C H A P T E R

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The Nature of Marketing Management

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he term marketing management describes two separate but related topics. First, it is a common name for the capstone course taken by marketing majors as they prepare to graduate. In that context, integrating management and marketing concepts to help prepare individuals for careers constitutes the primary goal. Second, marketing management is a business process. It includes managing marketing activities in profit-seeking and nonprofit organizations at the supervisory, middle-management, and executive levels. Success in these endeavors will be based on a strong knowledge of a variety of marketing functions combined with a clear understanding and application of supervisory and managerial techniques. Both of these topics may be examined and discussed using case analyses. Students and professors can learn from the case content and from each other when examining the concepts and actions taken by companies in a range of industries. This first case was chosen to accompany a review of the basic marketing management field. As the name implies, marketing management combines the fields of marketing and management. y Marketing

Marketing experts agree that an effective marketing program should be driven by customers, whether it is a for-profit, a nonprofit, or a governmental organization. The traditional definition of marketing has been 1. discovering consumer needs and wants; 2. creating the goods and services that meet those needs and wants; and 3. pricing, promoting, and delivering those goods and services.
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CASES IN MARKETING MANAGEMENT

The definition suggests that the primary elements of marketing include understanding and meeting the needs of consumers. Doing so requires attention to six major areas: · · · · · · Markets Products Prices Places (distribution systems) Promotion People