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ответы к экзамену 2 курс.doc
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Unit 1. Brands.

1. What are visible parts of marketing? What are brand managers and sales teams responsible for?

2. Who takes part in distribution channels?

3. Why do some companies make luxury products abroad rather than at home? Give examples.

4. Some people believe that luxury fashion products should always be made in Europe. What's your opinion? Give examples.

1. What are visible parts of marketing? What are brand managers and sales teams responsible for?

As the marketing expert Philip Kotler has said, 'The most distinctive skill of professional marketers is their ability to create, maintain, protect and enhance brands.' There are an awful lot of misunderstandings about ‘marketing’. Many people see it purely as the various ways in which a business or organisation advertises and promotes itself - a website, a brochure, corporate hospitality, advertisements and sales literature... But these are only the visible parts of marketing.

Professional literature defines marketing as 'the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably'. In other words, it is not just about producing a piece of promotional material to support a sales activity, it's about a systematic and careful process of ensuring that everything that the business develops and provides, whether it be a product or a service, is done with the customer in mind.

Think of the process of marketing rather like an iceberg.The top eighth is the part that is visible - seven eighths are unseen! What goes on below the surface is a whole range of activities and processes designed to ensure that any marketing communications are designed and delivered in the best way to achieve the desired results, usually that's profitable sales.

The main brand manager’s and sales teams’ responsibilities include:

- Developing and managing brand marketing plan

- Understanding and expressingbrand’spositioning, designing appropriatemarketing mix tools

- Brief & agree annual media plan, supervise work with advertising agencies

- Generate and analyze consumer insights, integrate findings into brand activities

- Manage pricing

- Enlist strong sales support for all brand marketing activities

2. Who takes part in distribution channels?

Distribution (or placement) is one of the four aspects of marketing. A distributor is the middleman between the manufacturer and retailer. After a product is manufactured it may be warehoused or shipped to the next echelon in the supply chain, typically either a distributor, retailer or consumer.

A number of alternate 'channels' of distribution may be available:

· Selling direct, such as via mail order, Internet and telephone sales

· Agent, who typically sells direct on behalf of the producer

· Distributor (also called wholesaler), who sells to retailers

· Retailer (also called dealer or reseller), who sells to end customers

· Advertisement typically used for consumer goods

Distribution channels can thus have a number of levels. Kotler defined the simplest level, that of direct contact with no intermediaries involved, as the 'zero-level' channel.

The next level, the 'one-level' channel, features just one intermediary between producer and customer - a retailer. In small markets (such as small countries) it is practical to reach the whole market using just one- and zero-level channels. In large markets (such as larger countries) a second level, a wholesaler for example, is now mainly used to extend distribution to the large number of small, neighborhood retailers.

3. Why do some companies make luxury products abroad rather than at home? Give examples.

Some companies prefer to make luxury products abroad rather than at home because they want to lower the firm costs. The process of subcontracting to a third-party company is named outsourcing.The reasons for outsourcing are many and varied, such as cost saving, cost restructuring, improving quality, knowledge and many others. The classical examples of companies making their products abroad are Coach, the US leather goods maker, which outsources all its products to Asia, and Burberry, which also has many Asian licensing arrangements.