Marketing management

Define sales volume and sales value

• They are marketing objectives

• Sales volume measures the TQ over a time, suggesting it’s easy to visualise but doesn’t identify the value from each sale

• Sales value measures the TR over a time, suggesting it identifies the value from each sale, making it a clearer measure than sales volume

Define sales growth

A marketing objective which measures the growth/increase in sales volume/value over a time

Define market share

• A marketing objective which measures the percentage of sales in a market by one firm/brand

• Furthermore, firms can measure how well it’s doing compared to its rivals

• Consequently, firms can increase market share by increasing their customer base

Define market size and market growth

• They are marketing objectives

• Market size measures the total sales volume/value in a market over a time

• Market growth measures the increase in market size from one period to another

• Furthermore, firms can increase their sales if their market share stays the same/increases due to the increasing market size, suggesting there are more customers in the market 

Define brand loyalty

A qualitative marketing objective which measures how loyal customers are to a firm, suggesting increased brand loyalty decreases competitiveness due to customers being less willing to switch to substitutes 

Analyse the three main reasons why market research is done

1. Helps businesses spot opportunities because they can research customer buying patterns, allowing them to spot growing/declining markets

2. Helps businesses decide what to do next because they can use the reseach before launching a new product/advertising campaign

3. Helps businesses evaluate their strategies because they can use the sales figures to identify if their plans are working

Define random sampling

When names are selected randomly from a list

Define stratified sampling

When the population is divided into groups and people are selected randomly from each group, where the number of people selected from each group is proportional to the group size

Define quota sampling

When people who fit a category (e.g. mothers between ages 30-40) to get opinions from the people the product is directly targeted at

Define segmenting

• Dividing the market into groups with similar characteristics/needs

• For example, factors can include:

• Demographic (e.g. age, gender, socio-economic class)

• Geographic (e.g. country)

• Income (e.g. high income)

• Behaviour (e.g. lifestyle)

Define targeting

• Deciding which market segment to focus on and adapt the product and marketing mix to appeal to this group

• For example, markets can include:

• Niche/differentiated markets (e.g. a small business selling microwave meals could establish a niche by specialising in people with nut allergies)

• Mass/undifferentiated markets (e.g. Coca-Cola appeals to many customers)

Define positioning

• Position the product in the target customers’ minds so they see it as better than the competition

• A market map shows extremes for two measures (e.g. low price vs high price & low quality vs high quality)

Analyse the factors that affect the marketing mix

• Competitiors that offer substitutes to a product will directly affect the price

• The target market segment (e.g. low-income consumers that may be more price sensitive will affect the price)

• The location of a business (e.g. a business based in Alaska won’t be able to include next-day delivery to the rest of the world as part of its process)