Marketing strategy is a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its resources on the optimal opportunities with the goals of increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Marketing strategy includes all basic and long-term activities in the field of marketing that deal with the analysis of the strategic initial situation of a company and the formulation, evaluation and selection of market-oriented strategies and therefore contribute to the goals of the company and its marketing objectives. Marketing strategies serve as the fundamental underpinning of marketing plans designed to fill market needs and reach marketing objectives. Plans and objectives are generally tested for measurable results. Commonly, marketing strategies are developed as annual plans, with a tactical plan detailing specific actions to be accomplished in the current year. Time horizons covered by the marketing plan vary by company, by industry, and by nation, however, time horizons are becoming shorter as the speed of change in the environment increases. Marketing strategies are dynamic and interactive. They are partially planned and partially unplanned. Marketing strategy needs to take a long term view, and tools such as customer lifetime value models can be very powerful in helping to simulate the effects of strategy on acquisition, revenue per customer and churn rate.

Account-based marketing (ABM), also known as key account marketing, is a strategic approach to business marketing in which an organization considers and communicates with individual prospect or customer accounts as markets of one. Companies such as BearingPoint, HP, Kilroy Travels, Progress Software and Xerox are reported to be leading the way. Account-based marketing is a demonstration of the trend away from mass marketing towards more targeted approaches. It parallels the movement in business-to-consumer marketing away from mass marketing where organizations try to sell individual products to as many new prospects as possible to 1:1 marketing where they concentrate on selling as many products as possible to one customer at a time. While business marketing is typically organized by industry, product/solution or channel (direct/social/PR), account-based marketing brings all of these together to focus on individual accounts.

Market Intelligence (MKI) is gathered through internal analysis, competition analysis, and market analysis about the total environment forming a broad spectrum of assembled knowledge, which is then used for developing scenarios so that timely reporting of vital foreknowledge for future planning in the areas of strategic, tactical, and counter-intelligence decision-making can be applied operationally and strategically in respect to the whole organization’s strategic interest for the whole market. The structure of the Model of Market Intelligence is a double helix that can usurp to make copies of itself in other dimensions and realities to reveal an ever infinity of knowledge and forecasts. The Market Intelligence Model provides a missing link present in organizations at the highest levels. The model gives reassurance to help ensure a broad scope of checks and balances protecting the CEO, senior executives and government senior officials as well as the organization, its value and performance. Market Intelligence is what makes intelligence, intelligence.

Sales management is a business discipline which is focused on the practical application of sales techniques and the management of a firm’s sales operations. It is an important business function as net sales through the sale of products and services and resulting profit drive most commercial business. These are also typically the goals and performance indicators of sales management.

Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties, intended to reach an understanding, resolve point of difference, or gain advantage in outcome of dialogue, to produce an agreement upon courses of action, to bargain for individual or collective advantage, to craft outcomes to satisfy various interests of two or more people/parties involved in a negotiation. Negotiation is a process where one party involved in negotiating attempts to gain an advantage, not only for their own party, but also for at least one other involved party, by the end of the process. Its aim is distinct from that of compromise, in which more than one party suffers a net loss of goals or resources. Instead, basic negotiation is aimed toward efficiency in either resource distribution, goal and resource integration, or most commonly, both. Negotiation occurs in business, non-profit organizations, government branches, legal proceedings, among nations and in personal situations such as marriage, divorce, parenting, and everyday life. The study of the subject is called negotiation theory. Professional negotiators are often specialized, such as union negotiators, leverage buyout negotiators, peace negotiators, hostage negotiators, or may work under other titles, such as diplomats, legislators or brokers.

Business partnering is the development of successful, long term, strategic relationships between customers and suppliers, based on achieving best practice and sustainable competitive advantage. The business partner model is a process where HR professionals work closely with business leaders and line managers to achieve shared organizational objectives. The mission of Business partnering and the key-aspects of the discipline has been developed recently in the tourism field. The mission of Business partnering (for tourism) consists in creating, organizing, developing and enforcing operative (short-term), tactical (medium-term) and strategic (long-term) partnerships. Partnering is the process of two or more entities creating synergistic solutions to their challenges

Economic planning refers to a coordinating mechanism outside the mechanisms of the market. There are various types of planning procedures and different ways of conducting economic planning. As a coordinating mechanism for socialism and an alternative to the market, planning is defined as a direct allocation of resources; contrasted to the indirect allocation of the market. The level of centralization in decision-making in planning depends on the specific type of planning mechanism employed. As such, one can distinguish between centralized planning and decentralized planning. An economy primarily based on central planning is referred to as a planned economy. In a centrally planned economy the allocation of resources is determined by a comprehensive plan of production which specifies output requirements. Planning may also take the form of directive planning or indicative planning. Most modern economies are mixed economies incorporating various degrees of markets and planning.
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Market integration occurs when prices among different locations or related goods follow similar patterns over a long period of time. Group of prices often move proportionally to each other and when this relation is very clear among different markets it is said that the markets are integrated. Thus market integration is an indicator that explains how much different markets are related to each other.

Business development comprises a number of tasks and processes generally aiming at developing and implementing growth opportunities between multiple organizations. It is a subset of the fields of business, commerce, and organizational theory. Business development is the creation of long-term value for an organization from customers, markets, and relationships.

Marketing performance measurement and management (MPM) is a term used by marketing professionals to describe the analysis and improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing. This is accomplished by focus on the alignment of marketing activities, strategies, and metrics with business goals. It involves the creation of a metrics framework to monitor marketing performance, and then develop and utilize marketing dashboards to manage marketing performance. Performance management is one of the key processes applied to business operations such as manufacturing, logistics, and product development. The goals of performance management are to achieve key outcomes and objectives to optimize individual, group, or organizational performance. MPM however, is more specific. It focuses on measuring, managing, and analyzing marketing performance to maximize effectiveness and optimize the return of investment (ROI) of marketing. Three elements play a critical role in managing marketing performance – data, analytics, and metrics.

Refers to all measures of marketing, which are taken from manufacturers and retailers in order for a successful business transaction or sale to customers for their own products and binding them to their own services. After sales encourages repeat and additional purchases, increasing customer satisfaction and ensures long-term customer loyalty. After sales often achieves a higher margin than new business, and is a sustainable ways to increase customer value and profitability.

Market research is any organized effort to gather information about target markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy. The term is commonly interchanged with marketing research; however, expert practitioners may wish to draw a distinction, in that marketing research is concerned specifically about marketing processes, while market research is concerned specifically with markets. Market research is a key factor to maintain competitiveness over competitors. Market research provides important information to identify and analyze the market need, market size and competition. Market research, which includes social and opinion research, is the systematic gathering and interpretation of information about individuals or organizations using statistical and analytical methods and techniques of the applied social sciences to gain insight or support decision making.

New business development concerns all the activities involved in realizing new business opportunities, including product or service design, business model design, and marketing. In the traditional definition of Business development, Business Development is mostly seen as growing an enterprise, with a number of techniques. The mentioned techniques differ, but in fact all of them are about traditional marketing. The main question in these issues is: how to find, reach and approach customers and how to make/keep them satisfied, possibly with new products. Since this definition is limited and lacks some essential factors in business developing, a complete new definition of Business Development will be introduced. Of course, the theory on “traditional” marketing is still correct and can be adopted from the old definition. When supplying a solution, it is important to focus on the total offering you give instead of only focusing on the product or service. An offering is a package consisting of different proportions of physical product, service, advice, delivery and the costs, including price that are involved in using it. Hereby the advice, adaptation to the customer and the costs are the most important factors to get the right combination within the offering. Drawing on contingency theory, an idea central to new business development is that different product-market- technology combinations can require different marketing strategies and business models to make them a success. To chart the factors that are involved and create synergy between them, new business development draws heavily upon the fields of technology and business networks. The new business development process is to recognize chances and opportunities in a fast changing technological environment. Often uncertainty arises because of new technology and their new markets.

Brand management is a communication function that includes analysis and planning on how that brand is positioned in the market, which target public the brand is targeted at, and maintaining a desired reputation of the brand. Developing a good relationship with target public is essential for brand management. Tangible elements of brand management include the product itself; look, price, the packaging, etc. The intangible elements are the experience that the consumer takes away from the brand, and also the relationship that they have with that brand. A brand manager would oversee all of these things.

A market entry strategy is the planned method of delivering goods or services to a new target market and distributing them there. When importing or exporting services, it refers to establishing and managing contracts in a foreign country. Many companies successfully operate in a niche market without ever expanding into new markets.

Mobile marketing is marketing on or with a mobile device, such as a smart phone. Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services and ideas.

Product marketing, as opposed to product management, deals with more outbound marketing or customer facing tasks (in the older sense of the phrase). For example, product management deals with the nuts and bolts of product development within a firm, whereas product marketing deals with marketing the product to prospects, customers, and others. Product marketing, as a job function within a firm, also differs from other marketing jobs such as marketing communications (“marcom”), online marketing, advertising, marketing strategy, public relations, although product marketers may use channels such as online for outbound marketing for their product.

Sales outsourcing allows companies to attract and maintain a sales force without having to make them full or part-time employees. Outsourced sales groups typically shoulder all or most of the risk by tying their compensation to success, without a base salary or benefits. Sales outsourcing represents a quick way by which service providers or manufactures can access distribution, and is becoming more and more popular. Full ‘sales outsourcing’ is observed where companies have an external third party sales force. It is differentiated from value added reselling or distribution in that the business model can be based on shared risk, although there are models where the outsourcer is paid for all of their activity – just as with a hired direct sales force, but the outsourcer provides rapidity, flexibility and experience. Other names for sales outsourcing include ‘indirect sales’ and ‘channel sales’.

Marketing communications are messages and related media used to communicate with a market. Marketing communications is the “promotion” part of the “marketing mix” or the “four Ps”: price, place, promotion, and product. It can also refer to the strategy used by a company or individual to reach their target market through various types of communication.