It is far from enough to understand the concepts and principles of such practical reference books. Only by applying them to work and life can we truly internalize knowledge into ability. In fact, what I admire most about this marketing bible is not its depth and breadth, but its iterative ability. As a reference book with a short shelf life, the author needs to constantly revise his views and ideas according to the changes in the marketing environment to maintain the effectiveness and practicality of the content. The changing speed of the times is always beyond the imagination of ordinary people. If you put the first and fifteenth editions fifty years ago together, they may be completely different books. I have seen many books with updated versions, all of which are based on the original books to make local adjustments and add or delete some contents. But kotler took the route of "subversive innovation". His books, from layout to content arrangement, are like new books just released from the oven. They always stand at the forefront of marketing practice to describe the basic concepts of marketing and analyze various brand cases, and have no sense of space-time distance from readers. Li Ao once lamented that "people and books are getting old" before his death, but kotler, who is older than him, made his books "grow backward" and began to iterate constantly from the 1960s. This ability to keep pace with the times really deserves our serious understanding and study.
Compared with marketing, the main authors of the two books are kotler, and there are many similarities in chapter setting and content arrangement. Each chapter contains two long brand marketing cases, with discussion questions and application questions, which not only strengthen the key concepts, but also closely link with marketing practice. The content of "marketing" is slightly compact, focused and well-defined (with different color titles), and key terms are listed at the end of each chapter; However, the content of marketing management covers a wide range, involving many concepts and cited cases, and specially set up columns of "marketing insight" and "marketing memorandum" to provide in-depth concepts and practical explanations. At the end of each chapter, there is an "overview of this chapter" column to help readers understand and master key concepts. The content arrangement of these two books has its own emphasis, especially when expounding some common principles or concepts. "Marketing" simply summarizes a certain concept (principle), while "Marketing Management" elaborates the latter in depth. Or when marketing explains a certain concept (principle) thoroughly, marketing management only passes over the latter. For example, the SWOT analysis mentioned in the formulation of marketing strategy, "Marketing" only briefly introduces the analysis principle (P57), while "Marketing Management" is launched from different perspectives of internal (external) environment, and combined with typical brand cases for in-depth and detailed analysis (P44-45). Another example is the environmental problem of sustainable development. Marketing used several pages to explain the problems of enterprise development and environmental protection from the aspects of environmental sustainable development strategy, "green" action, "beyond green" action and product environmental responsibility system, and cited several cases of well-known brands for supplementary explanation (P596-599); And "marketing management" only takes a little space to illustrate the concern of enterprises about environmental issues (P353). These two books have their own emphases and complement each other. If they are read together, they will get more inspiration and gains.
Cognitive gains:
Cognition 1: It is necessary to distinguish between private brand products and unlicensed products.
Origin: Private brands are brand products developed by retailers or wholesalers themselves. Unlicensed goods are ordinary goods with no brand, simple packaging and very cheap price. (P509-5 10)
Interpretation: In the past, I saw those cheap products without brand logo in the supermarket, and mistakenly thought that they were produced and sold in the supermarket, which was equivalent to the products with their own brands. By learning relevant knowledge, I learned that the products of my own brand are not only favorable in price, but also good in quality; Although the price of unlicensed goods is very cheap, the quality standard is low.
Cognition 2: If horses want to run fast, they have to eat more grass.
Origin: No system can meet the requirements of minimizing distribution cost and maximizing customer service capacity at the same time. (P5 15)
Interpretation: Many enterprises like to flaunt that they want to achieve zero inventory and direct products to customers by integrating logistics systems. I think this is the future development trend. However, after reading kotler's analysis of market logistics objectives, I am not so optimistic about the development prospect of zero inventory. In practice, it is difficult to improve logistics efficiency and minimize logistics costs at the same time, and logistics costs in many markets are intertwined and constrained. When the product inventory of an enterprise is reduced to the lowest or even zero, it will lead to product shortage, delayed order, unplanned production and high freight express cost. Even if the enterprise predicts the sales volume in advance, or treats different products differently to reduce the inventory cost, it will fail in an emergency. If it is not remedied in time, it will bear the consequences of supply chain paralysis. As for the zero-inventory strategy of making to order, it is either to meet the special needs of customers or the low requirements of customers for efficiency.
Cognition 3: Negative word of mouth is also word of mouth.
Origin: The ultimate success of any viral marketing or word-of-mouth marketing depends on whether consumers are willing to discuss relevant information with others. Customer comments can be particularly influential. (page 587)
Interpretation: As the saying goes, good things don't go out, and bad things spread thousands of miles. Negative information can attract people's attention and stimulate people's emotions more than positive information. Consumers like to relay negative word-of-mouth and spread the negative consumption experiences of others they have heard. Although negative word-of-mouth is not good for enterprises on the surface, it is good from the perspective of communication. As long as enterprises are good at crisis public relations and turn unfavorable factors into favorable factors, they can take the opportunity to improve their popularity and expand their influence. The book also points out that positive online comments are not as influential or valuable as negative comments. This phenomenon is somewhat similar to the rebound effect formed by reverse marketing. The more things that are forbidden to spread through formal channels, the more people will pay attention to and buy them.
Cognition 4: Sales growth does not necessarily mean that sales representatives have good performance.
Origin: the level and growth of average sales and gross profit of each customer, when compared with the overall level of the company, the data becomes more meaningful. (P6 12)
Interpretation: If a sales representative's performance indicators look good, such as the total sales volume of products is increasing every year, it does not necessarily mean that his performance is excellent. We should also pay attention to the changes of other indicators, such as the total gross profit may be lower than the average level of the company, indicating that sales representatives may waste too much time on inappropriate customers, resulting in increased call costs and diluted profits.
Cognition 5: the core force driving the new reality of marketing.
Source: Three forces of change: science and technology, globalization and social responsibility. (P 13- 15)
Interpretation: Technological innovation brings new markets and opportunities to marketers, but also challenges. Both marketers and customers can get strong information support through the Internet. Customers are more and more dominant in marketing activities and pay more attention to their own rights and interests such as privacy protection. Marketers also need to cultivate more coping and coping abilities. In the future, globalization will continue to promote the diversified development of countries and enterprises. Enterprises operating in global industries are becoming more and more common, and they have long been used to evaluating and establishing their position in the global market. With the increase of business risks, they will face greater difficulties in identifying and judging their competitors. In the future, the scope of social responsibility will be wider and wider, and more and higher requirements will be put forward for enterprises. Enterprises need to turn passive into active, do things that are beneficial to customers, enterprises and the future of the planet, and realize sustainable development.
Cognition 6: Making a marketing plan should be considered from the dimension of all-round marketing.
Origin: The concept of omni-directional marketing is to develop, design and implement marketing projects, processes and activities with a clear understanding of the breadth and interdependence of various marketing activities. The concept of omni-directional marketing holds that everything is very important in marketing. (Page 20-24)
Interpretation: To formulate a marketing plan from the perspective of all-round marketing, it is necessary not only to clarify how the company establishes and maintains profitable customer relationships, but also to form a marketing network (relationship marketing) that connects the internal and external relations of the enterprise; Moreover, by designing diversified marketing activities, we should integrate marketing projects in marketing strategy (integration strategy) and financial forecasting (performance marketing) to create, spread and transmit value for consumers. In the financial risk analysis of marketing plan, every uncertain variable (financial and non-financial return) that affects profitability is taken as an index to detect marketing effect, which makes the result of financial prediction more objective and true.
Cognition 7: The brand attribute of a product (service) may be negatively related to brand interests.
Origin: The difficulty in establishing brand positioning is that many attributes and interests that constitute similarities and differences are negatively related. Consumers usually want to get the maximum of two negatively related attributes or benefits. (P270-27 1)
Interpretation: Brand attribute is the functional characteristics of the brand, and brand interest is the value of the brand. If a brand performs well in functional characteristics, such as affordable price and good appearance, consumers will doubt its quality and practicality, thus breeding potential negative associations. In order to achieve the balance between brand attributes and interests, marketers must perform well in these two dimensions, change consumers' association mode, and turn negative correlation into positive correlation.
Cognition 8: Product differentiation is more effective than service differentiation.
Origin: To a certain extent, customers have regarded services as very similar or even identical products, so they pay more attention to the price of services rather than service providers. (P387)
Interpretation: the ways of product differentiation include form, characteristics, performance, quality, durability, reliability, maintainability, style and customization; The ways of service differentiation include ease of use, delivery, installation, customer training, customer consultation, maintenance and return. By comparison, it can be seen that the evaluation criteria for products are more specific, and customers can easily identify the difference between a product and competitors' products; However, the evaluation criteria of services are relatively vague and abstract. Customers often don't care much about the difference between a service and a competitor's service, and even think that the services of different providers are similar to some extent. They are more concerned about whether the price is reasonable than who provides the service.
Cognition 9: The importance of inside salespeople.
Origin: In order to reduce costs, reduce the time demand of external sales staff and make full use of technological innovation, many companies have expanded the scale and responsibilities of internal sales teams. (page 609)
Interpretation: Enterprises need not only external salespeople, but also internal salespeople. It costs more for outside salespeople to visit customers, while it costs less for inside salespeople to interact with or receive visiting potential customers through telephone, Internet and social media. Internal salespeople are responsible for finding new customers and providing information support for external salespeople, so that they can have more time to sell to big customers and find potential new customers.