Marketing Management

Marketing Management: Needs Before Products

Marketing questions are usually about sequence and orientation. The same idea returns in different words — which philosophy a firm is actually practising, what must exist before a product is designed, and who the seller is aiming at.

What These 29 Questions Cover

• The marketing philosophies: the production, product, selling and marketing concepts, and how to identify each from a described firm — the densest area on this page.
• Goods and buyer types: unsought goods such as insurance and funeral plots, and business markets versus consumer markets.
• Customer orientation: target markets, needs and wants, and customer value.
• Brand, pricing and promotion: branding decisions, pricing as a mix element, and advertising.
• Retailing and modern channels: retailers, and the comparison between brick-and-click firms and pure-click businesses.

Still Missing From This Page

This is the smallest commerce bank on the site, and the gaps are examinable. There are no questions yet on segmentation bases and the STP sequence, the product life cycle and product-mix decisions, packaging and labelling, channel design and distribution intensity (intensive, selective, exclusive), the elements of the promotion mix including push versus pull, personal selling, consumer buying behaviour, or services marketing. Study those from your own notes until the sets are expanded.

How to Use These Sets

Read the explanation even when you answer correctly — the distinction being tested is usually hiding in the wrong options. For the missing topics above, treat the rules below as a checklist of what you still need to learn elsewhere.

Rules Worth Memorising

• Segmentation precedes targeting, and targeting precedes positioning — the order is examinable.
• Introduction-stage pricing is either penetration or skimming; the choice depends on price sensitivity and the risk of imitation.
• Intensive distribution suits convenience goods; exclusive distribution suits specialty goods.
• A pull strategy aims at the consumer; a push strategy aims at the channel.
• Services add physical evidence, people and process to the four Ps because they are intangible, inseparable, variable and perishable.