2423 Posts Found

The experience of using a product changes the equation underlying consumers’ preferences. People initially choose products that do not maximize their long-term satisfaction because different considerations are salient in expected and experienced utility. Put simply, what looks attractive in prospect does not necessarily look good in practice.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Writing an effective questionnaire is not a task for novices. At the very least, it requires an understanding of four basic issues:
1. Considering the differences between a questionnaire that respondents fill out themselves and one that a professional interviewer administers
2. Knowing what questions should be asked early on in the questionnaire, in the middle, and toward the end
3. Understanding how to phrase … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Robert J. Kaden | Source: MarketingProfs | Subjects: Market Research, Marketing / Sales

Powerful brands can help firms leave rivals in the dust. But brand building today must encompass a more complex set of activities and target a broader audience than in the past.

Content: Article | Authors: Eric Almquist, Kenneth J. Roberts | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subject: Marketing / Sales

You may think you know why your customers buy from you, but there’s a good chance they buy for reasons other than the reasons you think. Or they don’t buy for reasons that may escape you.

Content: Article | Author: Jay Conrad Levinson | Source: Guerrilla Marketing | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Can an obsession with product costs ultimately hurt profits? Can products be too good for their own good? Such questions reflect the complicated relationship between product design and pricing. Companies that manage this relationship skillfully can maximize their gross margins and, in turn, fatten their R&D and marketing budgets.

Content: Article | Authors: Michael Broquist, Thomas Kratzert | Source: Kearney | Subject: Marketing / Sales

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Pricing may well be the weakest link in the value chain. It has such potential to accelerate revenue and profit growth, yet it is so clearly under-managed at consumer and business-to-business companies alike. There are opportunities for improvement in five areas of pricing strategy.

Content: Article | Authors: Krishnakumar (KK) Davey, Nagi Jonnalagadda, Paul Markowitz | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Ever wonder why soap retails for $1.99 instead of $2.00? Behind this prevalent feature of retail gimmickry lies some sound psychology.

Content: Article | Authors: Manoj Thomas, Vicki Morwitz | Source: STERNbusiness (NYU) | Subject: Marketing / Sales

A good marketing plan needs a great deal of information gathered from many sources. It is used to develop marketing strategy and tactics to reach a specific set of objectives and goals. The process is not necessarily difficult, but it does require organization. This is especially true if you are not developing this plan by oneself and are depending on others to assist one or … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: William A. Cohen | Subject: Marketing / Sales

An expert on customers explains why appealing to simple human emotion beats neuromarketing in the race to revenue. And he has the pictures to prove it.

Content: Article | Author: John Fleming | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

It’s been called “selling the invisible”-delivering intangible services as a core “product” offering.

Invisibility (intangibility), inseparability, variability, and perishability are four factors that distinguish services marketing from product marketing. These characteristics affect the way clients behave during the buying process and the way organizations must interact with them.

Content: Article | Author: Cynthia Coldren | Source: MarketingProfs | Subject: Marketing / Sales

All compensation systems involve a series of complex tradeoffs. How much of the compensation should be fixed and how much variable? Should it reward revenues, profit margins, or both? How will it weigh mature products against new ones? How will it encourage salespeople to stretch for incremental dollars once they have hit their quotas? The right answers to these questions will balance the salesperson’s primary … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Management, Marketing / Sales

Tom Peters offers a list of not-always-obvious tips that reminds us that every relationship is a sales relationship.

Content: Article | Author: Tom Peters | Source: ChangeThis | Subject: Marketing / Sales

How much is your company worth? If you own a piece of a public company, you can pick up a newspaper every morning and see how your business is trading. But if you own part or all of a private company, there are very few places you can turn for similar information. To help you, Inc. and Inc.com have partnered with Business Valuation Resources to … [ Read more ]

Content: Online Resource | Sources: Business Valuation Resources, Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Finance, Market Research

It’s been long known that preview pane and the blocked-images feature in email clients are problematic for marketers. The majority of email readers are using both the preview pane and the default blocked-images functions to decide whether to open emails and block unwanted downloads.

Companies that do not take steps to address these findings with their email design and format will be doing a disservice to … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Daniel Jung | Source: MarketingProfs | Subjects: Best Practices, Marketing / Sales

Executives often suffer from pricing myopia. They don’t see the freedom they have to use pricing to enhance the performance of their businesses and even create competitive advantage. Because of their distorted or limited vision, they underestimate their power to manage pricing, mistakenly believe that their customers are paying the amounts stipulated by their pricing guidelines, passively accept the prevailing approaches to pricing in their … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: George Stalk Jr., Peter Stanger, Peter Wetenhall, Philippe Morel | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

As real estate is location location location, marketing is frequency frequency frequency.

Content: Quotation | Source: Guerrilla Marketing | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Over the years, Kotler says, he has received thousands of questions from clients, students, business audiences, and journalists. From among this vast number he selected the 197 that have come up repeatedly and arranged them by subject. The book covers everything from general ideas about markets and marketing to marketing strategies and tools, marketing planning, organization, and control, marketing areas of applications, and achieving marketing … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Philip Kotler | Subject: Marketing / Sales

With sophistication of marketing tools and number of media increasing tenfold during the past decade, the difficulty of keeping customers engaged has also increased. Reaching qualified prospects at the right time, and through the right channel, remains an obstacle, as the volume of marketing messages both online and off-line continues to increase year over year. This paper provides an overview of how to efficiently and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Sources: JupiterResearch, RightNow Technologies | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Companies that do see a linkage between branding and IT performance go well beyond bumper-sticker slogans about customer intimacy or the customer experience. They recognize that in many cases, IT systems are the brand-not only to customers, but also to employees, business partners, and other stakeholders. Such companies don’t treat branding’s IT implications as an afterthought. On the contrary, they consider IT an integral part … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Bruce Rogow | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Marketing / Sales