• Unit 3: Marketing

    Marketing encompasses more than simple advertising and selling, it describes the activity businesses engage in to create, communicate, deliver, and exchange their products to their customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Business owners not only aim to provide customers with the goods and services they want and need, they need to convince them to make a purchase and come back for more. It involves the product, price, distribution, and promotion in the form of advertisement, publicity, public relations, and sales promotion. We will explore e-commerce, e-business, and the use of social media marketing.

    Completing this unit should take you approximately 10 hours.

    • Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

      • identify the major components of the marketing mix;
      • describe how segmentation and research foster an understanding of consumer behavior;
      • describe the marketing concept;
      • describe the evolution of marketing;
      • differentiate among the components of a marketing strategy;
      • analyze consumer decision-making processes to predict buying behavior;
      • identify the implications of marketing research on marketing strategy;
      • describe elements of customer-relationship management, including the customer life cycle and the customer value proposition;
      • identify the marketing implications of customer-relationship management;
      • describe brand, product development, technology adoption cycle, and product life cycle;
      • use product life cycles to determine marketing strategy; and
      • identify the marketing implications of e-business.

    • 3.1: Marketing Defined

    • 3.2: Marketing Mix

      The marketing mix is comprised of 4 elements: product, price, placement (or distribution), and promotion. This is often referred to as the 4 P’s of marketing. Businesses can change any one of these elements and create a different marketing mix.

    • 3.3: Consumer Behavior

      Now that we have a basic understanding of the marketing process we can explore the whole purpose of marketing, which is to reach the customer. This first resource provides an overview of consumer behavior. It is important to understand how consumers make their purchase decisions so the marketer can tailor the marketing mix to meet the consumers’ needs.

    • 3.4: Marketing Strategies

      In this unit so far we’ve learned about the marketing process, the marketing mix, and consumer behavior let’s take a look at some marketing strategies that bring these three elements together.

    • End of Unit Assessment