Text 21 marketing strategy and planning

Market segmentation recognizes that not everyone needs a certain product, and that a product cannot be expected to interest everyone. The marketing strategy is more efficient (of time and money) if it is aimed at those people the company can reasonably expect to serve. Planning a segmentation strategy involves four steps.

The first is to determine the market segments. Second is to select the appropriate segment as a target market for the product. Third is to develop procedures to serve the selected segment. Fourth, the program is carried out consistently evaluated and revised if necessary.

From studying demographic data, the manager might decide to aim his strategy towards a very specific target or segment of the population, as an example. An automobile company provides a common example of this strategy, with a wide variety of style, purpose and cost of its cars. The marketing programs of one Car Company might vary as widely as its products.

In planning the strategy for marketing his product, a marketer will want to know all he can about consumer's needs and wants for it, their motives for buying (how it looks, feels) and their attitude toward it and the company. A person's behaviour as a consumer is partly the result of these internal determinants. It is partly the result of the image he wants to present: how he wants to be seen by others. And it is partly the result of external determinants, which are social and cultural. The human need to be accepted as a member of group is very strong, although it is often unconscious.

Whether the potential market is domestic or foreign, it is necessary for the marketing manager to understand the internal and external determinants of consumer's behaviour. All people have needs, motives, and perceptions. All are members of groups, societies and cultures. Despite all human variety there are patterns of behaviour. One of the marketer's tasks is to know the buying pat­terns of specific groups of consumers and to match his products to their needs.

Text 22 the american economic system

In the USA the economic system is called capitalism or free enterprise. The free enterprise system rests on certain traditions, beliefs and practices that set it apart from other economic systems. These "pillars" of the economic system are private property, the price system and competition.

Private property. Unlike people in many other parts of the world, Americans are able to own property for business purposes and use it to produce income. Nearly 90 percent of goods and services produced in this country each year come from privately owned firms. Property owners know they will make a profit if they can produce goods and services that buyers want, at a price they are willing to pay.

The price system. One of the remarkable things about the American economic system is that it seems to run by itself. Prices determine what we are willing and able to buy. They influence us to continue the school or to accept a job. Prices help to determine when and where factories will be built, which businesses will succeed, which will fail, and even the colour and style of the clothing that will be manufactured. Prices, the money value of goods and services, carry so much information and so affect the behavior of buyers and sellers that economists often describe American economy as a price-directed system.

Competition refers to the rivalry among buyers and among sellers. Sellers compete by trying to produce the goods and services buyers want at the lowest possible price. Buyers compete with one another because there is never enough of everything to go around. Those willing to pay the price can buy steak. Those unwilling or unable to pay will substitute a less costly product like chopped meat, chicken or hot dog. In other words, in the rivalry among buyers of steak, those unable to pay the price will lose to those who are able to pay.