Chapter 10

I had no idea what goes into developing products.  It's not just thinking of something and distributing it.  There are vital steps when it comes to producing and distributing a successful product.  A new product strategy is developed which links the new product development process with the objectives of the marketing department, the business unit, and the corporation.  Idea generations comes from many different sources including, customers, employees, distributors, competitors, and vendors.  Ideas are generated through brainstorming and then put through several testing phases before distributing to customers.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 is all about decision support systems.  A decision support system is an interactive, flexible, computerized information that enables managers to obtain and manipulate information as they are making decisions.  Marketing research plays a vital role in any marketing system.  It is the planning, collecting and analyzing data relevant to a marketing decision.  Marketing research has three roles:  descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive.

Chapter 7

Today's topic of discussion was Market Segmentation, which before reading this chapter I had no idea what that meant.  Well, market segmentation is a subgroup of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar needs.  Market Segmentation makes it possible to tailor markets to meet the needs of specific segments.  It helps define customers needs and wants more precisely and objectives can better be evaluated.  There are several bases for segmentation, including geography, age, gender and ethnicity.