Marketing Information System

WRITING

As you read the passage, underline the main ideas and supporting information. Then write an abstract of it. Dwell on the author’s tone and attitude.

In carrying out marketing analysis, planning, implementation, and control, marketing managers need information at almost every turn. They need information about customers, competitors, dealers, and other forces in the marketplace. While incomes increase and buyers become more selective, sales managers need better information about how buyers respond to different products and appeals. As a growing business faces more competition and uses more complex marketing approaches, they need information on the effectiveness of their marketing tools. If companies become national or international in scope, they need more information on larger, more distant markets. Finally, in today’s more rapidly changing environments, managers need more up-to-date information to take timely decisions. One marketing executive put it this way: “To manage a business well is to manage its future; and to manage the future is to manage information.”

The supply of information has also increased greatly. The United States is said to be undergoing a “megashift” from an industrial to an information-based economy. Over 65% of the U.S. workforce is now employed in producing or processing information, compared with only 17% in 1950. Using IT systems, companies can now provide information in great quantities. In fact, today’s managers sometimes receive too much information. As one theorist pointed out: “Running out of information is not a problem, but drowning in it is.”

TRANSLATION

A. Translate from English into Russian.

Marketing Research can be defined as the function that links the customer to the marketer through information – information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems: to generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; to monitor marketing performance; and to improve understanding of the marketing process.

The marketing research process involves, usually, the four steps.

Defining the problem and research objectives is often the hardest step in research process. When the problem has been carefully defined, the manager and researcher must set the research objectives. A marketing research project might have one of three types of objectives. Sometimes the objective is exploratory – to gather preliminary information that will help to better define the problem. Sometimes the objective is descriptive – to describe things such as the market potential for a product or the demographics and attitudes of customers who buy the product. Sometimes it is casual – to test hypothesis about cause-and-effect relationships.

The second step of the marketing research process is developing a plan for collecting the information needed. To meet the manager’s information needs, the researcher can gather secondary data, primary data or both. Secondary data consist of information that already exists somewhere, having been collected for another purpose. Primary data consist of information collected for the specific purpose.

The stage of implementing the research plan involves collecting, processing and analysing the information.

The last phase is interpretation and reporting. The researcher should try not to overwhelm manager with statistics, but to present the major findings that are useful in the decisions faced by the management.

Most large companies have their own marketing research departments. A company with no research department will have to buy the services of research firms.

B. Translate from Russian into English.

Исследователи рынка определяют потенциальных потребителей товара, т.е. лиц, которые, как они полагают, будут покупать его. Маркетинговое исследование проводится с целью определения наиболее подходящего сочетания элементов маркетинговой программы. После тщательного исследования каждого из четырёх составляющих маркетинговой программы вырабатывается стратегия маркетинговой деятельности. Если специалистом по маркетингу проведена хорошая работа по определению потребностей покупателя, разработке привлекательного продукта, установлению конкурентоспособной цены, нахождению удобных каналов распределения и продвижения товара, то такой продукт будет распродаваться успешно. Маркетинг является ключевым фактором в успехе бизнеса в условиях жёсткой конкуренции.

LISTENING

Listen to Steve Moody, the manager of the Marks & Spencer store in Cambridge, giving a hypothetical example of a marketing failure – a product that reaches the shops but fails to sell.

Note down your answers to these questions:

1. What does Steve Moody say is the role of Marks & Spencer’s head office?

2. What is the example of a product that fails to sell?

3. In these circumstances, whose fault would it be that the product failed? What had not been done properly, before the product was delivered to the stores?

4. Who would be the only people in the company that would be able to find out what is wrong?

5. What action could Marks & Spencer take?

6. How does Steve Moody describe the relationship between head office and the individual stores?

Дата добавления: 2014-11-16