Elective 1 (MRK310 Market and Consumer

Behavior)
What is Consumer Behavior in Marketing?
Marketing is so much more than creating a catchy phrase or a jingle people will sing for days.
Understanding consumer behavior is a vital aspect of marketing. ​Consumer behavior​ is the
study of how people make decisions about what they buy, want, need, or act in regards to a
product, service, or company. It is critical to understand consumer behavior to know how
potential customers will respond to a new product or service. It also helps companies identify
opportunities that are not currently met.

A recent example of a change in consumer behavior is the eating habits of consumers that
dramatically increased the demand for gluten-free (GF) products. The companies that monitored
the change in eating patterns of consumers created GF products to fill a void in the marketplace.
However, many companies did not monitor consumer behavior and were left behind in releasing
GF products. Understanding consumer behavior allowed the pro-active companies to increase
their market share by anticipating the shift in consumer wants.

The Three Factors

To fully understand how consumer behavior affects marketing, it's vital to understand the three
factors that affect consumer behavior: psychological, personal, and social.

Psychological Factors

In daily life, consumers are being affected by many issues that are unique to their thought
process. Psychological factors can include perception of a need or situation, the person's ability
to learn or understand information, and an individual's attitude. Each person will respond to a
marketing message based on their perceptions and attitudes. Therefore, marketers must take
these psychological factors into account when creating campaigns, ensuring that their campaign
will appeal to their target audience.

Personal Factors

Personal factors are characteristics that are specific to a person and may not relate to other
people within the same group. These characteristics may include how a person makes decisions,
their unique habits and interests, and opinions. When considering personal factors, decisions are
also influenced by age, gender, background, culture, and other personal issues.

For example, an older person will likely exhibit different consumer behaviors than a younger
person, meaning they will choose products differently and spend their money on items that may
not interest a younger generation.
Social Factors

The third factor that has a significant impact on consumer behavior is social characteristics.
Social influencers are quite diverse and can include a person's family, social interaction, work or
school communities, or any group of people a person affiliates with. It can also include a person's
social class, which involves income, living conditions, and education level. The social factors are
very diverse and can be difficult to analyze when developing marketing plans.

However, it is critical to consider the social factors in consumer behavior, as they greatly
influence how people respond to marketing messages and make purchasing decisions. For
example, how using a famous spokesperson can influence buyers.

Elective 2 (MRK313 Product Development and

Innovation)

Product Development Process

Product development​ is a process whereby a business identifies an opportunity in the market
for a product and then designs, tests, and introduces the product to the market. Based on this
information, the product development process can be broken down into four steps.

Opportunity Identification
The first step in the process is ​opportunity identification​. At this step, scan the environment to
determine what unfulfilled needs or desires are in the marketplace. Ideas can also come from
employees, managers, customers, suppliers, research and development departments, and even
your competitors. You need to carefully define your market at this stage to set the scope of the
market and to determine your competition. A market can be defined by customer needs,
demographics, price, and product type, among other criteria. For example, you may define your
market as sport cars for males aged 35-55 with annual gross incomes of at least $75,000 and
living in the United States. Finally, you must carefully analyze these opportunities to determine if
they're feasible and useful in helping your company achieve its objectives.

Product Design
The second step is ​product design​. The core concept with product design is to have a clear
understanding of the needs and wants of the target consumer for the product. Then, design the
product around those needs and wants while attempting to differentiate your product from
competing products. The design will be evaluated, often refined, and modified. Product design
also includes developing a marketing strategy to support the introduction of the new product into
the market. Product design usually is a collaborative process involving different parts of the
company, including marketing, research and development, and production.

Product Innovation
Product innovation​ involves creating new products or improved versions of existing products
that increase their uses. This innovation can be in the product's own functionality, or it can take
the form of new technology. Think about how often cell phone manufacturers and car
manufacturers make new versions of their products. For example, car manufacturers make one
new car each year. Cell phone manufacturers tend to release a new version of their phones
every few years. In doing so, the manufacturer tries to introduce something unique. Product
innovation is all about improving upon what you have. You take customer feedback and you turn
it into an improved product.

Let's take a look at the two types of product innovation:

New Products
The first type of product innovation involves introducing a new product. However, you can't
introduce just any new product. This ​new product​ must solve an existing problem in a new and
exciting way. Or the product needs to solve a completely new problem that has arisen.

For example, at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show, the electronics company LG introduced a
new type of screen that's so flexible you can roll it up like a newspaper. This used to be the realm
of science fiction movies, but now it's a real product that could become readily available to
everybody in a short time. This innovative product solves the problem of portability - instead of
using a larger, unwieldy screen, people can show a video on a screen that they can fold up when
they are done and put it in their bag.

New innovative products can introduce new technologies or a new way to do something. For
example, when the gas and electric-powered lawn mower came out, it made mowing lawns a
little less manual. With the introduction of engine-powered mowers, people now had another
option when it came to cutting their lawns.

Elective 3 (MIS031 Management Information

System)

Management Information Systems

Imagine a large retailer during the holiday season. Stores are crowded, merchandise is flying off
the shelves, and then the point of sale system in the stores loses its link with headquarters. Now
headquarters is flying blind because they don't know what's been sold or what merchandise
needs to be shipped to replenish the stores. Chaos ensues.

We all use information to make decisions. Generally, the more informed we are, the better
decisions we make. Businesses are no different and that's why management information
systems were developed. If you think about all the potential information flows coming into a
business, managers need a way to harness that information and shape it into something useful.

Management information systems​ (MIS) is a collective term for all of the systems and
procedures a company builds to gather information and put it into a form that's useful in operating
the business. The people in the MIS department are the folks in charge of making all the pieces
and parts work together. They make sure the cash registers in the store talk to the inventory
system and that the inventory system is in sync with the accounting system.

Reports
Think of all the information streams coming into a business: sales data, inventory, project
management, financial records, etc. All of this needs to be boiled down into actionable
information, and that's usually through reporting. A ​report​ from the MIS takes the relevant
information and formats into a meaningful summary.

MIS Applications
Many organizations are structured based on functional areas. This is often reflected in an
organizational chart. Typically, functional areas include finances, human resources, marketing,
etc. Many of these functional areas have their own ​Management Information System​, or MIS.

Financial MIS
A ​financial MIS​ provides financial information for managers to make daily decisions on
operations within the organization. Most systems provide these functions:

● Integrate financial information from multiple sources

● Provide easy access to financial information in summarized form

● Enable financial analysis using easy-to-use tools

● Compare historic and current financial activity

A financial MIS often has a number of subsystems, depending on the type of organization. These
include systems to analyze revenues, costs and profits, auditing systems for both internal and
external purposes and systems to manage funds. A financial MIS can also be used to prepare
reports for third parties, such as external auditors or shareholders.
Marketing MIS
A ​marketing MIS​ supports activities throughout the many activities of marketing departments.
Some of the typical subsystems of a marketing MIS are marketing research, product
development and delivery, promotion and advertising, product pricing and sales analysis.

One of the most common uses of a marketing MIS is to produce sales reports. These are
typically produced on a regular schedule, such as by week, month and quarter. Reports can be
organized by sales representative, product, customer or geographic area. Such reports allow
managers to see which aspects of sales are doing well and which ones need attention.

Perhaps one sales representative has suddenly experienced a drop in sales by losing one major
customer and needs some support to develop some new leads. If there are only a handful of
sales reps sharing one office, a manager might be able to pick up on this just by talking to
everyone.

Elective 4 (MRK410 International Marketing)

Companies cannot just concentrate on domestic markets if they are to remain competitive.
Global marketing allows marketing managers to look for growing target markets and product
opportunities overseas.

Global marketing​ occurs when marketing managers use a global plan to effectively market their
goods and services on an international basis.

International marketing​ involves promoting products or services in multiple countries and/or

across international borders. So when Diana wants to take out an ad in a different country, she's
engaging in international marketing. International trade relies on marketing. If a country does not
market their products in the countries that they want to sell in, they are not going to sell very
many products! So there's a strong relationship with how well a company engages in
international marketing and how many sales they make internationally.

International marketing plans have a specific marketing mix that will differ tremendously from the
domestic version. Marketing managers have to take into account a country's economic,
technological, logistical, and sociocultural differences in order to successfully target an overseas
market.

A key step in ​global marketing​ is to assess the viability of potential markets for growth. The
components for assessment are​ economic, infrastructure/technological, sociocultural, and
government.

International Marketing Mix

The Ninja Corporation's business has increased dramatically each year. They are under
enormous pressure to keep their stockholders happy. The results of the company's yearly board
meeting showed that in order for them to keep growing at such a fast pace, they will need to
expand to ​international markets​. Ninja Corp.'s martial arts products are very popular (especially
their bandanas), and the company believes Canada, Europe, and India should be considered for
the expansion. The traditional ​marketing mix​, consisting of ​product, place, price, and
promotion​, will have to be tweaked in many ways in order to reach international markets.

The First Steps

In order to create an effective ​international marketing​ mix, the most important step is to have a
thorough understanding of global markets. This can be accomplished through marketing
research. The research studies must be designed with appropriate changes to handle how
different cultures react to being surveyed. Companies must also research how cultures shop, eat,
sleep, and socialize. Once information has been gathered about the market, the most important
concern is whether the product and ​promotion strategies​ need to be changed.

Product & Promotion Changes

Ninja Corporation has to make a decision about the marketing strategy for their product. They
have decided to try and sell their Ninja Martial Arts Bandanas overseas. Do they keep their
product the same and follow the ​global marketing standardization​? Sometimes products work
well overseas, but sometimes unaltered products fail due to local cultural differences. For
example, the word 'diet' does not do well on products in Europe as it is viewed as too feminine,
so Coca-Cola had to change Diet Coke to Coca-Cola Light.

Sometimes the product itself has to change entirely as well, and this is called ​product invention​.
Ninja Corp. had to create really cheap knives for the overseas market due to much lower
household incomes. Another change is called ​product adaptation​, and this is when a marketer
alters a product slightly to suit different cultures. For example, Ninja Corporation has to eliminate
the American flag on their bandana in order for it to be accepted in other countries. They have
decided to keep the bandanas the same, and then add each international country's flag on the
bandana.

The final type of change is called ​promotion adaptation​, and this occurs when the marketer
decides to keep the product exactly the same but alters the promotional strategy. Last year,
when the Ninja Corp. decided to launch a new martial arts DVD in Canada, they found out that it
needed a new promotion strategy.