Marketing Questions - Essay Example

While promoting products online, message adaption is a potential promotion strategy advisable for the marketer. The marketer must ensure that her product offerings are visible to local consumers who use internet for finding a business in their area. Furthermore, she has to make certain that her business is listed in business directories where her competitors are findable. Finally, she can use online marketing techniques to promote her sales by creating a contest or offering exclusive discount benefits. 2. “Cross-border alliances can be defined as partnerships that are formed between two or more firms from different countries for the purpose of pursuing mutual interests through sharing their resources and capabilities” (Schuler, Jackson & Luo, 2003, p.2). A cross border alliance is of different types including joint ventures, mergers, or acquisitions.

Cross-border alliance can be considered as a marketing strategy or business expansion strategy as this concept assists firms to gain numerous competitive advantages over their rivals and to increase market share. Under such a business strategy, involved firms can increase their various resources such as finance and human capital (OECD, 2002, p.63). Economies of large scale operations in a cross-border alliance would assist involved parties to trim down their operating expenses and thereby improve profitability.

In the view of Deresky (2006, p.273), organizations can spread their elements of risk by following a cross-border alliance policy. 3. Under list segmentation practice, direct marketers send marketing materials to individuals in his/her list every time he/she introduces a new product or needs to increase sales. As Pearson (2012) indicates, the practice of list segmentation assists a marketer to accurately track where his/her sales are coming from. This information will be of great help for a marketer to identify his/her potential customer groups.

Proper targeting is another benefit of list segmentation. Once the marketer identifies major sources of his sales, he can create more customized marketing strategies for the identified potential market segment (PIP, 2012). Conversely, the list segmentation approach would assist a direct marketer to identify his/her poor customer groups and thereby reduce focus on them. Spilt testing is another fruitful advantage of this strategy. This benefit may aid the marketer to periodically refine his/her approach so as to generate more sales.

A direct marketer can effectively follow up sales using the list segmentation approach (David Shepard Associates, 1999, p.289). 4. “Marketing research is the systematic design, collection, interpretation, and reporting of information to help marketers solve specific marketing problems or take advantage of marketing opportunities” (Pride & Ferrel, 2010, p.78). A well structured marketing research would assist marketing managers to obtain an edge over his/her competitors. Marketing research not only assists a marketing manager to get a clear view of the prevailing market trends and customer preferences but also aid him/her to realize what future changes customers expect.

McDaniel and Gates (1998) argue that the process of marketing research may benefit decision makers to get information on the effectiveness of current marketing practices. Hence, this process would be extremely