Corporate Management and Entrepreneurship

• Destination:
  • Acting at the right time in the market
    • Particularly significant for young, fast-growing markets
    • Market entry delayed by one year can result in losses of upt to 50% of the potential product volume
  • Right time for market enty / market exit
    • Rather significant for stagnating markets and products/services at the end of the life cycle
    • Delayed market exit leads to reduced profits and even losses

Pioneers vs. Followers

• Advantages of the pioneer strategy (First mover)
  • Can relatively freely shape their market without regard to competitors or existing cusomter layalties
  • Chance to establish entry barriers
  • Learning curve and experience curve advantages
• Risks/disadvantages of the pioneer strategy
  • Uncerainty of technical feasibility, estimation of market develoment, achievability of profitability
  • Necessarily high development speed which implies the danger of long-lasting image damage gue to insuffienently matured products
  • High costs
  • Explaining and introducing completeley new products to customers
• --> Followers do not have these disadvanateges, but ca build on the groundwork of the pioneers

• New Perspecitve
  • Long-term loyalty by building strong brands and increasing customer satisfaction
• Logic
  • Keeping existing customers is cheaper than gaining new ones
  • Goals:
    • Higher transaction numbers = repeated/more transactions, cross-selling
    • Higher transaction amounts = higher willingness to pay / higher average "basket values"

• Brands
  • Externally recognizable features (e.g. name, symbol design) that allow a product / service to be identified or differentiated from the competition
  • Perceptions and expectations (and associated esteem and emotinos) asscociatedwith the brand based o nprior interactions and communications
• Effects
  • For prociders: "communication platform" that enables relationship building
  • For consumers: information, trust and emotionalizatino function

Marketing Mix ("The 4 P's"):

• Product Policy (Product)
  • All measures aimed at the design of the product / service 
  • Design of components
  • Product life cycles
    • Phase 1: Product innovations (launch phase)
    • Phase 2: Product differentiation (growth phase)
    • Phase 3: Product variation (maturity phase)
    • Phase 4: Product elimination (decline phase)
  • Components:
    • Product core
    • Packing/packaging
    • Marking
    • Service
• Pricing Policy (Price)
  • All deicions with regard to the fee to be paid by the customer for a product / service
  • Importance increases as possibilities for product differentiation become increasingly limited
  • Pricing:
    • Absolute amount of fee
    • Upper limit
    • Lower limit
    • Trade-offs: Marketing goals and strategies
  • Price Differentiation: In general the same products are offered at different prices
    • Regional price differentiation: Different countries or regions
    • Time-based price differentiation: time/seasonal conditions
    • Product line-dependent price differentiation: Differentiation of products leads to different product lines with different prices
  • Pricing systems:
    • One-dimensional prices = total price
    • Multidimensional prices = price is composed of different components
    • Price bundling = package price
    • Non-linear prices = additional to prices for individual service units, additional quantity-independen price elements
    • Discounts:
      • Volume discounts
      • Time discounts
      • Functional discounts
• Distribution Policy (Place)
  • Acquisition activities
    - Contact initiation, sales and customer retention
    - Decision on sales channels and sales organs = sales channel system
  • Distribution channels: Direct vs. indirect
    • Direct: direct customer contact, traditionally B2B
      • low number of customers and high spatial concentration
      • Goal: Closer customer relationships / differentiation via service quality
    • Idirect: independent sales intermediaries B2C
• Communication policy (Promotion)
  • Potential Instuments:
    • Sales promotion
    • Product placement
    • Sponsoring
    • Advertising