Exam 14: Developing an Integrated Marketing Mix

Deciding amongst the many possible approaches requires tradeoffs. Focus exclusively on the marketing mix development and discuss what is meant by tradeoffs.

GoPro was able to work from its side to encourage participation and customers understood and appreciated their connections needs in the many efforts GoPro made to get users to share experiences. The way customers responded demonstrates the importance and use of getting the participation and connection linkage correct.

Products affect customer costs in very basic ways-the development of the product and its technology, providing valuable software to operate the product, etc. How does the process work in reverse? Which of the following shows how price affects customer benefit?

Some companies develop how-to videos or information on how to purchase a product effectively, and while these reduce the risks that customers may perceive, this effort fits into the promotion-customer cost linkage by

Product-connection linkages can provide customers opportunities to create relationships with other customers through use of the product.

The GoPro product was certainly technology driven, and to communicate effectively with the range of customers who would want to know about the product, it went beyond social media to traditional media which one might not associate with a high-tech product.

The chapter uses GoPro to demonstrate how a firm actually deals with the many aspects of customer needs, firm needs, creative realities, and the marketplace. As a "practice marketer" you have a chance to evaluate the firm's actions, but without access to marketing research and insights into the firm's management structures, it is not possible to come up with accurate assessments.

In the final stages of developing the marketing mix, the marketer must carefully examine each of the linkages one last time to ensure that

When there is a clear customer need, a firm can be successful if it understands that need and can build a product to suit those needs. Three of the four following problems represented a failure of GoPro to get the product/customer benefit correct. Which of the following was NOT one of the customer benefit issues GoPro got wrong?

If a company is making a product that would benefit from in-store support and education, the firm will use the place-communications linkage to help determine what kinds of retailers should be used for the product.