Chapter 1: Marketing Planning - My Takeaways

1. Marketing is all about creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that provide value and is gaining importance day by day.
2. Value is the difference between the perceived total price and the percieved benefits
3. Citizen Marketing is a new trend in maketing where with advances in technology/media, consumers are getting involved in marketing by providing feedback via videos, word of mouth, online reviews etc.
4. A Marketing plan covers a specific period and summarizes
1. What was learned about the market place?
2. What will be accomplished through marketing?
3. How will it the accomplishments be made?
5. Marketing holds the key to customer understanding - lack of the same creates risk of losing customer loyalty and goodwill and in turn drop in sales - Tropicana packagng case is a great example
6. The stratefic plan (3-5 year plan), business plan (1year plan) and the marketing plan - specific operational direction on how an org will use marketing to achieve targeted results - are key to ensure success and require input and collaboration from within and outside (partners, suppliers and customers) the org.
7. A detailed marketing plan once implemented should still be continuously monitored to adapt to the changes in the market place (customers and competetion), technology and other factors like environment, economy etc.
8. The six step process in creating a marketing plan:
1. Research & Analyze current situaution
2. Understand markets and customers
3. Plan segmentation, targeting and provisioning
4. Plan direction, objectives, marketing support
5. Develop marketing strategies and programs
6. Plan metrics and implementation control
9. Primary Marketing tools (Marketing Mix - 4Ps) :
1. Product
2. Pricing
3. Place (Channel)
4. Promotion
10. A good marketing plan, encompassing the 4Ps and accompanied by support strategies for customer service and internal marketing, creates a unique blue print to:
1. provide value
2. build relationships 
3. make a difference
11. The guiding principles for a marketing plan:
1. Anticipate change (in environment, resources and capabilities etc)
2. Engage everyone (all emplyees, customers and contact points)
3. Seek alliances (Suppliers, Channel members, Partners, Customers  & Community)
4. Make marketing meaningful (How can you make a difference)

  In short, this chapter gave me a glimpse into the extremely scientific world of marketing which reveals that marketing is indeed a science and not just an advertising campaign that can promote sales and definitely distinct from the sales itself (which I presume is a common misconception based on some of the other blogs that I saw as well). The examples of Zappos, Tropicana, Costa Farms, Bank of The West, Honda, Best Buy etc that are provided along with each of the concepts being explained helped in getting a clearer grasp on the idea being conveyed. I am also beginning to get some idea around the division of topics that Prof Talbott has done when preparing the marketing plan as part of our assignments. I look forward to the deep dives in the subsequent chapters on each of the key topics that we were introduced to in this chapter.