B.Com 1st Sem Marketing and Services Management Question Paper Dec 2017

B.Com 1st Sem Marketing and Services Management Question Paper Dec 2017

Time: 3 Hours
Max. Marks: 70

SECTION – A

I. Answer any five sub-questions. Each sub-question carries two marks: (5 x 2 = 10)

Question (a)
What is market?
Answer:
Market means getting together of buyers and sellers in person or by mail, telephone, telegraph, cable or through any other means of communication. It does not refer to any particular place where buyers and sellers meet face to face and make their purchases and sale, but covers the whole of any where the buyers and sellers are in such free intercourse (i.e., communications or contact) with one another that a single price prevails for a certain commodity at a certain point of time throughout the region.

Question (b)
What is green marketing?
Answer:
Green marketing refers to holistic marketing concept where in the production, marketing, consumption and disposal of products and services happen in a manner that is less detrimental to the Environment with growing awareness about the implications of global warming, non-biodegradable solid waste, harmful impact of pollutants etc

Question (c)
What is market segmentation?

Question (d)
What is consumer behaviour?

Question (e)
Give the meaning product.

Question (f)
What is service market?

Question (g)
What is tourism marketing?

SECTION – B

II. Answer any three questions. Each question carries six marks. (3 x 6 = 18)

Question 2.
State any six characteristics of marketing.

Question 3.
Explain the models of e-business.
Answer:
→ Business -to- Business (B2B) model: It involves electronic transactions for ordering, purchasing, as well as other administrative tasks between houses. It includes trading goods, such as business subscriptions, professional services, manufacturing and wholesale dealings.

→ Business -to- Consumer (B2C) model: It involves transactions between business organizations and consumers. It applies to any business organization that sells its products or services to consumers over the Internet. Internet sites display product information in an online catalogue and stores it in a database. It also includes services online banking, travel services, and health information.

→ Consumer – to- Consumer (C2C) model: It involves transaction between consumers. Here, a consumer sells directly to another consumer. EBay and www.bazee.com are common examples of online auction Web sites that provide a consumer to-advertise and sell their products online to another consumer.

→ Consumer-to – Business (C2B) model: It involves a transaction that is conducted between a consumer and a business organization. It is similar to the B2C model, however, the difference is that in this case the consumer is the seller and the business organization is the buyer. In this kind of a transaction, the consumers decide the price of a particular product rather than the supplier. This category includes individuals who sell products and services to organizations. For example, www.monster.com is a Web site on which a consumer can post his bio-data for the services he can offer. Any business organization that is interested in deploying the services of the consumer can contact him and then employ him, if suitable

Question 4.
Explain the objectives of pricing.
Answer:
(a) Profit Oriented Objectives:
Profit oriented objectives focus on profit. This objective can be profit maximization and achieve target return.
→ To maximize profit: One of the objectives of pricing is to maximize the profit. It is very important to maximize the profit to run the organization. Some company set price to their products or services with a view of maximizing profit. It is very important to focus on profit maximization.

→ Achieving target return: Some company may determine the price of their goods or services to achieve a certain return on investment or on sales.

→ Achieving target return on sales: It is necessary to achieve target return on sales in pricing. Mostly resellers manage their pricing to achieve a target return on sales

→ Achieving target return on investment: Pricing should focus on achieving target return on investment too. Manufacturing company manages pricing in order to achieve specified return on investment in manifesting, research and development, establishment and commercialization.

(b) Sales Oriented Objectives:
Sales oriented pricing objectives focus on sales volume rather than on profit. The profit can be to gain sales volume and market share. It includes sales volume in-crease,

Sales volume increase:
One of the pricing objectives may be determined in terms of increasing sales volumes over the certain period of time. For example, 10% increase annually. This does not mean that profit should be avoided. Organization believes that higher sales volume will lead to lower unit costs and higher long run profit. It is necessary to focus in the increment in sales volume of the company.

Maintain market share:
Pricing should have the basic objectives in maintaining market share. Market share is really a meaningful measure of the success of a firm’s marketing strategy. A market share price objective can be either to maintain the market share, to increase it or sometimes to decrease it. The company uses the price as an input to enjoy a target market share. This market share is normally expressed as a percentage of the total industry sales.

(c) Status Oriented Objectives:
Status oriented pricing focus on maintaining the current position. Large companies in order to minimize the risk of loss and maintain their status adopt this objective. Organization does not take any initiative in the price change. These objectives are as follows:

Stabilization of price:
Pricing should have the objectives in stabilizing the price of a product. Some organization may set their pricing objective in order to maintain or stabilize price and prevent from market uncertainty. These objectives are adopted for minimizing the risk of loss.

Meet competition:
The objective of pricing is to meet the competition in the market. Under this objective organization set the prevailing market price.

Question 5.
State the essentials of good brand.
Answer:

• It should be short as far as possible and should not exceed seven letters. Example: Surf, Lux, Colgate Super Max, Pear (soap)
• Brand should be easy to write, read, spell, recognize and remember. Example: Sony (Cassette), Promise (tooth paste) Action (Shoe) etc
• It should suggest product benefits or benefits or qualities. Examples are: LG Refrigerator, Vico Vajradanti tooth Powder, Snow cem paints etc
• It should be suited to the markets, buyers and products. Women consumers are attracted’to feminine name and mark and men to masculine ones, Example – Evening in Paris (perfume), and Prince (Blades)
• It should be able to translate in other foreign language easily
• It should be distinctive so that the product is easily differentiated e.g. LG T. V., Samsung T.V., Kodak, Philips, etc
• It should be capable of registration
• It should be legally protectable. For example use of names like National Flag, Ashok Chakra, UNO, WHO are prohibited by the act

Question 6.
Describe the service process.
Answer:
The service process is the detailed specification of a service. Service processes intensely interact with the customer. First, there are intense interactions with the customer: Service processes show long encounters, during which customers interact directly. There may be duties of the customer that are critical for success or failure of the service process. For example, it may be necessary that the customer provides some information to allow the further proceeding of the process. It is important to emphasize that a service process must-describe the interaction between customer and service provider.

A second important property is, that service processes differentiate two areas, front stage and back stage. The front stage contains the activities of the customer and the service provider’s activities that are visible to the customer. The back stage contains the activities not visible to the customer. The third important property is that service processes need to represent the handover of resources and information from the customer to the service provider and the restitution vice versa. Furthermore, service processes are often cross-organizational. A top-level service process that is responsible for providing the service to the customer coordinates a number of sub processes.

SECTION – C

III. Answer any three questions. Each question carries fourteen marks. (3 x 14 = 42)

Question 7.
Explain the functions of marketing.

Question 8.
Explain the bases for market segmentation.
Answer:
(a) Geographic Segmentation:
Geographic location is one of the simplest methods of segmenting the market. People living in one region of the country have purchasing and consuming habit which differs from those living in other regions. For example, life style products sell very well in : metro cities, e.g., Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai but do not sell in small towns.

Banking needs of people in rural areas differ from those of urban areas. Even within a city, a bank branch located in the northern part of the city may attract more clients than a branch located in eastern part of the city.

(b) Demographic Segmentation:
In demographic segmentation, market is divided into small segments based on demographic variables like age, gender, income, occupation, education, social class, generation, family size, family life cycle, home ownership, religion, ethnic group, nationality etc. It is one of the most important factors for segmenting the customers groups. Consumer needs, wants, usage rate etc depends upon demographic variables.

Demographic factors play a very crucial role in formulating marketing strategy. For instance Maggi noodles were launched to target the market of children and young children but it has been found to be liked by adult. Consumer products like liquor, cigarette, apartments, cars, LCD TVs, hotels and restaurants are income related segmented markets.

(c) Psychographic Segmentation:
In Psychographic Segmentation, segments are defined on the basis of social class, lifestyle and personality characteristics. A psychographic variable includes interests, opinions, personality, self image, activities, values, attitudes. A segment having demographically grouped customers may have different psychographic characteristics.

(d) Behavioral Segmentation:
In this segmentation market is divided into segments based on consumer knowledge, attitude, use or response to product. Behavioral variables includes usage rate, product benefits, brand loyalty, price consciousness, occasions, user status etc. For example, one segment of the market may always purchase your product while another is made up of people who switch frequently between brands. An experienced drinker may stick with Guinness, while an inexperienced on may try out a range of beers and stouts.

(e) Benefit Segmentation:
Marketing and advertising executive attempt to identify the one important benefit of their product or service that will be most meaningful to consumers. Examples of . benefit that are commonly used includes financial security, data protection, good health, fresh breath, and peace of mind.

(f) Socio-cultural segmentation:
Socio-cultural variables that is group and anthropological variables provide further .bases for market segmentation. For example, consumer markets have been successfully subdivided in to segments on the basis of stage in the family life, social class, core cultural, sub-cultural memberships and cross cultural affiliations

(g) Use -Related segmentation:
An extremely popular and effective form of segmentation categorizes consumer in term of product, services, or brand usage characteristics, such as level of usage, level of awareness and degree of brand loyalty. Marketers of a host of other products have also found that a relatively small group of heavy users accounts for a disproportionately large percentage of product usage; targeting these heavy users has become the basis of their marketing strategies. Other marketers take note of the gaps in market coverage for light and medium users and profitably target those segments.

Question 9.
Explain the stages involved in new product development.

Question 10.
Define services. Explain the characteristics of services.

Question 11.
Explain the characteristics and economic significance of tourism.
Answer:
Characteristics of tourism:
(a) Tourism arises from a movement of people to, and their stay in, various destinations.

(b) There are two elements in all tourism: the journey to the destination and the stay including activities at the destination.

(c) The journey and the stay take place outside the usual place of residence and work, so that tourism gives rise to activities, which are distinct from those of the resident and the working population of the places, through which the tourist travels and in which they stay.

(d) The movement to destinations is of temporary, short-term character, with the intention of returning to the usual environment within a few days, weeks or months.

(e) Destinations are visited for purposes other than taking up permanent residence or employment remunerated from within the places visited.

(f) Tourism is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. It involves varied activities like hotels, travel, tour operators, retail shops, entertainment

(g) Tourism is basically a service industry and a large proportion of population actively engaged in it finds employment prospects in tertiary profession like hotels, catering, transport, travel agency etc

(h) The industry of tourism is dominated by changing ideas, attitudes and motivation of its customers.

Economic benefits of tourism:
Foreign exchange earnings:
Tourism expenditures, the export and import of related goods and services generate income to the host economy. Tourism is a main source of foreign exchange earnings ’ for at least 38% of all countries.

Contribution to government revenues:
Government revenues from the tourism sector can be categorized as direct and indirect contributions. Direct contributions are generated by taxes on incomes from tour¬ism employment, tourism businesses and by direct charges on tourists such as eco tax or departure taxes. Indirect contributions derive from taxes and duties on goods and services supplied to tourists, for example, taxes on souvenirs, alcohol, restaurants, etc.

Employment generation:
The rapid expansion of international tourism has led to significant employment creation. For example, the hotel accommodation sector alone provided around 11.3 million jobs worldwide in 1995. Tourism can generate jobs directly through hotels, restaurants, taxis, souvenir sales and indirectly through the supply of goods and services needed by tourism-related businesses. According to the World Tourism Organization tourism represents around 7 % of the world’s employees.

Stimulation of infrastructure investment:
Tourism can induce the local government to improve the infrastructure by creating better water and sewage systems, roads, electricity, telephone and public transport networks. All this can improve the quality of life for residents as well as facilitate tourism.

Contribution to local economies:
Tourism can be a significant or even an essential part of the local economy. Because environment is a basic component of the tourism industry’s assets, tourism revenues are often used to measure the economic value of protected areas. There are other local revenues that are not easily quantified, as not all tourist expenditures are formally registered in the macro-economic statistics.

Part of the tourism income comes from informal employment, such as street vendors and informal guides. The positive side of informal or unreported employment is that the money is returned to the local economy and has a great multiplier effect as it is spent over and over again. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimate that tourism generates an indirect contribution equal to 100% of direct tourism expenditures.