Marketing

 Create a Dynamic Marketing Plan The article offers advice on how spa owners can build a marketing platform. The author contends that it is advantageous to have a solid understanding of the basic concepts of a marketing plan because it will be useful when creating one. Spa owners should know that they are selling services and retail, problem solutions, and convenience among others. The packaging aspect of a spa business extends to its treatment programs and business image.

 Don't Blame the Metrics In this article the authors discuss the results of advances in measuring the effectiveness of marketing. Due to technological developments and news sources of information, the chief marketing officers of corporations are able to measure marketing impact more precisely than ever before. This has led to some dissatisfaction among marketing executives, not because of the new tools used to measure impact, but because they are revealing in detail the wide failures of marketing initiatives. The authors advise marketers to improve performance through re-thinking marketing strategies and making more efficient use of monies allotted to marketing.

 How Much Risk Can You Take? The article offers view on taking risks in business. It should be noted that entrepreneurs who like risks had better learn how to rein in their risk-taking or they will make decisions that put their companies in jeopardy. It can be observed that most people are uncomfortable with taking risks. They tend to focus on the downside of risks. That fear is enough to keep many would-be entrepreneurs from going into business. It should be remembered that starting a business always involves a certain amount of risk.

 Reviving entrepreneurship New enterprises don't exist in a vacuum: They rise or fall depending on myriad contextual factors, all of them interrelated, and all of them affected by government policy. U.S. lawmakers must carefully consider the effects of interventions in at least 12 areas, ranging from capital markets to tax treatment to intellectual property to health care. Their decisions could shore up--or further weaken--what has long been America's greatest economic asset.

 What Drives Managerial Use of Marketing and Financial Metrics and Does Metric Use Affect Performance of Marketing-Mix Activities? Although the marketing field has made progress, researchers have paid less attention to what drives managerial use of marketing and financial metrics and whether metric use is associated with marketing-mix performance. The authors propose a conceptual model that links firm strategy, metric orientation, type of marketing-mix activity, and managerial, firm, and environmental characteristics to marketing and financial metric use, which in turn are linked to performance of marketing-mix activities.