Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr Tony Curtis had 25 years industrial experience in the chemical and aroma trade industries before moving into education. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and Senior Examiner for the ‘Marketing Management in Practice’ paper for the Professional Diploma in Marketing of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

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Dr Tony Curtis covers everything that engineers need to know about marketing and project management. The book has been written in an easy to read style with clear learning outcomes and objectives. In my opinion this should be mandatory reading for all engineers who are involved in the design and marketing of products and services.

Dr Naren Gupta, Senior Lecturer and Teaching Fellow, Director of Quality, School of Engineering and the Built Environment, Napier University

In working with a range of professionals across many industry sectors one often finds it is the technologists and scientists that gain the most out of acquiring skills and knowledge in marketing. Not only does their structured and analytical approach lend itself to strategic marketing but those skills, combined with a clear customer focus and an innovative approach to the market, can give them the portfolio of skills required for successful leadership.

Deirdre Makepeace, Senior Examiner, CIM

To succeed, products and services must satisfy customers’ needs and wants. Engineers, scientists and technologists need to understand these needs to develop and deliver better products. This book covers consumer products, services, international and business to business marketing, as well as current issues such as green and social marketing and the service extended marketing mix. Tony Curtis also discusses the core management skills needed to implement marketing plans, such as leadership, negotiation and consultancy. Finally, he brings all these elements together into three key areas; new product development, market driven quality and marketing plans.

Written by a technologist for technologists, this book is essential reading for engineers and scientists taking a module in business studies or marketing at all levels. It also provides a good foundation in marketing strategy for MBA students with a technical or scientific first degree.

Supporting material for lecturers is available at www.wileyeurope.com/college/curtis

Aus dem Klappentext

Dr Tony Curtis covers everything that engineers need to know about marketing and project management. The book has been written in an easy to read style with clear learning outcomes and objectives. In my opinion this should be a mandatory reading for all engineers who are involved in the design and marketing of products and services.

Dr Naren Gupta, Senior Lecturer and Teaching Fellow, Director of Quality, School of Engineering and the Built Environment, Napier University

In working with a range of professionals across many industry sectors one often finds it is the technologists and scientists that gain the most out of acquiring skills and knowledge in marketing.  Not only does their structured and analytical approach lend itself to strategic marketing but those skills, combined with a clear customer focus and an innovative approach to the market, can give them the portfolio of skills required for successful leadership.

Deirdre Makepeace, Senior Examiner, CIM

To succeed, products and services must satisfy customers’ needs and wants. Engineers, scientists and technologists need to understand these to develop and deliver better products. This book presents the range of marketing sectors including consumer products, services, international and business to business. Current issues in the marketing environment such as green and social marketing are discussed. Full cover is given to the implementation powerhouse of marketing and the service extended marketing mix. Management skills are needed to implement marketing plans, such as leadership, negotiation and consultancy and these topics are covered in section three. Section four brings all the elements together into three key areas, new product development, market driven quality and marketing plans.

Written by a technologist for technologists this book is essential reading for engineers, scientists and technologists taking a module of business studies or marketing at all levels. It also provides a good foundation of marketing strategy for MBA students with a technical or science first degree.

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Marketing for Engineers, Scientists and Technologists

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Learning objectives

After studying this chapter you will be able to:

* Define marketing and explain the importance of a marketing orientation

* Describe the marketing system and explain the individual elements

Introduction

In the 1960s, architects were implementing a vision of the future to replace the slums of an earlier century. The vision was of a new utopia with cities in the sky. Small squalid terrace houses were demolished to make way for high-rise flats: cities in the sky. In the event, an old nightmare was replaced with a new nightmare. The new cities in the sky were not fit for purpose. At the social level, their implementation destroyed the social fabric of existing communities. At the technical level, they did not provide safe, warm accommodation. A comparatively minor accident at 'Rowan Point' led to the partial collapse of a multi-storey building. After 50 years, authorities across the UK have had to demolish (in some cases simply blow them up) these monuments to failure to replace them with housing that is fit for purpose. How could this past disaster have happened? Could history repeat itself?

Some years later, the new town of Milton Keynes was conceived and built. Much open space was provided, with more trees than residents. Unemployment is low and people want to live and work there. However, even this success story has a downside. Milton Keynes is said, in some ways, to resemble a US city. This is true to the extent that Milton Keynes is, as are many US cities, built for the car. It could have been built with public transport as the arteries, but 40 years ago global warming and carbon footprints were not an issue.

Applied scientists, engineers and technologists are engaged in the development of products and services to satisfy the needs and wants of real people. To be successful the technologist must understand:

* What are the needs and wants of the target market?

* How will people use the product?

* How much are people prepared to pay?

* How do you provide an effective technical solution at an economic cost?

Often the question is asked: 'Should new products be technology driven or market driven?' The answer is simple. If you have a product and people do not want it, you do not have a product. If you have an idea for a product that people need and want but the product itself fails to perform you do not have a product. It is necessary to move on from a two letter word, 'or', to a three letter word, 'and'. Products must make the best economic use of technology and satisfy the real needs and wants of customers. On Valentine's Day when a young man proposes to his girlfriend he does not give her an uncut diamond. The boy presents a cut diamond in an engagement ring. Our technological skills are the uncut diamond. To be successful we must know how to cut the diamond and set it in a ring. The assertion, on which this book is founded, is that there is no such thing in the real world as a purely technical problem. There is, in fact, a 'business problem' that has technology as part of the total solution. The technologist who fails to take into account the broader context will not come up with the most elegant, cost-effective solution.

Consider the case of a construction engineer faced with a transport problem across a tidal river (Figure 1.1). The first stage of the project is not technical: What is the nature of the transport problem? Who and/or what (freight) has to be transported? What is the means of transport: road, rail, boat (canal)? What are the volumes of traffic going to be and how might they change during the lifetime of the bridge? This is, in effect, a purely business environmental analysis.

The next stage is to consider the physical environment:

* What is the nature of the river (e.g. depth, tidal range, flood levels, river traffic etc.)?

* What is the nature of the ground (clay, sand, slate, granite etc.)?

* What is the nature of the weather conditions (temperatures, snow, rain, wind speeds etc.)?

* What other conditions may affect the construction? For example, is it to be built in an earthquake zone?

After the investigation of the general physical environment and determination of the transport objects (nature and volume of traffic), the strategic options can be considered. These might include ferry, tunnel and bridge. For the purposes of discussion, we will consider that a bridge is the solution selected. Then the next stage is the selection of the specific bridge technology (strategy detail): should it be a box-girder bridge or a suspension bridge? This decision will be affected by technical issues (e.g. new techniques and materials of construction such as composites) and commercial issues (e.g. relative costs). Then the detailed design of the bridge can commence, followed by the construction.

Marketing and business projects follow much the same type of process. The first stage is to determine the broad aims of the organisations and the project. The strategies to be developed will depend on the environment. In business situations, the business external environment is divided into the macroenvironment and microenvironment. Figure 1.2, which is reproduced later, shows the organisation in its macro- and microenvironment. Strategic options can then be developed (e.g. what new products should be developed). Just as with the bridge's construction, business technologies change (e.g. nature and costs of business communications options). Then detailed plans can be formulated and effected.

The purpose of this book is to provide the technologist with the marketing insight to ask the key environmental questions and formulate commercially successful solutions. Projects that fail provide little satisfaction; marketing and business skills are a critical part of the survival kit for an engineer, scientist or technologist.

What is marketing?

In less-developed countries, millions of people do not have enough money for food, clean water and healthcare. Here, the need facing technologists is not for the manufacture of 'designer' styled bottles for French mineral water bottled at source. The need is solely for adequate supplies of clean, safe water. In a five star international hotel, there will be a range of mineral waters (sparkling, still, etc.) and these are supported by extensive marketing effort. In developed countries tap water is entirely safe and will satisfy the core benefit need (i.e. stop you dying of thirst). However, consumers in advanced economies have moved beyond the core benefit of survival to other non-core benefits such as flavour and lifestyle associations. In the post-industrial society, products have to do more than satisfy core benefits. (More development of benefits is given in Chapter 4.)

Organisations can be considered to have three orientations. The first is product orientation. This assumes that what customers want is the best quality product providing the core benefit - the 'build a better mouse trap and the world will be ours' attitude. This strategy can be successful when the product is in short supply. However, it can be very risky when this view is taken by technologists who love and understand their product but do not really know the needs and wants of their customers.

Second is sales orientation. This assumes that people are reluctant to buy...