 Hello, everyone. Sorry for the delay there. Hopefully we're coming to you live now. And we're just gonna get right into it. If you guys have any questions, put them in the chat. I'm in the chat there for you guys. And if you're watching this later, feel free to leave them in the comment. We'll try and answer those either down there or in a later video. But I'm just gonna listen to myself talking. So I know that we got through. So let me just hand it over to Dr. Salzer. And we'll, I'll get out of your way. Thanks so much, Mike. Welcome everyone to the first review for MBA 602 Marketing Management. There were eight units in this course and each week we will be exploring the topics in that unit. So I'd like to begin with just kind of an overview of the course learning objectives so that you can have an understanding right from the start of all the different things that we will be covering in these sessions. So the first course learning objective is that we're going to look at the role that marketing plays in the economy and how the importance of that role within the overall corporate structure as well as the broader global environments. And as we all know, marketing is not just on a small scale but on the global environment, the global marketplace. We will describe the strategic marketing planning process so that you have a full understanding of how that process works. But in addition to identifying these strategies and describing them, we're also going to look at how you can apply analytical skills to solve marketing problems. And many times companies don't have full information or the situations are unstructured or uncertain. So knowing how to apply those analytical skills to solve those problems will be very essential for business success. We're going to look at the marketing environment. We'll look at buying behavior, the marketing mix and the many marketing opportunities for domestic and international business. And again, we've seen so many companies that are expanding in the global marketplace. So we will be exploring the different strategies for marketing in the global platform. We will also apply managerial tools of marketing planning and forecasting. And again, planning, forecasting are so essential to coming up with strategies that can help a company I wouldn't say ensure success because there's no guarantees of that but also to have a better chance of being successful. We'll look at the role of marketing research, one of my favorite topics. Look at marketing information systems and also again, how to apply all of those factors to the decision-making process. And when we have more information when we know what's going on when we're able to look at past situations we're able to analyze the current situation we're able to make better business decisions. And again, that leads to better chance of business success. Further, we will describe different types of consumer industrial goods and we'll look at the difference between consumer goods and the business-to-business marketplace. We'll look at market segmentation. We will explore demographics and also psychographic information. We will then move on to identify key elements of product development and how products differ from each other which enables companies to better compete in the marketplace. Look at the product lifecycle. We'll talk about pricing strategies and we'll talk about branding and packaging which branding, we probably look at very often but also the role of packaging and how companies design packaging, the impact of things like color and funds and how things are displayed and how those impact what consumers are going to purchase. And just before we get into that, think about when you go to buy a product and you go to the store and you see something on the shelf, think about the product placement of course on the shelf but also how does that package attract you? What is it about it that captures your attention and that makes you wanna buy that product and that's part of branding and packaging that we'll explore later on. We'll also look at channel strategy, the promotional mix, how consumers get their messaging, how marketers create those messages in a way that makes them more appealing, that makes them stand out from the competition. We're going to look at ethics in marketing and how that influences marketing activities, different factors of how companies develop their codes of ethics and what it means to be an ethical company, particularly in today's society where there's a greater focus on social responsibility and being a good corporate citizen. So we'll talk about that there. And then we will spend some time talking about the marketing plan, which is really like the guideline, the roadmap for how a company is going to identify their products and services, create strategies and then get those out to the marketplace. So those are the overall course learning objectives and of course, as we go through each unit, we will be touching on all of these as we go forward. So let's talk about, for today, the unit one learning objectives and we'll start with explaining the role of marketing in a business. As I mentioned before, we'll talk about the role of ethical marketing activities. We will start touching on the strategic planning process and we'll also talk about the role of marketing within that strategic planning process. Now, very often students will say, well, let's just present a course and why do we have to have learning objectives? And the reason is that it helps us narrow down the focus of what we're going to be exploring in the course material. So every learning objective in each unit will tie back directly to course material and the content. Also important to recognize that your assessments for the course are tied to each learning objective and this will help you with test preparation. So just to kind of go over the overall course, as I mentioned, there are eight units. Today's unit is going to focus on marketing and strategic planning. Unit two, this is also so that you can prepare in advance for our sessions. Unit two, we'll talk about environmental scanning from resources and capabilities. In unit three, we will talk about segmentation, targeting and positioning. Unit four covers consumer organizational and service marketing. Unit five covers product lifecycle, marketing research and product development. Unit six, we will look into channels of distribution, supply chain and logistics. Certainly a very popular and common topic right now, particularly with changes in the supply chain throughout the world. We'll talk about promotion and pricing. And then as I talked about earlier, the importance of a marketing plan which we will cover in unit eight. So are there any questions at this point? Well, we don't have any questions in the chat right now, but we'll give everyone a second here to catch up because I think we're a little bit behind. So we'll pop off for a second here, see if anyone has any questions and then we'll come back and answer them or just keep moving. Okay. Okay, well, we don't have any questions in the chat right now, but feel free to put them down there. We're running on a bit more of a delay than usual. So that could be it. Of course, if you're watching later, that's fine too. You can leave a comment below, but I'll hand it back over. All right, thank you, Mike. So just briefly, I wanna review the topics that we will be exploring in unit one. We will talk about customer value. We'll talk about the marketing mix. And I'm sure that you're all familiar with the four P's, but you may not be as familiar with the four C's, which is a little bit of a new approach of sort of expanding and integrating all the different elements of the marketing mix. We will cover that. We will talk about positioning and targeting. As I mentioned, certainly ethics, as I've talked about, value proposition, which will come up often throughout the course because it's so important for how you present your messaging and also the value that you're offering to a customer. We'll talk about mission statements, strategies. We'll look at the external environment. And again, as I mentioned earlier, consumer behavior and the buying process and again, the marketing plan. So for the first learning outcome for this unit, we're going to explain the role of marketing in a business. And again, we'll talk about customer value. We'll look at the elements of the marketing mix. We'll look at how the four P's relate to the four C's and also why positioning and targeting are so very important when it comes to developing marketing strategies. So let's talk about customer value. And very often it's really customer perceived value. And really when we're talking about customer value, it's what are we offering to the customer? What are we giving them that gives them the reason for making a purchase? Customers are looking at the benefits. So we talk about benefits of a product, we talk about features of a product, but the benefits are really what customers are buying. And customers really want to have the answer to the question, so what? So if we describe certain features of a product or service to a customer, well, that's all very nice and good. The customer wants to know, well, that's great, but how does that benefit me? What does that do for me? The answer to the question of what's in it for me. So when we're looking at customer value, it's really about how is the customer going to benefit from what they're buying? So maybe there's a personal benefit. Maybe there's a benefit in terms of product and functionality. Maybe there's a benefit of image. So if we think about people buying luxury products, most of the time those products are serving the same function as a product that costs a lot less, but there's an image associated with it. So they're buying a variety of benefits. So when we talk about customer value, it's not just tangible factors, but also intangible factors. And they all work together to give the customers a reason for making that purchase. So things to think about. Also to add into that the total customer cost of what it costs to either find the product, research the product, be able to buy the product and all of those things combined become the value package that a company is offering to their customers. Now, let's talk about the marketing mix. And I'm sure that for all of the courses that you've taken that relate to marketing, the marketing mix comes up all the time. And the marketing mix is really, I would have to say one of the most basic of marketing tools and marketing strategies. So when we talk about the four Ps, the marketing mix four Ps, product, price, place, promotion, as basic as you can get. But what's amazing about the marketing mix is that no matter how technologically advanced we become, no matter how merchandise is offered to consumers, no matter how marketing messages are put out there, if all of the elements of the four Ps are not in place, it doesn't make a difference how advanced your marketing message is. So you could have a great product and your promotion could be great and you priced appropriately that your customers will be willing to buy a product. But if customers don't know where to buy your product or how they can get it, which is the place element, you've wasted all your efforts. So again, all of the technology is really a tool to implement the marketing mix. And I can't emphasize the importance of having all of the elements of the marketing mix in place so that you're able to capture the attention of your customers in a way that's going to be meaningful to them. And they all work together. So let's talk a little bit about the four Ps of the marketing mix. And the four Ps have kind of been revised a little bit to encompass the four Ps. So let's talk about each of them and talk about how they connect to the four Ps. So the four Ps are customer value, cost, convenience and communication. So for example, customer value, as we talked about in an earlier slide, relates to how the product benefits the customer, right? So customer value relates to the product element of the four Ps. The cost in the four Ps relates to price in the four Ps. And again, it's not just what is the price of the item, but what is the cost to the customer of the amount of time to research the product or the amount of time spent making the purchase or being able to find information. So when we look at cost, it's not just what we're paying for it, but the overall cost of actually being able to get that product or service. Convenience relates to the element of place in the four Ps and how convenient is it for a customer to get the product? Is it available in the stores? Are there websites for customers to go and make their purchase? Is it easy to, if you're doing online purchasing, is that website easy to use? So that's how convenience connects to place. And finally, communication relates to promotion of the four Ps. And that's really all about how is the message getting out to customers? We certainly, when we look at how communication has advanced over the over recent years and the years say 15, past 20 years, we've gone way beyond traditional marketing with so many options when it comes to digital communication. And it's now not just a company putting out a one-way message, but now everything is a two-way dialogue between the company and their customers. And it's even interesting to see that that two-way dialogue has really been integrated in some traditional marketing activities. So for example, television was traditionally a one-way communication. You'd watch television, you'd see a commercial. There was no way for you to interact, you were a captive audience. And now we can see so much on television where you can interact with it, where there's QR codes. And so this integration of traditional marketing activities with the digital environment is really fascinating and amazing to see. And so when we look at promotion, when we look at the four Ps of the marketing mix, we can see how communication is so much more advanced and so much more involved than it ever has been. So it's really fascinating to watch this evolution. And certainly as a marketer, it's essential to be aware of these changes of this evolution in how companies communicate with their customers. So it's really a fascinating process and to see how this evolves and things for you to keep in mind as you go forward as a marketer. Well, this is actually, we have a question to go back to here from, it is actually going back to the marketing mix when we're talking about that. And the question is, how often do we need to review or change our marketing mix? Does it vary according to the product lifecycle? So that's a terrific question. And yes, it does relate to the product lifecycle and we'll certainly be talking about the product lifecycle later, but yes, because as a product goes through the lifecycle, so let's say in the introductory phase, where sales are going to be low, particularly if it's a new product and consumers are not aware of it, it's important to have a very high level of promotion. So your promotion might be much more advanced, maybe spending more money on promotion. Certainly when we talk about the product itself, product placement, simply having shelf space in a store is going to be important. So it does specifically relate to the product lifecycle, but I also think that companies should not wait until a product moves into a new stage of the product lifecycle before evaluating the marketing mix. And as we'll see, we'll go through a little bit later and we're going to talk about the external environment. The marketing environment is constantly changing, the business environment is constantly changing. And so the marketing mix might need to be changed or it's certainly looked at on a regular basis because if a company waits, let's say even waits quarterly, they might find themselves behind relative to the competition. All right, well, thank you very much. Let us know in the chat if that answered your question. So I'll let you go in and I'll pop back in if we have any more questions. Yeah, absolutely. If someone needs more clarification of that, I'm certainly happy to help with that. All right. Okay, so let's see, where are we? Okay, so positioning and targeting. So positioning is really important. If you take a look at the graph I have here, the graph that I have here. So positioning is how a company differentiates their product from the competition. And very often, there are some factors where positioning is very clear, but it's relative to the competition. So if we, and it's also relative to the consumer's perception. So in this example here, for example, where we're looking at different types of chocolate and we look at positioning of high quality and low quality products and whether they're less expensive or more expensive. So a customer, a consumer that maybe traditionally buys Hershey's chocolate might think that this is a very high quality product because they enjoy Hershey's chocolate. But if we then say, okay, well, what about Godiva chocolate or Lynch chocolate? Then that consumer might say, oh yes, those are a little bit higher quality. So we can group certain types of products based on price, based on availability, based on where they're sold. But again, a lot of it relates to how they compare to other products within the same category. So to give another example, let's say if we wanna look at the positioning of luxury vehicles, for example, and we say, well, let's look at, let's say, Alexis, right? We might say, oh, that's a luxury vehicle. We think that that's a high-end vehicle. But then I say, okay, well, what about Rolls Royce or Mercedes? Oh yes, those are luxury vehicles too. So the positioning is differentiating the product from the competition, but also relative to the consumer's perception about where those brands fit in. So it's a very interesting thing when it comes to how do you differentiate from your competition, which is also important to make sure that you properly identify the competition and know who you are competing against. And then targeting is the group of consumers whose needs will be met. So if I go back to my example of luxury cars, the luxury car marketplace can be quite large, but I think that we would probably all agree that the market for Alexis or Mercedes or a Rolls Royce would be quite different. So it's important to be able to identify your target market and make sure that their needs are being met in a way that makes sense, okay? Mike, do we have any more questions at this point? We do not have any more questions at this point. Oh, I can say that the last question was answered satisfactorily, so that's good for everybody. So yeah, I think since because we have a delay, why don't we just keep going through and if people have a question about something happened, we can jump back and talk about a slide or two ago. That's okay. Okay, that's great, thank you. Okay, so now let's move on to the next learning outcome for this unit, which is explaining the role of ethical marketing activities. And we'll begin by looking at the purpose of a written code of ethics. We're going to look at why it's important to be ethical in the sales process and also what salespeople can do to generate trust and goodwill with their customers and make sure that everyone, that it's a win-win situation and that companies are really seeking honestly and truthfully to meet the needs of their customers. So a code of ethics, many companies have a written code of ethics and really a code of ethics. We're not talking about legalities here. We're not talking about laws or any kind of legislation. We're really talking about doing the right thing. And that's really what ethics comes down to. It's a way of looking at, how should we behave? What's the right thing to do? And there's so many different ways of defining ethics. And one main thing is being able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, did I do the right thing? So when we talk about honesty, we talk about being courteous, we talk about being responsible. We talk about having integrity, having respect for the people that you work with, whether it's internally or whether it's with your customers or whether it's your vendors and all of these things relate to having a code of ethics. And again, it's a guideline for how companies, how employees should behave, but also it's impossible to account for every possible situation. And so the idea is that a code of ethics is a guideline to help you make, use good judgment when you're making decisions. Use discretion when you're making the decisions and how you're evaluating the behavior of others. So it's important to recognize that, again, not every situation can be accounted for, but that the idea is to have a guideline for good behavior, again, for being honest, for respecting confidentiality, having high levels of integrity. These are the aspects of a code of ethics that can make a difference between whether or not your company's going to be successful and whether or not your customers, all of your stakeholders are going to feel confident about working with you and trusting you. So what does all this mean? It means that you have to build relationships, be honest with your customers. And in the past, companies were all about how can we make a sale? How can we increase sales that wasn't as much interest in, well, we wanna meet the needs of customers. We've really, we've moved on from that to the point of where we wanna make sure that we build those relationships because we know that when we build relationships, when we're honest with customers, when we generate that trust, we know that we have a greater opportunity of having repeat sales. We have a greater opportunity of those customers recommending us to others. So it's focusing on the future. It's not just what's the bottom line now, but how can we build a relationship? How can we guarantee or ensure that sales will come in the future? And it's also important not to over promise, right? Over deliver for sure, but don't over promise because when you over promise, you start to break down that trust. So be honest about what you can offer to customers. Make sure that you say, if they ask if you can do something and you can't, it's okay to say, I'm sorry, I can't do that. But by putting their interests first and helping to find solutions, we build that trust, we build those relationships. And that really goes a very long way in ensuring, again, repeat sales. It ensures customer referrals. It generates goodwill. And this is really what we're hoping and seeking to do. So that covers ethics. Mike, are any questions that need to be addressed at this point, or shall I continue? No questions in the chat right now, but I will let you know if some come in. And again, just to remind everyone, you can leave a comment in the chat now or you can leave, boy, I just messed it up. You can leave a comment later or you can be in the chat now. All right, I'm getting out of here, we can move on. That's all right, I think we all get it. And everybody ask your questions when you have them. We'll get to them now, we'll get to them later. We're here for you. All right, so the third learning outcome for this unit is to describe the strategic planning process. And again, I'll talk about the value proposition. We're going to address the purpose of a mission statement. We'll talk about SWOT analysis and how that fits into the strategic planning process. And I'm sure, again, at this point, much like the four P's, you are intimately familiar with the SWOT analysis. But again, because this is such a valuable tool, it really bears discussion in almost any marketing course. And there's never anything wrong with kind of going back and reviewing some of the basics. And again, much like the four P's, a SWOT analysis as basic of a tool, it is really very, very valuable. And then we'll talk about the difference between strategies and tactics, which sometimes is elusive for some people. So we will cover that as well. So the value proposition is basically telling the customer, giving the customer the information about why they should buy your product. So the first part of it is what is being offered, being very specific about what you have to offer to that customer. And again, this can be products or services. And we will cover the differences between products and services a little bit later in our sessions. But this is where you basically define what you have to offer. The next part of the value proposition is how will it benefit the customer? And again, as consumers, as customers, we always wanna know what's in it for us. We wanna be able to have the answer to the question, so what? And that's what a value proposition does. And then further it goes on to explain why the customer should buy this product. And I don't think that there's probably any product or service out there that we can buy where we don't have multiple choices for what we're going to buy. So for any company, it's really essential to have that value proposition be very clear, be very concise, because if it isn't, the customer is going somewhere else. And there's pretty much any product category and within that category, many choices that consumers can have. So creating that strong value proposition is really quite essential. So, yes, go ahead. Yeah, sorry, so we got a question in here. It's a bit of a three-parter, so I'm gonna try and break it down for you. You can let me know in the chat if I've done you well here. So they use the example that in India, there are rules against doctors and lawyers advertising. So the question is, are there any global rule books or defined standards related to marketing norms or rules, specifically when talking about marketing ethics? So that's a very good question and a very interesting question. So each country has their own set of rules. And so whether or not they're a global, what was the question, global rules or global guidelines? What was the specific word? Like rules or defined standards relating to marketing ethics. So while I would say, as a marketing professional, I would say there should be, but I think that we can see that those ethics and values and practices vary from country to country. So it's very difficult to say if there are global standards. Every country has their own set of rules. There are also different cultural factors. There are also different practices from country to country. As the question was asked, or a statement that was the doctors and lawyers. Doctors and lawyers in India weren't allowed to advertise. Yeah, so clearly we know that here in the United States, doctors and lawyers advertise all the time. We've seen even tremendous marketing for hospitals and hospital groups here in the United States. So there really is not a global rule book because each country has their own rules. So I think that when you're operating in any particular country, let's say, so let's say if you're a company in the United States and you're expanding to India, for example, it's essential to operate within the rules of that country. That makes sense to me. Let us know down in the chat if that answered your question and I'll be down there looking if anyone has any others, but I will keep going right now, I think. I think, but Mike, was there another part of that question or did that cover all of the aspects of that question? I believe that if that didn't cover them, please let us know and we'll circle back to it here, obviously. Okay, all right, great, thank you. Thanks. Okay, so mission statements. So a mission statement is more about the company's philosophy, what the company does, how they think, you know, again, what they do. And the mission statement helps guide the company's activities. So for example, so some Apple, Apple's mission statement up until recently really focused on the products that the company produces and the products that the company makes. Now, many companies will talk about not just what they do, but what that means to the customers. And it was very interesting to see Apple's mission statement as being purely about the company itself and purely about what they offered and how they're basically changing the world. What's interesting is of late, we've seen that Apple has changed their mission statement to include how that benefits consumers. So they've sort of changed not necessarily what they do, but sort of their philosophy of focusing more, not just on their products, but on what they're offering to customers. And again, because of that change in mission statement, it also guides their activities, it guides their marketing activities, it guides their research and development, how they're looking to innovate. So having a mission statement that's succinct is very important. And what's kind of interesting is if you were to do some research about some company's mission statements, for the most part, you would see that they're quite brief, but most of them are pretty good and pretty descriptive. But what's interesting to think about is that while those messages might be very brief, it takes a very long time to create a brief and succinct message that gets all the messages across. And I would pose to you that if you ever think that it's easy to write something short, here's kind of a little brief exercise is that if you had an assignment that said, okay, here's a question. In a two-page essay, write everything that you've researched. When you could do that pretty easily, you'd get a lot of information and it would be pretty quick to write a two-page essay. Then the following thing would be, okay, take that two-page essay, narrow it down to one paragraph, but don't leave out anything important. It will take you hours to do that. And so the point is that it takes a very long time for a company to come up with a succinct mission statement that describes their philosophy, what they do and how they think. So when you read a mission statement, think about what really went into creating a message that's brief, but really communicates things very clearly. Okay, so on to the SWOT analysis. I do have to say that this is one of my favorite marketing tools because it forces a company to really take a very close look at what they have, what's going on with the company. So, and I'm sure you're all intimately familiar with the SWOT analysis, but again, as I said, it always bears reviews. So SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And always important to remember that strengths and weaknesses are internal while opportunities and threats are external. And very often people have a problem sort of distinguishing between internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats. And one simple way to differentiate this is to recognize whether or not you have control over those factors. And that will help you determine whether or not those are internal and external factors. And very often when I get assignments from students in the weaknesses section, very often students will put strong competition. Well, the fact of the matter is, is that strong competition is not an internal weakness because the company has no control over that. It is certainly an external threat. So you really wanna make sure that you recognize it and be aware of it. So again, think about, is this something that I have any control over or is this something that I need to know about but can't control? The importance of recognizing what's external is that even though you can't control it, you can look at it and see how you can address it. If there are external opportunities, it's important to look at those, analyze them, recognize them and think about how you can turn those into internal strengths. So again, the SWOT analysis, an essential tool for marketing, but again, much more complex than it looks like on the surface. Okay, let's look at strategies and tactics. So a strategy is the overall approach and a tactic is a specific activity. So as an example, a company might say, we are looking, our goal is to increase sales by 10%. That's a very specific goal, but it doesn't identify how those sales will be achieved. So the tactics might be, we'll offer coupons, we might expand to a new geographic area, we might reduce the price a bit. So those are very, very specific activities. So again, the strategy is the overall picture, we're going to increase sales, the tactics are what activities do we need to do to achieve that goal? So I hope that very specific, but simple example can help you distinguish between a strategy and a tactic. And clearly you can see how they're working together. And you can also, what's important about it is when you have defined tactics, you're able to measure whether or not you've achieved that goal. And it's very important that when we set goals, that we make sure that they are achievable and that they're measurable. Because if they're not measurable, then you're not able to determine whether or not they've been reached. So now we're done with learning outcome three and I'd like to see if there are any questions at this point. We do not have any questions in the chat right now, but we'll pop away, we'll let them catch up for a second because of our delay and we'll give everyone a little bit of time. So we'll be back in a second everybody. We didn't get any questions in there, but again, we got a delay. So obviously we're here, I'm in the chat if you guys have any questions or you can leave them later in the comment section below. See, that's how you do it. I redeemed myself. There you go. All right, so let's move on to the last learning outcome for unit one, which is where we will describe the role of marketing within the strategic planning process. And the elements that we will talk about here are the factors that comprise an organization's external marketing environment. We're going to look a little bit at consumer behavior and how that impacts the marketing process. And again, back to the purpose of the marketing plan. Such a great document of marketing plan. Okay, so let's look at the external environment. I also refer to this as the macro environment, the bigger picture of the factors that impact a company. And in no particular order, let's start with the economic environment. And clearly we've seen, and this is why it's always important to be constantly on top of marketing strategies and what's going on because things change really on a daily basis sometimes. And so if we look at the economic environment, look at it from a local perspective, look at it from a global perspective. The economic environment impacts every aspect of a business's operations, from pricing to the supply chain and the jobs market and all of those factors. So the entire economic environment can impact so many different aspects of a company's operations. Certainly the competitive environment and at any given time, the competition is changing. And I just recently read a study that talked about Walmart. So here in the United States, Walmart is the number one retailer. And with Amazon in the past really being close behind. And I just read a recent report that said that by 2024, Amazon is predicted to overtake Walmart and be the number one retailer here in the US, which is really fascinating given the fact that Walmart really occupied that space for a very long time. And really while they have tremendous strategies in place in terms of offering customers good pricing and many locations, as well as a huge variety of merchandise and really be a one-stop shop for consumers and probably didn't anticipate that Amazon would overtake them. And so that is the prediction. So again, it's really important to be very, very aware of what that competitive environment looks like and who's coming up? Because no matter what your position in the marketplace, there's always another company that's really on your co-tail. So important to be very aware of that at all times. The technological environment, we've seen so much change in technology in recent years, particularly with the digital environment when it comes to marketing of the online environment overall. So companies really need to be on top of their technological game and really know what's happening and what changes are going on so that they can go back to, how are they going to effectively compete in the technological environment? Social and cultural environment, if we look at the greater movement towards, greater focus on social responsibility on buying from companies who are good corporate citizens that have green strategies, we look at the greater focus on health and people focusing on plant-based diets. These are all social and cultural factors that are influencing the decisions that people are making and companies really need to be on top of that, recycling and sustainability and all of those things become very important. And then again, political and regulatory environment and what political situations are impacting your business, what regulations are impacting your business, which goes back to the earlier question about advertising and marketing in different countries and whether or not there's global rules. Well, again, here's an example of the fact that there really aren't in that each country, each part of the world has their own rules and regulations as well as political factors that are impacting how a company can function. Consumer behavior, this is such a great topic because there are so many things that influence our purchase decisions and one of the first things that I like to talk about is the family. And if you think about the kinds of things you purchase and how your family and how you've grown up and what your parents or grandparents purchase, how those influence your own purchase decisions as we grow and as we mature and as we have our own families, the society in which we live also has an impact but also the people that we associate with and you've probably heard about this from other courses are reference groups, not only family but friends, the people within our perhaps communities, neighborhoods, perhaps religious organizations and how those influence what we buy. And then again, our lifestyles and the way we think, our psychological factors, all of those influence what we buy at any given time. So I'm gonna talk about this a little bit now but we do, I will be talking about this later on but all of these factors, all of the decision making process impacts the marketing process. So for example, and I'll briefly go through this again because I will be covering the consumer buying process in a later unit, but the processes need recognition. We feel that we need something. We then will do some information search to find some information about what we're looking for. We'll look at the alternatives, we'll identify them, we'll evaluate our different choices, we'll make our purchase decision and then after we make that purchase decision, we'll think about whether or not we made the right choice and whether or not we made the right choice and whether or not we think that we made the right choice is going to impact whether or not we make that purchase again. So if we look at how marketing impacts this, think about we have need recognition. So let's say we need a new car, our car breaks down or we have not had a car before. If you're a marketer, you wanna make sure that you are in front of that customer when they're looking for information which is the second stage. So each stage of the consumer decision-making process relates directly to how marketers are going to communicate with you to encourage you to buy their product. So let's say we get to the point where we're identifying and evaluating alternatives. If you are looking for a car with particular features, this is where the car manufacturer is going to say, yes, we've got fuel efficiency or increasingly now electric car alternatives and why those are better for you than others. And this is where you talk about the benefits back to the value proposition. So everything really kind of works and connects together. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the marketing plan. So the marketing plan again is a roadmap. It's a guideline for how you get from what you're offering to your customers, how you actually get them to be buying your product or service. So the first thing I have to do is look at things that are going to impact your sales process and do an internal audit. Look at your company really in depth. What is it that you have to offer? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? This is where the SWAT analysis takes a very big role. Going back to what we looked at earlier about the external environment, this is going to be a big part of the marketing plan. What's the competition? What factors are we facing out there? What technological advances have been developed that we can maximize and leverage? The next stage will be developing strategies based on all of these factors. And what is it going to cost to put all that together? And then another factor of the marketing plan is how we, now we have all this, how are we going to communicate with our customers? What are our goals? And again, goals need to be very specific. They need to be measurable. They need to be identifiable. They need to be realistic. And then once we're able to do that, we can develop marketing activities that will achieve those goals. And again, we will spend more time talking about the marketing plan later on in a separate unit at the end of the course. But just to give you kind of a foundation and to really give you the picture and the perspective of how all of these things work together. And at that point, this concludes all of the learning outcomes for unit one. And again, Mike, do we have any questions about any of the topics that I covered today? We do not have any new questions. So I will do a very slow outro to give people time. If you have any questions, put them in the chat and we'll get to them. Obviously, as I've said multiple times, you could leave a comment and we could get to it later. I still can't say it, but I've said it many times. Leave a comment down below and we could get to it perhaps in a later video or at least respond to your comment. We'll be back here next week. Next week we are doing part two of unit one, is that correct? We are doing unit two. Unit two, I'm thinking of a different course. We are doing unit two tomorrow, next week. So join us the same time. Obviously, these archives will be there. I just wanna thank everyone for joining us and of course, thanking you for taking us through this. And I'm not seeing any questions in the chat but I will just delay this a slight bit longer just to see if anyone has anything. But I'm not seeing anything come through. So thank you again everyone for joining us and we will see you here at the same time next week. Thank you so much everyone. Bye everyone. Bye bye.