Chapter 3 - Introduction to Marketing

What is Marketing?

The main purpose of a business is to the needs and wants of its customer. Businesses gather information about what customers desire by carrying out marketing activities.

satisfying customer in ways that are better then competitors by offering the right product , price , place and promotion.

1 - Product
2 - Price
3 - Place
4 - promotion

For the marketing mix to be effective, a business first needs to know its customer. It is important to gather information about customer's needs and wants in order to create goods and services desired by them

What product, price , place and promotion will attract the customer and how can the businesses be different from or better than its competitors.

Identify the potential customer groups?

A business may choose to serve one group or a few groups of customer with similar needs and wants. The group of customer a business chooses to serve is known as its target market

Know your customers

Leisure tourist
- they travel for pleasure , rest and relaxation. They enjoy activities such as visiting places of interest and shopping.

Business tourist
- they travel because of their jobs, usually for meetings or for training. They tend to have a fixed schedule and little time for recreational activities.

Medical tourist
- they travel to seek medical treatment from another country. They may include some leisure activities in the same trip.

Mature tourist
- they are the elderly who travel for pleasure, rest and relaxation. They have money and time, and tend to enjoy historical and cultural sites. They usually buy tour packages.

Stopover tourist
- they stop at a particular country to break a long flight. They usually stay for a short period of one or two nights.

Special interest tourist
- they travel to pursue their hobbies and interests outside of their own countries. for example a sport tourist who is a marathon runner who travels to a foreign country to participate in a marathon.

Understand Customers' Needs and Wants

A market survey is a way for businesses to gather information about their customer's preferences and buying habits, in order to make a decision on the marketing mix.

Step 1: Decide on the objectives of the market survey
- businesses must have a clear objectives at the start of the survey to help them decide what questions to ask and collect the information that they need.

Step 2: Choose a method survey
- To find out more about its target market, business can conduct a survey by getting customer to fill out a questionnaire through different methods. businesses need to know what's the most suitable survey methods after weighing the pros and cons of each other and they must also consider who to survey and how many respondents they need.

Step 3: Design the questionnaire
- A well-designed questionnaire encourages respondents to provide relevant information that will be useful for decision-making.

Step 4: Conduct the survey
- Businesses need to set a deadlines for completing their surveys. This provides a target for businesses to work towards and to plan the number of respondents to approach each day in order to meet the deadline.

Step 5: Analyse the data
- After completing the survey, the data is collated and presented so that it is easier to understand and analyse. Similar responses are first grouped and counted. Software such as Microsoft Excel can be used to present the results clearly in the form of tables , bar charts and pie charts.

Types of survey methods?

Personal survey
- This method involves face-to-face interaction with respondents. It also takes place at respondents homes or at public places such as streets and shopping centre. While conducting the survey, interviews can observe the reactions and behaviours of respondents and gather immediate feedback on the products when samples are shown. But conducting the survey is expensive and time-consuming.

Telephone survey
- This method may involve an interviewer or it may be fully automated. This survey is a popular choice nowadays as many people own mobile phones, and they are useful for getting quick answer to simple questions. However, they are easy to ignore and can result in a survey not getting enough respondents and thus not enough data to analyse accurately.

Postal survey
- This method involve mailing questionnaire to potential respondents. It may be accompanied by pictures or products samples. A postal survey is a quick way to reach out to a large number of people ( global ) , However not many people will respond.

Online survey
- This method involves spending questionnaire to respondents either via email or through websites , blogs and social networking sites. The links to complete the survey can also be sent to potential respondents via text messages to mobile phone. It is cheap and fast to conduct online survey. However, respondents may not be truthful in their responses as they can be remain anonymous.

What are "closed-ended" and "open-ended" questions?

- A close-ended question is a type of question that can be answered quickly by choosing from a set of options.

- An open-ended question is a type of question that respondents can create their own answers too.

Ways of presenting data?

- there are 3 ways to present data
- 1: frequency table
2: bar chart
3: pie chart