Business administration |
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Management of a business |
Product management is the business process of planning, developing, launching, and managing a product or service. It includes the entire lifecycle of a product, from ideation to development to go to market. Product managers are responsible for ensuring that a product meets the needs of its target market and contributes to the business strategy, while managing a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle. Software product management adapts the fundamentals of product management for digital products.
The concept of product management originates from a 1931 memo by Procter & Gamble President Neil H. McElroy. McElroy, requesting additional employees focused on brand management, needed "Brand Men" who would take on the role of managing products, packaging, positioning, distribution, and sales performance.
The memo defined a brand man's work as:
In modern terms, McElroy defined the role as: analyzing product distribution, optimize working distribution strategies, diagnosing and solving distribution issues, optimize product positioning and product marketing, and collaborate with regional distribution managers.
Product managers are responsible for managing a company's product line on a day-to-day basis. As a result, product managers are critical in driving a company's growth, margins, and revenue. They are responsible for the business case, conceptualizing, planning, product development, product marketing, and delivering products to their target market. Depending on the company's size, industry, and history, product management has a variety of functions and roles. Frequently there is an income statement (or profit and loss) responsibility as a key metric for evaluating product manager performance.
Product managers analyze information including customer research, competitive intelligence, industry analysis, trends, economic signals, and competitive activity, [1] as well as documenting requirements, setting product strategy, and creating the roadmap. Product managers align across departments within their company including product design and development, marketing, sales, customer support, and legal.
Marketing is the act of satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of business management and commerce.
A marketing plan is a plan created to accomplish specific marketing objectives, outlining a company's advertising and marketing efforts for a given period, describing the current marketing position of a business, and discussing the target market and marketing mix to be used to achieve marketing goals.
Product life-cycle management (PLM) is the succession of strategies by business management as a product goes through its life-cycle. The conditions in which a product is sold changes over time and must be managed as it moves through its succession of stages.
The marketing mix is the set of controllable elements or variables that a company uses to influence and meet the needs of its target customers in the most effective and efficient way possible. These variables are often grouped into four key components, often referred to as the "Four Ps of Marketing."
Marketing management is the strategic organizational discipline that focuses on the practical application of marketing orientation, techniques and methods inside enterprises and organizations and on the management of marketing resources and activities. Compare marketology, which Aghazadeh defines in terms of "recognizing, generating and disseminating market insight to ensure better market-related decisions".
Competitive analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context to identify opportunities and threats. Profiling combines all of the relevant sources of competitor analysis into one framework in the support of efficient and effective strategy formulation, implementation, monitoring and adjustment.
In marketing, brand management begins with an analysis on how a brand is currently perceived in the market, proceeds to planning how the brand should be perceived if it is to achieve its objectives and continues with ensuring that the brand is perceived as planned and secures its objectives. Developing a good relationship with target markets is essential for brand management. Tangible elements of brand management include the product itself; its look, price, and packaging, etc. The intangible elements are the experiences that the target markets share with the brand, and also the relationships they have with the brand. A brand manager would oversee all aspects of the consumer's brand association as well as relationships with members of the supply chain.
Multichannel marketing is the blending of different distribution and promotional channels for the purpose of marketing. Distribution channels include a retail storefront, a website, or a mail-order catalogue.
Market penetration refers to the successful selling of a good or service in a specific market. It involves using tactics that increase the growth of an existing product in an existing market. It is measured by the amount of sales volume of an existing good or service compared to the total target market for that product or service. Market penetration is the key for a business growth strategy stemming from the Ansoff Matrix (Richardson, M., & Evans, C.. H. Igor Ansoff first devised and published the Ansoff Matrix in the Harvard Business Review in 1957, within an article titled "Strategies for Diversification". The grid/matrix is utilized across businesses to help evaluate and determine the next stages the company must take in order to grow and the risks associated with the chosen strategy. With numerous options available, this matrix helps narrow down the best fit for an organization.
A chief marketing officer (CMO), also called a chief brand officer (CBO), is a C-suite corporate executive responsible for managing marketing activities in an organization. The CMO leads brand management, marketing communications (including advertising, promotions and public relations), market research, product marketing, distribution channel management, pricing, customer success, and customer service.
Software product management is the discipline of building, implementing and managing digital products, taking into account life cycle, user interface and user experience design, use cases, and user audience. It governs the development cycle of a product from its inception to the market or customer delivery and service in order to maximize revenue. This is in contrast to software that is delivered in an ad hoc manner, typically to a limited clientele, e.g. service.[
A product manager (PM) is a professional role that is responsible for the development of products for an organization, known as the practice of product management. Product managers own the product strategy behind a product, specify its functional requirements, and manage feature releases. Product managers coordinate work done by many other functions, and are ultimately responsible for product outcomes.
Revenue management (RM) is a discipline to maximize profit by optimizing rate (ADR) and occupancy (Occ). In its day to day application the maximization of Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR) is paramount. It is seen by some as synonymous with yield management.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to marketing:
Account executive is a role in sales, advertising, marketing, and finance involving intimate understanding of a client company's objectives and products and a professional capability to provide effective advice toward creation of successful promotional activities and strategies. The account executive (AE) directly works with, and provides services to, one or more delegate officers or executives of the client company.
An account manager (AM) is a person who works for a company and is responsible for the management of sales and relationships with particular customers. An account manager maintains the company's existing relationships with a client or group of clients, so that they will continue using the company for business. Account managers do not manage the daily running of the account. They manage the relationship with the client of the account(s) they are assigned to. Generally, a client will remain with one account manager throughout the account's duration. Account managers serve as the interface between the customer service and the sales no in a company. They are assigned a company's existing client accounts. The purpose of being assigned particular clients is to create long term client relationships. The account manager serves to understand the customer's demands, plan how to meet these demands, and generate sales for the company as a result.
Service Product Management deals with managing a service product across its complete life cycle. This organizational function is equally common between Business-to-business as well as Business-to-consumer businesses. A service product, unlike a hardware or software product, is intangible and manifests itself as pure professional services or as a combination of services with necessary software and/or hardware. The service product management practice ensures management of a profitable service in the marketplace. Service Product manager identifies profitable service space, packages services in a productized form and delivers the same to the market. The function is a core service business management function and is a mix of sales and marketing functions. The function interfaces with various organizational groups like Strategy, Planning, Financial Controls /Management Accounting, Sales, Marketing Communications etc.
Online presence management is the process of creating and promoting traffic to a personal or professional brand online. This process combines web design, development, blogging, search engine optimization, pay-per-click marketing, reputation management, directory listings, social media, link sharing, and other avenues to create a long-term positive presence for a person, organization, or product in search engines and on the web in general.
Product marketing is a sub-field of marketing that is responsible for crafting the messaging, go-to-market flow, and promotion of a product. Product marketing managers can also be involved in defining and sizing target markets. They collaborate with other stakeholders including business development, sales, and technical functions such as product management and engineering. Other critical responsibilities include positioning and sales enablement.
Product strategy defines the high-level plan for developing and marketing a product, how the product supports the business strategy and goals, and is brought to life through product roadmaps. A product strategy describes a vision of the future with this product, the ideal customer profile and market to serve, go-to-market and positioning (marketing), thematic areas of investment, and measures of success. A product strategy sets the direction for new product development. Companies utilize the product strategy in strategic planning and marketing to set the direction of the company's activities. The product strategy is composed of a variety of sequential processes in order for the vision to be effectively achieved. The strategy must be clear in terms of the target customer and market of the product in order to plan the roadmap needed to achieve strategic goals and give customers better value.