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Advertising is the most visible and most important instrument of the marketing communications mix. Large sums of money are spent on advertising, and no other marketing phenomenon is subject to so much public debate and controversy. Huge amounts of research are devoted to the question of what makes advertising effective and to the role of advertising characteristics on its effectiveness. As is the case with other communications instruments, special attention has to be devoted to the different steps in advertising campaign development and to the fit between the strategic marketing plan and the advertising campaign. The most crucial step in this process is translating the creative idea in an advertising execution. To this end, it is important to devote a lot of attention to different formal and content techniques and their effectiveness in advertising. But first of all, an overview is given of the different types of advertising.

Traditionally, public relations (PR) are an activity which in most companies has been structurally separated from marketing communications. It originated in the function of ‘press agent’, the main activity of who was to bridge the gap between the company’s point of view and media coverage of the company’s activities. Gradually, press agents became a vital part of the company’s communications efforts targeted at various publics or stakeholders, and the activity of ‘press relations’ evolved into the ‘public relations’ function. Staying in touch and creating goodwill with all types of audiences has become an extremely sophisticated and complex task. This is illustrated by the fact that in most companies the PR function directly reports to the chief executive officer (CEO). However, not only do the type and number of target groups of PR exceed marketing communications target groups, but also the nature of the objectives is quite specific, as well as the tools and instruments used, although some of the latter are similar to those used in marketing communications.

Globalisation, volatile markets, legal changes and technical progress have an immense impact on business environments in most industries. More and more IT is deployed to manage the complexity. As a result, companies and organisations have to handle growing volumes of data which have become a valuable asset. The ability to benefit from this asset is increasingly essential for business success. Therefore, fast storage, reliable data access, intelligent information retrieval, and new decision-making mechanisms are required. Business Intelligence (BI) and Performance Management (PM) offer solutions to these challenges.

The concept of knowledge management represents the planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling of people, processes and systems in the organization to ensure that its knowledge-related assets are improved and effectively employed. Knowledge-related assets include knowledge in the form of printed documents such as patents and manuals, knowledge stored in electronic repositories such as a “best-practices” database, employees’ knowledge about the best way to do their jobs, knowledge that is held by teams who have been working on focused problems and knowledge that is embedded in the organization’s products, processes and relationships.

The geographic information in advertising has known an increasing importance in the last years, being described as a mass communication made for the account of interests which are identified: that of an advertiser who pays a media to diffuse a message which is generally created by an advertising agency. The principal objectives of a commercial campaign are to increase the awareness of the brand, to create a preference for a product, to lead consumers to buy, etc. For the last few years, the sectors that have invested most in the communication domain are: distribution, food stuffs, mobile telephony, automobiles, services and beauty/hygiene products. The commercial strategies of firms, in the majority of cases, have been developed by advertising agencies specialized in creation, direct marketing, promotion, etc. These agencies assume several roles including strategic thought, conception, realization and production of commercial announcements, negotiation and transactions with the different suppliers, as well as the choice of means to diffuse the message.

For producing and delivering a specific service unit, certain service resources are necessary. The service capacity describes the amount of service resources which are available for service production and delivery. Due to the direct contact between these service resources and the customer (or their objects), which are integrated into the service process, a service provider can only deliver as many service units as service capacities are available. However, in every service setting there are often situations where there is a gap between demand and capacity, meaning the gap between the number of potential users of the service and the amount of service resources available.

A manager who develops an understanding of the needs and characteristics of specific groups of target customers within the broader market may see new, breakthrough opportunities. But it’s not always obvious how to identify the real needs of a target market—or the marketing mix that those customers will see as different from, and better than, what is available from a competitor. Identifying a company’s market is an important but sticky issue. In general, a market is a group of potential customers with similar needs who are willing to exchange something of value with sellers offering various goods or services—that is, ways of satisfying those needs. However, within a general market, marketing-oriented managers develop marketing mixes for specific target markets. Getting the firm to focus on specific target markets is vital.

The capstone of a company’s global marketing activities will be its strategic marketing plan. To implement the global plans effectively, a company needs to reflect on the best organizational setup that enables it to successfully meet the threats and opportunities posed by the global marketing arena. The vast majority of multinational companies prepare a global strategic marketing plan to guide and implement their strategic and tactical marketing decisions. Such plans are usually developed on an annual basis and look at policies over multiple years. Running a multinational organization is a tremendous challenge. Local managers need empowerment so that the local unit is able to respond rapidly and effectively to local market threats, grab opportunities, and stay in tune with local market developments.

Service interactions are next to customer relationships one of the primary value processes of a service provider. Due to the fact that in service situations value is created via the throughput of the customer through the service production process, and this throughput is realized in service interactions, these interactions are one of the major value drivers of a service firms value. As one of a service providers primary value processes, the interaction process aims at managing the service interactions by integrating the customer, providing the service in the service encounter and a recovery service in case of service failures. These three main value-enhancing sub-processes contribute differently to a service firms value by influencing both revenues and cost. Revenues are created first by the customers throughput through the service process, and secondly by preventing customer defections as a consequence of service failures.

For most companies, new products are the bread-and-butter of their growth strategy. Unfortunately, developing new products is a time-consuming and costly endeavor, with tremendous challenges. The new product development process becomes especially a major headache for multinational organizations that try to coordinate the process on a regional or sometimes even worldwide basis. The steps to be followed in the global new product development (NPD) process are by-and-large very similar to domestic marketing situations. A cornerstone of a global marketing mix program is the set of product policy decisions that multinational companies (MNCs) constantly need to formulate. The product policy questions that need to be tackled are various: What new products should be developed for what markets? What products should be added to, removed from, or modified for the product line in each of the countries in which the company operates? What brand names should be used? How should the product be packaged? serviced? and so forth.

Services marketing, by definition, focuses on the external stakeholders, and principally on the customers. By managing the interactions and relationships with the customers, value is created. Successful value-oriented services marketing is determined by strong interdependencies between all stakeholders within the service firm. In order to be able to produce value, it is not enough that a marketing manager takes some decisions. The employees and above all the customer contact employees play an important role in service delivery. However, a service employee is not an isolated individual, focused only on individual interactions and relationships with the customer. In most service industries, service employees behaviour is even more influenced by internal factors, e.g. the colleagues and supervisors behaviours, as well as the systems and the culture of the firm. All these are factors of services marketing implementation which support the realisation of the services marketing concept in the firm.

Innovation is the key to the creation of a sustainable competitive advantage in most industries. Since costs and cost reductions play an important role in service management, the service innovation process must be discussed from a service operations point of view. An important objective of service, however, is to differentiate the company by creating more value and satisfying the customer better than competitors. According to the service dominant logic the point of view that customers derive value from the service a product provides them with much of the value obtained from the retailing experience is co-created by the customer.

Today’s consumers are increasingly using technology as an effective tool in their shopping experience. Social media can be defined as Internet-based applications that carry information posted by end users. End users utilize several online formats (e.g., blogs, podcasts, social networks, bulletin boards, wikis, newsgroups, and chat rooms) to express their opinions about a product, service, brand, and/or organization. In addition to sharing ideas about a given product, service, or brand, end users utilize social media to reach out to other consumers, who are seen as more objective information sources than firms themselves. This information, produced by people who were assumed to only use or consume online content, is termed consumer-generated content (CGC). Likewise, consumer-generated media is defined as any positive or negative statement about a product or service, created by potential, actual, or former customers, and made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet.Keywords: Health value chain management, patient value, health care providers, sustainable development.

In online retailing or electronic retailing (or e-retailing, electronic commerce, Internet retailing, e-commerce), retailers offer their products and services over the Internet. Merchandise is thus presented in Internet shops. Customers usually place their orders via electronic checkouts or they can use e-mail or traditional modes of communication (e.g. mail, phone and fax). While, in most cases, customers pay through traditional systems (e.g. credit card, purchasing on account), some Internet shops also offer electronic payment systems. In electronic retailing, according to their merchandise strategies, retailers can be divided into general merchandise and specialty retailers.

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Building strong relationships with customers has become a prime strategic objective of retail marketing. This article focuses on the paradigm of customer relationship management (CRM), regarding the principles of customer value and the constructs of customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. In highly competitive environment the relationship marketing is concerning on critical importance of clients for every business activity in market economy. The significance of customer relationship management is to lead to satisfied and loyal clients. From one side it is oriented to synchronize relations between the customers and the retail company, from the other side it is dedicated to optimize sources of information for better comprehension of consumer behavior. The CRM outline the main directions for development of client oriented products, high level consumer service and long term partnership with the company audiences and it is also an instrument of the intelligent company management in the field of customers relationship, taking into consideration the personal preferences and characteristics. This approach emphasizes the possibility to evaluate the separate clients according to their significance for business by realized sales, profitability and development potential. Also it is important to mention that in retailing the loyalty programmes are manifestations of customer relationship management.

Retail merchandising is the process used in order to conduct retail sales. As part of the process, the merchandiser pays close attention to the types of products offered for sale, how to best present those products to consumers, and determining what is a reasonable retail price for each unit sold. The product assortment is the core of the retailing service. A retailers total product offering is called a merchandise mix or product range. At a strategic level, merchandise management includes the process of selecting the right items for a store and, at an operational level, ensuring that they are available when customers want to purchase them. Items in the assortment are organised into groups, the so called categories. Merchandise planning encompasses selecting the right categories and the items within them. The selection of the appropriate items for a store refers to the breadth and depth of the assortment, quality levels and the brand portfolio.

For decades, strategic management has analysed the alternative routes to company growth. In present, retailers need to devote more attention to long-term strategic planning to cope effectively with the growing intensity of retail competition as well as shifts in customer needs. The changes in the global retail environment are the result of the emergence of new competitors, formats, technologies, and globalization. The retail strategy indicates how retailers will deal effectively with their environment, customers and competitors. The desire to grow business and increase its value is often a fundamental objective from the very beginning. A very important element in a retail strategy is the retailers approach to building a sustainable competitive advantage by capitalizing the development opportunities. Establishing a competitive advantage means that the retailer, in effect, builds a wall around its position in a retail market, that is, around its present and potential customers and its competitors. When the wall is high, it will be hard for competitors outside the wall (i.e. retailers operating in other markets or entrepreneurs) to enter the market and compete for the retailers target customers.

Even though retailing has long had the opportunity to be marketing oriented because retailers are in closer contact with customers than manufacturers, mass retailing has been slow to take advantage of this aspect. Higher priority has been placed on buying decisions, operational concerns and short term objectives than on strategic marketing concepts. A lack of a well defined differentiation from competitors has been a frequently criticized consequence in many retail sectors. However, this has changed. Mainly as a result of changing industry conditions and increasing management capability in retail companies, a change of attitude towards strategic marketing can be observed. Within the context of strategic marketing, the relevance of establishing a clear cut and differentiated profile is clearly recognized by retailers, and retail brands are systematically being established and managed..

Retail location is considered to be one of the most important elements in retail marketing strategy, because it is a long-term decision, associated with long-term capital commitment. The selection of retail store locations is one of the most significant decisions in retail marketing, because in store based retailing, good locations are key elements for attracting customers to the outlets and sometimes can even compensate for a mediocre retail strategy mix. A good location therefore can lead to strong competitive advantages, because location is considered one of the elements of the retail marketing mix that is unique and thus cannot be imitated by competitors.