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120-801: Marketing management employs tools from economics and competitive strategy to analyze the industry context in which the firm operates. These include Porter's five forces , analysis of strategic groups of competitors, value chain analysis and others. In competitor analysis, marketers build detailed profiles of each competitor in the market, focusing on their relative competitive strengths and weaknesses using SWOT analysis . Marketing managers will examine each competitor's cost structure, sources of profits, resources and competencies, competitive positioning and product differentiation , degree of vertical integration , historical responses to industry developments, and other factors. Marketing management often implies market research and marketing research to perform

240-446: A brand and create a lasting brand memory, brands need to be able to connect to consumers in an authentic way, creating a brand persona usually helps build this sort of connection. Positioning is one of the most powerful marketing concepts. Originally, positioning focused on the product and with Al Ries and Jack Trout grew to include building a product's reputation and ranking among competitor's products. Schaefer and Kuehlwein extend

360-474: A brand audit is to determine whether a business's resource strengths are competitive assets or competitive liabilities. This type of audit seeks to ensure that a business maintains a distinctive competence that allows it to build and reinforce its competitive advantage. What's more, a successful brand audit seeks to establish what a business capitalizes on best, its level of expertise, resource strengths, and strongest competitive capabilities, while aiming to identify

480-413: A broader range of users. Notes: Annotations, added in square brackets, were not in the original positioning statement, but are included here to show how the general format and elements of positioning statements described in the preceding discussion, have been applied to the specific example, which in this case is Volvo. Differentiation is closely related to the concept of positioning. Differentiation

600-438: A business's image and reputation with its customers. Furthermore, a brand audit seeks to determine whether a business is perceived as an industry leader in technology, offering product or service innovations, along with exceptional customer service, among other relevant issues that customers use to decide on a brand of performance. A brand audit usually focuses on a business's strengths and resource capabilities because these are

720-454: A business's position and future performance. Two customer segments are often selected as targets because they score highly on two dimensions: A commonly cited definition of marketing is simply "meeting needs profitably". The implication of selecting target segments is that the business will subsequently allocate more resources to acquire and retain customers in the target segments than it will for other, non-targeted customers. In some cases,

840-403: A clear identity and placement to the needs of the consumers targeted as they will not only purchase the product, but can warrant a larger margin for the company through increased added value. A number of different positioning strategies have been cited in the marketing literature: (Being the first to claim a benefit or feature) (Being the best or exhibiting some type of superiority) (Being

960-441: A consumer's attitude. Research on persons' attitudes suggests that a brand's position in a prospective consumer's mind is likely to be determined by the "combined total of a number of product characteristics such as the price, quality, durability, reliability, colour, and flavour". The consumer places important weights on each of these product characteristics and it can be possible by using things such as promotional efforts to realign

1080-702: A definition of economics as a study of human behaviour, subject to and constrained by scarcity, which forces people to choose, allocate scarce resources to competing ends, and economise (seeking the greatest welfare while avoiding the wasting of scarce resources). According to Robbins: "Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses". Robbins' definition eventually became widely accepted by mainstream economists, and found its way into current textbooks. Although far from unanimous, most mainstream economists would accept some version of Robbins' definition, even though many have raised serious objections to

1200-448: A diagrammatic representation of consumers' mental perceptions of the relative place various brands occupy within a category. Traditionally perceptual mapping selects two variables that are relevant to consumers (often, but not necessarily, price and quality) and then asks a sample of the market to explain where they would place various brands in terms of the two variables. Results are averaged across all respondents, and results are plotted on

1320-451: A distinct field. The book focused on determinants of national income in the short run when prices are relatively inflexible. Keynes attempted to explain in broad theoretical detail why high labour-market unemployment might not be self-correcting due to low " effective demand " and why even price flexibility and monetary policy might be unavailing. The term "revolutionary" has been applied to the book in its impact on economic analysis. During

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1440-409: A firm's positioning. Upscale restaurants, for example, which previously flourished on expense account dinners and corporate events, may for the first time need to stress value as a sale tool. Repositioning a company involves more than a marketing challenge. It involves making hard decisions about how a market is shifting and how a firm's competitors will react. Often these decisions must be made without

1560-531: A graph to indicate how the average member of the population views the brand that make up a category and how each of the brands relates to other brands within the same category. While perceptual maps with two dimensions are common, multi-dimensional maps are also used. A key advantage of perceptual mapping is that it can identify gaps in the market which the firm may choose to 'own.' The following statistical procedures have been found to be useful in carrying out positioning analysis: The right positioning strategy at

1680-420: A lower relative cost of production, rather relying only on its own production. It has been termed a "fundamental analytical explanation" for gains from trade . Coming at the end of the classical tradition, John Stuart Mill (1848) parted company with the earlier classical economists on the inevitability of the distribution of income produced by the market system. Mill pointed to a distinct difference between

1800-474: A member of an exclusive club or group) (Strong registration of both category and brand) (Use competitor's strategy as a reference point) (Emphasize a problem, need or benefit where the firm can offer superior satisfaction) (Can be associated with seasonal products) To identify suitable positions that a company or brand might occupy in a given market, analysts often turn to techniques such as perceptual mapping or correspondence analysis. Perceptual maps are

1920-449: A more comprehensive theory of costs on the supply side. In the 20th century, neoclassical theorists departed from an earlier idea that suggested measuring total utility for a society, opting instead for ordinal utility , which posits behaviour-based relations across individuals. In microeconomics , neoclassical economics represents incentives and costs as playing a pervasive role in shaping decision making . An immediate example of this

2040-460: A more important role in mainstream economic theory. Also, heterogeneity among the economic agents, e.g. differences in income, plays an increasing role in recent economic research. Other schools or trends of thought referring to a particular style of economics practised at and disseminated from well-defined groups of academicians that have become known worldwide, include the Freiburg School ,

2160-401: A number of options: Repositioning involves a deliberate attempt to alter the way that consumers view a product or brand. Repositioning can be a high risk strategy, but sometimes there are few alternatives. Fishbein and Rosenberg's attitude models indicate that it is possible for a business to influence and change the positioning of the brand by manipulating various factors that will affect

2280-418: A part of brand strategy and even label it as "brand positioning". However, in the book Get to Aha! Discover Your Positioning DNA and Dominate Your Competition , Andy Cunningham proposes that branding is actually "derived from positioning; it is the emotional expression of positioning. Branding is the yang to positioning's yin, and when both pieces come together, you have a sense of the company's identity as

2400-435: A particular market a product must occupy an "explicit, distinct and proper place in the minds of all potential and existing consumers". It has to also be relative to other rival products with which the brand competes. This may require considerable research of customer perceptions and competitor activity in order to ensure that the points of difference are meaningful in the minds of customers. Perceptual mapping (discussed below)

2520-420: A primary analysis. For this, a variety of techniques are implemented. Some of the most common ones include: Marketing managers may also design and oversee various environmental scanning and competitive intelligence processes to identify trends and inform the company's marketing analysis . A brand audit is a thorough examination of a brand's current position in an industry compared to its competitors and

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2640-516: A product for woolen garments should be broadened so that consumers would see it as a soap for use on all fine fabrics in the household. To implement, Lux was repositioned with a more up-market posture and began a long association with expensive clothing and high fashion. Cano has argued that the positioning strategy JWT used for Lux exhibited an insightful understanding of the way that consumers mentally construct brand images. JWT recognized that advertising effectively manipulated socially shared symbols. In

2760-586: A proportion of the value their work had created. Marxian economics was further developed by Karl Kautsky (1854–1938)'s The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx and The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) , Rudolf Hilferding 's (1877–1941) Finance Capital , Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924)'s The Development of Capitalism in Russia and Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism , and Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919)'s The Accumulation of Capital . At its inception as

2880-409: A rapidly growing population against a limited amount of land meant diminishing returns to labour. The result, he claimed, was chronically low wages, which prevented the standard of living for most of the population from rising above the subsistence level. Economist Julian Simon has criticised Malthus's conclusions. While Adam Smith emphasised production and income, David Ricardo (1817) focused on

3000-469: A set of stable preferences, a definite overall guiding objective, and the capability of making a choice. There exists an economic problem, subject to study by economic science, when a decision (choice) is made by one or more players to attain the best possible outcome. Keynesian economics derives from John Maynard Keynes , in particular his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), which ushered in contemporary macroeconomics as

3120-409: A single tax on income of land owners. In reaction against copious mercantilist trade regulations, the physiocrats advocated a policy of laissez-faire , which called for minimal government intervention in the economy. Adam Smith (1723–1790) was an early economic theorist. Smith was harshly critical of the mercantilists but described the physiocratic system "with all its imperfections" as "perhaps

3240-435: A small- and medium-sized enterprises, the managing marketer may contribute to both managerial and marketing operations roles for the company brands. In a large consumer products company, the marketing manager may act as the overall general manager of his or her assigned product. To create an effective, cost-efficient marketing management strategy, firms must possess a detailed, objective understanding of their own business and

3360-452: A social science, economics was defined and discussed at length as the study of production, distribution, and consumption of wealth by Jean-Baptiste Say in his Treatise on Political Economy or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth (1803). These three items were considered only in relation to the increase or diminution of wealth, and not in reference to their processes of execution. Say's definition has survived in part up to

3480-435: A sought after end). Some subsequent comments criticised the definition as overly broad in failing to limit its subject matter to analysis of markets. From the 1960s, however, such comments abated as the economic theory of maximizing behaviour and rational-choice modelling expanded the domain of the subject to areas previously treated in other fields. There are other criticisms as well, such as in scarcity not accounting for

3600-442: A synthesis emerged by the 2000s, often given the name the new neoclassical synthesis . It integrated the rational expectations and optimizing framework of the new classical theory with a new Keynesian role for nominal rigidities and other market imperfections like imperfect information in goods, labour and credit markets. The monetarist importance of monetary policy in stabilizing the economy and in particular controlling inflation

3720-427: A valuable conceptual vehicle, which is effectively used to make various strategy techniques more meaningful and more productive. Several large brands – Lipton , Kraft , and Tide – developed "precisely worded" positioning statements that guided how products would be packaged, promoted, and advertised in the 1950s and 1960s. The article, "How Brands Were Born: A Brief History of Modern Marketing," states, "This marked

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3840-753: A whole". Positioning is part of the broader marketing strategy which includes three basic decision levels, namely segmentation, targeting and positioning, sometimes known as the S-T-P approach: In general terms, there are three broad types of positioning: functional, symbolic, and experiential position. Functional positions resolve problems, provide benefits to customers, or get favorable perception by investors ( stock profile ) and lenders. Symbolic positions address self-image enhancement, ego identification, belongingness and social meaningfulness, and affective fulfillment. Experiential positions provide sensory and cognitive stimulation. Both theorists and practitioners argue that

3960-412: Is a differentiated brand of prestige automobiles [marketing strategy] , That offers the benefits of safety [problem removal] as well as prestige [social approval] . The advertising for Volvo, should emphasize safety and performance [message strategy] and Must mention prestige as an entry ticket to the category And will downplay its previous family-car orientation in the interest of appealing to

4080-403: Is a mental device used by consumers to simplify information inputs and store new information in a logical place. He said this is important because the typical consumer is overwhelmed with unwanted advertising, and has a natural tendency to discard all information that does not immediately find a comfortable (and empty) slot in their mind. In Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind , the duo expanded

4200-421: Is a term for the "way (nomos) to run a household (oikos)", or in other words the know-how of an οἰκονομικός ( oikonomikos ), or "household or homestead manager". Derived terms such as "economy" can therefore often mean "frugal" or "thrifty". By extension then, "political economy" was the way to manage a polis or state. There are a variety of modern definitions of economics ; some reflect evolving views of

4320-438: Is also applied to such diverse subjects as crime , education , the family , feminism , law , philosophy , politics , religion , social institutions , war , science , and the environment . The earlier term for the discipline was "political economy", but since the late 19th century, it has commonly been called "economics". The term is ultimately derived from Ancient Greek οἰκονομία ( oikonomia ) which

4440-469: Is different from the concept of brand awareness . In order to position products or brands, companies may emphasize the distinguishing features of their brand (what it is, what it does and how, etc.) or they may try to create a suitable image (inexpensive or premium, utilitarian or luxurious, entry-level or high-end, etc.) through the marketing mix . Once a brand has achieved a strong position, it can become difficult to reposition it. To effectively position

4560-468: Is how a company's product is unique, by being the first, least expensive, or some other distinguishing factor. A product or brand may have many points of difference, but they may not all be meaningful or relevant to the target market. Positioning is something (a perception) that happens in the minds of the target market whereas differentiation is something that marketers do, whether through product design, pricing or promotional activity. To be successful in

4680-433: Is often used for this type of research. Visibility and recognition is what product positioning is all about as the positioning of a product is what the product represents for a buyer the business is targeting. As markets become increasingly competitive, buyers have more purchase choices, and the process of setting one brand apart from rival brands is critical success factor. It is vital that a product or service needs to have

4800-413: Is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it

4920-481: Is still working 25 years later." In relation to a SAAB campaign launched in 1961, Ogilvy later recalled that "In Norway, the SAAB car had no measurable profile. We positioned it as a car for winter. Three years later it was voted the best car for Norwegian winters." Yet other scholars have suggested that the positioning concept may have much earlier heritage, attributing the concept to the work of advertising agencies in both

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5040-598: Is the consumer theory of individual demand, which isolates how prices (as costs) and income affect quantity demanded. In macroeconomics it is reflected in an early and lasting neoclassical synthesis with Keynesian macroeconomics. Neoclassical economics is occasionally referred as orthodox economics whether by its critics or sympathisers. Modern mainstream economics builds on neoclassical economics but with many refinements that either supplement or generalise earlier analysis, such as econometrics , game theory , analysis of market failure and imperfect competition , and

5160-463: Is the responsibility of marketing managers to ensure that the execution of marketing programs achieves the desired objectives and does so in a cost-efficient manner. Marketing management therefore often makes use of various organizational control systems, such as sales forecasts , and sales force and reseller incentive programs, sales force management systems , and customer relationship management tools (CRM). Some software vendors have begun using

5280-747: The School of Lausanne , the Stockholm school and the Chicago school of economics . During the 1970s and 1980s mainstream economics was sometimes separated into the Saltwater approach of those universities along the Eastern and Western coasts of the US, and the Freshwater, or Chicago school approach. Within macroeconomics there is, in general order of their historical appearance in

5400-433: The macroeconomics of high unemployment. Gary Becker , a contributor to the expansion of economics into new areas, described the approach he favoured as "combin[ing the] assumptions of maximizing behaviour, stable preferences , and market equilibrium , used relentlessly and unflinchingly." One commentary characterises the remark as making economics an approach rather than a subject matter but with great specificity as to

5520-406: The market in which they operate. In analyzing these issues, the discipline of marketing management often overlaps with the related discipline of strategic planning . Economics Economics ( / ˌ ɛ k ə ˈ n ɒ m ɪ k s , ˌ iː k ə -/ ) is a social science that studies the production , distribution , and consumption of goods and services . Economics focuses on

5640-467: The neoclassical model of economic growth for analysing long-run variables affecting national income . Neoclassical economics studies the behaviour of individuals , households , and organisations (called economic actors, players, or agents), when they manage or use scarce resources, which have alternative uses, to achieve desired ends. Agents are assumed to act rationally, have multiple desirable ends in sight, limited resources to obtain these ends,

5760-460: The revenues and profits of the firm. The selected strategy may aim for any of a variety of specific objectives, including optimizing short-term unit margins, revenue growth, market share , long-term profitability, or other goals. After the firm's strategic objectives have been identified, the target market selected, and the desired positioning for the company, product, or brand has been determined, marketing managers focus on how to best implement

5880-415: The societal to the microeconomic level: Economics is a study of man in the ordinary business of life. It enquires how he gets his income and how he uses it. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man. Lionel Robbins (1932) developed implications of what has been termed "[p]erhaps the most commonly accepted current definition of

6000-400: The "choice process and the type of social interaction that [such] analysis involves." The same source reviews a range of definitions included in principles of economics textbooks and concludes that the lack of agreement need not affect the subject-matter that the texts treat. Among economists more generally, it argues that a particular definition presented may reflect the direction toward which

6120-427: The (product name) is a (product category) that (statement of key benefit – that is, compelling reason to buy). Unlike (primary competitive alternative), our product (statement of primary differentiation)." An annotated example of how this positioning statement might be translated for a specific application appears in the text-box that follows. To upper income, other brand switcher car buyers [target audience] ; Volvo

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6240-486: The 1970s and 1980s, when several major central banks followed a monetarist-inspired policy, but was later abandoned because the results were unsatisfactory. A more fundamental challenge to the prevailing Keynesian paradigm came in the 1970s from new classical economists like Robert Lucas , Thomas Sargent and Edward Prescott . They introduced the notion of rational expectations in economics, which had profound implications for many economic discussions, among which were

6360-510: The Atlantic, the English agency, W. S. Crawford's Ltd, began to use the concept of 'product personality' and the 'advertising idea' arguing that in order to stimulate sales and create a 'buying habit' advertising had to 'build a definitive association of ideas round the goods'. For example, in 1915 JWT acquired the advertising account for Lux soap. The agency suggested that the traditional positioning as

6480-607: The US and the UK in the first decades of the twentieth century. Cano, for example, has argued that marketing practitioners followed competitor-based approaches to both market segmentation and product positioning in the first decades of the twentieth century; long before these concepts were introduced into the marketing literature in the 1950s and 60s. From around 1920, American agency, J. Walter Thompson (JWT), began to focus on developing brand personality, brand image , and brand identity—concepts that are very closely related to positioning. Across

6600-407: The analysis of wealth: how wealth is created (production), distributed, and consumed; and how wealth can grow. But he said that economics can be used to study other things, such as war, that are outside its usual focus. This is because war has as the goal winning it (as a sought after end ), generates both cost and benefits; and, resources (human life and other costs) are used to attain the goal. If

6720-479: The area of inquiry or object of inquiry rather than the methodology. In the biology department, it is not said that all biology should be studied with DNA analysis. People study living organisms in many different ways, so some people will perform DNA analysis, others might analyse anatomy, and still others might build game theoretic models of animal behaviour. But they are all called biology because they all study living organisms. According to Ha Joon Chang, this view that

6840-443: The author believes economics is evolving, or should evolve. Many economists including nobel prize winners James M. Buchanan and Ronald Coase reject the method-based definition of Robbins and continue to prefer definitions like those of Say, in terms of its subject matter. Ha-Joon Chang has for example argued that the definition of Robbins would make economics very peculiar because all other sciences define themselves in terms of

6960-716: The behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyses what is viewed as basic elements within economies , including individual agents and markets , their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses economies as systems where production, distribution, consumption, savings , and investment expenditure interact, and factors affecting it: factors of production , such as labour , capital , land , and enterprise , inflation , economic growth , and public policies that have impact on these elements . It also seeks to analyse and describe

7080-474: The borders of their home countries, making international marketing a part of those firms' marketing strategy. Marketing managers are often responsible for influencing the level, timing, and composition of customer demand. In part, this is because the role of a marketing manager (or sometimes called managing marketer in small- and medium-sized enterprises) can vary significantly based on a business's size, corporate culture , and industry context. For example, in

7200-419: The brand." Ogilvy is on record as having used the positioning concept in several campaigns in the mid-1950s and early 1960s, well before Ries and Trout published their articles on the positioning. In relation to a Dove campaign launched in 1957, Ogilvy explained, "I could have positioned Dove as a detergent bar for men with dirty hands, but chose instead to position it as a toilet bar for women with dry skin. This

7320-476: The case of Lux, the brand disconnected from images of household drudgery and connected with images of leisure and fashion. As advertising executives in their early careers, both Ries and Trout were exposed to the positioning concept via their work. Ries and Trout codified the tacit knowledge that was available in the advertising industry; popularizing the positioning concept with the publication of their articles and books. Ries and Trout were influential in diffusing

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7440-419: The chosen strategy. Traditionally, this has involved implementation planning across the "4 Ps": product management , pricing (at what price slot does a producer position a product, e.g. low, medium, or high price), place (the place or area where the products are going to be sold, which could be local, regional, countrywide or international) (i.e. sales and distribution channels), and promotion. Taken together,

7560-459: The claim that Ries and Trout devised the concept has been challenged by marketing scholars. According to Stephen A. Fox, Al Ries , and Jack Trout "resurrected the concept and made it their trademark." Some scholars credit advertising guru, David Ogilvy , with developing the positioning concept in the mid-1950s, at least a decade before Ries and Trout published their now-classic series of articles. In their early writing, Ries and Trout suggest that

7680-517: The colonies. Physiocrats , a group of 18th-century French thinkers and writers, developed the idea of the economy as a circular flow of income and output. Physiocrats believed that only agricultural production generated a clear surplus over cost, so that agriculture was the basis of all wealth. Thus, they opposed the mercantilist policy of promoting manufacturing and trade at the expense of agriculture, including import tariffs. Physiocrats advocated replacing administratively costly tax collections with

7800-435: The company's implementation choices across the 4 P's are often described as the marketing mix , meaning the mix of elements the business will employ to " go to market " and execute the marketing strategy. The overall goal for the marketing mix is to consistently deliver a compelling value proposition that reinforces the firm's chosen positioning, builds customer loyalty and brand equity among target customers, and achieves

7920-427: The company's margin of profit is improving, or decreasing, and how much it is in comparison to the profit margin of established competitors. Additionally, a brand audit investigates trends in a business's net profits, the return on existing investments, and its established economic value. It determines whether the business's financial strength and credit rating are improving or worsening. This kind of audit also assesses

8040-546: The company, product, or brand to occupy in the target customer's mind. This positioning is often an encapsulation of a key benefit the company's product or service offers that is differentiated and superior to the benefits offered by competitive products. For example, Volvo has traditionally positioned its products in the automobile market in North America in order to be perceived as the leader in "safety", whereas BMW has traditionally positioned its brand to be perceived as

8160-416: The concept beyond material and rational aspects to include 'meaning' carried by a brand's mission or myth. Primarily, positioning is about "the place a brand occupies in the mind of its target audience". Positioning is now a regular marketing activity or strategy. A national positioning strategy can often be used, or modified slightly, as a tool to accommodate entering into foreign markets. The origins of

8280-560: The concept of positioning from the advertising community through to the broader marketing community. Their articles were to become highly influential. By the early 1970s, positioning became a popular word with marketers, especially those that were working in the area of advertising and promotion. In 1981 Ries and Trout published their classic book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (McGraw-Hill 1981). The concept enjoys ongoing currency among both advertisers and marketers as suggested by Maggard who notes that positioning provides planners with

8400-414: The concept was limited due to its focus on the product alone. In addition to the previous focus on the product, positioning now includes building a brand's reputation and competitive standing. John P. Maggard notes that positioning provides planners with a valuable conceptual vehicle for the implementation of more meaningful and productive marketing strategies . Many branding practitioners make positioning

8520-551: The definition as "an organized system for finding a window in the mind. It is based on the concept that communication can only take place at the right time and under the right circumstances". Positioning is closely related to the concept of perceived value. In marketing, value is defined as the difference between a prospective customer's evaluation of the benefits and costs of one product when compared with others. Value can be expressed in numerous forms including product benefits, features, style, value for money. The precise origins of

8640-488: The design of modern monetary policy and are now standard workhorses in most central banks. After the 2007–2008 financial crisis , macroeconomic research has put greater emphasis on understanding and integrating the financial system into models of the general economy and shedding light on the ways in which problems in the financial sector can turn into major macroeconomic recessions. In this and other research branches, inspiration from behavioural economics has started playing

8760-506: The distribution of income among landowners, workers, and capitalists. Ricardo saw an inherent conflict between landowners on the one hand and labour and capital on the other. He posited that the growth of population and capital, pressing against a fixed supply of land, pushes up rents and holds down wages and profits. Ricardo was also the first to state and prove the principle of comparative advantage , according to which each country should specialise in producing and exporting goods in that it has

8880-464: The economy can and should be studied in only one way (for example by studying only rational choices), and going even one step further and basically redefining economics as a theory of everything, is peculiar. Questions regarding distribution of resources are found throughout the writings of the Boeotian poet Hesiod and several economic historians have described Hesiod as the "first economist". However,

9000-451: The elements that enhance its competitiveness. A business's competitive strengths can exist in several forms. Some of these forms include skilled or pertinent expertise, valuable physical assets, valuable human assets, valuable organizational assets, valuable intangible assets, competitive capabilities, achievements and attributes that position the business into a competitive advantage, and alliances or cooperative ventures. The basic concept of

9120-404: The examination of its effectiveness. When it comes to brand auditing, six questions should be carefully examined and assessed: When a business conducts a brand audit, the goal is to uncover the business's resource strengths, deficiencies, best market opportunities, outside threats, future profitability, and its competitive standing in comparison to existing competitors. A brand audit establishes

9240-479: The expectations of investors, employees, clients and regulators all needed to shift, and each company needed to influence how these perceptions changed. Doing so involves repositioning the entire firm. This is especially true of small and medium-sized firms, many of which often lack strong brands for individual product lines. In a prolonged recession, business approaches that were effective during healthy economies often become ineffective and it becomes necessary to change

9360-405: The firm may go so far as to turn away customers who are not in its target segment. The doorman at a swanky nightclub, for example, may deny entry to unfashionably dressed individuals because the business has made a strategic decision to target the "high fashion" segment of nightclub patrons. In conjunction with targeting decisions, marketing managers will identify the desired positioning they want

9480-523: The firm's marketing and financial objectives. In many cases, marketing management will develop a marketing plan to specify how the company will execute the chosen strategy and achieve the business's objectives. The content of marketing plans varies for each firm, but commonly includes: More broadly, marketing managers work to design and improve the effectiveness of core marketing processes , such as new product development , brand management , marketing communications , and pricing. Marketers may employ

9600-730: The first large-scale macroeconometric model , applying the Keynesian thinking systematically to the US economy . Immediately after World War II, Keynesian was the dominant economic view of the United States establishment and its allies, Marxian economics was the dominant economic view of the Soviet Union nomenklatura and its allies. Monetarism appeared in the 1950s and 1960s, its intellectual leader being Milton Friedman . Monetarists contended that monetary policy and other monetary shocks, as represented by

9720-536: The following decades, many economists followed Keynes' ideas and expanded on his works. John Hicks and Alvin Hansen developed the IS–LM model which was a simple formalisation of some of Keynes' insights on the economy's short-run equilibrium. Franco Modigliani and James Tobin developed important theories of private consumption and investment , respectively, two major components of aggregate demand . Lawrence Klein built

9840-509: The global economy . Other broad distinctions within economics include those between positive economics , describing "what is", and normative economics , advocating "what ought to be"; between economic theory and applied economics ; between rational and behavioural economics ; and between mainstream economics and heterodox economics . Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, including business , finance , cybersecurity , health care , engineering and government . It

9960-424: The growth in the money stock, was an important cause of economic fluctuations, and consequently that monetary policy was more important than fiscal policy for purposes of stabilisation . Friedman was also skeptical about the ability of central banks to conduct a sensible active monetary policy in practice, advocating instead using simple rules such as a steady rate of money growth. Monetarism rose to prominence in

10080-463: The importance of various market failures for the functioning of the economy, as had Keynes. Not least, they proposed various reasons that potentially explained the empirically observed features of price and wage rigidity , usually made to be endogenous features of the models, rather than simply assumed as in older Keynesian-style ones. After decades of often heated discussions between Keynesians, monetarists, new classical and new Keynesian economists,

10200-522: The late-1960s with the publication of a series of articles, followed by a book. Ries and Trout, both former advertising executives, published articles about positioning in Industrial Marketing in 1969 and Advertising Age in 1972. By the early 1970s, positioning became a popular word with marketers, especially those in advertising and promotion. In 1981, Ries and Trout published their now-classic book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind . However,

10320-406: The leader in "performance". Ideally, a firm's positioning can be maintained over a long period of time because the company possesses or can develop, some form of sustainable competitive advantage . The positioning should also be sufficiently relevant to the target segment such that it will drive the purchasing behavior of target customers. To sum up, the marketing branch of a company is to deal with

10440-418: The literature; classical economics , neoclassical economics , Keynesian economics , the neoclassical synthesis , monetarism , new classical economics , New Keynesian economics and the new neoclassical synthesis . Positioning (marketing) Positioning refers to the place that a brand occupies in the minds of the customers and how it is distinguished from the products of the competitors. It

10560-449: The market's two roles: allocation of resources and distribution of income. The market might be efficient in allocating resources but not in distributing income, he wrote, making it necessary for society to intervene. Value theory was important in classical theory. Smith wrote that the "real price of every thing ... is the toil and trouble of acquiring it". Smith maintained that, with rent and profit, other costs besides wages also enter

10680-437: The most famous passages in all economics," Smith represents every individual as trying to employ any capital they might command for their own advantage, not that of the society, and for the sake of profit, which is necessary at some level for employing capital in domestic industry, and positively related to the value of produce. In this: He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he

10800-503: The pessimistic analysis of Malthus (1798). John Stuart Mill (1844) delimited the subject matter further: The science which traces the laws of such of the phenomena of society as arise from the combined operations of mankind for the production of wealth, in so far as those phenomena are not modified by the pursuit of any other object. Alfred Marshall provided a still widely cited definition in his textbook Principles of Economics (1890) that extended analysis beyond wealth and from

10920-444: The positioning concept are unclear. Cano (2003), Schwartzkopf (2008), and others have argued that the concepts of market segmentation and positioning were central to the tacit knowledge that informed brand advertising from the 1920s, but did not become codified in marketing textbooks and journal articles until the 1950s and 60s. Al Ries and Jack Trout are often credited with developing the concept of product or brand positioning in

11040-405: The positioning concept are unclear. Scholars suggest that it may have emerged from the burgeoning advertising industry in the period following World War I , only to be codified and popularized in the 1950s and 60s. The positioning concept became very influential and continues to evolve in ways that ensure it remains current and relevant to practising marketers. David Ogilvy noted that while there

11160-407: The positioning concept was widely used in the advertising industry before the 1950s. Ogilvy's writings indicate that he was well aware of the concept and drilled his creative team with this idea from at least the 1950s. Among other things, Ogilvy wrote that "the most important decision is how to position your product", and "Every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of

11280-400: The positioning statement should be written in a format that includes an identification of the target market , the market need, the product name and category, the key benefit delivered and the basis of the product's differentiation from any competing alternatives. A basic template for writing positioning statements is as follows: "For (target customer) who (statement of the need or opportunity),

11400-483: The present, modified by substituting the word "wealth" for "goods and services" meaning that wealth may include non-material objects as well. One hundred and thirty years later, Lionel Robbins noticed that this definition no longer sufficed, because many economists were making theoretical and philosophical inroads in other areas of human activity. In his Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science , he proposed

11520-409: The price of a commodity. Other classical economists presented variations on Smith, termed the ' labour theory of value '. Classical economics focused on the tendency of any market economy to settle in a final stationary state made up of a constant stock of physical wealth (capital) and a constant population size . Marxist (later, Marxian) economics descends from classical economics and it derives from

11640-400: The procurement of these services. Under the area of marketing agency management (i.e. working with external marketing agencies and suppliers) are techniques such as agency performance evaluation, scope of work, incentive compensation, ERFx 's and storage of agency information in a supplier database . Marketing management employs a variety of metrics to measure progress against objectives. It

11760-429: The purest approximation to the truth that has yet been published" on the subject. The publication of Adam Smith 's The Wealth of Nations in 1776, has been described as "the effective birth of economics as a separate discipline." The book identified land, labour, and capital as the three factors of production and the major contributors to a nation's wealth, as distinct from the physiocratic idea that only agriculture

11880-425: The right time can help a brand build a powerful image in the mind of consumer(s). From time to time, the current positioning strategy fails to resonate. This could be due to new market entrants, changed customer preferences, structural change within the target market (such as ageing, segment creep) or simply that customers have forgotten about a brand and its position. When this happens, the company may need to consider

12000-412: The scope and method of economics, emanating from that definition. A body of theory later termed "neoclassical economics" formed from about 1870 to 1910. The term "economics" was popularised by such neoclassical economists as Alfred Marshall and Mary Paley Marshall as a concise synonym for "economic science" and a substitute for the earlier " political economy ". This corresponded to the influence on

12120-425: The selling and popularity of its products among people and its customers, as the central and eventual goal of a company is customer satisfaction and the return of revenue. If the company has obtained an adequate understanding of the customer base and its own competitive position in the industry, marketing managers are able to make their own key strategic decisions and develop a marketing strategy designed to maximize

12240-486: The so-called Lucas critique and the presentation of real business cycle models . During the 1980s, a group of researchers appeared being called New Keynesian economists , including among others George Akerlof , Janet Yellen , Gregory Mankiw and Olivier Blanchard . They adopted the principle of rational expectations and other monetarist or new classical ideas such as building upon models employing micro foundations and optimizing behaviour, but simultaneously emphasised

12360-444: The source of the word economy. Joseph Schumpeter described 16th and 17th century scholastic writers, including Tomás de Mercado , Luis de Molina , and Juan de Lugo , as "coming nearer than any other group to being the 'founders' of scientific economics" as to monetary , interest , and value theory within a natural-law perspective. Two groups, who later were called "mercantilists" and "physiocrats", more directly influenced

12480-401: The start of almost 50 years of marketing where 'winning' was determined by understanding the consumer better than competitors and getting the total 'brand mix' right. This early positioning tactic was focused on the product itself – its "form, package size, and price", according to Al Ries and Jack Trout The positioning concept continues to evolve. Traditionally called product positioning,

12600-406: The state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services. Jean-Baptiste Say (1803), distinguishing the subject matter from its public-policy uses, defined it as the science of production, distribution, and consumption of wealth . On the satirical side, Thomas Carlyle (1849) coined " the dismal science " as an epithet for classical economics , in this context, commonly linked to

12720-429: The strategic elements needed to improve the brand position and competitive capabilities within the industry. Once a brand is audited, any business that ends up with strong financial performance and market position is more likely than not to have a properly conceived and effectively executed brand strategy. A brand audit examines whether a business's share of the market is increasing, decreasing, or stable. It determines if

12840-408: The subject of mathematical methods used in the natural sciences . Neoclassical economics systematically integrated supply and demand as joint determinants of both price and quantity in market equilibrium, influencing the allocation of output and income distribution. It rejected the classical economics' labour theory of value in favour of a marginal utility theory of value on the demand side and

12960-402: The subject or different views among economists. Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1776) defined what was then called political economy as "an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations", in particular as: a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator [with the twofold objectives of providing] a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people ... [and] to supply

13080-471: The subject": Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses. Robbins described the definition as not classificatory in "pick[ing] out certain kinds of behaviour" but rather analytical in "focus[ing] attention on a particular aspect of behaviour, the form imposed by the influence of scarcity ." He affirmed that previous economists have usually centred their studies on

13200-822: The subsequent development of the subject. Both groups were associated with the rise of economic nationalism and modern capitalism in Europe. Mercantilism was an economic doctrine that flourished from the 16th to 18th century in a prolific pamphlet literature, whether of merchants or statesmen. It held that a nation's wealth depended on its accumulation of gold and silver. Nations without access to mines could obtain gold and silver from trade only by selling goods abroad and restricting imports other than of gold and silver. The doctrine called for importing inexpensive raw materials to be used in manufacturing goods, which could be exported, and for state regulation to impose protective tariffs on foreign manufactured goods and prohibit manufacturing in

13320-469: The term customer data platform or marketing resource management to describe systems that facilitate an integrated approach for controlling marketing resources. In some cases, these efforts may be linked to various supply chain management systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), material requirements planning (MRP), efficient consumer response (ECR), and inventory management systems. Globalization has led some firms to market beyond

13440-431: The tools of business process re-engineering to ensure these processes are properly designed, and use a variety of process management techniques to keep them operating smoothly. Effective execution may require management of both internal resources and a variety of external vendors and service providers, such as the firm's advertising agency . Marketers may therefore coordinate with the company's Purchasing department on

13560-467: The war is not winnable or if the expected costs outweigh the benefits, the deciding actors (assuming they are rational) may never go to war (a decision ) but rather explore other alternatives. Economics cannot be defined as the science that studies wealth, war, crime, education, and any other field economic analysis can be applied to; but, as the science that studies a particular common aspect of each of those subjects (they all use scarce resources to attain

13680-518: The weights of price, quality, durability, reliability, colour and flavour of which can then help adjust the position of a brand in the mind of the prospective consumer. Companies engaging in repositioning can choose to downplay some points of difference and emphasize others. In volatile markets, it can be necessary – even urgent – to reposition an entire company, rather than just a product line or brand. When Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley suddenly shifted from investment to commercial banks, for example,

13800-505: The word Oikos , the Greek word from which the word economy derives, was used for issues regarding how to manage a household (which was understood to be the landowner, his family, and his slaves ) rather than to refer to some normative societal system of distribution of resources, which is a more recent phenomenon. Xenophon , the author of the Oeconomicus , is credited by philologues for being

13920-460: The work of Karl Marx . The first volume of Marx's major work, Das Kapital , was published in 1867. Marx focused on the labour theory of value and theory of surplus value . Marx wrote that they were mechanisms used by capital to exploit labour. The labour theory of value held that the value of an exchanged commodity was determined by the labour that went into its production, and the theory of surplus value demonstrated how workers were only paid

14040-421: Was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1798) used the concept of diminishing returns to explain low living standards. Human population , he argued, tended to increase geometrically, outstripping the production of food, which increased arithmetically. The force of

14160-446: Was no real consensus as to the meaning of positioning among marketing experts, his definition is "what a product does, and who it is for". For instance, Dove has been successfully positioned as a bar of soap for women with dry hands, vs. a product for men with dirty hands. Al Ries and Jack Trout advanced several definitions of positioning. In an article, Industrial Marketing , published in 1969, Jack Trout stated that positioning

14280-892: Was productive. Smith discusses potential benefits of specialisation by division of labour , including increased labour productivity and gains from trade , whether between town and country or across countries. His "theorem" that "the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market" has been described as the "core of a theory of the functions of firm and industry " and a "fundamental principle of economic organization." To Smith has also been ascribed "the most important substantive proposition in all of economics" and foundation of resource-allocation theory—that, under competition , resource owners (of labour, land, and capital) seek their most profitable uses, resulting in an equal rate of return for all uses in equilibrium (adjusted for apparent differences arising from such factors as training and unemployment). In an argument that includes "one of

14400-437: Was recognised as well as the traditional Keynesian insistence that fiscal policy could also play an influential role in affecting aggregate demand . Methodologically, the synthesis led to a new class of applied models, known as dynamic stochastic general equilibrium or DSGE models, descending from real business cycles models, but extended with several new Keynesian and other features. These models proved useful and influential in

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