Нина Пусенкова - Английский язык. Практический курс для решения бизнес-задач
– What are metamarkets?
A metamarket facilitates all of the activities involved in obtaining an item for use or consumption. To buy a car, I must choose the car, finance it, and obtain insurance. Edmunds.com is an online metamarket where I can get information about all cars, search for the best dealer for the car that I want, arrange for a loan, and buy insurance. Another example is theknot.com, an online metamarket for obtaining everything connected with preparing a wedding, including gowns, invitations, gifts, etc.
– What are the most significant challenges marketers face today?
I would list the following challenges:
1. Getting better financial measures of the impact of marketing programs. Marketing has been lax in developing marketing metrics to show what particular expenditures and campaigns have achieved. CEOs are no longer satisfied with measures of how much awareness, knowledge, or preference has been created by marketing programs. They want to know how much sales, profit, and shareholder value has been created. One step in the right direction is at Coca-Cola, where its marketers must estimate the financial impacts of their programs before getting a budget and after spending the money. This will produce a financial mindset in Coca-Cola’s marketers.
2. Developing more integrated information about important customers. Customers come in contact with a company at various touchpoints: by e-mail, by snail mail, by phone, in person, and so on. Yet if these touchpoints are not recorded, the company won’t have a 360-degree view of a prospect or customer and therefore is handicapped in developing sound offerings and communications for that customer.
3. Getting marketing to be the company’s designer and driver of market strategy. Too much marketing today is 1P marketing; that is, marketing deals only with promotion, with other departments heavily determining the product, the price, and the place. I remember a major European airline at which the VP of marketing confessed that he doesn’t set the fare or the product conditions (food, staff, decor) or the flight schedules, but only the advertising and the sales force. How can marketing be effective if the 4Ps are not under unified planning and control?
4. Facing lower-cost/higher-quality competitors. As China continues its rapid growth, U.S. firms will face a repeat of the Japanese threat, which consisted of competing with Japanese companies that were able to offer better products at lower costs. This will force more U.S. companies to shift their production to China, and this will reduce jobs at home.
5. Coping with the increasing power and demands of mega-distributors. Mega-retailers such as Wal-Mart, Costco, Target, Office Depot, and others are commanding a larger share of the retail marketplace. Many mega-retailers are carrying store brands that are equal in quality to national brands and lower in price, thus forcing down manufacturers’ margins. National-brand companies feel more than ever at the mercy of mega-retailers and are desperately searching for defensive and offensive strategies.
– You say that the main economic problem plaguing companies is industry overcapacity. What are the main causes of this problem? How can companies cope with it?
Almost every industry suffers from overcapacity. The world auto industry could probably produce 30% more cars without adding another factory. The same can be said for the steel industry and many chemical industries. Customers are scarce, not products. Overcapacity is the result of companies’ overoptimism about economic prospects and about their prowess in the marketplace. I have seen many companies plan for a 10% increase in sales when the total market is growing by only 3%. When this happens, the result is overcapacity and hypercompetition. Hypercompetition can only result in falling prices. The main defenses include (1) building a superior brand, (2) developing more loyal customers who will pay a higher price, (3) and acquiring or merging with other companies to rationalize the supply.
– What is the difference between a competitive market and a hypercompetitive market?
Many markets have moved from being competitive markets to becoming hypercompetitive markets. In a competitive market, a company can usually sustain its market position and competitive advantage. In a hypercompetitive market, there is hardly any sustainable competitive advantage. Rapid technological change and globalization can destroy competitive advantages overnight. The only hope is to practice continuous improvement – some even say continuous breakthroughs. When Jack Welch was CEO of General Electric, he told his people: «Change or die!» Perhaps the only advantage a company can have is an ability to change faster than its competitors.
Companies, of course, should study other companies that have mastered certain processes, whether those be product development, customer retention, or order fulfillment. Benchmarking, however, has two forms: passive, in which one company copies the practices of another; and creative, in which one company copies and improves on a process seen at another company. Creative benchmarking is about bettering the best, not just copying the best.
– You write that the customer has become the hunter. What impact does that have on marketing strategies?
Customers now have the power. With the advent of the Internet, they have great amounts of information about brands, prices, product quality, features, and service at their disposal. This is in contrast to the past, when information was largely in the hands of the sellers and the cost of acquiring information was high for the buyers. Today the buyer of a car goes on the Internet, searches for product and price information, and comes armed with the facts to wrest a good price from the seller. The sellers who have the best chance to survive and prosper are those who have found ways, in the words of Jack Welch, to «keep giving the customers more for less… while maintaining a profit.»
– How can a company survive in an environment where the markets are changing faster than the marketing?
Not all companies can survive! This is evidenced by the high rate of bankruptcy and the rapid increase in M&As. When there is too much capacity, mergers help to rationalize that capacity. The companies that will do well will be those that can create and deliver the most value to customers. The task is to assess the trajectory of customer wants accurately.
Source: www.amanet.org, 2005
Essential Vocabulary
1. globalisation n – глобализация
2. site n – место, местонахождение; производственная или строительная площадка
3. trend n – тренд, тенденция
4. preferential terms – предпочтительные, наиболее благоприятные условия
5. retention n – удержание, сохранение, задержание
retain v – нанимать, удерживать, сохранять
retained a – удержанный, сохраненный; нераспределенный (о прибыли)
6. transaction (trans) n – сделка, операция
7. mediator n – посредник, ходатай
mediation n – посредничество, ходатайство, вмешательство с целью примирения
mediate v – посредничать, ходатайствовать
8. scenario n – сценарий
9. implication n – последствие; вовлечение; причастность; значение
implicate v – впутывать, вовлекать, подразумевать
10. expenditure n – расходы, затраты, расходная часть бюджета, статья расхода
expend v – тратить, расходовать, затрачивать
expendable a – потребляемый, расходуемый; невозвратимый, одноразового применения
11. tool n – инструмент
12. sales force – сбытовики
13. set n – комплект, набор, коллекция, серия, ряд, состав; компания, круг, партия; множество; строение, конфигурация; тенденция
set v – ставить, помещать, поставить; располагаться; сажать, надевать, вставлять; направлять, приготавливать, устанавливать, определять, назначать, ставить (задачу), подавать (пример), вводить, внедрять (модель)
14. facilitator n – способствующее (сделке) лицо
facilitate v – способствовать, облегчать (в некот. контекстах давать взятку)
15. measure n – мера, система измерений, единица измерения, мерка; мероприятие
measure v – измерять, мерить, отмерять, оценивать
16. metric n – мерило, измеритель
metric a – метрический
17. campaign n – кампания
18. prospect n – вид; потенциальный клиент; перспектива, будущее
prospecting n – поисковые работы (горн.)
prospect v – исследовать, разведывать, искать (клиентов, полезные ископаемые)
prospective а – будущий, предполагаемый, ожидаемый
19. retailer n – розничный торговец
retail a – розничный
20. capacity n – производственная мощность, способность, потенциал, функция
21. overcapacity n – переизбыток производственных мощностей
22. scarcity n – нехватка, недостаток, дефицит
scarce a – дефицитный, редкий (ресурс)
23. merger n – слияние
merge v – сливаться
24. benchmarking n – бенчмаркинг
25. mergers and acquisitions (M&A) – слияния и поглощения
Exercise 1*. Which of the following statements are not correct and why?
1. Globalization means that companies will bring products into a country at prices higher than those charged by the domestic sellers. 2. Hypercompetition means that there are less suppliers competing for the same customer, leading to price hikes. 3. The Internet means that people can compare prices more quickly and move to the lowest-cost offer. 4. Various world regions are becoming less integrated and less protective. 5. In the fast-changing world, it is useless to identify trends and speculate about their implications for the company. 6. Nowadays, marketing departments need a whole new set of skills. 7. Marketers need to think about profitably when selling a product or a service. 8. Marketing has been lax in developing marketing metrics to show what particular expenditures and campaigns have achieved. 9. The Japanese threat to the US companies meant competing with Japanese companies that were able to offer similar products at lower costs. 10. Today, both customers and products are scarce. 11. In a hypercompetitive market, there is hardly any sustainable competitive advantage. 12. In the past, information was largely in the hands of the sellers and the cost of acquiring information was high for the buyers.
Exercise 2*. Philip Kotler names different types of marketing. Find 19 categories of marketing in the text and explain what they mean.
Exercise 3*. Fill in the blanks using terms given below.
Benchmarking
Benchmark refers to a…… of best practice…….. Benchmarking refers to the search for the best practice that yields the benchmark performance, with emphasis on how you can……. the process to achieve…….. results.
Benchmarking is a process used in management and particularly……, in which companies……. various aspects of their business processes in relation to best practice, usually within their own…… This then allows companies to…… plans on how to…… such best practice. Benchmarking may be a…… event, but is often treated as a continuous process in which companies continually seek to…… their practices.
Benchmarks and benchmarking can provide you with facts to answer the questions about the…….. position of your company. They can provide you with…….. to show you what can be achieved. Perhaps more important, benchmarking can tell you how you can achieve the same type of results! In short, benchmarking gives you the external…….. and the best practices on which to base your evaluations and to…… your work processes.
All process improvement efforts require a sound methodology and……, and benchmarking is no different. You need to:
1. Set……. and define the……. of your efforts
