Page 301 - Introduction to Business

CHAPTER 8 Marketing Basics 275

Vinchel Must Learn to Market Its Wines

inchel is a winery located in Chelyabinsk, Russia, in the southeastern
part of the Ural mountains. The company was founded in 1969. Anatoly
V Bondarev is Vinchel’s general director.
For its first two decades, the firm was owned by the state because Russia
was a Communist republic. Under the Soviet system, state planners
determined how much wine the company could produce and what types. The
government decided markets for the company’s output, so there was no need
for Vinchel to come up with a marketing plan.
Then, in the early 1990s, Russia threw off Communism and government
control of the economy and of companies was no more. Virtually overnight,
Bondarev and Vinchel’s other executives were forced for the first time in the
firm’s history to develop a comprehensive program for marketing its wines in
Russia and eventually to Western Europe and the United States.
Bondarev realized that this greater attention to marketing would require
Vinchel to obtain more information about the market for wine and the new
environment in which the company now had to operate. He and his executive
team would have to establish objectives for the firm and develop appropriate
strategies for achieving them. Understanding the basic concepts of effectively
managing Vinchel’s customers was an additional responsibility that would
now have to be dealt with.
You will be introduced to these important topics in this first chapter
concerning the marketing operations of business firms.

Introduction

Companies realize that they must be effective marketers in order to succeed.
As a starting point, they focus on determining the needs and desires of their
markets. Not only products are marketed; services must be marketed as well.
Services are increasingly important to the U.S. economy and to other countries’
economies.
Companies will sell their products and services through the development of an
effective marketing mix (product, price, promotion, and distribution). Marketing
touches our daily lives and is an important responsibility for companies. It is a vital
component of the U.S. economy.
Companies can elect to serve any or all of four major markets: consumer,
business-to-business, government, and international markets. They gather infor-
mation about these markets and the environment (economy, culture, legal-
political, technology, and competition). Companies also recognize the advantages
and disadvantages of the three major ways to gather this information: marketing
information systems, marketing research, and databases.
Marketing executives will set objectives for the marketing operation and will
develop ways to achieve those objectives (strategies). Many companies are effec-
tively employing a niche marketing strategy.
Successful marketers know how to manage their customers. They spend much
time in analyzing them, they understand the importance of customer satisfaction
and customer service programs, and they are skilled at handling customer
complaints.

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