Marketing information systems

Marketing Information Systems

You work for an automobile manufacturer that offers a complete line of vehicles, from full-size pickups and luxury sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) to economy cars and hybrids. After analyzing the recent changes in consumers’ buying habits, your manager wants you to create a marketing information system for the firm. The system should help the firm identify early trends in the marketing environment.

Begin your post by describing an automobile type from the line of vehicles that you will use for the remainder of your post.

Then, create a 300- to 400-word response to any two of the following bullet points:

Identify the variables in the marketing environment that need to be monitored to recognize and predict trends.
Explain the need to monitor trends for each of the identified environmental variables.
Describe how you will monitor these trends.
Describe the role of marketing research in understanding how consumers’ perception of these trends impacts their selection of this automobile.

Be sure to properly cite your sources using APA; include your references and in-text citations. Comment on the postings of your classmates. Do you agree with their position? Why or why not?
Please use USA based sources.
Here are some lecture notes :
Marketing Plan and Research

The marketing mix – (4P’s)is used to focus an organization’s strategy on a specific target market. Successful integration of the marketing mix toward this market is the core of a successful marketing plan. The four components of the marketing mix:

Product: The combination of services and physical goods that best satisfies the needs of the target market.
Price: Enables the target market to exchange value for the product it wants to purchase. Price must cover the cost of producing the product while also making it affordable for the target market.
Place: Place refers to the physical distribution of a product, making sure it is in the right place at the right time for the consumer to purchase it.
Promotion: Promotion is the integration of the different techniques available to an organization to communicate to its target market.

Four steps to the marketing plan –

Analyze the situation
Articulate the organizations objectives
Explore opportunities
Develop realistic goals.

Four steps in designing a competitive intelligence system for market research –

Identify intelligence sources.
Collect intelligence.
Evaluate the intelligence.
Report the intelligence to decision makers.

Marketing research is the process of learning more about consumer behavior. Because the factors that impact consumer behavior are similar to other behavior research, many techniques relative to consumer behavior are drawn from psychology. The difference is consumer behavior increases the effectiveness of the firm’s marketing efforts. Both qualitative and quantitative research is applied to marketing. In place of focus groups and surveys, marketing managers use secondary information about strategies, finances, and markets to understand its buying behavior. Marketing managers may then contact key purchasers or other personnel with a role in decision making to determine what their needs are. The goal is to better understand the needs of the customers.

Eventually, marketing managers must control the marketing plans that they develop and implement. The control aspect includes feedback so managers can change marketing strategies to better meet customer needs. To maintain control, a marketing manager uses a number of analytical tools to learn more about customers and their buying habits. That might involve measuring customers’ shopping behaviors and purchase decisions. Once the manager has selected the target market, decided on the (integrated) marketing mix to meet that target market’s needs, and developed estimates of the costs and revenues for that strategy, it’s time to put it all together in the marketing plan.

A marketing plan includes the time-related details—including costs and revenues—for a marketing strategy. Thus, the plan basically serves as a blueprint for what the firm will do. Marketing managers must constantly evaluate their strategies to be sure they’re not being left in the dust by competitors who see new and better ways of doing things. This is where market research comes in. Decision-making in many industries, both for-profit and not-for-profit, depends on input from research. The process enables a company to identify its customers and design products that maximize the value they receive from a purchase. In return, the company receives value as the customers spend their hard- earned money. The result: customers win and businesses win! All are better off.