There are tons of stores out there, how are they all classified and fit together?  All of these stores are retail stores.  According to the text there are general-merchandise, department, discount, convenience, supermarkets, superstores, hypermarkets, warehouse clubs, warehouse showrooms, specialty, category killers, and off-price types of retail.  The first one mentioned, general-merchandise, is a retail outfit that offers many products and several types of retail stores fall under this category.  First of which is a department store, which consists of a larger store, employing 25+ people and offer many products.  Department stores offer a variety of services also, and some example of such stores would be JC Penny and Sear's.  The second type of retail under general-merchandise would be a discount store.  A discount store typically consists of brand names and generic names offered at low prices.  These stores are self-service, where they try to have a high turn-over rate of products by offering the lowest prices possible, thus moving more product.  Examples of these discount stores include Wal-Mart and Target.  Another general-merch retailer would be a convinience store, which are typically small in size and are self service.  These stores offer a much smaller product offering and are products considered to be "convinience products."  These products include;  soft drinks, coffee, snacks, tobacco, newspapers, and such.  Most conviniece stores consist of gas stations, such as a 7 Eleven.  Supermarkets also fall under the general-merchandise category, and are large, self-service types of retail.  Supermarkets carry many products and divide the store into departments to organize the wide type of products offered.  An example of such retail would be Albertson's.  Superstores are giant stores that are similar to supermarkets but sell approxiametly four times as much different types of products.  An example would be a Wal-Mart, where they offer food, non-food, appliances, automotive, electronics, tire, gardening, and such.  Hypermarkets combine the two supermarkets and discount stores together for a complete package. Hypermarkets have been tried by the likes of K-Mart and Wal-Mart.  These mega stores are larger that superstores, incredibly large, in the 225,000 to 325,000 square feet figure!  Another type of retail is the warehouse clubs, where you can only shop there if your a member, such as Costco.  These retail outlets are in huge stores as well, but things come in vast quanities.  Stocking is also easy in these stores, cause they just put a pallet up thats full of the merchandise.  Nothing in these stores can be bought in small quantities.  Another one is warehouse showrooms, which display products but offer very minimal services.  The costomer must transport, finance, and have store larger quantites of food.  General-merchandise retail does not offer everything however, such as specialty items.  Specialty retailers offer specialty items and may offer a lot of depth within a specific product line.  There are two other types of retailers that don't fit the general-merch. description as well, one of which is a category killer.  A category killer large stores that focus on specialty items as well, but are so big and have so much of the specialty items that they can offer them at low prices.  An example of this type is Home Depot and Lowes.
And the final non-general-merchandise store is an off-price retailer.  Off-price retailers buy manufacturers' pick up unwanted items and sell at huge discounts.  An example of this would be the Cinch Outlet Store in Denver, Colorado.  This store picks up all products that maybe don't meet manufacturers' specs, are done being offered or off-season, and returns.

New products introduced into the market have a live cycle.  This cycle has been described into four stages; introduction stage, growth stage, maturity stage, and the decline stage.  The introduction stage, as per the textbook, is the intial appearance into the market.  At this point, profits below zero due to the advertisement of the new product, development of the product, and the distribution of the product.  The next stage, the growth stage is where sales grow very rapidly.  Also during this stage, the profits reach a peak point and then they begin to level off, as the competition begins to catch up.  In the maturity stage, the profits continue to decline, in which the competition is most fierce, as many firms have entered the market.  In the final stage, the decline stage, sales have fallen rapidly and the marketers of this product are considering dicontinueing the product line.  The product may no longer be earning a profit for the firm, and a plan to phase it out is being developed, such as using up what is left of the product and then not making any more. 

Adopters of products that are new, are divided into groups of when they adopt new products.  Innovators are the first ones to adopt a new product and they are always looking for the next new thing to get.  This gropu has the smallest percentage of consumers.  The next category is the early adopters, whom of which will get the new product after much research and they are careful in choosing these new products.  This group is closely watched by marketers, since they indicate whether or not the new product is going to work.  This category consists approximately 13.5% percent of the consumers.  The next group is defined as the early majority, in which these consumers adopt a new product quicker than the "average" person.  These consumers are also careful and do their research before choosing the new product.  This group accounts for 34% of consumers, as well as the next group, the late majority.  The late majority are skepitical of all new products, but eventually give into getting new products because they may have to get them.  The final group of adopters is considered the laggards.  This group is the last of which to adopt the product.  Sometimes they are so late to adopt a new product, that there is already a newer product that may replace the one they just adopted. 

Those people that stand in lines to purchase the newest gaming system would be considered the innovators.  Those of which that purchase the product after the initial date that the product was introduced, and have done some research would fall into the early adopters category.  The early majority would probably purchase the new gaming system within a year of when it was introduced, and the late majority would buy it after that when its probably cheaper, and a lot of people have already purchased the new gaming system.  Then there are the laggards, like me, I just purchased a PlayStation 2, and I guess its been replaced with a PS3 a long time ago. 

When gas prices began to soar out of control, and seemingly will never stop soaring, some firms found a great strategic window.  One of these firms I believe would have been Honda.  Honda was always thought of as smaller fuel efficient vehicles, but back in 2001, who cared about fuel economy.  We always had a gas guzzler SUV and several trucks.  Hell even in the ninetees, fuel was relatively cheap compared to now.  Now that gas is hovering around the four dollar a gallon mark, and diesel has surpassed that, many people are fuel efficiency concious.  I don't blame them, my diesel '01 Cummins gets 14 mpg on a good day!  Having said that I think this was a great time for Honda and sales increased, due to their many fuel sipping models.  According to a source (http://voices.yahoo.com/top-eco-friendly-cars-last-decade-honda-has-insight-5136417.html) Honda led the way to offer green vehicles to the US.  All in all I think that Honda has a great chance still to take the lead in greener vehicles and offer consumers some relief at the pump with outstanding mileages. 

According to the textbook, the marketing plan is a written document stating specifically the tasks to be performed to implement and control the firms marketing activities.  The marketing plan is ultimately under the strategic planning under the the marketing objectives and strategy.  I think the marketing plan describes who the firm is targeting, how they are going to do that targeting, and and if there is a good opportunity to target that market.  Many factors go into the marketing plan and can present a challenge to firms.  Some examples would be the marketing plan for the Chevy Sonic car, seems to be aimed at younger, adventurous individuals. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuvoSw1TiJ8&seo=goo

I think the hardest part of the marketing plan is deciding who to target with your product.  How did Chevy decide that this car should target young adventurous people, and not older people?

Target Marketing

By definition, target marketing is when a firm targets a specific group of customers, buy creating a product that they would want.  One of my favorite firms has to be Coors, especially during my time here in college.  I think that they target us college kids specifically, since they have developed a can with a frost-brewed liner, a wide mouth and vent to aid in the faster flowing of the contents, and the best part is the cold beer indicator.  All of these awesome components have definatley caught my other college buddies attention, and we keep buying it.  Plus, being brewed in the Rockies, where the Denver Broncos play, you know its goin to be good.

Moneyless exhanges

Marketing is defined as an exchange for something that both parties want.  I've have been in serval exchanges not involving money, such as helping neighbors brand.  All the neighbors here figure out when they would like to brand and we all go and help out in exhange for them to come help us when its our turn to brand.  Its just basically an exchange of work.