Nguyen Duc Tam: Marketing Management Seminar Final Report

This report presents a comprehensive overview of a marketing management seminar, focusing on key theories and concepts. The student, Nguyen Duc Tam, reflects on topics including the nature of marketing, megamarketing strategies, the impact of standardization, consumer loyalty, and firm-market relationships. The report highlights the importance of understanding marketing's contributions to organizational performance and societal welfare, emphasizing customer-centricity and cross-functional management. The student gained valuable insights from the course, particularly in applying marketing theories and plans to future research endeavors. The report covers topics such as exchange and marketing nature, new thoughts on marketing, marketing strategy, customer behavior, and the role of firms in markets. It concludes with a discussion on the future directions of marketing research, advocating for interdisciplinary collaboration and a focus on the '4Cs' of marketing.

NATIONAL YUNLIN UNIVERSITY OF
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Department of Business Administration
SEMINAR IN MARKETING MANAGEMENT (1)
FINAL REPORT
STUDENT NAME: NGUYEN DUC TAM
STUDENT ID: D10922013

In this semester, I have learned the course Seminar in Marketing Management. This course
mainly introduces the related theories of marketing management, which can help me get an
overview of the main theories of marketing management. Moreover, this course is the foundation
for other advanced marketing management courses I can learn in the next semesters. Overall, after
study this course, I gain several knowledge about marketing management theories with many
interesting articles. This course inspires me some good topics and ideas I can apply in my future
research, which I will discuss in the next part of my report.
1. Exchange and Marketing Nature
This topic refers to the nature of Marketing. I am especially impressed with the article “The
Nature and Scope of Marketing” of Hunt (1976). In this paper, Hunt discussed about the definition
of Marketing, based on a lot of definitions from scholars such as Kotler, Luck, Dawson, etc. Liked
Kotler gave the concept of marketing: "Marketing is specifically concerned with how transactions
are created, stimulated, facilitated and valued", we can see the Marketing activities is huge. It is
not only created inside the firms, but also happened in every transactions in social lives. Hunt
emphasized the Scope of Marketing in the table which is produced by Kotler (1972). This schema
proposes that all marketing phenomena, issues, problems, models, theories, and research can be
categorized using the three dimensions of (1) profit sector/ nonprofit sector, (2) micro/macro, and
(3) positive/normative. Until now, there is still no correct definition that can cover all of the
marketing phenomena from this schema. From this paper, Hunt shows that almost marketing’s
scholars focus on the profit/micro/normative dimension- which is considered as the entire
conceptual domain of marketing. Therefore, there are several dimensions of marketing that still is
not examined. I am very interested in Nonprofit sector, so I will do my research base on the
nonprofit/micro/normative dimension.

2. New Thoughts of Marketing
In this topic, I have learned about Megamarketing, a concept of Marketing activities that
firms need to do when they entry to the new market. This topic is very interesting to me, as it
shows that there are a lot of further parties need to be satisfied rather than customers, such as
governments, labor unions, and other interest groups which can block entry into a market. From
the article “Megamarketing”, Kotler (1986) added two more Ps into the 4Ps of marketing strategy,
which are power and public relations. He analyzed how companies can organize their power and
public relations resources to achieve entry and operating success in blocked markets. The
Megamarketing activities are very important, especially for the global companies when they want
to expand their markets. If firms cannot satisfy the gatekeepers of a new market, they cannot reach
the customers in this market.
I will present the Freshtaste case study for an example of Megamarketing. When Freshtaste,
a U.S. manufacturer of milk-sterilizing equipment, wanted to introduce its equipment into Japan,
they encountered numerous problems although their product was very innovative at that time than
the competitive Japanese products. First, they needed to develop an advertising campaign to
change Japanese milk consumption habits. Second, the Consumers' Union of Japan opposed this
product because of concerns about sterilized milk's safety. Third, several large retailers in Japan
said they would not carry sterilized milk because of interest-group pressure. Final, the Health and
Welfare Ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry indicated they would wait the
consumer acceptance of sterilized milk before taking action to approve or disapprove general
distribution. Overall, if Freshtaste wants to reach the Japanese customers and distribute their
products to the market, the company will have to satisfy some third parties first like: Health and

Welfare Ministry, Consumers' Union, retailers, etc. They can entry this market only if they get the
keys from these gatekeepers.
Hence, before conducting the 4Ps strategy in the new market, firms need to examine and
satisfy the third parties, who then allow them to run their marketing activities in this market. This
topic makes me get better understanding about how global companies run marketing strategies in
new markets, how they can compete with local firms, and how they can satisfy the gatekeepers of
these markets.
3. Marketing Strategy
Marketing strategy is one of the most important strategies in a company. This strategy helps
firms to create their own markets, attracted their target customers, and compete with other
competitors in the industry. In this issue, I have learned the impact of one marketing strategy-
standardization- through the article “When Does International Marketing Standardization Matter
to Firm Performance?” by three authors Oliver Schilke, Martin Reimann, and Jacquelyn S. Thomas
(2009). The most interesting point of this article is that it emphasizes the important of

standardization, as it will effect strongly to performance. Moreover, the relationship between
standardization and firm performance is moderated by many factors, such as Competitive
Strategies, Products Characteristics, and General Firm Characteristics. After reading this paper, I
can understand more deeply about the impact of these moderator variables to the standardization-
performance relationship. With different situations, a company should adopt the standardization
strategy differently, in order to maximize their performances.
4. How do customers and consumers really behave?
In the article “Whence Consumer Loyalty?” (1999), Oliver examines very successful the
distinguish between Loyalty and Satisfaction- two similar constructs of customer attitude. From
many perspectives of scholars about relationship between Loyalty and Satisfaction, Oliver proved
that the Loyalty is the transformation of Satisfaction- like the seed becomes the tree.

There are a lot of factors that affect to this process, such as personal determination and
social support. Without these additional factors, satisfaction, similar to the seed, stays dormant.
The consumer remains satisfied but does not grow beyond that state. I am really impressive about
this perspective, which helps me to explain in many situations that customers do not use the
product or service again after they purchased even they are satisfied. In order to gain the loyalty
from the customers, companies need to do others activities, and bring more values to their
customers.
5. How do firms relate to their markets?
This topic is quite interesting with me, which analyzes methods how companies create their
market value system with the institutional design. The article “Understanding Institutional Designs
Within Marketing Value Systems” by Carson, Devinney, Dowling, & John has examined how
firms can use the institutional design to generate the marketing value based on two theories:
transaction cost theory and institutional theory. I am especially interesting in the transaction cost
theory, which explains the core reason of the firm existence. In my research direction, I will try to
apply the transaction cost theory in my ideas, to examine the relationship between buyer and
supplier in marketing contexts.
6. What Are the Contributions of Marketing to Organizational Performance and Societal
Welfare?
The last topic which influences my research directions is the discussion about what
marketing was, is, and should be. In the article “Foreseeing Marketing”, Rohit Deshpande
summarized three other marketing articles to explore the question: “What are the contributions of
marketing to organizational performance and societal welfare?”

These articles indicate that the going beyond the implementation of a market orientation in
a firm will involve the management of three key interfaces: between customers and products,
between customers and service delivery, and between customers and financial accountability. They
emphasized the importance of cross-functional management for the performance measurement.
Furthermore, these three articles have a common focus—"customercentricity." Making the
customer the core of the enterprise is the foundation of the marketing concept, which helps to
distinguish marketing from other related fields.
In the final section, Rohit argues that the future direction for marketing research should not
only focus on “4Ps” model, but the “4Cs” problems: issues that deal with cross-disciplinary, cross-
functional, cross-cultural problems and customercentric focus. This article is very helpful for me,
as it suggests that we need to cooperate with other field researcher in order to publish our articles
easier. In the future, I will collaborate with my colleagues who are special in finance field to do
the research.

In conclusion, this course is very useful for me, from which I can learn many theories
of marketing management. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Professor Lai, Professor
Tsai, and Professor Pan. All three Professors are very kind and devoted in guiding and giving
to me good articles that I can have better understanding how to apply the marketing
management theories into my papers. I hope I can learn more knowledge and techniques from
three Professors in my research career.