Sweet Toothless Cookbook Cover

Creating Value for Target Customers

“Through market segmentation, companies divide large, heterogeneous markets into smaller segments that can be reached more efficiently and effectively with products and services that match their unique needs.” (Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction, Pg. 167) You need to split up the market into different groups so you can target the one’s that’ll make you the most profit. Now in the world there are little kids, teens, adults, seniors, males and female’s, but chances are at least 80% of my sales are going to be going to senior female’s. So I don’t want to put rappers and gang banger’s on the front of my cookbook because that probably won’t sale very well. I could do something that will attract the target customer’s I am shooting for like team up with the Cure for Cancer organization and have 10% of all profit from the book go to them. I can now put their logo on my book too and this will catch a lot of people’s eyes in the store. “A product’s position is the way the product is defined by consumers on important attributes – the place the product occupies in consumers’ minds relative to competing products.” (Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction, Pg. 185) Now a cookbook is usually something that’s not too important to somebody. But for someone who has no teeth and has to pick from a group of things that all almost taste the same to eat all the time, a special cookbook just for them might be extremely intriguing. So this does have a high potential to sale as long as I market it on the right shelves.

Chocolate Marsh-mellow's.

Chocolate is a taste that everybody loves and almost nobody can resist! You can't just exclude chocolate from your life because it's hard and you don't have any teeth to chew it. So we have created not just chocolate covered marshmallow's, but marshmallow's that are actually made with chocolate.
First we need to creat Mix # 1.
- 3 Tbsp's of gelatin.
- 1/2 cup of water.
- Mix these and let them sit for one hour.
Then you need to double boil any type of chocolate of your choice, (Dark, Milk, Orange)
Then you make Mix # 2 while the chocolate is still melting.
- 2 cups of sugar.
- 3/4 cup of light corn syrup.
- 1/2 cup of water.
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt.
Heat this till it is about 240 degrees Farenheit. Poor mix 2 into mix 1 and beat for about 15 minutes. While beating, poor about 3 or 4 tbsp's of the chocolate you picked out into the marshmallow mix. Get a nice size pan and lightly coat it with cornstarch. When you are done beating mix, poor it into them pan with cornstarch and let sit for about 12 hours. Then take scissors or a knife and cut the huge chocolate marshmallow into smaller slices and serve!
*This recipe also works with other flavors than chocolate just don't go overboard with the amount of flavoring you put in!

Consumer and Business Buyer Behavior

“The American consumer market consists of more than 300 million people who consume more than $12 trillion worth of goods and service each year, making it one of the most attractive consumer markets in the world.” (Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction, Pg. 130) As you can see, there is more than enough of a market out there for almost any product, especially here in America, though there is still the whole world to possibly deal with. All you have to do is market intelligibly, and one of the steps to marketing intelligibly is understand consumer buyer behavior. There are plenty of factors out there that influence consumers’ decision; we just have to be aware of what they are so we can use them to our advantage. First off, the 4 P’s, product, price, place, and promotion, which we have control over and need to be studied and adjusted carefully so the consumer will make purchases. For a book like this about 15 dollars will do the trick, it’s enough to pay off manufactures, businesses, its not too expensive, and we’ll still make profit. Then there are the economic, technological, social, and cultural influences we must work around, or “with” to help increase customer purchases. Then there’s the Buyer’s Black Box which we have no control over, that’s how they operate personally, every person is different. Then there is the buyer responses we must study and constantly work with to make our company the best it can be. “In the business buying process, business buyers determine which products and services their organizations need to purchase and then find, evaluate, and choose among alternative suppliers and brands.” (Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction, Pg. 150) Once again, this is our microenvironment. The department of my company I told you about that will be studying and dealing with the microenvironment will be taking care of this too. They will be constantly researching and dealing with our suppliers and other company’s to make sure we have the cheapest, highest quality, and most reliable cookbook we can create.

Managing Marketing Information

“To create value for customers and to build meaningful relationships with them, marketers must first gain fresh, deep insights into what customers need and want.” (Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction, Pg. 96) There are plenty of ways for our company to get information about our consumers. We’re going to create an internal database that’ll hold all our information we gather that is considered customer insights. We can contact our customers and ask questions by phone once in a while, we’ll put surveys on our website to see how customers feel about particular topics, and we’ll be sure to remember every piece of information we can gather when we are dealing with a customer face to face. “In fact, smart companies capture information at every customer touch point. These touch points include customer purchases, sales force contacts, service and support calls, Web site visits, satisfaction surveys, credit and payment interactions, market research studies – every contact between the customer and the company.” (Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction, Pg. 114) Every moment somebody who is associated with the company is dealing with a customer they could be learning and gathering information about them whether it be good or bad. No customer insights we acquire will be overlooked because if they are then we’ll have to end up figuring the same thing out over again. Keeping track of everything that goes on very well and studying our data closely will keep us in control of our market at all times, and it’ll also take us one step ahead of all the competing companies out there. We’ll be able to see things coming in the market place before hand by studying our data. We’ll be sure to always have the freshest customer insights to keep our product and marketing plan up-to-date and “attractive”.

The Marketing Environment

The marketing environment consists of two main parts, the microenvironment and the macroenvironment. “The microenvironment consists of the actors close to the company that affect its ability to serve its customers – the company, suppliers, marketing intermediaries, customer markets, competitors, and publics. The macroenvironment consists of the larger societal forces that affect the microenvironment – demographic, economic, natural, technological, political, and cultural forces.” (Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction, Pg. 65) A company wants to stay on good terms with all of the forces in its microenvironment. Those are all the people and companies we’ll be working with the most. My company will have a special team for the soul purpose of keeping good relations with all the forces in our microenvironment. “Many companies view the marketing environment as an uncontrollable element to which they must react and adapt.” (Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction, Pg. 89) I think this is much more true for macroenvironment than the micro. Your company has no control over what’s currently going on in politics, religion, the economy, or other worldly matters. But you can observe it and be smart about what’s going on to make sure you don’t do anything wrong with your company. There will also be a team working on studying all of what’s currently going on in the macroenvironmental forces so where always up to date with the world around us as well as within us.

Mission Statement and Marketing Strategy

“A mission statement is a statement of the organization’s purpose – what it wants to accomplish in the larger environment. A clear mission statement acts as an “invisible hand” that guides people in the organization.” (Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction, Pg. 37) A clear mission statement acts as an invisible hand because it can point in more direction, and some directions may be more appealing to a larger crowd than others which is what you want. You could say that your mission is to make money for yourself, but nobody’s going to like that and nobody’s going to want to purchase your products after reading that, you want something that is going to make your consumers feel secure and important like they are what the business is about, which they really are. The mission statement I have designed for this company is as follows: “To add a whole world of easily available, delicious, recipes to the daily lives of people missing their teeth for them to readily enjoy.” “Consumers stand in the center. The goal is to create value for customers and build profitable customer relationships. Next comes the Marketing Strategy – The marketing logic by which the company hopes to create this customer value and achieve these profitable relationships.” (Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction, Pg. 47) Creating a designated marketing strategy gives the company a clear way to reach its long term goals. First you must divide the market into segments, then you want to find the most attractive or profitable markets and target them. Then you must position your product so your target market knows “why a shopper will pay a little more for your brand.” (Pg. 49)