KnowThis Blog Postings

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Published on October 08, 2012

Posted by Paul Christ

SERVILE BRANDS (Trendwatching)

In our What is Marketing? tutorial we observe how critical it is for marketers to build satisfying relationships with customers. In particular, we state: “A key objective of marketing is to provide products and services that customers really want AND to make customers feel their contact with the marketer is helping build a good relationship between the two.”

While, most leading companies have generally embraced this concept, they are now finding their customers are stretching their needs and expectations to levels that are making satisfaction much more challenging. In large part, significant technological innovations are leading customers to expect brands to provide much more. In most cases, what they are expecting goes beyond the composition of the Actual product.

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Published on September 26, 2012

Posted by Paul Christ

Craig Marks: I Want My MTV ( Studio 360 – NPR)

As we discuss in our How to Write a Marketing Plan tutorial, marketing success often is measured by whether the results lead to the achievement of specific objectives (i.e, goals). As we note, these objectives include two main types: 1) financial measures, such a revenue and profit; and 2) specific marketing areas objectives, such as gaining a certain percentage of market share or achieving a certain level of product awareness through promotion. Yet, marketers often discover that achieving these objectives can be heavily affected by factors that they do not control.

For instance, consider a company that is attempting to obtain distribution for a new consumer product. Marketers, who have enthusiastically worked hard to prepare the product for the market, often hit a roadblock because they cannot convince enough resellers to distribute their product. For these marketers, who have been generally free to design the product, set the price and create the promotions, they find the distribution component of the Marketing Mix to be frustrating as they cannot get their product distributed in desired outlets.

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Published on September 12, 2012

Posted by Paul Christ

Government's E-Book Case Helps Amazon Build Toward a Monopoly (Los Angeles Times)

E-Book Settlement Has Publishing World in Turmoil (Los Angeles Times)

In our past postings on the topic of price, we have often discussed how price is one of the toughest, yet often least understood marketing decisions. Consequently, many marketers often direct limited resources to issues related to this part of the marketing mix. The reasons for relegating price to the lower end of the marketing-decision checklist are numerous. For instance, to some marketers the pricing decision lacks real importance because they think their customers should not be thinking price first; rather they should be sold on product features and the benefits these provide. Others see price as an almost automated process where they just plug in a number to a standard markup equation (e.g., price is always 25% above cost) and whatever number comes out is what they charge.