Chapter 2 - Marketing and Competition
✔ Define competition and the role it performs in ensuring that scarce resources are used
to maximise satisfaction.
✔ Appreciate that good theory usually reflects best practice and why learning through
knowledge acquisition is more cost-effective than learning by experience.
✔ Understand the nature and scope of marketing.
✔ Know why marketing is a discipline that synthesises knowledge derived from empirical
generalisations.
✔ Answer the question ‘What is strategy?’
✔ Appreciate the ways in which market structure and performance influences and is
influenced by the conduct of suppliers and their interaction with users.
✔ Perceive how these interactions help determine marketing strategy.
✔ Recognise and be able to describe the impact of international trade on competition.
✔ Understand and be able to describe Porter’s concept of the ‘Diamond of National
Advantage’.
✔ Identify the influence of government policy on competitive activity.
✔ Define the nature of competitive advantage and how this leads to the creation of
‘clusters’ of successful firms and industries.
✔ Appreciate the contribution that marketing makes to the achievement of competitive
success.
✔ Recognise the key issues facing firms in the future.
✔ Understand why knowledge is likely to be the key to success in the future.
Chapter 3 - Marketing and Corporate Strategy
✔ Describe the function of marketing.
✔ Recognise the concept of need satisfaction in the development of a marketing
orientation.
✔ Understand the role of corporate strategy and be able to describe its constituent
elements.
✔ Define a business in terms of the need served.
✔ Distinguish the four factors which create the cycle of business-growth and decay.
✔ Identify four alternative strategies of the growth vector components and understand the
concept of limited strategic alternatives.
✔ Appreciate the PLC as a planning tool and be able to use the concept.
✔ Describe three basic marketing strategies – undifferentiated, differentiated and
concentrated – and relate these to Porter’s generic strategies of cost leadership and
differentiation.
✔ Describe the four major subsets of general management, and show how they differ from
marketing management.
Chapter 4 - Principles of Strategic Marketing Planning
✔ Justify the role and importance of strategic marketing planning (SMP).
✔ Explain the concepts of mission, vision and strategic intent.
✔ Trace the development of alternative approaches to SMP.
✔ Define SMP.
✔ Define the nature of objectives and show how these shape marketing strategies.
✔ Describe the cycle of SMP and the stages involved in it.
✔ Illustrate some key principles of SMP using a framework developed by Arthur D. Little.
✔ Identify and describe the three steps involved in formulating a corporate strategy.
✔ Spell out some of the criticisms of and obstacles to the adoption and implementation of
SMP.
Chapter 5 - Analytical Frameworks for Strategic Marketing Planning
✔ Explain the application of demand curves to SMP.
✔ Describe the concept of the product life-cycle and justify its use as a basic input to
formal planning.
✔ Spell out the strategy alternatives appropriate to each of the major stages of the PLC –
introduction, growth, maturity, decline.
✔ Suggest how diffusion theory may be used to aid formal planning.
✔ Explain the nature of portfolio analysis and the key concepts it embraces – PLC, market
share, experience effects and scale effects.
✔ Review and critique criticisms of portfolio analysis as an approach to SMP.
✔ Describe the analytical approaches developed by Shell and GEC as a basis for
determining the strategic threats and opportunities facing them.
✔ Relate expectations to outcomes using Baker’s Box.
✔ Describe and explain the techniques of gap and scenario analysis and the nature of
SWOT analysis.
Chapter 6 - Research for Marketing
✔ Explain the importance of marketing research and its contribution to competitive
success.
✔ Describe the differences between quantitative and qualitative research, when to use
them and how they complement each other.
✔ Identify the role of secondary data sources as an input to market analysis.
✔ Define the nature of primary data and describe the methods by which it can be
collected – observation, experimentation, simulation and sample survey.
✔ Suggest a checklist for assessing a market’s worth.
✔ Explain the process for analysing sample data and drawing inferences from it.
✔ Discuss probabilistic approaches to decision-making under conditions of uncertainty,
following the principles of Bayesian analysis.
✔ Show how to structure problems, identify alternatives, develop decision trees, select a
decision criterion and solve problems by combining facts and judgement.
Chapter 7 - Macro-Environmental Analysis
✔ Define and describe the impact of environmental forces on the firm’s strategy.
✔ Review and describe the main environmental factors – demographic, economic, social,
technological and political – and their influence upon strategic planning.
✔ Distinguish the underlying cyclical pattern of economic activity and its implications for
strategic planning.
✔ Appreciate the impact of environmental change upon strategic marketing planning.
✔ Understand the need for and limitations of forecasting.
Chapter 8 - Industry and Competitor Analysis
✔ Discuss the nature of competition and explain why non-price competition has become
the dominant form.
✔ Justify, define and execute a competitor analysis.
✔ Describe the concept of the value chain and its use as a diagnostic tool.
✔ Define the nature of critical success factors and their role in developing a competitive
advantage.
✔ Understand the importance of skills and competencies to business success.
✔ Explain benchmarking as a process for evaluating competitor performance.
✔ Discuss the growth of strategic alliances as a response to competitive pressures.
✔ Describe and explain the major influences on choice behaviour.
✔ Define selective perception and distinguish its effect on the individual’s interpretation of
information.
✔ Illustrate the concept of a hierarchy of needs and its effect on consumer behaviour.
✔ Specify the stages through which buyers pass in making choice decisions.
✔ Propose a composite model of buyer behaviour which encompasses and reconciles the
foregoing concepts and explains its application in practice.
✔ Devise a customer audit.
Chapter 10 - Internal (self-) Analysis
✔ Define a marketing audit.
✔ Spell out the scope and major elements of a marketing audit.
✔ Assess the relevance of ‘core competencies’.
✔ Explain some of the reasons why companies fail.
✔ Describe the role and importance of internal marketing.
✔ Identify some of the key issues associated with knowledge management.
Chapter 11 - Matching - putting it all together
✔ Explain the need to match an organisation’s strengths with market opportunities.
✔ Know why it is the organisation’s assets, skills and resources that determine the courses
of action open to management.
✔ Understand how to combine the products of the external and internal analyses (the
marketing ‘appreciation’) into a simple summary analysis.
Chapter 12 - Product differentiation and market segmentation
✔ Distinguish between product differentiation and market segmentation as alternative
strategies.
✔ Suggest appropriate ways for segmenting markets.
✔ Define and describe four basic approaches – a priori, clustering, flexible and
componential.
✔ Discuss the major segmentation variables grouped into four major categories:
✔ Describe factors to be taken into account when segmenting industrial markets.
✔ Indicate when it is appropriate to segment markets.
Chapter 13 - Positioning and Branding
✔ Define and describe key concepts such as:
✔ Explain the importance of these factors in developing a sustainable competitive
advantage.
✔ Spell out what is involved in developing successful brands.
✔ Understand why the rapid erosion of objective advantages has led to increased
emphasis upon less tangible and subjective benefits.
✔ Discuss the trend towards marketing companies as brands and the factors likely to
reinforce this development.
✔ Explain the concept of the marketing mix.
✔ Describe the elements or ingredients which make up the marketing mix and critique
some of the different classificatory schemes.
✔ Discuss the factors which influence the relative importance of mix elements and their
selection and use.
✔ Suggest some possible mix patterns according to industry type and stage of the
product life-cycle.
✔ Identify some criticisms of the mix concept.
Chapter 15 - Product Policy and Management
✔ Explain the central role played by products in the development of marketing strategy.
✔ Define the major terms associated with product management.
✔ Summarise some of the distinguishing characteristics of services.
✔ Identify the four basic growth strategies proposed by Ansoff, and their implications for
product policy and management.
✔ Describe and illustrate the normative theory of new product development.
✔ Outline the concept of the product portfolio.
✔ Specify the actions most appropriate to the management of products at different stages
of their life-cycles.
✔ Suggest procedures for monitoring product performance.
✔ Explain the four roles played by packaging in marketing.
✔ Describe the five criteria to be considered in developing a package – appearance,
protection, function, cost and disposability.
✔ Spell out the steps to be followed in designing a pack and achieving a balance
between the five functional criteria.
Chapter 17 - Pricing Policy and Management
✔ Explain the economic theory of price and its role in achieving a balance between
supply and demand.
✔ Describe the concept of elasticity.
✔ Suggest the limitations of price theory as an explanation of real world behaviour, but its
contribution to understanding policy and procedure.
✔ Spell out the objectives of price policy and distinguish particularly between profit and
sales-oriented objectives.
✔ Define and describe three basic approaches to pricing – cost-plus, flexible mark-up
and marginal-cost pricing.
✔ Discuss the role of price as an element in the marketing mix.
✔ Review the pricing strategies available to the firm.
Chapter 18 - Distribution and Sales Policy
✔ Explain why distribution channels develop and the role they play in linking producers
and consumers.
✔ Describe the functions performed by the distribution channel.
✔ Review the forces which influence channel structure.
✔ Relate distribution strategy options to the basic marketing strategies – undifferentiated,
differentiated and concentrated.
✔ Explain the trade-off between cost and control in channel selection.
✔ Distinguish between ‘push’ and ‘pull’ as distribution alternatives.
✔ Account for the decline of the role of personal selling as a marketing function.
✔ Suggest how distribution policy may vary in accordance with the stages of the PLC.
Chapter 19 - Promotion Policy and Management
✔ Describe the nature of the communication process.
✔ Explain how advertising appears to work in consumer decision-making and distinguish
between high- and low-involvement buying situations.
✔ Justify the view that the primary goal of advertising is to influence attitudes and suggest
alternative strategies for achieving this.
✔ Identify possible advertising objectives.
✔ Discuss the issues involved in developing a promotional strategy.
✔ Describe and evaluate five basic approaches to setting the advertising budget.
✔ Suggest methods for measuring advertising effectiveness.
Chapter 20 - Customer Care and Service
✔ Define and describe customer service and customer care.
✔ Discuss the nature and importance of customer service and customer loyalty.
✔ Explain how customer services can be classified as pre-transactional, transactional or
post-transactional and the uses of this classification.
✔ Suggest how service activities may be used strategically to differentiate and position
products and services.
✔ Define the concept of total quality management (TQM) and discuss some of the issues
and problems associated with its implementation.
✔ Suggest how to price services.
✔ Discuss how to measure service quality.
✔ Illustrate, through a case study example, how service may be used in formulating a
marketing strategy.
Chapter 21 - Developing a Marketing Culture
✔ Explain why strategy should determine organisational structure.
✔ Describe the characteristics of the five basic business orientations – technology,
production, sales, financial and marketing – and how these condition the conduct of the
firm’s business.
✔ Define the concepts of organisational climate, corporate personality and corporate
culture, and show how these shape and mediate the firm’s strategy and behaviour.
✔ Spell out what is involved in the development of a marketing-oriented organisation.
✔ Review some of the obstacles to the translation of theory into practice through effective
implementation.
Chapter 22 - The (Short-Term) Marketing Plan
✔ Explain the role of the short-term marketing plan within the strategic planning process.
✔ Describe and justify a normative framework for marketing planning.
✔ Set out the conditions to be satisfied if an organisation is to produce a marketing plan
successfully.
✔ Outline the key elements of a formal marketing plan and provide reasons to support
their inclusion.
Chapter 23 - Implementation and Control
✔ Suggest why profitability alone is an insufficient measure of a firm’s performance
and potential.
✔ Explain the difference between fixed and variable costs and how these behave
over time.
✔ Undertake a breakeven analysis.
✔ Describe other cost concepts and their use in diagnosis.
✔ Explain and exemplify the nature and use of contribution analysis.
✔ Define and describe the concepts of cash flow and net present value.
✔ Suggest how management ratios may be used to diagnose a firm’s financial health.
✔ Justify the importance of control in implementing marketing strategy.
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