Although there are many marketing activities that impact the success or failure of strategy-implementation efforts, three activities are indicated in the text as being especially important

What are these three activities? Discuss why they are so important.
What will be an ideal response?

The marketing activities that are especially important to strategy implementation are engaging customers in social media, market segmentation and product positioning (perceptual mapping). The online community of customers increasingly mirrors the offline community but is much quicker, cheaper, and effective to reach than traditional focus groups and surveys. Successful strategy implementation requires a firm to know what people are saying about it and its products. Market segmentation is important in strategy implementation for at least three major reasons. 1. Strategies such as market development, product development, market penetration, and diversification require increased sales through new markets and products. To implement these strategies successfully, new or improved market-segmentation approaches are required. 2. Market segmentation allows a firm to operate with limited resources because mass production, mass distribution, and mass advertising are not required. Market segmentation enables a small firm to compete successfully with a large firm by maximizing per-unit profits and per-segment sales. 3. Market segmentation decisions directly affect marketing mix variables: place, promotion, and price. Product positioning (perceptual mapping) is important because it is a severe mistake to assume the firm knows what customers want and expect. Countless research studies reveal large differences between how customers define service and rank the importance of different service activities versus how companies view services. What the customer believes is good service is paramount, not what the producer believes service should be.