DISCUSSIONS 1

"Marketing Concepts" Please respond to the following:

-Provide a recent example of a product you purchased that demonstrates marketing as an exchange relationship. Analyze the 4Ps as it relates to this purchase's exchange relationship.

-Make an argument for the most important and the least important aspect of the 5Cs.

This is a COMMENT from my Professor, which can give an idea and help you answering the above discussions 1.

It's time to retool the 4 P's of marketing for today's B2B reality. As a framework for fine-tuning the marketing mix, the P's-product, place, price, and promotion-have served consumer marketers well for half a century. But in the B2B world, they yield narrow, product-focused strategies that are increasingly at odds with the imperative to deliver solutions. In a five-year study involving more than 500 managers and customers in multiple countries and across a wide range of B2B industries, we found that the 4 P's model undercuts B2B marketers in three important ways: It leads their marketing and sales teams to stress product technology and quality even though these are no longer differentiators but are simply the cost of entry. It underemphasizes the need to build a robust case for the superior value of their solutions. And it distracts them from leveraging their advantage as a trusted source of diagnostics, advice, and problem solving. It's not that the 4 P's are irrelevant, just that they need to be reinterpreted to serve B2B marketers. The model shifts the emphasis from products to solutions, place to access, price to value, and promotion to education-SAVE, for short.

DISCUSSION 2

"Marketing's Impact" Please respond to the following:

-Determine the challenges marketers currently face with clutter and its impact on marketing communication. Suggest two solutions to this dilemma.

- Imagine how your life would be different if there were no or limited marketing. Determine the positive and negative social impacts you would foresee. Provide your rationale.

This is a COMMENT from my Professor, which can give an idea and help you answering the above discussions 2.

Is there anything else to business except Marketing and Innovation? COLLAPSE Parent Post "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. "Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." - Peter Drucker

What is the future of marketing, PR and advertising agencies going to look like? While I don't have a crystal ball (or do I? muhahaha) based on thousands of conversations with entrepreneurs, big brands, consultants and agencies, and through content consulting here are some thoughts: The days of Mad Men are long gone. Why? For one thing: MASSIVE overhead. Big buildings, segways for employees, whatever.

This model ends up driving up expense and instead of a well oiled machine, creates an environment that often isn't cutting edge, but slow-moving. Slow to make decisions. Slow to take action. I know I'd rather work with a lean agency with a specific specialization than a "jack of all trades that costs me my first born." Sure, it is nice to have "everyone under one roof" for control purposes, but now there is this Internet thing and more ways to do work virtually. A team of freelancers can be assembled in a jiffy. Or a consultant. Does it take more work on the agency end to do this? Absolutely. But why hire a bunch of experts as opposed to bring them in on a per project basis or set up a referral network?

I'd bet the future will be more about partnerships between highly specialized experts as opposed to the big box model.