1. What does marketing mean?
2. What is a marketing mix?
3. What techniques are used by companies for market research?
4. What is the product life cycle?
5. What can prolong the product life cycle?
II. Choose the necessary word and put it in the sentence (predict, influence, promote, marketing, trends, distribution, market research, product planning, consume).
1. One of the aims of market research is to indicate new... among people.
2. Advertising must... the consumer and make him buy the goods produced.
3. Often marketing is called....
4. In order to sell a new product, a producer has to consider how to... it.
5. The goods of this company are not sold very well, they must think about....
6. Sometimes it is difficult to... through advertising.
7. If you want to produce something new, you should start with....
8. A producer wants to... the new trends and then tries to influence them.
9.... includes product development and pricing among other things.
III. It is very common to use military metaphor in business: we talk about management strategy and tactics, aggressive advertising, a sales campaign, staff casualties, strongman tactics. Takeover deals are often described as coups and raids.
Read the text and fill in the blanks with the following words and phrases: losses, continue, give up, sales strategy, country, cannot compete, marketing plan, main markets
It’s true that we’ve been deeply affected by our competitor’s latest
1 s__________ s___________. A new plan of action must be developed as soon as possible. 2 L _________ have been particularly high in every foreign 3 c _________. We have lost 4 m ____m____ in Russia and Venezuela. Even in the home market we 5 c__________ c_________. However we are not going to 6 g _______ u______. We are developing a new 7 m_______ p________ which will help us regain some of our market share. The war will 8 c ________ for some time yet but we are confident that we can still win.
IV. Replace the words and phrases 1-8 with the following military expressions: surprise attack, territory, casualties, surrender, are outgunned, key strongholds, campaign, rage on.
V. Supermarket strategies
Marketing people and advertisers are experts at making people aware of products, but persuading people to buy them is a different skill. Here are some of the ways that supermarkets persuade their customers to buy the products on their shelves.
Read the article and talk about these questions.
1. Which of these sales strategies have you noticed at supermarkets in your country?
2. Do you think that these strategies are effective, or are they irritating?
3. Do you think that any of these sales strategies are unethical?
Don’t be deceived. Shopping at a large modern supermarket might seem a fairly simple experience, but the reality is very different.
A typical large supermarket offers around 17.000 to 20. 000 items for sale and it wants to make sure that its customers see as many of them as possible. That's why you’ll normally find essential goods like bread, vegetables and meat in completely different parts of the store. Products with a high profit margin are always placed on shelves within easy reach of the customer, while lower margin items, like sugar or flour, are on the top or bottom shelves.
Many people make shopping lists before they visit supermarkets, but even so around 60% of all supermarket purchases are the result of decisions that are taken in the store. For this reason, supermarkets try to tempt their customers by placing certain kinds of products next to each other. In the UK, beer will often be found next to baby's nappies, because research shows that fathers of young children buy nappies on their way home from work and will buy beer at the same time. Research has also shown that this kind of 'impulse buy' happens much more frequently when no sales assistants are nearby - which is why there are often not many assistants available to help customers with purchases.
In fact, supermarkets have made selling such a fine art that their customers often lose all sense of time. When interviewed, customers will normally guess that they have only spent half an hour in the supermarket, even when they have been there for well over forty-five minutes. But that shouldn't be too surprising. Any really profitable supermarket knows that it should keep its clocks well hidden.
VI. Advertising. Companies advertisements appeal to different groups of people:
- young professionals with a high income;
- couples with a double income and no kids;
- people who work with their hands;
- people who are of a different race from the majority of people in a country;
- people who are concerned about the environment.
The advertising and the image of some companies are famous in nearly every country. The style of each advertisement can be described best with the following adjectives: political, masculine, feminine, business-to- business, luxurious, caring, humorous, tough, simple.
