Билет №13

1. Describe the essence and strategies of TQM.

2. Explain the Growth Matrix Structure visually.

B.C.G. analysis or Growth Matrix Structure is a technique used in brand marketing, product management, and strategic management to help a company decide what products to add to its product portfolio. It involves rating products according to their market share and market growth rate. The products are then plotted on a two dimensional map. Products with high market share but low growth are referred to as ‘cash cows’. Products with high market share and high growth are referred to as ‘stars’. Products with low market share and low growth are referred to as ‘dogs’ and should usually be discontinued. Products with low market share but high growth are referred to as ‘question marks’ or ‘problem children’ or ‘wild cats’. The technique can also help companies think about the priority and resources that they should give to the different businesses in their portfolio. A ‘question mark’ has the potential to become a ‘star’ in the future if it is developed. A company should have a balanced portfolio. This implies having at least one ‘cash cow’ which can generate revenue that can be used to develop one or more ‘question marks’. This process is referred to as ‘milking your cash cow’.

Билет №14

1. Describe the essence of MBWA, its principles and objectives.

2. Do you think that the product life cycle concept is a useful marketing-planning tool? Why or why not?

This is the idea that all products have a birth, a life and a death, and that they should be financed and marketed with this in mind. Even as a new product is being launched, its manufacturer should be preparing for the day when it has to be killed off. Its sales and profits start at a low level, grow (it is hoped) to a high level and then decline again to a low level. Sometimes this cycle is simply referred to in marketing circles as PLC.

Philip Kotler, one of the world’s leading authorities on marketing, breaks the product life cycle into five distinct phases: Product development. Introduction.Growth.Maturity.Decline.

Although managers know that a new product will follow this cycle, they are not sure when each phase will start and for how long each one will last. Although some products appear to have been around for ever (Kellogg's corn flakes, for example, or Kodak cameras) the products that bear these names today are entirely different from the ones that carried the same brand 50 years ago. The continuity of the brand name helps to disguise the fact that the product itself has been through several life cycles.

Products of fashion, by definition, have a shorter life cycle, and they thus have a much shorter time in which to reap their reward. A distinc­tion is sometimes made between fashion items, such as clothing, and pure fads. It is not always immediately obvious into which of these two categories a product falls. When they were first introduced in the early 1980s, in-line skates seemed as if they might be a brief fad. But 20 years later they were still selling strongly, firmly set in the mature stage of their life cycle. They may not be destined for the life cycle of the corn flake, but they have already outlived many seemingly more permanent fashions.