Buying behavior

A marketing firm must ascertain the nature of customers' buying behavior if it is to market its product properly. In order to entice and persuade a consumer to buy a product, marketers try to determine the behavioral process of how a given product is purchased. Buyer behavior in the digital age is assessed through analytics and predictive modeling. The analysis of buyer behavior through online platforms includes Google Analytics and vendor side software such as Experian. The psychology of marketing is determined through the analysis of customer perception pertaining to brands. Marketing theory holds that brand attributes is primarily a matter of customer perception rather than product or service features.

Buying behavior is usually split into two prime strands, whether selling to the consumer, known as business-to-consumer (B2C), or to another business, known as business-to-business (B2B).

B2C buying behavior

This mode of behavior concerns consumers and their purchase of a given product. For example, if one imagines a pair of sneakers, the desire for a pair of sneakers would be followed by an information search on available types/brands. This may include perusing media outlets, but most commonly consists of information gathered from family and friends. If the information search is insufficient, the consumer may search for alternative means to satisfy the need/want. In this case, this may mean buying leather shoes, sandals, etc. The purchase decision is then made, in which the consumer actually buys the product. Following this stage, a post-purchase evaluation is often conducted, comprising an appraisal of the value/utility brought by the purchase of the sneakers. If the value/utility is high, then a repeat purchase may be made.

B2B buying behavior

This mode of behavior involves one business marketing a product or service to another business. An example would be a business buying either wholesale from other businesses or directly from the manufacturer in contracts or agreements.  B2B marketing doesn't always involve wholesale products. For example, it could be a business selling business services such as a website or digital marketing. B2C and B2B behavior are not mutually exclusive terms, as similarities and differences exist, with some key differences listed below:

In a straight re-buy, the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages are omitted. In a modified re-buy scenario, the fifth and sixth stages are precluded. In a new buy, all stages are conducted.

Market segmentation

Market segmentation pertains to the division of a market of consumers into persons with similar needs and wants. For instance, Kellogg's cereals, are marketed to children. Crunchy Nut Cornflakes are marketed to adults. Both goods denote two products which are marketed to two distinct groups of persons, both with similar needs, traits, and wants. In another example, Sun Microsystems can use market segmentation to classify its clients according to their promptness to adopt new products.

Market segmentation allows for a better allocation of a firm's finite resources. A firm only possesses a certain amount of resources. Accordingly, it must make choices (and incur the related costs) in servicing specific groups of consumers. In this way, the diversified tastes of contemporary Western consumers can be served better. With growing diversity in the tastes of modern consumers, firms are taking note of the benefit of servicing a multiplicity of new markets.

Market segmentation can be viewed as a key dynamic in interpreting and executing a logical perspective of Strategic Marketing Planning. The manifestation of this process is considered by many traditional thinkers to include the following; Segmenting, Targeting, and Positioning.

Marketing environment

Staying ahead of the consumer is an important part of a marketer's job. It is important to understand the "marketing environment" in order to comprehend the consumers concerns, motivations and to adjust the product according to the consumers needs. Marketers use the process of marketing environmental scans, which continually acquires information on events occurring outside the organization to identify trends, opportunities and threats to a business. The six key elements of a marketing scan are the demographic forces, socio-cultural forces, economic forces, regulatory forces, competitive forces, and technological forces. Marketers must look at where the threats and opportunities stem from in the world around the consumer to maintain a productive and profitable business.

 The market environment is a marketing term and refers to factors and forces that affect a firm's ability to build and maintain successful relationships with customers. Three levels of the environment are: Micro (internal) environment - forces within the company that affect its ability to serve its customers. Macro environment – the industry in which a company operates and the industry's market(s). Macro (national) environment - larger societal forces that affect the microenvironment.

Evolution to global marketing

 Global marketing is not a revolutionary shift, it is an evolutionary process. While the following does not apply to all companies, it does apply to most companies that begin as domestic-only companies. International marketing has intensified and is evident for approximately nearly all aspects of consumer’s daily life. Local regions or national boundaries no longer restricted to the competitive forces. To be successful in today's globalized economy, it is a must for the companies to simultaneously be responsive to local as well as global market conditions and varying aspect’s related to the international marketing process. Hence, international marketing skills are an important ingredient for every company, whether or not it is currently involved in exporting the activities for the endorsement of the brand or the company. The internationalized marketplace has been transformed very quickly in recent years by shifts in trading techniques, standards and practices. These changes have been reinforced and retained by new technologies and evolving the economic relationships between the companies and the organizations which are working for the trade across the globe. This assignment project work is just an attempt to get integrate these developments and attempts in the field of the market journalism into the burgeoning literature on international marketing process as well as on recent research findings on the International marketing. The research emphasis within the subject has evolved alongside changes in the stress given to key aspects of international trade market. The pre-occupation of early researchers with exports and selling is being replaced by a more balanced view which gives increasing weight to other aspects of international marketing such as licensing, joint ventures, and overseas subsidiaries. In effect, the traditional ethnocentric conceptual view of international marketing trade is being counterbalanced by a more accurate global view of markets. This process of change is tracked in this paper and the growing importance of a strategic and organizational approach to international marketing is emphasized in this article theory. Focused attention is paid to the heterogeneous nature of international marketing process. The diversity of the globalized situations is matched by the variety of enterprises which play a vital part in the marketing exploration process. There is also explanation focuses on the matching of the available company resources and marketing goals in successful international marketing trade. The concept which unveils the paper brings out the importance of effective marketing procedures to success in international markets and trade over the international markets.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages

The advantages of global market include:

·         Economies of scale in production and distribution

·         Lower marketing costs

·         Power and scope

·         Consistency in brand image

·         Ability to leverage good ideas quickly and efficiently

·         Uniformity of marketing practices

·         Helps to establish relationships outside of the "political arena"

·         Helps to encourage ancillary industries to be set up to cater for the needs of the global player

Benefits of Marketing over traditional marketing

Reach

The nature of the internet means businesses now have a truly global reach. While traditional media costs limit this kind of reach to huge multinationals, Marketing opens up new avenues for smaller businesses, on a much smaller budget, to access potential consumers from all over the world.

Scope

Internet marketing allows the marketer to reach consumers in a wide range of ways and enables them to offer a wide range of products and services. Marketing includes, among other things, information management, public relations, customer service and sales. With the range of new technologies becoming available all the time, this scope can only grow.

Interactivity

Whereas traditional marketing is largely about getting a brand’s message out there, Marketing facilitates conversations between companies and consumers. With a two way communication channel, companies can feed off of the responses of their consumers, making them more dynamic and adaptive.

Immediacy

Internet marketing is able to, in ways never before imagined, provide an immediate impact. Imagine you’re reading your favorite magazine. You see a double-page advert for some new product or service, maybe BMW’s latest luxury sedan or Apple’s latest iPod offering. With this kind of traditional media, it’s not that easy for you, the consumer, to take the step from hearing about a product to actual acquisition. With Marketing, it’s easy to make that step as simple as possible, meaning that within a few short clicks you could have booked a test drive or ordered the iPod. And all of this can happen regardless of normal office hours. Effectively, Internet marketing makes business hours 24 hours per day, seven days per week for every week of the year. By closing the gap between providing information and eliciting a consumer reaction, the consumer’s buying cycle is sped up.

Demographics and targeting

Generally speaking, the demographics of the Internet are a marketer’s dream. Internet users, considered as a group, have greater buying power and could perhaps be considered as a population group skewed towards the middle-classes. Buying power is not all though. The nature of the Internet is such that its users will tend to organize themselves into far more focused groupings. Savvy marketers who know where to look can quite easily find access to the niche markets they wish to target. Marketing messages are most effective when they are presented directly to the audience most likely to be interested. The Internet creates the perfect environment for niche marketing to targeted groups.

The youth is an example of a global demographic. In particular, teenagers share common characteristics even if they are from different cultures and nations. This youth market generally has more money to spend and is affluent. However, this market is difficult to target because they are always one step ahead – they are more aware of marketing tactics and are very cynical. They are trendsetters that define themselves in opposition to the establishment. Since the youth market is growing, it would benefit the company to target them, as it would bring in more revenue. Youths are also highly active on social media and in the recent years, many advertising campaigns have gone viral through social media. With the constant flow of media and information, brands continue to increase their awareness, and increase consumer consumption. Targeting the youth market is beneficial because they are more open-minded, have international contacts, and travel more.

Cross cultural negotiation

The dimensions of culture, such as power distance, the context of the culture and the local work ethic is an area of marketing and social science that is closely related to Global marketing. The ability to discern cultural differences through initial assessment of another market is considered a critical enabler to progress in Global marketing.

When a company can advertise effectively to its foreign markets, it brings benefits to both sides. The company gains more revenue and relations, and the foreign markets have access to better products and services.   Through the five cultural dimensions, reveals how cultures are different and value different things. Typically, the west is different from the rest. The west typically values individualism, high need for autonomy, modernity, and a more explicit use of sexuality whereas eastern values include family oriented, respect for elderly, submission to authority, traditional collectivism, and Confucianism. When designing an advertisement, cultural value differences must be considered to be effective since advertising campaigns do not work the same way in different countries.

                                                                

Adaptivity and closed loop marketing

Closed Loop Marketing requires the constant measurement and analysis of the results of marketing initiatives. By continuously tracking the response and effectiveness of a campaign, the marketer can be far more dynamic in adapting to consumers’ wants and needs. With Marketing, responses can be analyzed in real-time and campaigns can be tweaked continuously. Combined with the immediacy of the Internet as a medium, this means that there’s minimal advertising spend wasted on less than effective campaigns. Maximum marketing efficiency from Marketing creates new opportunities to seize strategic competitive advantages. The combination of all these factors results in an improved and ultimately, more customers, happier customers and an improved bottom line.

Disadvantages

·         Differences in consumer needs, wants, and usage patterns for products

·         Differences in consumer response to marketing mix elements

·         Differences in brand and product development and the competitive environment

·         Differences in the legal environment, some of which may conflict with those of the home market

·         Differences in the institutions available, some of which may call for the creation of entirely new ones (e.g. infrastructure)

·         Differences in administrative procedures

·         Differences in product placement.

·         Differences in the administrative procedures and product placement can occur

Global marketing

                Global marketing is “marketing on a worldwide scale reconciling or taking commercial advantage of global operational differences, similarities and opportunities in order to meet global objectives".

  Worldwide competition

One of the product categories in which global competition has been easy to track . The increasing intensity of competition in global markets is a challenge facing companies at all stages of involvement in international markets. As markets open up, and become more integrated, the pace of change accelerates, technology shrinks distances between markets and reduces the scale advantages of large firms, new sources of competition emerge, and competitive pressures mount at all levels of the organization. Also, the threat of competition from companies in countries such as India, China, Malaysia, and Brazil is on the rise, as their own domestic markets are opening up to foreign competition, stimulating greater awareness of international market opportunities and of the need to be internationally competitive. Companies which previously focused on protected domestic markets are entering into markets in other countries, creating new sources of competition, often targeted to price-sensitive market segments. Not only is competition intensifying for all firms regardless of their degree of global market involvement, but the basis for competition is changing. Competition continues to be market-based and ultimately relies on delivering superior value to consumers. However, success in global markets depends on knowledge accumulation and deployment. Today, more and more marketing companies specialize in translating products from one country to another.

Domestic marketing

A marketing restricted to the political boundaries of a country is called 'Domestic Marketing'. A company marketing only within its national boundaries only has to consider domestic competition. Even if that competition includes companies from foreign markets, it still only has to focus on the competition that exists in its home market. Products and services are developed for customers in the home market without thought of how the product or service could be used in other markets. All marketing decisions are made at headquarters.

The biggest obstacle these marketers face is being blindsided by emerging global marketers. Because domestic marketers do not generally focus on the changes in the global marketplace, they may not be aware of a potential competitor who is a market leader on three continents until they simultaneously open 20 stores in the Northeastern U.S. These marketers can be considered ethnocentric as they are most concerned with how they are perceived in their home country.

The domestic market is a large market that every nation needs. These markets are all restricted to be under control of certain boundaries in that company or country. This type of marketing is the type of marketing that takes place in the headquarters. In domestic markets it helps reduce the cost of competition. By reducing competition the company has a better shot of being more successful in the long run. Also if the company’s competition is not a big factor that will affect their business, they have a good shot at making prices higher and people will still purchase that product.

A firm operating in a domestic market also gets the opportunity to operate in different areas and this gives the company an opportunity to have bigger markets to advertise to. Even in domestic markets, businesses are still trying to trade with each other to promote their business to other businesses in the area. An advantage to marketing domestically is that the firm may be entitled to tax benefits for offering jobs to the nation and for giving people opportunities for work. A firm that markets domestically helps countries by offering more jobs, bringing in additional business to the market and stimulates trading within the market.

International marketing

International marketing is the export, franchising, joint venture or full direct entry of an organization's product or services into another country. This can be achieved by exporting a company's product into another location, entry through a joint venture with another firm in the target country, or foreign direct investment into the target country. The development of the marketing mix for that country is then required - international marketing. It can be as straightforward as using existing marketing strategies, mix and tools for export on the one side, to a highly complex relationship strategy including localization, local product offerings, pricing, production and distribution with customized promotions, offers, website, social media and leadership. Internationalization and international marketing meets the needs of selected foreign countries where a company's value can be exported and there is inter-firm and firm learning, optimization and efficiency in economies of scale and scope. The firm does not need to export or enter all world markets to be considered an international marketer.

Global marketing

Global marketing is a firm's ability to market to almost all countries on the planet. With extensive reach, the need for a firm's product or services is established. The global firm retains the capability, reach, knowledge, staff, skills, insights, and expertise to deliver value to customers worldwide. The firm understands the requirement to service customers locally with global standard solutions or products, and localizes that product as required to maintain an optimal balance of cost, efficiency, customization and localization in a control-customization continuum to best meet local, national and global requirements to position itself against or with competitors, partners, alliances, substitutes and defend against new global and local market entrants per country, region or city. The firm will price its products appropriately worldwide, nationally and locally, and promote, deliver access and information to its customers in the most cost-effective way. The firm also needs to understand, research, measure and develop loyalty for its brand and global brand equity (stay on brand) for the long term.

At this level, global marketing and global branding are integrated. Branding involves a structured process of analyzing "soft" assets and "hard" assets of a firm's resources. The strategic analysis and development of a brand includes customer analysis (trends, motivation, unmet needs, segmentation), competitive analysis (brand image/brand identity, strengths, strategies, vulnerabilities), and self-analysis (existing brand image, brand heritage, strengths/capabilities, organizational values).

Further, Global brand identity development is the process establishing brands of products, the firm, and services locally and worldwide with consideration for scope, product attributes, quality/value, uses, users and country of origin; organizational attributes (local vs. global); personality attributes (genuine, energetic, rugged, elegant) and brand customer relationships (friend, adviser, influencer, trusted source); and importantly symbols, trademarks metaphors, imagery, mood, photography and the company's brand heritage. In establishing a global brand, the brand proposition (functional benefits, emotional benefits and self-expressive benefits are identified, localized and streamlined to be consistent with a local, national, international and global point of view. The brand developed needs to be credible.

A global marketing and branding implementation system distributes marketing assets (website, social media, Google PPC, PDFs, sales collateral, press junkets, kits, product samples, news releases, local mini-sites, flyers, posters, alliance and partner materials), affiliate programs and materials, internal communications, newsletters, investor materials, event promotions and trade shows to deliver an integrated, comprehensive and focused communication, access and value to the customers, that can be tracked to build loyalty, case studies and further establish the company's global marketing and brand footprint.

Global marketing specialization

Global marketing is a field of study in general business management to provide valuable products, solutions and services to customers locally, nationally, internationally and worldwide.

Elements of the global marketing

Not only do standard marketing approaches, strategies, tactics and processes apply, global marketing requires an understanding of global finance, global operations and distribution, government relations, global human capital management and resource allocation, distributed technology development and management, global business logic, interfirm and global competitiveness, exporting, joint ventures, foreign direct investments and global risk management.

The standard “Four P’s” of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion are all affected as a company moves through the five evolutionary phases to become a global company. Ultimately, at the global marketing level, a company trying to speak with one voice is faced with many challenges when creating a worldwide marketing plan. Unless a company holds the same position against its competition in all markets (market leader, low cost, etc.) it is impossible to launch identical marketing plans worldwide. Nisant Chakram(Marketing Management)

Product

A global company is one that can create a single product and only have to tweak elements for different markets. For example, Coca-Cola uses two formulas (one with sugar, one with corn syrup) for all markets. The product packaging in every country incorporates the contour bottle design and the dynamic ribbon in some way, shape, or form. However, the bottle can also include the country’s native language and is the same size as other beverage bottles or cans in that same country.

Luxury products, high-tech products, and new innovations are the most common products in the global marketplace.[5] They are easier to market in a standardized way than other products because there are no traditional cultural values attached to their meanings.

Price

Price will always vary from market to market. Price is affected by many variables: cost of product development (produced locally or imported), cost of ingredients, cost of delivery (transportation, tariffs, etc.), and much more. Additionally, the product’s position in relation to the competition influences the ultimate profit margin. Whether this product is considered the high-end, expensive choice, the economical, low-cost choice, or something in-between helps determine the price point.

Place

How the product is distributed is also a country-by-country decision influenced by how the competition is being offered to the target market. Using Coca-Cola as an example again, not all cultures use vending machines. In the United States, beverages are sold by the pallet via warehouse stores. In India, this is not an option. Placement decisions must also consider the product’s position in the market place. For example, a high-end product would not want to be distributed via a “dollar store” in the United States. Conversely, a product promoted as the low-cost option in France would find limited success in a pricey boutique.

Promotion

After product research, development and creation, promotion (specifically advertising) is generally the largest line item in a global company’s marketing budget. At this stage of a company’s development, integrated marketing is the goal. The global corporation seeks to reduce costs, minimize redundancies in personnel and work, maximize speed of implementation, and to speak with one voice. If the goal of a global company is to send the same message worldwide, then delivering that message in a relevant, engaging, and cost-effective way is the challenge.

Effective global advertising techniques do exist. The key is testing advertising ideas using a marketing research system proven to provide results that can be compared across countries. The ability to identify which elements or moments of an ad are contributing to that success is how economies of scale are maximized. Market research measures such as Flow of Attention, Flow of Emotion and branding moments provide insights into what is working in an ad in any country because the measures are based on visual, not verbal, elements of the ad.

Psychological Marketing

     Psychological Marketing deals mainly with intangible aspects of communications, on the role of mental images and representations. The Psychology of Marketing represents an interdisciplinary research area, where several contributions converge, from cognitive science, neuroscience, social psychology, and dynamic psychology. Early contributions were rooted mainly in social psychology, with a strong attention to attitude research and the analysis of behavioral effects.[33] Recent approaches include a comprehensive analysis of several areas, including neuroscience, linguistics, and experimental research. Key aspects are: effects of visual and verbal messages on mental maps, effects of advertising on attitudes and emotions, Psychophysiological response to advertising messages and products observation, effects of marketing on emotional states, consumer psychology insights, and group psychological dynamics.

Right-time marketing

         Right-time marketing is an approach to marketing which selects an appropriate time and place for the delivery of a marketing message.

As the number of vendors and delivery channels has increased, customers demand a right time and place for accepting messages and only pay attention to messages when and how it is convenient for them. These tools generally fall into "reactive" or push offers (e.g., someone searches "pizza" and receives an offer from a local restaurant) and new "predictive" models where a Intelligent Personal Assistant understands past preferences and delivers related products or services.

Real-time bidding (RTB) also follows a similar principle. RTB has begun to transform online marketing and advertising in a similar manner to right-time marketing. While right-time marketing focuses on putting content out in a timely manner, RTB makes sure this is able to happen. With RTB consumers are able to directly respond and indirectly create marketing campaigns. RTB, put in simple terms, is the idea that when a person logs onto the internet, information is gathered about that person and then messages are adapted to conform to that user. This is why when you go on Google and search for Nike shoes, advertising for a Nike shoe may appear in the users browser later on. According to Aram Sinnerich, in a report titled The Revolution Will Be Targeted there was a disruption in the online marketing system. "The first major disruption to this system was search-engine marketing (SEM), which introduced not only a new kind of inventory but also a new paradigm for marketing altogether: Advertisers could use a publisher-specific platform to bid against one another for the right to place contextual ads" (Sinnerich 5).This is the type of marketing that we see all around us all the time and will continue to develop so that it takes over our whole lives.

Services marketing

     

        Services marketing is a sub-field of marketing, which can be split into the two main areas of goods marketing (which includes the marketing of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and durables) and services marketing. Services marketing typically refers to both business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) services, and includes marketing of services such as telecommunications services, financial services, all types of hospitality services, car rental services, air travel, health care services and professional services.

Services are (usually) intangible economic activities offered by one party to another. Often time-based, services performed bring about desired results to recipients, objects, or other assets for which purchasers have responsibility. In exchange for money, time, and effort, service customers expect value from access to goods, labor, professional skills, facilities, networks, and systems; but they do not normally take ownership of any of the physical elements involved.

There has been a long academic debate on what makes services different from goods. The historical perspective in the late-eighteen and early-nineteenth centuries focused on creation and possession of wealth. Classical economists contended that goods were objects of value over which ownership rights could be established and exchanged. Ownership implied tangible possession of an object that had been acquired through purchase, barter or gift from the producer or previous owner and was legally identifiable as the property of the current owner.

More recently, scholars have found that services are different than goods and that there are distinct models to understand the marketing of services to customers.[2] In particular, scholars have developed the concept of service-profit-chain to understand how customers and firms interact with each other in service settings,

Adam Smith’s famous book, The Wealth of Nations, published in Great Britain in 1776, distinguished between the outputs of what he termed "productive" and "unproductive" labor. The former, he stated, produced goods that could be stored after production and subsequently exchanged for money or other items of value. But unproductive labor, however" honorable,...useful, or... necessary" created services that perished at the time of production and therefore didn’t contribute to wealth. Building on this theme, French economist Jean-Baptiste Say argued that production and consumption were inseparable in services, coining the term "immaterial products" to describe them.

       Services marketing relates to the marketing of services, as opposed to tangible products. A service (as opposed to a good) is typically defined by the paraphrase of 5 I's :

Inseparability - The customer cannot be separated from the service and therefore, the use of it is inseparable from its purchase (i.e., a service is used and consumed simultaneously)

Intangibility - It does not possess material form, and thus cannot be touched. Yet, many services are directly connected to products. Services (compared with goods) can also be viewed as a spectrum. Not all products are either pure goods or pure services. An example would be a restaurant, where a waiter's service is intangible, but the food is tangible.

Service Products - Those pure services or major service components, directly offered to customers, such as a gig

Product Services - Those service elements associated with a physical objects such as on-line shopping or instrument tuning

Inconsistency (Variability) – Every delivery of the service will be different. Furthermore, the use of a service is inherently subjective, meaning that several persons experiencing a service would each experience it uniquely.

Inventory (Perishability) – the service cannot last

Involvement – customer can tailor the service while using it (e.g. hairdresser)

For example, a train ride can be deemed a service. If one buys a train ticket, the use of the train is typically experienced concurrently with the purchase of the ticket. Although the train is a physical object, one is not paying for the permanent ownership of the tangible components of the train.

Marketing planning

The marketing planning process involves forging a plan for a firm's marketing activities. A marketing plan can also pertain to a specific product, as well as to an organization's overall marketing strategy. Generally speaking, an organization's marketing planning process is derived from its overall business strategy. Thus, when top management are devising the firm's strategic direction or mission, the intended marketing activities are incorporated into this plan. There are several levels of marketing objectives within an organization. The senior management of a firm would formulate a general business strategy for a firm. However, this general business strategy would be interpreted and implemented in different contexts throughout the firm.

Types of market research

Market research, as a sub-set aspect of marketing activities, can be divided into the following parts:

Primary research (also known as field research), which involves the conduction and compilation of research for a specific purpose.

Secondary research (also referred to as desk research), initially conducted for one purpose, but often used to support another purpose or end goal.

By these definitions, an example of primary research would be market research conducted into health foods, which is used solely to ascertain the needs/wants of the target market for health foods. Secondary research in this case would be research pertaining to health foods, but used by a firm wishing to develop an unrelated product.

Primary research is often expensive to prepare, collect and interpret from data to information. Nevertheless, while secondary research is relatively inexpensive, it often can become outdated and outmoded, given that it is used for a purpose other than the one for which it was intended. Primary research can also be broken down into quantitative research and qualitative research, which, as the terms suggest, pertain to numerical and non-numerical research methods and techniques, respectively. The appropriateness of each mode of research depends on whether data can be quantified (quantitative research), or whether subjective, non-numeric or abstract concepts are required to be studied (qualitative research).

Marketing research

                   

 Marketing research involves conducting research to support marketing activities, and the statistical interpretation of data into information. This information is then used by managers to plan marketing activities, gauge the nature of a firm's marketing environment and obtain information from suppliers. Marketing researchers use statistical methods such as quantitative research, qualitative research, hypothesis tests, Chi-squared tests, linear regression, correlations, frequency distributions, poisson distributions, binomial distributions, etc. to interpret their findings, and convert data into information. The marketing research process spans a number of stages, including the definition of a problem, development of a research plan, collection and interpretation of data, and disseminating information formally in the form of a report. The task of marketing research is to provide management with relevant, accurate, reliable, valid, and current information.

                       A distinction should be made between marketing research and market research. Market research pertains to research in a given market. As an example, a firm may conduct research in a target market, after selecting a suitable market segment. In contrast, marketing research relates to all research conducted within marketing. Thus, market research is a subset of marketing research.

Factors of influence on marketing strategies

       In addition to the controllable marketing mix factors, there are uncontrollable factors called environmental forces. The external influences are the forces that affect the characteristics of the marketing strategies to which marketers adapt. Among others they include: regulatory, economic, social, political environmental, competitive, and technological.

• Regulatory: This refers to laws and legality (governmental policies) that may affect the way marketing can be characterized. For example, government restriction on the importation of a particular product might hinder the marketers playing in that particular field.

• Economic. Various trends in the economic business cycle, including inflation, recessions, deficit, or income level. Each of these factors can have a direct impact on marketing which may have to be re-evaluated and overhauled as a result.

• Social: The social forces refer to the structure and dynamics of individuals and groups and their behaviors, beliefs, thought patterns and lifestyles, friendships, etc. When consumers change their needs and wants, this directly affects marketing strategies.

• Political: The socio-economic conditions are closely related to the state of the governmental institutions. Depending on the governmental impact on bureaucracy, corruption, freedom of speech and other limitations (or opportunities), the marketing strategies will adapt to the political conditions.

• Competitive: Competition refers to the numbers of similar competitive product brands. A new competitor entering the market will directly affect the marketing strategies of the incumbent companies. Firms offering similar services or products often achieve differentiation through marketing, positioning and branding.

• Technological: The marketing strategies often adapt to the pace of development of the consumer demand and exponential technological progression.