Enterprise Marketing and Marketing Mix
What the domain tests
Marketing orientation versus selling, market research, segmentation–targeting–positioning, the 4Ps and 7Ps, branding, pricing methods and promotion tools.
Marketing vs selling
Marketing begins with customer needs, precedes production, and aims at satisfaction and repeat purchase; selling begins after production and pushes what already exists. Advertising is one promotion tool, not the whole of marketing.
Segmentation, targeting, positioning
- Segmentation bases: geographic, demographic, psychographic, behavioural.
- Targeting: undifferentiated, differentiated, concentrated, micromarketing.
- Positioning: the place a brand occupies in the customer's mind relative to competitors, expressed as a value proposition.
The marketing mix
Product: core, actual and augmented levels; branding, packaging, labelling, quality. Price: objectives (profit, market share, survival, prestige); methods - cost-plus/mark-up, penetration, skimming, competitive, value-based; influenced by cost, demand elasticity, competition and perceived value. Place: channel levels; direct (own outlet, e-commerce) versus indirect (wholesaler, retailer, agent); logistics. Promotion: advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, publicity (unpaid) and public relations; digital channels such as website/SEO, social media, email, influencer and content marketing.
Services and the 7Ps
Services add people, process and physical evidence, because they are intangible, inseparable, variable and perishable.
Worked example
A startup launches a premium smartwatch with weak competition and inelastic demand. Penetration pricing would signal cheapness and leave money on the table; cost-plus ignores willingness to pay; skimming - high launch price, then reductions - recovers R&D and reinforces premium positioning. Choose skimming and review after six months.
Traps
- Defining marketing as selling or advertising.
- Confusing publicity (unpaid, uncontrolled) with advertising.
- Applying the 4Ps to a service without people, process and physical evidence.
- Choosing a pricing method without linking it to objectives and elasticity.
- Treating a segment as the whole market.