Marketing_Management_14th_Edition-min

Developing Marketing
Strategies and Plans
Key ingredients of the marketing management process are insightful,
creative strategies and plans that can guide marketing activities. Developing the right marketing
strategy over time requires a blend of discipline and flexibility. Firms must stick to a strategy but
also constantly improve it. They must also develop strategies for a range of products and services
within the organization.
Founded in 1994 by Web-surfing Stanford University grad students, Yahoo! grew from a tiny
upstart surrounded by Silicon Valley heavyweights to a powerful force in Internet media.
Yahoo! worked hard to be more than just a search engine. The company proudly proclaims it
is “The only place anyone needs to go to find anything, communicate with anyone, or buy
anything.” Its range of services includes e-mail, news, weather, music, photos, games, shopping,
auctions, and travel. A large percentage of revenues comes from advertising, but the company also
profits from subscription services such as online personal ads, premium e-mail, and small-business services.
Although Yahoo! strives to achieve a competitive advantage over rival Google with its vast array of original
content, Google’s ascension to the runaway leader in search, e-mail, and related services has made it a
darling with advertisers. Yahoo!’s acquisition of photo-sharing service Flickr, social bookmark manager
Del.icio.us, and online video editing site Jumpcut strengthened its capabilities. Yahoo! has also continued to
grow globally in Europe and Asia, helped in part by the acquisition of Kelkoo, a European comparisonshopping
site, for $579 million, and of 46 percent of Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company, for $1 billion
in cash. Discussions with Microsoft about a possible merger culminated in a
10-year deal in June 2009 that gave Microsoft full access to the Yahoo!
search engine, to be used in future Microsoft projects for its own search
engine, Bing. CEO Carol Bartz faced many questions, however, about how
Yahoo! should best move forward. 1
This chapter begins by examining some of the
strategic marketing implications in creating customer value.
We’ll look at several perspectives on planning and describe how
to draw up a formal marketing plan.
Marketing and Customer
Value
The task of any business is to deliver customer value at a profit. In a hypercompetitive economy
with increasingly informed buyers faced with abundant choices, a company can win only by finetuning
the value delivery process and choosing, providing, and communicating superior value.
The Value Delivery Process
The traditional view of marketing is that the firm makes something and then sells it, with marketing
taking place in the selling process. Companies that subscribe to this view have the best chance of
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