Comprehensive Study Notes on Strategic Marketing, Environment Analysis, and Consumer Buyer Behavior
Company-Wide Strategic Planning and Partnering for Customer Relationships
Company-Wide Strategic Planning (Quy hoạch chiến lược toàn công ty):
Verbatim Definition: The process of developing and maintaining a strategic fit between the organization's goals and capabilities and its changing marketing opportunities.
Four Strategic Steps:
Defining the Company Mission (Định hình Sứ mệnh công ty): Formulating a formal Mission Statement that declares the organization's purpose, what it wants to accomplish in the larger environment, remaining market-oriented rather than product-oriented.
Setting Company Objectives and Goals (Thiết lập Mục tiêu công ty): Translating the mission into detailed supporting objectives, divided into business objectives (e.g., economic profit, market leadership) and marketing objectives (e.g., brand awareness, customer acquisition, market share growth).
Designing the Business Portfolio (Thiết kế Danh mục kinh doanh): Evaluating the collection of businesses and products that make up the company to allocate resources effectively.
Planning Marketing and Other Functional Strategies (Lập kế hoạch marketing và các chiến lược chức năng): Developing detailed departmental plans for marketing, finance, accounting, operations, and research and development to support the overall corporate strategy.
Partnering to Build Customer Relationships:
Value Chain (Chuỗi giá trị): A series of internal departments within a company that carry out value-creating activities to design, produce, market, deliver, and support a firm's products.
Success depends on how well each department performs its work and how well the various departments coordinate their activities to serve the customer.
Value Delivery Network (Mạng lưới cung ứng giá trị): A network composed of the company, its suppliers, distributors, and ultimately customers who partner with each other to improve the performance of the entire system in delivering customer value.
Business Portfolio Analysis and Growth Strategies
Strategic Business Unit (SBU - Đơn vị kinh doanh chiến lược):
A key unit of the company that has a separate mission and objectives, and which can be planned independently from other company businesses.
An SBU can be a company division, a product line within a division, or a single product or brand.
BCG Growth-Share Matrix (Ma trận BCG):
A portfolio-planning tool developed by the Boston Consulting Group that evaluates a firm's SBUs based on two dimensions: Market Growth Rate (vertical axis, measuring market attractiveness) and Relative Market Share (horizontal axis, measuring company strength in the market).
Matrix Classifications:
Stars (Ngôi sao): High-growth, high-share businesses or products. They require heavy investments to finance their rapid growth. Eventually, their growth slows down, and they transition into cash cows.
Cash Cows (Bò sữa): Low-growth, high-share businesses or products. These established and successful SBUs require less investment to hold their market share and generate large amounts of cash that the company uses to pay its bills and support other SBUs needing investment.
Question Marks (Dấu hỏi): Low-share business units in high-growth markets. They require a lot of cash to hold their share, let alone increase it. Management must decide whether to invest heavily to turn them into stars or phase them out.
Dogs (Con chó): Low-growth, low-share businesses and products. They may generate enough cash to maintain themselves but do not promise to be large sources of cash; candidates for divestment or liquidation.
The Product/Market Expansion Grid - Ansoff Matrix (Ma trận Ansoff):
A portfolio-planning tool for identifying company growth opportunities through four distinct strategic approaches:
Market Penetration (Thâm nhập thị trường): Company growth achieved by increasing sales of current products to current market segments without changing the product itself (e.g., through aggressive promotion, price cuts, or expanded distribution).
Market Development (Phát triển thị trường): Company growth achieved by identifying and developing new market segments for current company products (e.g., targeting new demographic groups or entering new geographic regions).
Product Development (Phát triển sản phẩm): Company growth achieved by offering modified or new products to current market segments.
Diversification (Đa dạng hóa): Company growth achieved by starting up or acquiring businesses outside the company's current products and markets.
Downsizing:
The practice of reducing or eliminating products, business units, or operations that are unprofitable or that no longer fit the company's overall strategic plan.
Customer Value Network, Marketing Mix, and Management
Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy (STP):
Market Segmentation (Phân đoạn thị trường): Dividing a market into distinct groups of buyers who have different needs, characteristics, or behaviors, and who might require separate products or marketing mixes.
Market Targeting (Chọn thị trường mục tiêu): Evaluating each market segment's attractiveness and selecting one or more segments to serve.
Differentiation and Positioning (Định vị & Khác biệt hóa): Differentiating the company's market offering to create superior customer value, and arranging for a product to occupy a clear, distinctive, and desirable place relative to competing products in the minds of target consumers.
The Marketing Mix (4Ps - Hỗn hợp Marketing):
The set of tactical marketing tools that the firm blends to produce the response it wants in the target market:
Product (Sản phẩm): The goods-and-services combination the firm offers to the target market.
Price (Giá): The amount of money customers must pay to obtain the product.
Place (Phân phối): Company activities that make the product available to target consumers.
Promotion (Xúc tiến / Chiêu thị): Activities that communicate the merits of the product and persuade target customers to buy it.
Managing the Marketing Effort:
The Management Process:
SWOT Analysis:
Strengths (Điểm mạnh): Internal capabilities, resources, and positive situational factors that may help the company serve its customers and achieve its objectives.
Weaknesses (Điểm yếu): Internal limitations and negative situational factors that may interfere with the company's performance.
Opportunities (Cơ hội): Favorable factors or trends in the external environment that the company may be able to exploit to its advantage.
Threats (Thách thức): Unfavorable external factors or trends that may present challenges to performance.
Marketing Return on Investment (Marketing ROI):
The net return from a marketing investment divided by the costs of the marketing investment.
Serves as a critical metric to measure the profits and value generated by investments in marketing activities.
The Marketing Environment: Microenvironment Actors
Marketing Environment Definition:
The actors and forces outside marketing that affect marketing management's ability to build and maintain successful relationships with target customers.
The Microenvironment (Môi trường Vi mô):
Consists of six actors close to the company that affect its ability to serve its customers directly:
The Company (Công ty): Internal organizational groups that marketing managers must take into account, including top management, finance, research and development (R&D), purchasing, operations, and accounting.
Suppliers (Nhà cung cấp): Partners that provide the resources needed by the company to produce its goods and services. Supply shortages, delays, labor strikes, and price fluctuations directly impact marketing.
Marketing Intermediaries (Trung gian Marketing): External firms that help the company promote, sell, and distribute its products to final buyers. These include:
Resellers (wholesale and retail distributors).
Physical distribution firms (warehouses, transportation).
Marketing services agencies (market research firms, advertising agencies, media firms).
Financial intermediaries (banks, credit companies, insurance companies).
Competitors (Đối thủ cạnh tranh): Rival organizations that offer substitutes or similar products. A firm must provide greater customer value and satisfaction than its competitors, positioning its offerings strongly against competitors' offerings in the minds of consumers.
Publics (Giới công chúng): Any group that has an actual or potential interest in or impact on an organization's ability to achieve its objectives. Key publics include:
Financial publics.
Media publics.
Government publics.
Citizen-action publics.
Local publics.
General public.
Internal publics.
Customers (Khách hàng): The most important actors in the microenvironment. Marketing aims to serve target customers and create strong relationships. Customer markets consist of:
Consumer markets (individuals buying for personal consumption).
Business markets (companies buying goods for further processing).
Reseller markets (firms buying goods to resell at a profit).
Government markets (government agencies buying goods to produce public services).
International markets (buyers in other nations, including consumers, businesses, and governments).
The Marketing Environment: Macroenvironment Forces
The Macroenvironment (Môi trường Vĩ mô):
Consists of six larger societal forces that affect the entire microenvironment:
Demographic Environment (Nhân khẩu học):
The study of human populations in terms of size, density, location, age, gender, race, occupation, and other statistics.
Generational Cohorts:
Baby Boomers: Born between and .
Generation X (Gen X): Born between and .
Millennials (Generation Y): Born between and .
Generation Z (Gen Z): Born after .
Economic Environment (Kinh tế):
Economic factors that affect consumer purchasing power and spending patterns.
Encompasses the trend toward Value Marketing (consumer spending restraint and focus on quality for a fair price) and the growing polarization of income distribution.
Natural Environment (Tự nhiên):
The physical environment and the natural resources that are needed as inputs by marketers or that are affected by marketing activities.
Major trends include shortages of raw materials, increased pollution, increased government intervention and regulation, and the drive toward Environmental Sustainability (phát triển bền vững).
Technological Environment (Công nghệ):
Forces that create new technologies, creating new product and market opportunities while rendering older technologies obsolete. Recognized as the force that drives the most rapid and impactful changes.
Political and Social Environment (Chính trị & Xã hội):
Laws, government agencies, and pressure groups that influence or limit various organizations and individuals in a given society.
Focuses on legislation protecting fair competition, protecting consumers from unfair business practices, and protecting the interests of society.
Emphasizes business ethics, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and Cause-Related Marketing (marketing tied to charitable causes).
Cultural Environment (Văn hóa):
Institutions and other forces that affect a society's basic values, perceptions, preferences, and behaviors.
Core Beliefs and Values (Niềm tin cốt lõi): Passed on from parents to children and reinforced by schools, businesses, religious institutions, and government; persistent and difficult to change.
Secondary Beliefs and Values (Niềm tin thứ cấp): Beliefs and values that are more open to change and cultural shifts (e.g., views of themselves, others, organizations, society, nature, and the universe).
Responding to the Marketing Environment:
Uncontrollable Approach: Viewing the environment as an uncontrollable element to which the company must adapt, passively accepting environmental shifts.
Proactive Approach: Taking aggressive actions to influence and shape the forces and public opinions in the marketing environment rather than simply watching and reacting.
Reactive Approach: Passively tracking, monitoring, and adapting to changes only after they occur to avoid threats or take advantage of existing situations.
Consumer Markets and Buyer Behavior Foundations
Consumer Buyer Behavior Definition:
The buying behavior of final consumers—individuals and households that buy goods and services for personal consumption.
The collection of all these final consumers combines to create the Consumer Market.
Model of Buyer Behavior (The Black Box Model):
A stimulus-response model that illustrates how marketing and other stimuli enter the consumer's "black box" and produce certain responses:
Environmental Stimuli:
Marketing Stimuli: Product, Price, Place, Promotion (4Ps).
Other Macroenvironmental Forces: Economic, Technological, Social, and Cultural forces.
Buyer's Black Box (Hộp đen của người mua):
Buyer's Characteristics: How the buyer perceives, interprets, and reacts to stimuli.
Buyer's Decision Process: How the internal stages of decision-making occur.
Buyer Responses:
Buying attitudes and preferences.
Purchase behavior: What the buyer buys, when, where, and how much.
Brand engagements and relationships.
Factors Influencing Consumer Buying Behavior
1. Cultural Factors (Yếu tố Văn hóa):
Culture (Nền văn hóa): The set of basic values, perceptions, wants, and behaviors learned by a member of society from family and other important institutions; the most fundamental cause of a person's wants and behavior.
Subculture (Văn hóa phụ): A group of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations (e.g., nationalities, religions, racial groups, and geographic regions).
Social Class (Tầng lớp xã hội): Relatively permanent and ordered divisions in a society whose members share similar values, interests, and behaviors, measured as a combination of occupation, income, education, wealth, and other variables.
2. Social Factors (Yếu tố Xã hội):
Groups and Social Networks:
Membership Groups: Groups that have a direct influence and to which a person belongs.
Aspirational Groups: Groups to which an individual wishes to belong.
Reference Groups: Groups that serve as direct or indirect points of comparison or reference in forming a person's attitudes or behavior.
Word-of-Mouth, KOC, and Opinion Leaders:
Key Opinion Consumers (KOCs) and Opinion Leaders exert social influence on others because of special skills, knowledge, personality, or other characteristics.
Online social networks enable consumers to interact and share opinions.
Family (Gia đình):
The most important consumer buying organization in society; roles and status of spouses and children strongly influence buying choices.
Roles and Status (Vai trò & Địa vị):
A person belongs to many groups; their position in each group is defined in terms of both role (activities expected to perform) and status (general esteem given by society).
3. Personal Factors (Yếu tố Cá nhân):
Age and Life-Cycle Stage: Tastes in food, clothes, furniture, and recreation change over a lifetime, shaped by family life-cycle stages.
Occupation: A person's job affects the goods and services bought.
Economic Situation: Trends in personal income, savings, and interest rates dictate spending capabilities.
Lifestyle (Phong cách sống): A person's pattern of living as expressed in their AIO dimensions (Activities, Interests, Opinions).
Personality and Self-Concept (Nhân cách & Tự nhận thức):
The unique psychological characteristics that distinguish a person or group.
Brand Personality: The specific mix of human traits that may be attributed to a particular brand.
4. Psychological Factors (Yếu tố Tâm lý):
Motivation (Động cơ):
A need that is sufficiently pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: Arranged from the most pressing at the bottom to the least pressing at the top:
Physiological: Hunger, thirst.
Safety: Security, protection.
Social: Sense of belonging, love.
Esteem: Self-esteem, recognition, status.
Self-Actualization: Self-development and realization.
Perception (Nhận thức):
The process by which people select, organize, and interpret information to form a meaningful picture of the world.
Selective Attention (Chú ý có chọn lọc): The tendency for people to screen out most of the information to which they are exposed.
Selective Distortion (Bóp méo có chọn lọc): The tendency of people to interpret information in a way that supports what they already believe.
Selective Retention (Ghi nhớ có chọn lọc): The tendency to remember good points made about a brand they favor and forget good points made about competing brands.
Learning (Lĩnh hội):
Changes in an individual's behavior arising from experience, occurring through the interplay of drives, stimuli, cues, responses, and reinforcement.
Beliefs and Attitudes (Niềm tin & Thái độ):
Belief: A descriptive thought that a person holds about something.
Attitude: A person's relatively consistent evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or idea.
Types of Buying Decision Behavior
Four Types of Buying Behavior:
Complex Buying Behavior (Mua phức tạp):
Characterized by High Consumer Involvement and Significant Perceived Differences Between Brands.
Consumers undertake this behavior when the product is expensive, risky, purchased infrequently, and highly self-expressive. Buyers go through a learning process to develop beliefs, then attitudes, and finally a thoughtful purchase choice.
Dissonance-Reducing Buying Behavior (Mua giảm bất hòa):
Characterized by High Consumer Involvement but Few Perceived Differences Between Brands.
Consumers experience high involvement because the purchase is expensive, infrequent, or risky, but see little brand differentiation. After the sale, buyers might experience postpurchase dissonance (after-sale discomfort) if they notice disadvantages of the purchased brand or hear favorable things about other brands.
Habitual Buying Behavior (Mua theo thói quen):
Characterized by Low Consumer Involvement and Few Perceived Differences Between Brands.
Consumers buy out of habit rather than brand loyalty (e.g., table salt). Buyers do not search extensively for information, evaluate brand characteristics, or make weighty purchase decisions.
Variety-Seeking Buying Behavior (Mua tìm kiếm sự đa dạng):
Characterized by Low Consumer Involvement but Significant Perceived Differences Between Brands.
Consumers do a lot of brand switching for the sake of variety, novelty, or boredom rather than dissatisfaction (e.g., buying different brands of cookies).
The Consumer Buyer Decision Process
The Five Steps in the Buyer Decision Process:
1. Need Recognition (Nhận biết nhu cầu):
The consumer recognizes a problem or need, triggered by internal stimuli (normal needs such as hunger, thirst) or external stimuli (an advertisement or discussion with a friend).
2. Information Search (Tìm kiếm thông tin):
The stage where the consumer is motivated to search for more information through various sources:
Personal Sources: Family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances (most effective in evaluating products).
Commercial Sources: Advertising, salespeople, dealer websites, packaging, displays (inform the buyer).
Public Sources: Mass media, consumer-rating organizations, social media searches.
Experiential Sources: Handling, examining, using the product.
3. Evaluation of Alternatives (Đánh giá các phương án):
The stage in which the consumer uses information to evaluate alternative brands in the choice set, using calculations, logical analysis, or intuition.
4. Purchase Decision (Quyết định mua):
The buyer's decision about which brand to purchase.
Two factors can come between the purchase intention and the purchase decision:
Attitudes of others.
Unexpected situational factors.
5. Postpurchase Behavior (Hành vi sau khi mua):
The stage where consumers take further action after purchase, based on their satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
Determined by the relationship between consumer expectations and the product's perceived performance.
Cognitive Dissonance (Sự bất hòa về nhận thức): Buyer discomfort caused by postpurchase conflict, occurring in almost all major purchases as consumers feel uneasy about acquiring the drawbacks of the chosen brand and losing the benefits of the rejected brands.
New Product Adoption Process and Adopter Categories
The Adoption Process (Quá trình Tiếp nhận Sản phẩm Mới):
The mental process through which an individual passes from first hearing about an innovation to final regular usage.
Five Stages in the Adoption Process:
Awareness (Nhận biết): The consumer becomes aware of the new product but lacks information about it.
Interest (Quan tâm): The consumer is stimulated to seek information about the new product.
Evaluation (Đánh giá): The consumer considers whether trying the new product makes sense.
Trial (Dùng thử): The consumer tries the new product on a small scale to improve his or her estimate of its value.
Adoption (Chấp nhận): The consumer decides to make full and regular use of the new product.
Individual Differences in Innovativeness (Adopter Categories):
Consumers differ in their readiness to try new products, falling into five distinct adopter groups:
Innovators: Venturesome individuals who try new ideas at some risk (\ of adopters).
Early Adopters: Guided by respect; opinion leaders in their communities who adopt new ideas early but carefully (\ of adopters).
Early Mainstream: Deliberate individuals who adopt new ideas before the average person, although they rarely are leaders (\ of adopters).
Late Mainstream: Skeptical individuals who adopt an innovation only after a majority of people have tried it (\ of adopters).
Lagging Adopters: Tradition-bound individuals who are suspicious of changes and adopt the innovation only when it has become something of a tradition itself (\ of adopters).
Product Characteristics Influencing the Rate of Adoption:
Relative Advantage (Lợi thế tương đối): The degree to which the innovation appears superior to existing products.
Compatibility (Tính tương thích): The degree to which the innovation fits the values and experiences of potential consumers.
Complexity (Độ phức tạp): The degree to which the innovation is difficult to understand or use.
Divisibility (Khả năng dùng thử): The degree to which the innovation may be tried on a limited basis.
Communicability (Khả năng quan sát / truyền thông): The degree to which the results of using the innovation can be observed or described to others.