Marketing Management and Strategy: Marketing Engineering Applications, Second Edition

Rapid changes in the marketplace, in data availability, and in the computing environment are transforming the structure and content of the marketing manager's job. As a profession, marketing is evolving so that it is no longer based primarily on conceptual content and, increasingly, senior managers are requiring marketers to provide compelling financial justification for their marketing plans and programs. While many view traditional marketing as an art and some view it as a science, the new marketing increasingly looks like engineering (that is, combining art and science to solve specific problems). There will always be a central role for marketing concepts. Indeed, to make use of the powerful information tools now available requires sound conceptual grounding. But marketers need more than concepts to fully exploit the resources available to them. They need to move beyond conceptual marketing toward what we call marketing engineering: the use of interactive computer decision models to help support marketing decisions. We designed this package of materials to supplement either a basic marketing course or a course in marketing strategy. It includes cases and exercises selected from our book,Marketing Engineering(Prentice Hall, 2003) that are appropriate for such courses. These selections are designed to make the corresponding material in the basic courses come alive. Each case or exercise here is designed to accompany a specific marketing engineering software application and, if you purchased this book as a requirement for a course, the bulk of your purchase price covers an access fee for the software. You should find that software installed on your school's network. Although each piece of software has associated with it a corresponding exercise or case problem, most of the software modules are completely independent of those cases and can be used separately on other case-problems or on real problems. According to most marketing texts, the most common and fundamental strategic marketing problems involve segmentation, targeting, positioning and associated resource allocation decisions. We have selected and included six cases and associated software packages to correspond to that set of broad needs, as follows: Case 1: Conglomerate's New PDA Software: Needs-based Segmentation Using Cluster Analysis: This general software tool performs cluster analysis, factor analysis and discriminant analysis. The accompanying case addresses how to segment the market on the basis of needs for a sample of prospective buyers for a new personal digital assistant. The case raises issues such as: (1) How many segments should the firm consider (and how do those segments differ)? (2) Which of those segments should the firm target? (See GE model below). (3) How many different products should the firms offer? (also linked to GE model). (4) How should the new product be positioned? (See Positioning Analysis, below.) Case 2: ABB Electric Segmentation Software: Choice-based Segmentation Using Multinomial Logit Analysis: This software tool includes a multinomial logit analysis module that one can use to identify the variables that most influence customer choices, and to determine the probability that each customer will purchase each of the available choice alternatives. The accompanying case--ABB Electric--asks which of these customers or prospects are the best ones to target with a supplementary marketing program. The case introduces the concept of segmentation by switchability and shows how to use that information to profitably focus sales effort. Case 3: Product Planning Using the GE/McKinsey Approach at Addison Wesley Longman Software: Targeting/Business Prioritization Using GE/McKinsey Approach: This software tool allows the user to build a customized portfolio of SBUs (Strategic Business Units) and associated attribute dimensions and weightsGary L. Lilien is the author of 'Marketing Management and Strategy: Marketing Engineering Applications, Second Edition', published 2002 under ISBN 9780130084637 and ISBN 0130084638.