Yellow Pages UAE

It is an example which can be used as a free study to four or five managers, with prices as mentioned at the end of page 2.

My advice is to go, first through the whole two pages red rectangulars content, then go through the references which will take not less than 2 months, if properly investigated, by staff.

Kotler Quotes on Marketing

• The future is not ahead of us.  It has already happened.  Unfortunately, it is unequally distributed among companies, industries and nations.
• The Internet will create new winners and bury the laggards.
• It is no longer enough to satisfy customers. You must delight them.
• It is more important to do what is strategically right than what is immediately profitable.
• Marketing is becoming a battle based more on information than on sales power.
• Today you have to run faster to stay in the same place.
• The most important thing is to forecast where customers are moving  and to be in front of them.
• Many businesses are wisely turning their suppliers and distributors into valued partners .
• Poor firms ignore their competitors; average firms copy their competitors; winning firms lead their competitors.
• Don’t buy market share. Figure out how to earn it..
• Watch the product life cycle; but more important, watch the market life cycle .
• Who should ultimately design the product ? The customer of course.
• Your company does not belong in markets where it cannot be the best.
• The best way to get and keep customers is to constantly figure out how to give them more for less.
• Every business is a service business. Does your service put a smile on the customer's face?
• Sell value, not price.
• Establish channels for different target markets and aim for efficiency, control, and adaptability.
• Successful " go-to-market " strategies require integrating retailers, wholesalers, and logistical organizations.
• Integrated marketing communications is a way of looking at the whole marketing process from the viewpoint of the customer.
• The best advertising is done by satisfied customers.
• The successful salesperson cares first for the customers, second for the products.
• The marketing organization will have to redefine its role from managing customer interactions to integrating and managing all the company’s customer facing processes .

[1] Defining Marketing for the 21st Century

1. Business today face three major challenges and opportunities: globalization, the effects of advances in technology, and deregulation.
2. Marketing is typically seen as the task of creating, promoting, and delivering goods and services to consumers and businesses. Effective marketing can take many forms: It can be entrepreneurial, formulated, or intrepreneurial; and marketers are involved in marketing many types of entities; goods, services, experiences, events, persons, places, properties, organizations, information, and ideas.
3. Marketers are skilled at managing demand: They seek to influence the level, timing, and composition of demand. To do this, they face a host of decisions, from major ones such as what features a new product should have to minor ones  such as the color of packaging. They also operate in four different marketplaces: consumer, business, global, and nonprofit.
4. For each chosen target market, a firm develops a market offering that is positioned in the minds of the buyers as delivering some central benefits. Marketers must try to understand the target market's needs, wants, and demands. A product or offering will be successful if it delivers value and satisfaction to the target buyer. The term markets covers various grouping of customers. Today there are both physical marketplaces and digital  marketplaces, as well as megamarkets.
5. Exchange involves obtaining a desired product from someone by offering something in return. A transaction is a trade of values between two or more parties: It involves at least two things of value, agreed-upon conditions, a time of agreement, and a place of agreement. In the most generic sense, marketers seek to elicit a behavioral response from another party: a purchase, a vote, active membership, adoption of a cause.
6. Relationship marketing has the aim of building long-term, mutually satisfying relations with key parties- customers, suppliers, and distributors-in order to earn and retain their long-term preference and business. The ultimate outcome of relationship marketing is the building of a unique company asset called a marketing network.
7. Marketers reach their markets through various channels-communication, distribution, and selling. Marketers operate in a task environment and a broad environment. They face competition from actual and potential rival offerings and substitutes. The set of tools marketers use to elicit the desired responses from their target markets is called marketing mix. ( Price, Promotion, Product, and Price ).
8. There are six competing concepts under which organizations can choose to conduct their business: the production concept,  product concept, selling concept, marketing concept, customer concept, and societal marketing concept. The first three are of limited use today. The marketing concept holds that the key to achieving organizational goals consists of determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors. It starts with well-defined market, focuses on customer needs, coordinates all the activities that will affect customers, and produces profit by satisfying customers. The customer concept addresses the individual needs of specific customers and aims to build customer loyalty and lifetime value.
9. The societal marketing concept holds that the organization's task is to determine the needs, wants, and interests of target markets and deliver the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors, in a way that preserves or enhances the consumer's and society's well-being. The concept call upon marketers to balance three considerations: company profits, consumer want satisfaction, and the public interest.

[2] Adapting Marketing to the New Economy

1. New technological advances and new market forces are creating a new economy. Companies and marketers need to add new tools and practices if they hope to be successful.
2. Four specific drivers of the new economy are digitalization and connectivity, disintermediation and reintermediation, customization and customerization, and industry convergence. Digitalization in particular has introduced exciting new capabilities for consumers and for businesses.
3. The new economy is shifting several old economy business practices toward organizing by customer segments (instead of only by products), focusing on customer lifetime value (instead of only transactions), focusing on stakeholders (and not only shareholders),getting everyone to do the marketing, building brands through behavior (not just advertising ), focusing on customer retention (as much as customer acquisition ), measuring customer satisfaction, and underpromising and overdelivering.
4. Companies face many questions in adopting e-marketing. Three of them are knowing how to design an attractive web site, knowing how to advertise on the web, and knowing how to build a sound revenue and profit model for their dot-com business.
5. Companies are also becoming skilled in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which focuses on meeting the individual needs of valued customers. The skill requires building a customer database and doing datamining to detect trends, segments, and individual needs.

[3] Building Customer Satisfaction, Value, and Retention

1. Customers are value-maximizers. They form an expectation of value and act on it. Buyers will buy from the firm that they perceive to offer the highest customer-delivered value, defined as the difference between total customer value and total customer cost.
2. A buyer's satisfaction is a function of the products perceived performance and the buyer's expectations. Recognizing that high satisfaction leads to high customer loyalty, many companies today are aiming for TCS-total customer satisfaction. For such companies, customer satisfaction is both a goal and a marketing tool.
3. Strong companies develop superior capabilities in managing core business processes such as new-product realization, inventory management, and customer acquisition and retention. Managing these core processes effectively means creating a marketing network in which the company works closely with all parties in the production and distribution chain, from suppliers of raw materials to retail distributors. Companies no longer compete- marketing network do.
4. Losing profitable customers can dramatically affect a firm's profits. The cost of attracting a new customer is estimated to be five times the cost of keeping a current customer happy. The key of retaining customers is relationship marketing. To keep customers happy, marketers can add financial or social benefits to products, or create structural ties between the company and its customers.
5. Quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. Today's companies have no choice but to implement total quality management programs if they are to remain solvent and profitable. Total quality is the key to value creation and customer satisfaction.
6. Marketing managers have two responsibilities in a quality centered company. First, they must participate in formulating strategies and policies designed to help the company win through total quality excellence. Second, they must deliver marketing quality alongside production quality. Each marketing activity--marketing research, sales training, advertising, customer service, and so on--must be performed to high standards.

PART 2.  Analyzing Marketing Opportunities

[4] Winning markets through market-oriented strategic planning

1. Market-oriented strategic planning is the managerial process of developing and maintaining a viable fit between the organization's objectives, skills, and resources and its changing market opportunities. The aim of strategic planning is to shape the company's businesses and products so that they yield target profits and growth. Strategic planning takes place at four levels: corporate, division, business unit, and product.

2. Corporate headquarters is responsible for setting the strategic-planning process in motion. The corporate strategy establishes the framework within which the divisions and business units prepare their strategic plans. Setting a corporate strategy entails four activities: defining the corporate mission, establishing strategic business units (SBUs), assigning resources to each SBU based on its market attractiveness and business strength, and planning new businesses and downsizing older businesses.

3. Strategic planning for individual businesses entails the following activities: defining the business mission, analyzing external opportunities and threats, analyzing internal strengths and weaknesses, formulating goals, formulating strategy, formulating supporting programs, and gathering feedback and exercising control.

4. The marketing process consists of four steps: analyzing market opportunities; developing marketing strategies; planning marketing programs; and organizing, implementing, and controlling the marketing effort.

5. Each product level within a business unit must develop a marketing plan for achieving its goals. The marketing plan is one of the most important outputs of the marketing process, and it should contain the following elements: an executive summary and table of contents; an overview of the current marketing situation; an analysis of the opportunities and issues facing the product; a summary of the plan's financial and marketing objectives; an overview of the marketing strategy to be used to achieve the plan's objectives; a description of the action programs to be implemented to achieve the plan's objectives; a projected profit-and-loss statement; and a summary of the controls to be used in monitoring the plan's progress. 

[5] Gathering information and measuring market demand

1. Three developments make the need for marketing information greater now than any time in the past: the rise of global marketing, the new emphasis on buyers' wants, and the trend toward nonprice competition.

2. To carry out their analysis, planning, implementation, and control responsibilities, marketing manager need a marketing information system (MIS). The role of the MIS is to assess the managers' information needs, develop the needed information, and distribute that information in a timely manner.

3. An MIS has four components: (a) an internal records system, which includes information on the order-to-payment cycle and sales reporting systems; (b) a marketing intelligence system, a set of procedures and sources used by managers to obtain everyday information about pertinent developments in the marketing environment; (c) a marketing research system that allows for the systematic design, collection, analysis, and reporting of data and findings relevant to a specific marketing situation; and (d) a computerised marketing decision support system that helps managers interpret relevant information and turn it into a basis for marketing action.

4. Companies can conduct their own marketing research or hire other companies to do it for them. Good marketing research is characterized by the scientific method, creativity, multiple research methods, accurate model building, cost-benefit analysis, healthy skepticism, and ethical focus.

5. The process consists of defining the problem and research objective, developing the research plan, collecting the information, analyzing the information, and presenting the findings to management. In conducting research, firms must decide whether to collect their own data or use data that already exist. They must also decide which research approach (observational, focus-group, survey, behavioral data, or experimental) and which research instrument (questionnaire or mechanical instruments) to use. In addition, they must decide on a sampling plan and contact methods.

6. One major reason for undertaking marketing research is to discover market opportunities. Once the research is complete, the company must carefully evaluate its opportunities and decide which markets to enter. Once in the market, it must prepare sales forecasts based on estimates of demand.

7. There are two types of demand: market demand and company demand. To estimate current demand, companies attempt to determine total market potential, area market potential, industry sales, and market share. To estimate future demand, companies survey buyers' intentions, solicit their sales force's input, gather expert opinions, or engage in marketing testing. Mathematical models, advanced statistical techniques, and computerized data collection procedures are essential to all types of demand and sales forecasting.   

[6] Scanning the marketing environment

1. Successful companies realize that the marketing environment presents a never-ending series of opportunities and threats. The major responsibility for identifying significant changes in the macroenvironment falls to a company's marketers. More than any other group in the company, marketing managers must be the trend trackers and opportunity seekers.
2. Many opportunities are found by identifying  trends (directions or sequences of event that have some momentum and durability) and megatrends (major social, economic, political, and technological changes that have long-lasting influence).
3. Within the rapidly changing global picture, marketers must monitor six major environmental forces: demographic, economic, natural, technological, political-legal, and social-cultural.
4. In the demographic environment, marketers must be aware of worldwide population growth; changing mixes of age, ethnic composition, and educational levels; the rise of nontraditional families; large geographic shifts in population; and the move to micromarketing and away from mass marketing.
5. In the economic arena, marketers need to focus on income distribution and levels of savings, debt, and credit availability.
6. In the natural environment, marketers need to be aware of raw materials shortages, increased energy costs and pollution levels, and the changing role of governments in environmental protection.
7. In the technological arena, marketers should take account of the accelerating pace of technological change, opportunities for innovation, varying R&D budgets, and the increased governmental regulation brought about by technological change.
8. In the political-legal environment, marketers must work within the many laws regulating business practices and with various special-interest groups.
9. In the social-cultural arena, marketers must understand people's views of themselves, others, organizations, society, nature, and the universe. They must market products that corrrespond to society's core and secondary values, and address the needs of different subcultures within a society.  

[7] Analyzing consumer markets and buyer behavior

1. Consumer behavior is influenced by four factors: cultural (culture, subculture, and social class); social (reference groups, family, and social roles and statuses); personal (age, stage in the life cycle, occupation, economic circumstances, lifestyle, personality, and self-concept); and psychological (motivation, perception, learning, beliefs, and attitudes). Research into all these factors can provide clues to reach and serve consumers more effectively.

2. To understand how consumers actually make buying decisions, marketers must identify who makes and has input into the buying decision; people can be initiators, influencers, deciders, buyers, or users, and different marketing campaigns might be targeted to each type of person. Marketers must also examine buyers' level of involvement and the number of brands available to determine whether consumers are engaging in complex buying behavior, dissonance-reducing buying behavior, habitual buying behavior, or variety-seeking buying behavior.

3. The typical buying process consists of the following sequence of events: problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and postpurchase behavior. The marketers' job is to understand the buyer's behavior at each stage. The attitudes of others, unanticipated situational factors, and perceived risk may all affect the decision to buy, as will consumers' levels of postpurchase satisfaction and postpurchase actions on the part of the company.

4. Other models of the buying decision process include the health model and the customer activity cycle model.

[8] Analyzing business markets and business buying behavior

1. Organizational buying is the decision-making process by which formal organizations establish the need for purchased products and services, then identify, evaluate, and choose among alternative brands and suppliers. The business market consists of all the organizations that acquire goods and services used in the production of other products and services that are sold, rented, or supplied to others.

2. Compared to consumer markets, business markets generally have fewer and larger buyers, a closer customer-supplier relationship, and more geographically concentrated buyers. Demand in the business market is derived from demand in the consumer market and fluctuates with the business cycle. Nonetheless, the total demand for many business goods and services is quite price-inelastic. Business marketers need to be aware of the role of professional purchasers and their influencers, the need for multiple sales calls, and the importance of direct purchasing, reciprocity, and leasing.

3. The buying center is the decision-making unit of a buying organization. It consists of initiators, users, influencers, deciders, approvers, buyers, and gatekeepers. To influence these parties, marketers must be aware of environmental, organizational, interpersonal, and individual factors.

4. The buying process consists of eight stages called buy phases: (1) problem recognition, (2) general need description, (3) product specification, (4) supplier search, (5) proposal solicitation, (6) supplier selection, (7) order-routine specification, and (8) performance review.

5. The institutional market consists of schools, hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and other institutions that must provide goods and services to people in their care. Buyers for government organizations tend to require a great deal of paperwork from their vendors and tend to favor open bidding and domestic companies. Suppliers must be prepared to adapt their offers to the special needs and procedures found in institutional and government markets.

[9] Dealing with the competition

1. To prepare an effective marketing strategy, a company must study its competitors as well as its actual and potential customers. Companies need to identify competitors' strategies, objectives, strengths, weaknesses, and reaction patterns. They also need to know how to design an effective competitive intelligence system.

2. A company's closest competitors are those seeking to satisfy the same customers and needs and making similar offers. A company should also pay attention to latent competitors, who may offer new or other ways to satisfy the same needs. A company should identify competitors by using both industry and market-based analyses.

3. Competitive intelligence needs to be collected, interpreted, and disseminated continuously. Managers should be able to receive timely information about competitors.

4. Managers need to conduct a customer value analysis to reveal the company's strengths and weaknesses relative to competitors. The aim of this analysis is to determine the benefits customers want and how they perceive the relative value of competitors' offers.

5. A market leader has the largest market share in the relevant product market. To remain dominant, the leader looks for ways to expand total market demand, attempts to protect its current market share, and perhaps tries to increase its market share.

6. A market challenger attacks the market leader and other competitors in an aggressive bid for more market share. Challengers can choose from five types of general attack, challengers must also choose specific strategies: discount prices, produce cheaper goods, produce prestige goods, produce a wide variety of goods, innovate in products or distribution, improve services, reduce manufacturing costs, or engage in intensive advertising.
7. A market follower is a runner-up firm that is willing to maintain its market share and not rock the boat. A follower can play the role of counterfeiter, cloner, imitator, or adapter.
8. A market nicher serves small market segments not being served by larger firms.  The key to nichemanship is specialization.
9. As important as a competitive orientation is in today's global markets, companies should not overdo the emphasis on competitors. They should maintain a good balance of consumer and competitor monitoring.

[10] Identifying market segments and selecting target markets

1. Target marketing involves three activities: market segmentation, market targeting, and market positioning.

2. Markets can be targeted at four levels: segments, niches, local areas, and individuals. Market segments are large identifiable groups within a market. A niche is a more narrowly defined group. Marketers are localizing their campaigns for trading areas, neighborhoods, and even individual stores. Finally, more companies now practice individual and mass-customization. The future is likely to see more self-marketing, a form of individual marketing in which individual consumers take the initiative in designing products and brands.

3.  There are two bases for segmenting consumer markets: consumer characteristics and consumer responses. The major segmentation variables for consumer markets are geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral. These variables can be used singly or in combination. Business marketers use all these variables along with operating variables, purchasing approaches, and situational factors. To be useful, market segments must be measurable, substantial, accessible, differentiable, and accountable.

4. Once a firm has identified its market-segment opportunities, it has to evaluate the various segments and decide how many and which ones to target. In evaluating segments, it must look at the segment's attractiveness indicators and the company's objectives and resources. In choosing which segments to target, the company can choose to focus on a single segment, several segments, a specific product, a specific market, or the full market. If it decides to serve the full market, it must choose between differentiated and undifferentiated marketing.

5. Marketers must choose target markets in a socially responsible manner. Marketers must also monitor segment interrelationships, and seek economies ofscope and the potential for marketing to supersegments. Marketers should develop segment-by-segment invasions plans. Finally, market segment managers should be prepared to cooperate in the interest of overall company performance.