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.

Sources of opportunity exist within a company or industry:

1. Unexpected occurrences

2. Incongruities

3. Process needs

4. Industry and market changes

Sources of opportunity exist outside a company in its social and intellectual environment

1. Demographic changes

2. Changes in perception

3. New knowledge

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