Marketing strategies exam 2

MP#3 - All competitors react and an effective marketing strategy must manage _________

The firm’s sustainable competitive advantage (SCA)

A good Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA) must include (check all that apply):

Customers care about what this SCA offers

The firm does it better than competitors

Focusing only on competitors often ___________

Leaves firms blind to changes in their customers needs and desires

The sources of SCA in marketing can be grouped under the following main categories? (check all that apply):

Brands

Offerings

Relationships

Competitors can overcome a firm’s SCA by applying which of the following strategies?

Exploiting changes in customers’ desires due to cultural, environmental, or other factors

“Me-too” copycats that improve the efficiency/effectiveness of an existing execution

Technical innovations that provide them a platform to launch a disruptive offering

*All of the above

Industrialization increased the importance of brands as a means to:

Distinguish among products and provide a signal of quality of the offerings

Using brands as an SCA is most effective in ________

Large consumer markets

____________ for a firm refers to “the total of the discounted lifetime values of all its customers.”

Customer equity

True comprehension of customers occurs at ____________, but strategic and resource decisions occur at ____________:

Micro levels, Macro levels

While making Brand, Offering, and Relational (BOR) strategic decisions, ____________ are normally determined last, because they involve the delivery and experiential aspect of offerings

Relationship strategies

BOR equities are similar to _____________:

Tangible assets

____________ provide strong tests of causality, by randomly assigning customers to multiple groups:

Experiments

______________ is the largest barrier to competitive attacks

Interpersonal relationships between producers and consumers

Maintaining a relative advantage over ______________ is particularly difficult, because they benefit from factors such as free-rider effects:

Early followers/ “Me-too” competitors

A brand can provide a relative advantage when:

It aligns better with customers’ needs than competitors brands

Firms must first focus on customer, before building SCA, because:

SCAs offer value only when a financially meaningful group of customers care about them

Using offerings as an SCA can be effective, because new and innovative products/services:

Have the potential to disrupt virtually any market segment

For a firm, fulfilling a SCA better than its competitors is particularly critical in:

More mature product/market segments

Using relationships as an SCA is most effective in ___________________ setting (check all that apply):

B2B

Service

Complex offering

Over time, following have been the primary sources of SCA:

Innovative offerings following the technology revolution

Brands in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution with the emergence of middlemen and retailers

Relationships in early market

* All of the above

To make optimal decisions, a firm needs a framework that:

Measures, tracks, and reports customer equities

Brand elements are associated with the following _______

Name

Package design

Symbol

* All of the above

___________ equals the sum of all Customer lifetime value associated with all future and existing customers.

Brand equity

Characteristics such as brand awareness or familiarity is associated with ______________ of brand equity?

Associated network memory model

Customer’s perceptions and associations with the brand is known as _______

Brand image

One of the benefit of Brand equity is that

It cannot change customer’s actual experiences

It can change customer’s actual experiences

It can make it more difficult for competitors to encroach

* Both B & C

When both attitudinal and behavioural loyalty are high it creates _________

True loyalty

Spurious Loyalty is when ______

Ambivalent feelings are manifested

Latent Loyalty is when Customers have ________ attitudes but actually _______ the product?

Positive, do not buy

How a brand is going to maintain its relative advantage over time is known as ________

Brand Sustainability

_________ pulls all characteristics together and describes who the brand is.

Brand Identity

A firm that focuses on branding each major product with its own unique brand elements is known as _____

House of brand architecture

A firm that uses a single set of band elements for all products is known as

Branded House architecture

Vertical Extensions of brands to lower priced markets often __________ the image of the parent brand.

Undermine

Building Brand awareness involves making the brand easy to recall known as ________

Brand Depth

Brand awareness across a wide range of potential purchase  and usage situations is known as _________

Brand breadth

Dissemination of information by individual customers to build a firm’s or product reputation and generate sales is known as ______

Word of mouth

The six-step approach of communication and information processing by firms towards customers can be simplified as ________

Think-feel-act

Exploratory qualitative analysis include

Case studies

Focus groups

Observations

* All of the above

Qualitative method which is flexible and time effective and can support larger sample sizes is ______

Interviews

Example Data reduction techniques that seek to condense customers’ attributes is/are

Factor analysis

Cluster Analysis

Regression

* Both A & B

Choice Models help __________ or identify the causes or drivers of desired outcomes

Link variables to outcomes

Optimal way to allocate a marketing budget to different communication formats is knows as

Resource Allocation

The _________________ involves creation of substantial new value for customers and the firm by creatively changing one or more dimensions of the business

Process of innovation

A first-mover advantage is nearly always trumped by _____________, who are not just quick but also better:

Early followers

_____________ refers to the core value that the performance of the product/service offers the customer, absent any brand or relationship equity effects

Offering equity

________________ is a process to increase the speed of a firm’s offering development and enhance its likelihood of success:

Stage-gate approach

Which of the following are the ways a firm can innovate?

Change what the firm offers

Changing who the customer is

Changing where to sell to customers

* All of the above

Greater offering equity, generated from a firm’s new and innovative products/services leads to _____________ (check all that apply):

SCA

Superior sales

Superior profit

The following are the ways for a firm to change who the customer is (check all that apply):

Change customer interactions

change customers to target

_____________ means that once developers/designers accept some new feature, they perceive its great value – far more than would be assigned the feature by non-users:

Designer’s Curse

_______________ refers to an innovative offering that results from dramatically repositioning an existing offering, so that the total offering appeals to a different customer segment with a ‘new’ proposition

Repositioning strategy

______________ attempt to capture a portion of the existing market, and account for the majority of sales, but earn lower relative profit levels

Red ocean strategies

_____________ aim at transforming the image off competitors brand features, such that they become a negative attribute in the new market:

Blue ocean strategies

The basic intuition in Jugaad is that

Agile innovation practices can vary with each problem stage and product

________________ leads to continuous, incremental improvements over time:

Sustaining technology

With its very different price and performance characteristics, ________________ improves very quickly:

Disruptive technology

_______________ are the first to adopt, often before the new offering even is officially launched

Innovators

_______________ see the benefits of the new technology and are willing to adopt it after just a few references:

Early adopters

The ______________ consists of much more pragmatic consumers, who need to be convinced that the new product really works:

Early majority

The _____________ and _____________ want more evidence, but they are especially hard to persuade (check all that apply):

Laggards

Late majority

In Moore’s adoption cycle, the concept of _____________ refers to many new offerings failing to survive the jump from the early adopters to the early majority groups:

Crossing the chasm

Changing the following factors can alter the rate of product diffusion, all else being equal (check all that apply):

Complexity

Trialability

Relative advantage

*All of the above

_____________ helps marketers design and develop new products by thinking of products as bundles of attributes, then determining which combination of attributes is best suited to meet the preferences of customers

Conjoint analysis

The ______________ captures many of the people-and-product-based factors, but it also integrates pricing and advertising levels to predict adoption rates

Bass model

Relationship equity in combination with brands and offerings, in turn can lead to ____________

Sustainable competitive advantage

The acronym CRM stands for

Customer Relationship Management

Aggregation of relational assets and liabilities, associated with the firm’s boundary-spanning employees and social networks linked to the offering is known as ____

Relationship Equity

Social exchange theory has established that ______ and ______ are central to strong business relationships

Commitment, Trust

A seller’s Relationship Marketing activities influence _______

Relationship Quality

Relationship breadth

Relationship composition

*All of the above

A diverse, authoritative contact portfolio increases a seller’s ability to effect change in its customer’s organizations _________

Relationship composition

Coordinated, complementary actions between partners to achieve a mutual goal is called _________

Cooperative behaviors

Likelihood that customer provides seller benefits in exchange process due to their relational ties and attitudes 

Relationship loyalty

Word of mouth exemplifies ________

Feelings of gratitude

Positive attitudes

Provide referrals

*All of the above

A greater likelihood of being influenced by perceptions of the seller’s position

Empathic behaviors

Unfairness or betrayal has powerful negative effects on customer _____

Cooperation

Flexibility

*Both A & B

None of the above

Bystanders despise the unfair treatment they receive which in turn _______

Harms loyalty and annual sales intentions

When contextual factors ________ a customer’s relationship orientation, they also _________ its receptivity to relationship building, prompting more effective RM.

Increase, increase

________ encourages strong customer-seller relationships through compensation policies, evaluative systems

Relationship-centric reward system

Business-to-business markets offer ______ complexity, such that they require adaption and relational governance structures

Greater

Relationship Marketing is more effective in _____ than in _____

B2B, B2C

If a seller offers RM benefit of its own accord it is known as ______

Free will

Exploratory Stage features __________ confidence in the partner’s ability

Limited

If initial responses are positive and produce the desired outcomes the relationship moves into the ________ stage

Maintaining stage

Even Successful relationships can enter the Recovery stage in response to events of passive neglect such as

Failure to communicate

Ending investments

Unfairness

*All of above

________ RM programs provide investments that customer’s might not make themselves such as electronic order processing or customized packaging

Structural

Financial RM programs provide financial benefits, in the form of _____

Special discounts

Giveaways

Free shipping

*All of the above

A central measure of the effectiveness of RM is _______

Relationship equity

Relationships typically peak during _______ stage.

Maturity