Basics of Marketing – Diego Monferrer
Diego Monferrer is the author of “Fundamentos del Marketing”. He has worked as a lecturer and researcher in the Marketing and Market Research area of the Business Administration and Marketing Department of the Jaime I. University for eleven years.
His lines of research include diverse topics such as market orientation, organizational skills, international marketing and entrepreneurship or quality, referring to both: the service and the relationship with customers.
He has published several articles in journals of international scope, as well as numerous papers in congresses around the world. He is also the author of five books highly recommended for those who want to start in the world of marketing.
How did you start to get interested in the world of marketing?
I have a degree in ADEM and throughout my academic studies I began to realize that the subjects of the marketing area were the ones that most demanded my attention.
Subsequently, I decided to deepen this discipline through my doctoral studies. In this process I understood that my professional concerns should be framed in marketing, specifically, in the teaching context.
What is marketing for you?
Marketing is a discipline linked mainly to the business branch that helps companies to focus their activity and the conception of their business in the client, more specifically, in the satisfaction of their needs through the contribution of value.
How can someone help your book?
The manual “Fundamentos del Marketing” is designed for those who are initiated in this discipline, especially in the academic field, approaching in a structured and sequential the basic marketing concepts.
What do you think the marketing society thinks? Has your perception changed much in recent years?
To answer this question I will rely on my own experiences that are repeated every year in class. For more than 10 years I have taught the subject of Basics of Marketing in various academic degrees not linked to the business branch.
When I arrive on the first day of class, I always ask my students this same question: If you had to define what marketing is, with a single word, what would you say?
Among the answers of my students, it is quite common for terms like manipulation or deception to appear. These situations lead me to consider that the general perception of marketing is certainly negative.
The reality is that the current consumer is every day overexposed, both consciously and unconsciously, to an unquantifiable amount of commercial impacts. Impacts that, with the development of ICT, increasingly reach us from supports and more diverse and complex forms.
This excessive accumulation, together with the application of marketing under unethical approaches, which nowadays are spread viral almost immediately, do not help to improve this preconceived and negative image of marketing that certain sectors of society have.
What do we have to take into account if we want to create an effective marketing plan?
What is relevant within a marketing plan, in my opinion and however simple it may seem, is the cohesion between its blocks.
It is essential to understand that each of the decisions we make is related to the previous one and that, in turn, it will do so over the next one.
We can not decide which segment of the market to attend and which goals we intend to achieve without analyzing in detail the current situation of the company, both in its internal and external context.
In turn, we can not understand our different actions if they do not serve to achieve these objectives. The marketing plan should be seen as a long chain in which each link is linked to the next.
On the other hand, and I have already had an impact on this aspect before, it is essential that our actions be realistic with our situation, but at the same time be intensive in creativity and ingenuity.
When everyone wants to surprise the consumer at the same time, doing it differently than what they are used to always gives an advantage in the start compared to the rest of the runners…
What percentage do you think corresponds to the training?
As indicated above, training is basic. Without training there is no knowledge, and without knowledge there are no skills to apply professionally.
The important thing is to understand internally what training is what one needs the most. And this is where our educational system does not contribute excessively.
It would be desirable for students to have a training that is linked to a greater degree with the professional world, because it is fair in this context in which the student can realize the degree to which his / her training will have real applicability.
Moreover, this would allow you to better understand what deficiencies you have and what you need to polish them.
As a teacher, I am sure you have many students every year but not all of them have a prominent position in this world, what do you have to do to achieve it?
We live in a highly competitive and dynamic professional environment.
This, on the one hand, leads us to assume that when we pursue an objective we are not alone and, to be sure, we are going to find many others on the road that pursue that same goal.
In this sense, it is essential to train in the culture of effort and in the pursuit of excellence. We do not have to do things optimally, we must pursue them in an outstanding way and, if possible, do them in a different way, always looking for our actions to present high doses of originality and creativity.
And, on the other hand, we have to understand that the life cycles of everything that surrounds us tend to be shortened exponentially. What we are worth today, it is very likely that tomorrow will not. In this regard, it is essential to adopt an academic and professional orientation of ongoing training throughout our lives, which allows us to assume the most current skills and competencies.
The two elements considered above are completed by a third one of a transversal nature: the search for interdisciplinarity.
This concept involves the acquisition of skills in different disciplines. And the fact is that any problem that is posed to us can be understood under very different prisms and, therefore, resolved from particular solutions.
The interdisciplinarity in the individual means that the latter, by itself, is capable of providing different complementary solutions to the problem. Or what is the same, a complete solution and not partial to it.
