It means that all the activities a firm undertakes to promote its products to target customers. The goals of promotion include informing, persuading and reminding.

Marketing Myopia

Marketing myopia is a short-sighted and inward approach focusing on the company’s needs. Marketing Myopia suggests that businesses will do better in the end if they concentrate on meeting customers’ needs rather than selling products. It also indicates that the vision of most organisations is too constricted by a narrow understanding of what business they are in. For example, the railroads are in trouble today not because that need was filled by cars, trucks or airplanes. The reason was that they defined their industry incorrectly. They were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented and they were product oriented instead of customer oriented. A strong understanding of marketing myopia paper helped oil companies to redefine their business as energy rather than just petroleum.

Examples in TBL: TradeMe

Innovation and entrepreneurship

Innovation is the conversion of knowledge and ideas into new or improved products, processes or services, which may be for commercial use or for the public good. It is about exploring the unknown in terms of markets, technologies and business models and creating radical or incremental change.

Entrepreneurship is the process of creating an opportunity and pursuing it to create something of value regardless of current available resources. An entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

Intrapreneurship is entrepreneurial efforts within a larger organisation.

Workforce management

Workforce management is critical to business success. All organisations need workforces to carry out the activities that generate value. The goal of workforce management is to attract and retain the people the business needs, motivating and developing them in a way that generates the required performance at a cost the business can afford. Bring together the interests of the company and the employee is at the heart of successful employment relationships. Good negotiating skills help managers do this.

Co-creation

Co creation means that value that has to be jointly created by both the firm and the consumer for mutual benefit.

Co-creation involves dialog, access, risk-benefits and transparency that are emerging as the basis for interaction between the consumer and the firm.

Dialog implies interactivity, deep engagement, ability and willingness to act on both sides. The firm and the consumer must become equal and joint problem solvers for an active dialog and the development of a shared solution. However dialog is difficult, if the consumer does not have the same access and transparency to information. Therefore, firms should allow their consumers to get access to as much information as they need. Thereby, dialog, access and transparency help to decrease the risk of failure of satisfying consumers’ needs and wants.

Examples in TBL: TradeMe, YouTube, Threadless.com

Customer lifetime value

CLV means that the value of all the cash flows created by the relationship with a customer. ICLV suggests focusing on retaining customer rather than on acquiring customer. A firm’s value is improved by the increasing the value of the customer relationships.

Dimensions of CLV:

Time (longer relationships):

-Secure customer satisfaction (treating well)

-Regular meetings with the customer

-Frequent flier programs

-Tier program: silver, gold, platinum

Frequency:

-buy 3, get 1 for free

-buy 10, get one for free  Card

Share of wallet:

-up-sell and cross sell (burger and fries), (suggesting another type of a particular product)

Operation management

Operation management is overseeing all the activities involved in producing goods and services. Operations managers are responsible for a wide range of strategies and decisions from location production facilities to managing the supply chain.

In general, operations management uses mathematical approaches (quality control, forecasting techniques, capacity planning etc.) to find ways to increase productivity, improve quality, and manage or reduce costly inventories.

As operation management deals with managing production costs, it will affect pricing decision.

Supply chain

The lifeblood of every production operation is the supply chain. SC is a set of connected systems that coordinates the flow the flow of goods and materials from supplier all the way through to final customers.

Managing risks. SCM can help companies manage the complex risks involved in a supply chain, risks that include everything from cost and availability to health and safety issues.

Managing relationships. SCM can also coordinate the numerous relationships in the supply chain and help managers focus their attention on the most important company-to company relationships.

Managing trade-offs. SCM helps managers address the many trade-offs in the supply chain. These trade-offs can be a source of conflict within the company, and SCM helps balance the competing interests of the various functional areas. This holistic view helps managers balance both capacity and capability along the entire chain.

System is an interconnected and coordinated set of elements and processes that converts inputs to desired outputs. (Transaction Processing System, Decision Support system).

Value chain – all the elements and processes that add value as raw materials are transformed into the final products made available to the ultimate customer.

Just in time - inventory management in which goods and materials are delivered throughout the production process right before they are needed.