Questions

1. Assess Maytag Corporation’s current portfolio of businesses, classifying each business unit or product line. Which units should receive more emphasis, which should receive less? What other new products might Maytag add?

2. Develop a formal mission statement for Maytag that will help to guide the company and all of its units in the future.

3. Why has Maytag been so successful in the past in marketing its laundry appliances? Should it use its traditional strategy for its new product lines? Why or why not?

Unit 3

Marketing Management process

TEXT А

Factors of the Marketing Management process

As it is already known the strategic plan defines the company’s overall mission and objectives. Within each business unit, marketing plays a role in helping to accomplish overall strategic objectives. Marketing’s role and activities in the organization are shown in Figure 1, which summarizes the entire marketing management process and the forces influencing company marketing strategy.

Target consumers stand in the center. The company identifies the total market, divides it into smaller segments, selects the most-promising segments, and focuses on serving and satisfying these segments. It designs a marketing mix made up of factors under its control—product, price, place, and promotion. To find the best marketing mix and put it into action, the company engages in marketing analysis, planning, implementation, and control. Through these activities, the company watches and adapts to the marketing environment. We will now look briefly at each factor in the marketing management process.

Target Consumers

To succeed in today’s competitive marketplace, companies must be customer centered, winning customers from competitors by delivering greater value. But before it can satisfy consumers, a company must first understand their needs and wants. Thus, sound marketing requires a careful analysis of consumers. Suppose a com­pany looking at possible markets for a potential new product. The company first needs to make a careful estimate of the current and future size of the market and its various segments. To estimate current market size, the company would identify all competing products, estimate their current sales, and determine whether the market is large enough.

Equally important is future market growth. Companies want to enter markets that show strong growth prospects. Growth potential may depend on the growth rate of certain age, income, and nationality groups that use the product more than others. Growth may also be related to larger developments in the environment, such as economic conditions, advances in technology, and life-style changes. For example, the future market for quality children’s toys and clothing is strongly related to current birthrates, trends in consumer affluence, and projected family life styles. Forecasting—predicting what consumers are likely to do under a given set of conditions—is difficult, but it must be performed in order to make a decision about the market. The company’s marketing information specialists will probably use complex techniques to measure and forecast demand.