A sneak-peek into the big bad world of marketing brought to you by the coolest and most vibrant Interest Group on Campus: \m/Power

mPower (or rather \m/Power, as we are better known) is the Marketing Interest Group of IIM Kozhikode. Apart from industry interactions with eminent marketers via workshops and seminars, we, at \m/Power conduct events like quizzes, extempore, debates and Group Discussions. The marquee events at \m/Power include the KMAC (Kozhikode Marketing Acumen Certificate), which would probably be your first CV point containing the word marketing. We also prepare you for the all important summer internships by means of experience sharing, briefing about the companies, and by organizing mock GDs and interviews for the entire batch. You can connect with us via our Facebook page (facebook.com/mPowerIIMK) and/or our blog (mpower.iimk.ac.in). You can also write to us at mpower@iimk.ac.in.

\m/arketing, what is it?

People say marketing is same as selling. Is it?

Of all the things, what all can be marketed?

Who are the gentlemen who market anyway?

Err whats this STP then?

Rightso all gentlemen market the same way?

According to the American Marketing Association, Marketing is an organizational function and a set of pro-cesses for creating, communicating, and delivering value to the customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders. Started fretting already? Well, theres no need to. \m/Power is at you service. To cut the long things short, Marketing is meeting needs profitably. So heres how it goes:

By authoring the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling created value. By value, we mean any combination of Quality, Service and Price. By the viral word-of-mouth campaigns and in-store promotions, the proposed value was communicated to the potential buyers. Finally, by means of online and in-store sales, the value was delivered.

Creating Communicating Delivering

Selling is the most visible leg of marketing. If we go back to the sequence discussed before, selling deals with delivering the value that has been created and communicated. Peter Drucker, a Management Guru opines that the purpose of marketing is to make Sales superfluous. In other words, the product should sell itself. However, we believe that Sales is the most elemental facet of Marketing. Why would you choose Slice over Minute Maid? Both taste the same. It is sometimes the shape of the bottle or a recent catchy advertisement of that product which lures a customer to prefer one product over the other. In most cases, the product which is kept at eye level, is pitched for by the seller or even carries seasonal discounts, is the one more likely to be preferred over the other.

Goods: Cars, trucks, machinery, TV sets Services: Airlines, hotels, car-rentals, boutiques Events: FIFA World Cup, IPL, Olympic Games Experience: A theme-based restaurant like Machester United Caf Bar, or an amusement park like Wonder-la or Essel World Persons: Who else other than the one and only NaMo?

Places: The Khushboo Gujarat Ki Campaign with Amitabh Bachchan promoting Gujarat Tourism Properties: The Classifieds information, i.e., real estate, stocks and bonds Organizations: Teach for India, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Ideas: Aishwarya Rai promoting the voluntary eye donation campaign, Amitabh Bachchan promtoting the 2 boond zindagi ki polio campaign Information: Oxford Dictionary

Gentleman 1(seller) seeks or intends to seek a response from Gentleman 2(customer). Marketers assessment of demand leads to the following 8 possible states 1. -ve demand: Gentleman 2 dislikes the product and may even pay to avoid purchasing it from Gentleman 1

2. Non-existent demand: Gentleman 2 is completely unaware of what gentleman 1 is selling

3. Latent demand: Gentleman 1s products are just not good enough to satisfy gentleman 2s needs

4. Declining demand: With time, gentleman 2 reduces the frequency of purchase of gentleman 1s products

5. Irregular demand: Gentleman 2s purchase vary on a seasonal, monthly, weekly, daily or even an hourly basis

6. Full demand: Gentleman 2 will purchase everything that Gentleman 1 sells

7. Overfull demand: Gentlemen 3, 4 and 5 also want to purchase from Gentleman 1 now

8. Unwholesome demand: Even though gentleman 1s product is harmful for the society, gentleman 2 purchases it nevertheless.

The aim of marketing is to divide, divide and divide even further until we find the right set of products for the right set of customers. Segmentation is the process of profiling diverse buyer groups on the basis of some geographic, demographic, psychographic or behavioural metric. For instance, McDonalds segments potential customers, among other things, on the basis of age, broadly into children and adults. After segmentation, Target segment(s) are decided. For each identified target segment, the firm develops an offering. McDonalds offers different meals for the children and adult segments. Positioning is how the above offering is fixated in the minds of the target buyers. A kid coming to McDonalds should see it as a fun place to be with the yummy fast-food and the all the goodies that come along with it. An adult should see McDonalds as a place where you get decent quality fast-food at a reasonable cost delivered in miniscule time. Apart from STP, there are 3 more important definitions which you should know. This is the famous Needs, Wants and Demands triad. A need is a basic human desire. Food, Shelter and Clothing is a need. A specific need is called a want. So, a desire to gulp down a bottle of Black Dog, wear Armani and spending a weekend at the Taj in Colaba are all wants. A Demand is a want constrained by the depth of your pockets. So, instead of the aforesaid, your demands are rather Seagrams, pair of Levis and coffee at Leopold.

Do all market the same way? Of course not! We dare say, the marketing philosophy has multiple thought processes. Which is the best thought process? The first is the Production Concept. This concept holds that customers prefer products that are inexpensive and widely available. Gurgaon based Micromax which sells the second most number of handsets in India used this philosophy to beat the premium brands. The Product Concept, stresses the fact that customers prefer products offering the best quality, performance or other innovative features. Luxury car brands Porsche and Laborghini epitomize this school of thought. According to the Selling Concept, customers, if left alone would not buy an organizations products. Did you enroll for the First Citizen program of Shoppers Stop without the cashier asking you to? Finally, we have the Marketing Concept. A stark contrast to the Selling Concept, the idea behind this concept is to find the right products for your customers rather than finding the right customers for your product. Yum Brands Pizza Hut lets you choose the crust, the key ingredients and finally the toppings.

Most of the discussions here have been borrowed from Marketing Management , A South Asian Perspective (Pearson) by Philip Kotler, Kevin Lane Keller, Abraham Koshy and Milthileshwar Jha. It is better known as the Bible of marketing. In all likelihood, you would not need to refer any other text. However, in case you need a second opinion, you may refer to the

Etzel, Bruce, Stanton, Pandit: Marketing (TMH)

Perrault, Cannon, McCarthy: Basic Marketing (TMH)

Ramaswamy, Namakumari: Marketing Manage-ment: Global Perspective Indian Context (Macmillan)

Saxena: Marketing Management (TMH)