1. What are visible parts of marketing? What are brand managers and sales teams responsible for?

2. Who takes part in distribution channels?

3. Why do some companies make luxury products abroad rather than at home? Give examples.

4. Some people believe that luxury fashion products should always be made in Europe. What's your opinion? Give examples.

1. What are visible parts of marketing? What are brand managers and sales teams responsible for?

As the marketing expert Philip Kotler has said, 'The most distinctive skill of professional marketers is their ability to create, maintain, protect and enhance brands.' There are an awful lot of misunderstandings about ‘marketing’. Many people see it purely as the various ways in which a business or organisation advertises and promotes itself - a website, a brochure, corporate hospitality, advertisements and sales literature... But these are only the visible parts of marketing.

Professional literature defines marketing as 'the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably'. In other words, it is not just about producing a piece of promotional material to support a sales activity, it's about a systematic and careful process of ensuring that everything that the business develops and provides, whether it be a product or a service, is done with the customer in mind.

Think of the process of marketing rather like an iceberg.The top eighth is the part that is visible - seven eighths are unseen! What goes on below the surface is a whole range of activities and processes designed to ensure that any marketing communications are designed and delivered in the best way to achieve the desired results, usually that's profitable sales.

The main brand manager’s and sales teams’ responsibilities include:

- Developing and managing brand marketing plan

- Understanding and expressingbrand’spositioning, designing appropriatemarketing mix tools

- Brief & agree annual media plan, supervise work with advertising agencies

- Generate and analyze consumer insights, integrate findings into brand activities

- Manage pricing

- Enlist strong sales support for all brand marketing activities