Contemporary Marketing Strategy

This chapter discusses the internal factors affecting consumer behavior, explains consumer ecosystem and behavior process converging consumer perceptions and attitudes. The factors associated with the consumer motivation, learning, and knowledge transfer have also been deliberated in this chapter. The chapter also explores key variables that drive cognitive thinking process of consumers in the context of beliefs and social influences toward decision-making and setting preferences. In addition, discussion on the process of consumer stimulus and response mapping for marketing organizations to understand the cognitive dynamics among consumers for developing competitive marketing strategies constitutes one of the interesting points of learning.

Discussions explore the external factors affecting the consumer behavior in this chapter, and guide managers to learn the causes and effects of extrinsic variables to develop right marketing strategies. The external factors affecting consumer behavior have been discussed categorically in this chapter, spread across the sections on business environment, geo-demographic factors, consumer culture, seasonality, and induced consumer perception. This chapter also discusses the concerns emerging among the multinational companies, related to developing competitive marketing strategies by learning comprehensively about co-creation and creating consumer value that affect the behavior dimensions of the consumers. In general, this chapter focusses on learning about the influence of external factors by discussing how situational factors at the time and place of purchase may influence consumer behavior. The discussions also guide managers about how consumers’ relationships with the marketing organization influence the decision-making process of the company.

Discussions in this chapter focus on the market ecosystem for companies for developing appropriate marketing strategies that seem fit in the competitive marketplace. The market ecosystem is explained in the chapter in the context of industry attractiveness, consumer behavior, market competition, and innovation and business growth. In addition, the discussion on market segmentation, targeting, and positioning of products and services in the competitive marketplace enriches learning on market environment in this chapter. Discussions in this chapter get into the core of marketing strategy formulation through exploring the external fit of the firm.

This chapter deliberates strategic capabilities and direction toward developing long-term marketing strategies by strengthening the organizational capabilities and competencies. Discussions in this chapter contribute new perspectives on improving the capabilities and competencies in an organization by engaging employees and stakeholders across the human resources ecosystem. Discussions also portray the attributes of team culture in business organizations for sustainable development. Developing organizational vision and mission with employee engagement and deriving sustainable advantages of continuous improvement efforts involving employees form the core of discussions in this chapter.

This chapter discusses advanced marketing-mix, which consists of basic, extended functional, and design elements besides various peripheral elements supporting the marketing-mix for developing appropriate marketing strategies. Advanced marketing-mix comprising various nonconventional elements that are groundbreaking for the marketing organizations in making the right marketing decision across geo-demographic consumer segments. The discussions in this chapter deliver core knowledge and skills for understanding decision metrics, and developing suitable marketing strategies to gain competitive leverage. This chapter also discusses entry strategies for the companies, which are exploring new markets for driving business growth.

Concepts and arguments are woven around discussion on the product and brand strategies in this chapter. The product strategies haves been addressed in this chapter deliberating on product-mix, product lifecycle, and product planning and consumer relations. The discussion on product-mix include extended product strategies, product overlap strategies, product scope strategies, product design strategy, and product diversification strategies. The second part of the chapter discusses the brand management concepts concerning brand building, brand launching, brand governance, and brand communication. The section on brand governance deliberates on brand-consumer segment, co-creation of brands, and breakthrough brands in this chapter. The leaning objective in this chapter is to gain knowledge on developing a right product strategy for a right market, and avoid the situation of product failure. This chapter aims at delivering knowledge and skills on new product management in the competitive marketplace.

This chapter examines contemporary trends in development and implementation of the pricing strategies. Pricing structure, pricing taxonomy, product lifecycle based pricing strategies, and pricing and profitability are the core topics addressed in this chapter. The discussions on the pricing taxonomy include value and skimming strategy, paywall pricing strategy, and dual standards in pricing. The section on pricing and profitability discusses developing pricing strategies in the context of standard and incremental mark-ups using the price waterfall model. This chapter aims at developing knowledge and skills on various pricing strategies with regards to sustain the market competition, enhance market share, and profitability of the company.

The distribution and promotions strategies discussed in this chapter, share contemporary knowledge on channel management strategy, contemporary distribution strategies, managing channel conflicts, and recent trends in distribution technology. The discussion on the distribution strategies includes distribution scope strategy, multi-channel strategy, channel modification strategy, and mid- and broad-market mapping distribution strategies. The application of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is addressed in this chapter in the section on distribution technology. The second part of this chapter explains modern strategies on promotions of products and services through the discussion on promotions-mix. The objectives of this chapter are to impart knowledge and skills on contemporary good office practices of global companies on distribution management, and compare their advantages against the conventional distribution and logistics modelling. On the aspects of promotions management, this chapter addresses the new managerial ways to develop economic promotion strategies combining the sales performance and right marketing strategies.

This chapter raises several applied perspectives on marketing research methods that need to be used in marketing research to support development of competitive strategies. The scope of marketing research, process of conducting marketing research, methodologies and research models, diverse research areas, and technology and market drivers for exploring future research have been addressed in this chapter. The principal objective of the chapter is to impart knowledge on skills on marketing research for managers to use it as a tool to support development of marketing strategies.