Chapter-9-Question-Bank-7-28-2017.docx

Marketing Strategy: Based on First Principles and Data Analytics

Marketing Strategy:
Based on First Principles and Data Analytics

Question Bank

Chapter 9 Question Bank

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

1. Which of the following is not true?
a. In the 1970s the availability of scanner data enabled marketers to use databases to track sales as well as marketing efforts at the customer-level.
b. In the 1980s there was a surge of new approaches and techniques on how best to segment and target customers, as well as position products in a competitive marketplace.
c. In the 1990s and 2000s, the availability of customer relationship marketing (CRM) databases resulted in the boom of micro-targeted television campaigns.
d. In today’s “big data plus” era, the impending Internet-of-things boom means that the data available to marketers about customer preferences and behaviors almost doubles every year.

Answer: A

2. Which of these trends is not critical to a firm’s success to address each of the First Principles
a. firms are focusing on smaller and smaller customer segments in their move towards 1-to-1 customer marketing
b. customers, products, and markets are changing faster than in the past
c. competitive rivalry is increasing due to more globalization
d. none of the above

Answer: D

3. At times, managers face a/an ________ condition, such that their vast consideration set can lead to decision-making paralysis.
a. Under-choice
b. No-choice
c. Over-choice
d. None of the above
Answer: C
4. Competitive rivalry is increasing due to greater ______________
a. Globalization
b. Commercialization
c. Capitalism
d. None of the above
Answer: A
5. Segmenting a firm’s existing customers according to a criterion that defines migration patterns is known as ___________?
a. Static customer segmentation
b. Dynamic customer segmentation
c. Lateral customer segmentation
d. None of the above
Answer: B
6. A firm’s barrier to competition or SCA’s must meet these requirements?
a. Customer care about what the firm offers
b. They do it better than competitors
c. Their offerings are hard to duplicate
d. All of the above
Answer: D
7. __________ is a process of dividing the overall market into groups with similar needs and desires.
a. Positioning
b. Targeting
c. Segmentation
d. None of the above
Answer: C
8. __________ involves, which segment to go after, based on market attractiveness and competitive strength.
a. Positioning
b. Targeting
c. Segmentation
d. None of the above
Answer: B
9. The process of improving a firm’s relative advantage in the minds of its targeted customers, by emphasizing the key attributes of its offerings for the right sub segments is known as?
a. Positioning
b. Targeting
c. Segmentation
d. None of the above
Answer: A
10. Most firms build SCA by building __________ equities
a. Brand
b. Offering
c. Relationships
d. All of the above
Answer: D
11. To build offering equity firm’s must invest in ____
a. R&D
b. Salesforce
c. Advertising
d. Big Data
Answer: A
12. Micro-macro duality talks about identifying insights in the _________ level while supporting marketing decisions in the _________ level.
a. Macro, Micro
b. Micro, Macro
c. Customer, competitor
d. Brand, product
Answer: B
13. ___________ analytics can be defined as a technology-enabled, model supported approach to harnessing customer and market data to understand and serve customers.
a. Brand
b. Competitor
c. Customer
d. None of the above
Answer: C
14. Firms increase data capabilities to improve _____ form/forms of intelligence.
a. Economic
b. Customer
c. Competitive
d. All of the above
Answer: D
15. _________ support cause-and-effect investigations of marketing interventions?
a. Linking methods
b. Data simplifications methods
c. Optimization methods
d. None of the above
Answer: A
16. _________ helps firms trade off among multiple marketing variables.
a. Linking methods
b. Data simplifications methods
c. Optimization methods
d. None of the above
Answer: C
17. Firms cannot solve all the marketing principles simultaneously because of complexity, hence firms need a/an ____
a. Restrained approach
b. Data driven approach
c. Optimized approach
d. Iterative approach
Answer: D
18. Two key ways that the Marketing Principles work together to synergistically improve the effectiveness of a marketing strategy are __________:
a. Segmenting and Targeting
b. Data and Systems
c. Temporal interconnectedness and micro-macro duality
d. Strategies and tactics
Answer: C

19. Which of the following is not a process of the MP #2 framework?
a. Industry Segmentation
b. Migration Paths and Triggers
c. Customer Lifetime Value of Segments
d. AER positioning statements
Answer: A

20. Which of the following is false about interconnections:
a. To develop an effective marketing strategy requires the understanding that each of the four Marketing Principles are inter-connected in a natural sequence
b. Starting from the overall market in MP#1, then to the firm’s own customer base in MP#2, and next to building a barrier around these segments and customers using BOR strategies (MP3#)
c. Only when the outputs of these three MPs are known can a firm then allocate their resources in an efficient manner (MP#4)
d. None of the above
Answer: D
21. Which of the following is false about micro-macro duality:
a. A micro-macro duality identifies insights at the micro level while supporting macro-level marketing decisions
b. This process is important since if a firm only averages data and studies data at the macro level, then many deeper insights and trends will be overlooked
c. A micro-macro duality is key to MP#2 where the AER Strategy Grid captures the acquisition, expansion, and retention strategies (i.e., microanalysis of customer dynamics) across a firm’s customer personas (i.e., microanalysis of customer heterogeneity)
d. None of the above
Answer: C
22. Which of the following is false about customer analytics:
a. Customer analytics could be broadly defined as a technology-enabled and model-supported approach to harness customer and market data to better understand and serve customers
b. Firms deploying analytics are shown to perform about the same than those who do not employ such practices, even though such firms are better prepared to understand what customers want and react to changes in customer and environmental trends
c. In 2009 only 10% of firms regularly employed customer analytics, the number grew to over 80 in 2013, with firms spending 21% of their marketing budget on customer analytics projects
d. Vendor market for customer analytics is burgeoning; for example, the worldwide customer analytics software market, consisting of data warehousing software and analytics tools, grew 8.7% to reach $34.9 billion in 2012, with a projected growth rate of 9.7% through 2017
Answer: B
23. The output of MP#2 is a _____ of customer heterogeneity and dynamics in the firm’s customer _____, it captures the most effective AER strategies for each relevant persona.
a) Microanalysis, portfolio
b) Statement, marketing-mix
c) AER grid, BOR stack
Portfolio, BOR stack
Answer: A.
24. Which of the following is not an output of the MP #2 framework?
e. The products and services customers buy at different points in their lifecycle migration
f. Customer static needs and preferences
g. How they feel at different stages in their lifecycle
h. The CLV of customers in each persona
Answer: B

25. A firm can build data capabilities by building databases that improve _____, ____ and ____ intelligence:
a. Economic, customer, competitor
b. Economic, segment, market
c. Economic, market, competitor
d. Segment, customer, competitor
Answer: A
26. The techniques covered within the marketing principles don’t cover which of the following:
a. Simplification thru data reduction
b. Predictive customer future perfectly using statistical tools
c. Linking variables to outcomes thru identification of causality
d. Finding tradeoffs among variables thru resource optimization
Answer: B
27. The three key inputs to creating SCA are ___, AER strategies, and ____:
a) BOR strategies, lost custom analysis
b) Positioning statements, future trends,
c) Positioning statements, BOR strategies
d) BOR strategies, future trends
Answer: B.
28. Two factors that help effectiveness of marketing strategies include:
a. Customer-centric approach, continuous iterations
b. Industry-centric approach, total quality control
c. Competitor-centric approach, continuous iterations
d. Competitor-centric approach, total quality control
Answer: A
29. _____ focused marketing efforts on well-defined, narrow segments of consumers, and by specializing, this method seeks to give the firm a competitive advantage.
a) niche marketing
b) mass marketing
c) individualized marketing
d) lifetime value
Answer C
30. An ideal positioning statement must answer (check all that apply):
a) Who are the competitors?
b) Who are the customers?
c) What is the set of needs the product or service fulfill?
d) Why is this product/service the best option to satisfy your needs?
Answer: B, C & D

31. Which of these is not true about customer-centricity?
a. Customer centricity grants an organization deep knowledge about and commitment to their focal customers, supporting faster detection and responses to changing market conditions.
b. The customer-centric approach is an industry-wide philosophy that places customers’ needs at the center of an organization’s strategic process and uses the resultant insights to make decisions
c. Being customer centric requires a firm to align multiple aspects of its organization to be consistent with this perspective, such as leadership, structure, culture, metrics, processes, and strategy
d. Successful customer centricity depends on a strong market orientation, or “the organization-wide generation of market intelligence, dissemination of the intelligence across departments and organization-wide responsiveness to it”
Answer: B

TRUE/FALSE QUESTIONS
32. While most approaches to marketing strategy take a functional perspective to update readers about the latest tools, we take a simplifying customer-centric perspective that aims at providing an overarching framework for marketing strategy, that possess a portable, generalized input-process-output approach for all marketing problems.
Answer: TRUE
33. Firms are moving from mass-marketing to one-on-one marketing, and thus serving the needs of smaller and smaller groups of customers. Firms are managing dynamics by moving from lifecycle approaches to dynamic customer segmentation approaches, again managing and responding to anticipated changes at the customer-level. Managers now have more data and techniques than ever, denecessitating prioritization of what technique matter, for what problem in what situation. Managing these three trends requires managers to developed core skill and processes, which is why we develop an overarching generalized framework.
Answer: FALSE (last one is wrong)
34. The first Marketing Principle is motivated by the fact that all customers differ. The main challenge in this principle is in managing customer heterogeneity, which is done through segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Cluster analysis is used to perform segmentation while positioning analyses is achieved using techniques such as multidimensional scaling.
Answer: TRUE
35. The main challenge in the third principle is in managing customer dynamics, which is done through an AER (acquisition, expansion and retention) strategy. Methods that help with AER include lost customer analysis, dynamic segmentation, and Hidden Markov Models.
Answer: FALSE
36. The third Marketing Principle is due to the fact that all competitors react. The main challenge in the third Marketing Principle is in managing competitor reaction and building sustainable competitive advantage, which is done by building brand, offering, and relationship (BOR) equities.
Answer: TRUE
37. The main challenge in the third principle is in managing resource tradeoffs, which is done by ensuring that allocations to marketing activities are based on a scientific analysis of their benefits and costs.
Answer: FALSE
38. Each of the four principles are temporally inter-connected, it is important to take advantage of the micro-macro duality of each principle, firms need to develop data and methodological capabilities.
Answer: TRUE
39. A firm can build data capabilities by collecting data pertaining to customer intelligence, market intelligence, and competitive intelligence.
Answer: FALSE

ESSAY TYPE QUESTIONS

40. Write a short note about executing marketing strategies that integrate the four marketing principles.
Answer: To yield the benefits from following the First Principle approach also requires effective execution of the marketing strategy. Building the data and methodological capabilities are critical first steps to have the prerequisite toolbox to conduct many of the research processes and analytical models critical to making data-based decisions. There are two other factors shown to improve the effectiveness of implementing a firm marketing strategy: Instituting a customer-centric approach across the organization to provide a customer focus to decisions and to motivate employee towards satisfying customers needs, and Continuously iterating and improving each aspect of the marketing strategy in recognition that an effective marketing strategy is more of a process than an exact endpoint and requires ongoing adaption. Also, Firms need an iterative approach to integrate and execute the principles. An ideal solution would optimize all the First Principles simultaneously, but firms likely lack the required time, resources, and skills to implement an ideal solution. Instead, they can gradually improve their overall marketing functions by improving one principle at a time maintaining an existing (even if suboptimal) approach to the other three marketing principles.
41. Write a short note about the customer-centric approach to integrating the first principles of marketing strategy.
Answer: The customer-centric approach is a company-wide philosophy that places customers’ needs at the center of an organization’s strategic process and uses the resultant insights to make decisions. Being customer centric requires a firm to align multiple aspects of its organization to be consistent with this perspective, such as leadership, structure, culture, metrics, processes and strategy. Successful customer centricity depends on a strong market orientation, or “the organization-wide generation of market intelligence, dissemination of the intelligence across departments and organization-wide responsiveness to it” . Customer centricity grants an organization deep knowl