# Creating Products and Pricing Strategies to Meet Customers' Needs

## Introduction


### Learning Outcomes

After reading this chapter, you should be able to answer these questions:
1. What is the marketing concept and relationship-building?
2. How do managers create a marketing strategy?
3. What is the marketing mix?
4. How do consumers and organizations make buying decisions?
5. What are the five basic forms of consumer and business market segmentation?
6. What is a product, and how is it classified?
7. How do organizations create new products?
8. What are the stages of the product life cycle?
9. What strategies are used for pricing products, and what are the future trends?
10. What trends are occurring in products and pricing?
Marketing plays a key role in the success of businesses. It is the task of marketing to generate sales for the firm. Sales revenue, in turn, pays workers’ salaries, buys supplies, covers the costs of new buildings and equipment, and hopefully enables the company to earn a profit. This chapter looks at the nature of marketing and the creation of product and pricing strategies to meet customers’ needs. In this chapter, you will learn about the marketing concept, marketing strategies, and consumer and business buying decisions. You will also see how the marketing mix is used to create sales opportunities. We discuss how new products are created and how they go through periods of sales growth and then decline. Next you will discover how managers set prices to reach organizational goals.