V. Answer the questions:

1. What does the marketing mix consist of?

2. Can such organizational recourses as finances and information be used to accomplish marketing goals?

3. Are the firm's marketing activities also affected by external and generally uncontrollable forces?

4. What do these forces make up?

5. What forces does the external marketing environment consist of?

6. Do these forces influence decisions about marketing-mix ingredients?

7. Can the changes in the marketing environment have a major impact on existing marketing strategies?

8. What can be the result of changes in environmental forces?

9. What does the development of a marketing strategy begin with?

10. Do marketing research and marketing information play an important role in the first stage of the planning process?

VI. Speak on the following:

1. The Marketing environment.

2. Strategic market planning.

Unit 4 a product in marketing generalities

The basic product may be a manufactured item, a service, an idea, or some combination of these.

1. Products are classified according to their ultimate use. Classification affects a product's distribution, promotion, and pricing. Consumer products, which include convenience and specialty products, are purchased to satisfy personal and family needs. Industrial products are purchased for use in a firm's operations or to make other products.

2. Every product moves through four stages — introduction, growth, maturity, and decline — which together form the product life cycle. As the product progresses through these stages, its sales and profitability increase, peak, and then decline. A firm that does not introduce new products to replace declining products will eventually fail.

3. A product line is a group of similar products marketed by a firm. The firm's product mix includes all the products it offers for sale. Customers require marketers to maintain an effective product mix. Marketers may improve a product mix by changing existing products and developing new products.

4. New products should by developed by seven steps (phases). The first two steps are idea generation and screening. Concept testing, the third step, is a phase in which a small group of potential buyers is given-a written or oral description in order to determine their initial feelings associated with the product. The fourth step, business analysis, generates information on the marketability and profitability of the proposed product. The last three steps — product development, test marketing, and commercialization — provide an actual product and launch it into the marketplace.

5. Branding strategies are used to associate (or not associate) particular products with existing products, producers, or intermediaries.

6. Under the ideal conditions of pure competition an individual seller has no control over the price of its products. Prices are determined by supply and demand.

Before the price of a product can be set, a firm must decide whether its basis for competition will be its low price or some other consideration. Prices may be established based on costs, demands, the competitors' prices or some combination of these factors. Once basic prices are set, the seller may apply various pricing strategies to reach his target more effectively.