Marketing –

Introduction and
Concepts
‘Marketing is the management process
that identifies, anticipates and
satisfies customer requirements
profitably’

The Chartered Institute of Marketing

‘The right product, in the right place,
at the right time, and at the right
price’
‘Marketing is a social and managerial
process by which individuals and
groups obtain what they want and
need through creating, offering and
exchanging products of value with
others’
Kotler 1991
A better definition of marketing:

Marketing is War!
• The true nature of marketing today
involves the conflict between
corporations.
• Not the satisfying of human needs
and wants!
 What leads to defeat in both
War and Marketing?

• Over-pessimism (Fear of Failure)

• Over-optimism (Failure to Fear
Failure)
 Implications of marketing
• Who are our existing / potential
customers?
• What are their current / future
needs?
• How can we satisfy these needs?
• Can we offer a product/ service that the
customer would value?
• Can we communicate with our customers?
• Can we deliver a competitive product
orservice?
Marketing
• Why should customers buy from us?
 Is this enough?
• Is knowing what the customer wants
enough when all of your competitors
know it as well?
• Or is success based primarily on
strategies and tactics?
 Most Common Marketing
Errors
• Failure to keep products/services up-
to-date
• Failure to estimate market potential
accurately
• Failure to gauge the trend of the
market
• Failure to appreciate regional
differences in
market potential and in trend of
market
 Most Common Marketing
Errors
• Failure to establish the advertising
budget
based on the job to be done
• Failure to adhere to policies
established in
connection with long-range goals
• Failure to test-market new ideas
• Failure to differentiate between long-
term
strategies and short-term tactics
 Most Common Marketing
Errors
• Failure to try new ideas while a
brand is
climbing
• Failure to integrate all phases of the
marketing operation into the over-all
program
• Failure to appraise objectively your
competitors’ brands
• Failure to get the facts and interpret
them
Good Marketing professionals need to
understand the nature, causes,and
cures of marketing failures
 WE'RE NOT DELTA - BUT
WE'RE TRYING TO FLY!
"We want to be like Delta!" proclaimed Anatoly Brylov,
Chief Executive of the Russian airline Aeroflot in an
interview with Time Magazine. That's quite an easy
thing to say, but poses such an enormous challenge
for an airline that has been struggling to come to
terms with marketing. Delta has grown steadily from
its 1920s origins as a southern crop spraying company
to be the USA's number 3 airline. By all accounts, it is
popular with its customers and it has to be, for most of
its routes are operated in competition with other
airlines. Aeroflot by contrast has been associated with
everything that is anathema to the management of
Delta. During the Soviet era, travel on Aeroflot had
been so dire that the airline - disparagingly referred to
as "Aeroflop", was frequently described as "the world's
worst airline".
 WE'RE NOT DELTA - BUT
WE'RE TRYING TO FLY!
The contrast between Delta and Aeroflot can be explained
in terms of the extent to which the two airlines have
adopted a marketing orientation. Delta has had to fully
embrace the principles and practices of marketing because
if it didn't, competitors who did would soon win over
customers. Aeroflot on the other hand traditionally had little
need for marketing. It operated in a centrally planned
economy where consumer sovereignty had little meaning. If
a passenger wanted to fly somewhere, they usually had no
choice but to fly with Aeroflot. Aeroflot's managers were not
really concerned with attracting more passengers or
making life better for their existing passengers - they saw
themselves just like any other government bureaucrat who
was charged with implementing a centrally planned
economic program. So long as they met very loosely
defined targets, they were OK. The targets themselves
weren't marketing targets at all but operational targets
referring to the number of flights operated or the fuel
consumption of aircraft. There was little concern for
whether the flights were going to the right places at the
right times, or with the right level of facilities before, during
 WE'RE NOT DELTA - BUT
WE'RE TRYING TO FLY!
In a communist centrally planned economy, it was not surprising to
find Aeroflot adopting a production orientation to its business.
Operational considerations came first, customers came second.
Stories abounded about what this actually meant for passengers.
Planes were known to leave late because members of the crew
were drunk, baggage was routinely stolen by ground staff and
ticketing and reservations system were corrupt and inefficient. It
was commonplace for passengers to bribe flight attendants to be
allowed on an aircraft, even though all seats were full. As for in-
flight services, there weren't any, unless warm water in plastic
cups is counted.
The break up of the former Soviet Union and the rapid disintegration
of the centrally planned economy propelled Aeroflot into a new
era in which marketing took on significance for the first time. The
spur to marketing was the withdrawal of the heavy subsidies that
the airline received from the government - the airline now had to
earn all of its income from fares paid by passengers. And those
passengers were able to exercise increasing choice as the
domestic civil aviation market was opened to competition for the
first time.
 WE'RE NOT DELTA - BUT
WE'RE TRYING TO FLY!
The first thing the new management did was to repaint
its fleet of aircraft with a new name - Aeroflot Russian
International Airlines. That was a skin-deep change -
to achieve a true marketing orientation, the airline
had to embark on much more fundamental change.
Part of that fundamental change was to impress upon
staff that passengers were important people whose
needs had to be satisfied, rather than being brushed
aside as nuisances. Staff had to be made aware that
over 70 new regional airlines had appeared on the
scene, many of them competing with Aeroflot for
passengers' business. Many of these - such as
Uzbekistan Air - had acquired modern western aircraft
and put its crews through a customer care programme
which even Delta might have approved of. The
management structure also had to change from an
authoritarian structure to one which was able to
integrate operational and marketing functions, in
order to allow new opportunities to be profitably
 WE'RE NOT DELTA - BUT
WE'RE TRYING TO FLY!
• Despite the enormity of the airline's task, changes
were put in hand. The aircraft fleet has being
modernized, including the lease of a number of
European Airbuses. This has gone some way to allay
potential customers' fears over the safety record of
Aeroflot's primitive Tupolev and Illuyshin aircraft,
many of which have been scrapped. Locally prepared
in-flight meals have been replaced with western made
products. Flight attendants have been attending
politeness seminars, often run in conjunction with
western consultants. A number of key executives have
been enrolled on western run marketing and
management courses. Fares are now determined with
due regard to market considerations, rather than
being set according to a central plan. Marketing
research is now taken very seriously to monitor
customers' reactions to the airlines service levels. In
short, "passengers" have become "customers" whose
business can no longer be taken for granted.
 WE'RE NOT DELTA - BUT
WE'RE TRYING TO FLY!
Is Delta worried by the regeneration of
Aeroflot? At the moment, the two airlines
compete only indirectly, but over the longer
term, Aeroflot has expressed its desire to
become a global airline. It signed an
agreement with British Airways which will
help it to expand beyond its Russian base.
Global success would have seemed
preposterous to an observer of Delta back in
1924. But by putting customers first and
adopting the principles and practices of
marketing, Delta has achieved its current
enviable position. With the same attitude
and determination, Aeroflot could just do
 MARKETING VS SELLING
Example: M. Institute is an institute
specializing in preparing students
for CAT. It opened a branch at
Bhopal in June 2002. To open the
branch, it recruited the following
persons: Branch Manager (BM),
Marketing Executive(ME), Student
Counselor (SC), Operations Executive
(OE) and an office boy. Faculty was not
BM, ME and SC were responsible for selling. OE was
responsible for administration of branch including
housekeeping and accounting. Due to the efforts of
selling team and an aggressive advertising campaign,
more than twenty enrolments were done in various
courses within the first two months. Faculty
recruitment was done in a hasty manner within a
week of first enrolments. Students of first batch
complained of poor course material, inadequately
prepared faculty, and absenteeism of faculty. In the
months from November 2002 to January 2003, there
have been no fresh enrolments. By the end of January
2003, M. Institute had sacked its complete original
selling team and had advertised for fresh executives
who could give commitments about meeting targets of
enrolments.
 Task for Today
Newspapers have been facing
declining sales all over the world due
to onslaught of television in the past
two decades. However, some
newspapers have suffered more than
others. A rare few have managed to
grow in spite of
difficult times. The picture seems
confusing. If you have to start a new
newspaper in your town, what will be
the key factors that you will devote