Strategic Marketing Management A Means-End Approach

A One-Volume, MBA-Level Course for Designing and Implementing a Customer-Focused, "Means-End" Marketing Program "Mark Parry has written a book on developing strategy from the perspective of means-end theory, using techniques that have demonstrated ability to create superior results.   It is combat tested, proven in the trenches of marketing campaigns around the world."­­John A. Norton, Vice president, The Connaught Group, Ltd. Strategic Marketing Management outlines a customer-based marketing program designed to help you identify your most attractive target customers and position your product or service so that it matters to those customers. With common-sense explanations of how and why recommended methods work, along with current examples of techniques other companies have used to apply these methods successfully (and unsuccessfully), this book shows you how to determine: What makes your company, product, or service special to current and potential customers What position you should establish and nurture in order to create sustained competitive superiority Strategies to strengthen and defend that position Look to The McGraw-Hill Executive MBA Series for straight-talking, technique-filled books, written by front-line executive education professors and modeled after the programs of top business schools. Other titles in the series include: Corporate Strategy Finance & Accounting for Nonfinancial Managers Managerial Leadership Mergers & Acquisitions Sales Management Targeting and positioning. The interdependence of these two fundamentals lies at the heart of every successful marketing initiative. Strategic Marketing Management looks into the marketing programs of today's most consistently successful marketers­­from Procter & Gamble to Amazon.com­­to reveal how they treat targeting and positioning as interdependent efforts, vitally linked at every level. Strategic marketing authority and educator Mark Parry shows you how to identify your most important customers, then position yourself successfully in relation to your closest competitors. Built around the precepts of the proactive Means-End Theory, and developed from materials created for executive education courses at the Darden School, Strategic Marketing Management provides you with the information and strategies you need to: Create a benefit framework that encompasses functional, experiential, financial, and psychosocial benefits Present evidence and support to make promised benefits both credible and valuable Separate intrinsic from extrinsic attributes, and correctly capitalize on each Use customer decision maps to "ladder" from concrete product attributes to benefits to personal values Create and employ creative strategies that speak only to those values considered most essential Foster and nurture appropriate brand meanings that retain value in the marketplace­­and over time Overcome unintended and undesirable product associations in the minds of your customers Strategic Marketing Management goes straight to the heart of marketing, providing a logical approach for targeting and positioning products that is easy to implement and proven successful in today's marketplace. A concise, focused guide written for executives and executives-in-training, it describes today's top tools for assessing market trends, making essential decisions to capitalize on those trends, and executing those decisions with authority and confidence.Parry, Mark E. is the author of 'Strategic Marketing Management A Means-End Approach', published 2001 under ISBN 9780071372220 and ISBN 0071372229.