Summaries for Chapters 1-5

SUMMARIES FOR CHAPTERS 1-5

Chapter 1 Defining Marketing for the 21st Century

Key Concepts:

1)What Is Marketing

Each student is to select a company of their choosing and prepare a listing of all of the marketing messages the company disseminates through their various communication channels. The student is to examine the company’s public-relations messages, their television advertising, Internet advertising, and printed messages. Students should collect this information and try to discover if there is a commonality of message, preference for one form of communication over another (by frequency), or a series of nonrelated messages.

2)Marketers and Prospects

In small groups (five students suggested as the maximum), have them visit their local coffee shop or Starbucks and compare their visit to the services provided in the opening vignette of the chapter. Does their local Starbucks or coffee shop contain wireless Internet access? What is the climate of the establishment—friendly or hurried? Is marketing prevalent in this establishment? If so, how and to what extent are they exposed to marketing messages? Have the students keep a list of every marketing message they encounter.

3)Marketplaces, Marketspaces, and Metamarkets

In small groups, ask the students to visit an on campus eatery. During this experience, have the students keep a diary of their exposures to marketing messages. How are the messages being communicated—visually through signs and posters, by sound, or via verbal communication? Ask the students to break down these messages into 1-minute segments, and then total the amount of messages for the time spent in the eatery. What conclusions can you draw from the number of messages exposed to in the time period for marketers?

Have the students reflect upon their favorite product and/or service. Then have the students collect marketing examples from each of these companies. This information should be in the form of examples of printed advertising, copies of television commercials, Internet advertising, or radio commercials. During class, have the students share what they have collected with others. Questions to ask during the class discussion should focus on why this particular example of advertising elicits a response from you. What do you like/dislike about this marketing message? Does everyone in the class like/dislike this advertising?

4)Marketing Environment

Have the students visit a retail mall or other type of retail establishment. During their visit, ask the students keep a log of the marketing messages they encounter. Such messages can be in the form of emotional advertising, price-point advertisements, store design and layout, or sensual advertisements such as smell or sound. Ask the students which retail establishment enticed them the most and why? Have the students share these experiences and ask the class if others in the class would be similarly affected (male versus female for example).

5)Shifts in Marketing Management

Have students (in groups or individually) select a local firm in their community, or a local division of a national firm, and ask the executives how their firm has responded or is responding to the 14 major shifts in marketing management today. The students can then present these findings to the class in a group or by individual presentations. This could be a full semester project or limited to a few weeks of the semester.

Consider the broad shifts in marketing. Are there any themes that emerge with these shifts? Can they be related to the major societal forces? Which force contributed to which shift?

Chapter 2 Developing Marketing Strategies and Plans

Key Concepts:

1)Marketing and Customer Value

For the semester long project, with this chapter, we continue the formation of groups; first presentation of “product” to the instructor for approval; review of process; and calendar of “due dates.”

2)Core Competencies

Where possible, have the students visit an H&M as mentioned in the opening vignette of the chapter. While at the store, the students should record their impressions of the store in relation to the company’s stated strategy or business concept: “To give the customer unbeatable value by offering fashion and quality at the best price.” Does the store offer value and quality at the best price? Why did your observations confirm this? Why did your observations not confirm this? The students should be very specific in their answers.

3)A Holistic Marketing Orientation and Customer Value

Assign the three titles found in the box, Marketing Insight, Keys to Long-Term Market Leadership to three groups of students. Have each group read and prepare an oral report of what they learned from reading these books and have them analyze whether the ideas and concepts of these books can be helpful or would be helpful to marketers in today’s environment.

4)Value Creation

Visit the Web site for Netflix ( does this company and its Web site demonstrate the stated three distinctive capabilities of market sensing, customer linking, and channel bonding to you? Why or why not? Be specific in your answers.

5)Defining the Corporate Mission

Students should be encouraged to review selected company’s annual reports to collect from these reports the corporations’ mission statements, strategy statements, and target market definitions. The collected material can be discussed in class comparing the company’s overall business, marketing, and customer strategies.

6)Assessing Growth Opportunities

Have students read Peter Doyle’s Value-Based Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Corporate Growth and Shareholder Value,Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2000 and report on their findings in a written and/or oral presentation.

7)Business Unit Strategic Planning

Select a local firm or have the students select firms in which they are familiar (current employers or past employers for example) and have them answer the questions posed by the Marketing Memo, Marketing Plan Criteria regarding the evaluation of a marketing plan. Make sure the students are specific in their answers.

8)The Business Mission

Marketing Debate: What Good Is a Mission Statement?

Virtually all firms have mission statements to help guide and inspire employees as well as signal what is important to the firm to those outside the firm. Mission statements are often the product of much deliberation and discussion. At the same time, some critics claim that mission statements sometimes lack “teeth” and specificity. Moreover, critics also maintain that in many cases, mission statements do not vary much from firm to firm and make the same empty promises.

Take a position: Mission statements are critical to a successful marketing organization versus mission statements rarely provide useful marketing value.

Chapter 3

Gathering Information and Scanning the Environment

Key Concepts:

1)Internal Records and Marketing Intelligence

Commission a marketing research study on topic(s) of interest to the students at your institution. During the course of the semester (15–16 week), have the students develop the questionnaire, collection method, conduct the survey, and tabulate the results. The students can be divided into groups for this project. Suggested topics might include the school or university students’ opinions on campus issues such as the athletic program, sale of alcohol, use of and availability of technology, or students’ perceptions of their current education experiences.

2)The Marketing Intelligence System

To illustrate the concept of marketing intelligence, select a different group of students to conduct similar research to Key Concept 1 above using other universities and colleges of similar size. These findings should then be presented to class as a comparison to the findings prepared from the group(s) researching your own university or college. Challenge the students to suggest the factors that differentiate the two studies and ways to reverse or to continue the trend.

3)Population Age Mix

Obesity has been officially called an epidemic as cited in the opening vignette of the chapter. In small groups, have the student’s collect from the university or college administrators, information about the students eating habits (on-campus students would be one group; commuting students another group), exercise, and lifestyle. For example, how many students (as a percentage of the total student population) regularly take advantage of the available exercise facilities? How many students presently on campus are clinically obese? This is a very good project to demonstrate the skill of data mining and the use of secondary data.

4)Ethnic and Other Markets

Each student is a member of an identifiable ethic and demographic segment of society. As an individual assignment, ask each student to describe their sub-segment in terms of population, age distribution, growth potential, income, education level, and other demographic characteristics. The conclusion of their report should explain the marketing implications of their findings in terms of potential market, over-saturated market, declining market, or hidden or ignored market with potential.

5)Geographical Shifts in Population

Marketing Debate—Is consumer behavior more of a function of a person’s age or generation?

One of the widely debated issues in developing marketing programs that target certain age groups is how much consumers change over time. Some marketers maintain that age differences are critical and that the needs and wants of a 25-year-old in 2002 are not that different from those of a 25-year-old in 1972. Others dispute that contention and argue that cohort and generational effects are critical and that marketing programs must therefore suit the times.

Take a position: Age differences are fundamentally more important than cohort effects versus cohort effects can dominate age differences.

6)Social-Cultural Environment

Select or suggest a current “fad” or “trend” exhibited by students on campus. Each student is to select either a fad or trend and then research this it in light of the marketing opportunities present. Would a firm be successful in capitalizing on this “fad”? If so, why? Should companies capitalize on this “trend”? What are the “upsides” for producing products that are currently “trendy”? What are the “downsides”? What generation do these fads and trends appeal to? How large is the potential market for the fad and/or trend? Students should prepare a report with as much detail into the specific characteristics of these markets as is available. This is a good secondary data and data mining assignment.

7)Natural Environment

“Green Marketing” has been a challenge to firms producing environmentally friendly products. The obstacles stated range from overexposure and lack of credibility, to the consumer not willing to pay a premium prices for “green” products, to poor implementation on the part of companies engaged in the practice.

Question: When faced with a decision to market its products as “environmentally safe” or to market its products along conventional lines (matching competitive positioning) does the company have a responsibility to choose the more socially responsible manner or should the dictates of the marketplace (i.e. consumer) decide its marketing strategy?

8)Growth of Special-Interest Groups

The Marketing Insight, Ten Megatrends Shaping the Consumer Landscape illustrates those megatrends predicted to affect the consumer in the coming years. Select a particular product or service (medical devices for example as a product; insurance sales as a service) split the class into ten equal sections and ask each section to comment on how their particular megatrend will affect the product and/or service.

Chapter 4

Conducting Marketing Research and Forecasting Demand

Key Concepts

1)The Marketing Research Process

2)Data Sources

During the course of the semester, ask students to retain all customer surveys, satisfaction surveys, or other types of research material sent to them, their parents, or others. Each survey should be critiqued by the student for appropriateness, completion, bias, etc. per the tenants outlined in this chapter. Why do these surveys contain errors?

3)Survey Research

In small groups, conduct a series of personal interviews with faculty members of your college or university. The research should involve a specific topic (of the students choose). The students must gain approval from the instructor, via written presentation, their types of questions, sample size, and sampling procedure prior to implementing their interviews.

A second group of students can conduct the same research but must use either a mail questionnaire, online or telephone interview techniques. In a class presentation setting, students should compare and contrast their findings based upon these two different methodologies. Students should be prepared to answer some of these questions: Why is the data different? Where is the data forming the same or similar conclusions? What were the challenges to using each of these methods? What can be done in the future to minimize these challenges?

4)Experimental Research

In the Marketing Memo, Pros and Cons of Online Research, the author describes four advantages and two disadvantages for conducting online research. Selecting an online research site from the Web, each student is to comment on the “value” of this type of research vis-à-vis the advantages and disadvantages of the marketing memo. Specifically, do the negatives of online research, in their example, outweigh the positives? Can, and more importantly, should marketers develop marketing strategies from just the findings of online research? On the other hand, is more qualitative or quantitative research needed before strategy is defined?

5)Research Instruments

Research conducted by PurdueUniversity shows that up to 75 percent of consumers fail to complete their online purchases, primarily because of sluggish Web sites, poor site design, and related factors. Seeking to learn what online visitors do and do not do at its Web site, Northwest Airlines has added a new software tool to its online operations. “The success of our online business comes down to our customers and how satisfied they are with our products and services,” says Northwest’s manager of e-commerce. “This new tool,” he says, “makes it very easy to determine where we should focus our efforts,” by analyzing the online behavior of visitors, finding out which affiliates send the most visitors to the site, and tracking response to online promotions. With this information, the airline will be able to make the site function more efficiently and more effectively to increase sales and customer satisfaction.

Browse Northwest’s home page ( and then follow the link to the “Talk to Us” page. Sample several of the links on this page to see how customers can submit questions and feedback. Would such data be included as part of Northwest’s marketing information system, marketing intelligence system, or marketing research system? Where would the airline store the primary data about online visitor behavior that its new software tool is collecting? What kind of research approach does this primary data represent? How else might Northwest use its Web site to gather primary data?

6)Questionnaires

Query your college or university regarding what kind of research they conduct regarding their student population and their competitive positioning versus other similar colleges and universities. After collecting this data, analyze it according to the following criteria: Is it current, accurate, specific, and/or applicable? Is this research composed of primary data, secondary data, or a combination of both? What research companies does the college or university contract with for their research? Is the research based upon more quantitative or qualitative research? Present these findings to the class in oral and written formats.

In the Marketing Memo, Questionnaire Dos and Don’ts, the author lists 12 ways to phrase questions that will maximize unbiased responses. Prepare a set of questions (10–12 questions) for a hypothetical consumer products company trying to break into the toy business. Make sure that your questions meet each one of the 12 criteria. Comment on how easy or hard such question formatting is.

Chapter 5

Creating Customer Value, Satisfaction, and Loyalty

Key Concepts:

1)Customer Perceived Value

Have students (in groups or individually) select a local firm in their community, or a local division of a national firm. Then, request permission to interview their corporate executives on their corporation’s definition of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and what their particular firm does to foster such customer relations. This project can be combined with the project on marketing research and as such, students can create questionnaires suitable for mailing to these executives. The students can then present these findings to the class in a group or by individual presentations. This could be a full semester project or limited to a few weeks of the semester.