As the story of GM's marketing efforts suggests, the goal of marketing
and product development is to find ways to make customers
want to buy a company's products. This is the first of two chapters that examine the
many issues related to developing attractive new products and successfully marketing
and selling them.
In this chapter we first describe the nature of marketing and the relationship
between marketing, product development, and sales. Second, we focus on the three
most important issues in marketing and market research, how to (1) identify and
shape customer needs in a particular market, (2) identify different groups of customers
or market segments, and create products to meet the needs of these groups,
and (3) use the marketing mix to create distinctive or differentiated products that satisfy
different customer needs and customer groups.
By the end of this chapter, you will understand how a company's profitability
depends on the ability of its marketing function to send a strong and consistent message
to customers about the value of the firm's products. Then, in Chapter 11 we take
an in-depth look at some additional marketing mix issues - distribution, sales, and customer
relationship management - that are becoming increasingly important today.
