MBA 7053—Exam 1—Study Guide
The following assigned readings are subject to be included on the exam:
Any of the material from the three assigned articles.
Chapter 1—Marketing Creates Value by Facilitating Exchange Relationships pp. 5-13
Marketing is a social process involving the activities necessary to enable individuals and organizations to obtain what they need and want through exchanges with others and to develop on-going exchange relationships.
The parties in an exchange
Ultimate customers buy goods and services for their own personal use or the use of others in their immediate household.
These are called consumer goods and services.
Organizational customers buy goods and services for resale; as production inputs; or for use in the day-to-day operations.
These are called industrial goods and services.
Customer needs and wants
Basic physical needs are critical to our survival.
Social and emotional needs critical to our psychological well-being.
Wants reflect desires or preferences for specific ways of satisfying a basic need.
Marketers—and many other social forces—influence people’s wants.
Products and services
Products are essentially tangible physical objects that provide a benefit.
Services are less tangible and, in addition to being provided by physical objects, can be provided by people, institutions, places, and activities.
How exchanges create value
Customers buy benefits, not products.
Value is a function of intrinsic product features, service, and price, and it means different things to different people.
Lifetime customer value —the present value of a stream of revenue that can be produced by a customer over time.
A market consists of individuals and organizations who are interested and willing to buy a particular product to obtain benefits that will satisfy a specific need or want, and who have the resources to engage in such a transaction.
The total market for a given product category is often fragmented into several distinct market segments.
Each segment contains people who are relatively homogeneous in their needs, their wants, and the product benefits they seek.
Each segment seeks a different set of benefits from the same product category.
Strategic marketing management involves a seller trying to determine the following points in an effort to define the target market:
1. Which customer needs and wants are currently not being satisfied by competitive product offerings
2. How desired benefits and choice criteria vary among potential customers and how to identify the resulting segments by demographic variables
3. Which segments to target, and which product offerings and marketing programs appeal most to customers in those segments
4. How to position the product to differentiate it from competitors’ offerings and give the firm a sustainable competitive advantage

Chapter 2—Allocating Corporate Resources, pp. 52-57
Portfolio models and value-based planning are two sets of analytical tools useful in decision making
Portfolio models
The Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) growth-share matrix analyzes the impact of investing resources in different businesses on the corporation’s future earnings and cash flows.

Limitations of the growth-share matrix Market growth rate is an inadequate descriptor of overall industry attractiveness. Relative market share is inadequate as a description of overall competitive strength. The outcomes are highly sensitive to variations in how growth and share are measured. It provides little guidance on how best to implement investment strategies for each business. It assumes that all business units are independent of one another except for the flow of cash.
Chapter 3—Macro Trend Analysis, pp. 72-80; Your Market is Attractive, pp. 80-84
Macro Trend Analysis
The demographic environment: Aging; AIDS; Imbalanced population growth; Increased Immigration; Declining Marriage Rates
The sociocultural environment
Sociocultural trends are those that have to do with the values, attitudes,