an effective way to evaluate and improve your long-term marketing strategy.
Needless to say, marketing campaigns aren鈥檛 always as successful as we would like them to be. And the fault could lie at any stage of the process. Maybe the target market wasn鈥檛 researched well enough, and there鈥檚 less desire for your product than expected. Maybe the various marketing channels weren鈥檛 coordinated effectively, and consumers received a mixed message.
Or maybe you did everything right, but a mistake was made at some other point in the supply chain. It doesn鈥檛 matter how good your marketing campaign is if retailers still end up stocking your product on a hidden bottom shelf where it just gathers dust.
Whatever the cause of a disappointing campaign, it鈥檚 essential to figure out what went wrong in order to make corrections in the future. The most rigorous and effective way to do this is to perform a marketing audit.
To begin a marketing audit, start by making a list of all the marketing activities your firm engages in. For example, you could write 鈥渢argeting,鈥� 鈥減ricing,鈥� 鈥減roduct management,鈥� and so on. Some larger firms include as many as 21 categories in their marketing audits, but for most companies, it should be sufficient to choose about 6鈥�8 of the most important ones.
Now your aim is to rank each activity on a scale of 0鈥�100. Ideally, you鈥檒l make this determination by looking at hard data in the form of management plans, research results, and customer feedback. For instance, if you鈥檙e trying to evaluate how well your company understands customer needs and all you can procure is a customer survey from five years ago, then clearly the category of 鈥渦nderstanding customer needs鈥� will receive a low score.
Once you鈥檝e scored each marketing activity, the next step is to rank the importance of each activity as either low, medium, or high.
With this done, it should become instantly visible which marketing activities are strong 鈥� and which need immediate attention. For example, if 鈥渘ew product development鈥� is deemed to be an activity of high importance but received a low score, then you鈥檒l know you need to prioritize research and development in the next quarter.
A marketing audit is a reliable way to keep long-term marketing efforts improving.