NATURE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF BUSINESS MARKETING

Size
 Market size is defined by current and projected total industry sales.
 It estimated from trade association data, public company financial statements, government data
and customer surveys.
 Maintaining and increasing the company's market share is usually a key management objective.
Competition
 Competitive environments are defined by the identity, track record, financial strength and
market share of key competitors.
Segmentation
 Marketing strategies usually involve dividing the total market into multiple segments by
demographic factors (e.g., age, gender and race); geography (e.g., city, state and country); and
other factors such as lifestyle and socioeconomic class.
 Advertising and promotional campaigns can then be designed specifically for each segment.
Distribution
 Distribution systems determine how efficiently products reach customers.
 Before launching a new product, management evaluates how the existing distribution channels
work and how they can be improved; the trends in emerging channels that can offer a
competitive advantage (e.g., social media and ecommerce); and the negotiating power of
distributors and retailers (i.e., a new player, desperate to capture market share, will probably
not have a negotiating advantage with big-box retailers, but a more established player might).
Key Success Factors
 Key factors that determine the success of marketing strategies include the ability to recruit
qualified people (e.g., a pharmaceutical company may need to hire qualified scientists quickly to
launch a clinical trial); grow sufficiently quickly to achieve profitability (i.e., achieve economies of
scale); access distribution channels (e.g., a new player may be blocked from supplying into a
channel that is already filled with more established brand names); and keep pace with
innovation (e.g., launch comparable products at the same time as the competition).