As you know, marketers often sell their promises to execute works for a customer or provide services to a client. However, the buyer of works or services needs evidence that the contractor will execute these at a high quality and on time. Due to confusion in the scientific and legal definitions of the concepts of “services” and “works,” theorists and practitioners often do not pay attention to the differences between them, instead believing that works are a special type of services. In 2010, the author of this book overcame this confusion, realizing that work is a product of human labor, which changes the market value of the processed object. Services, on the other hand, are products that do not change the market value of the object being served.

To give marketers more specialized tools and techniques for selling works, this book explores a new special concept: “the marketing of works,” which should be added to the existing integrated marketing of goods and services. It presents the reader with new knowledge in the marketing discipline, marketing practitioners with new tools for selling works, and marketing theorists with new directions for developing their own theories. Indeed, it unveils an important marketing secret. 

The Marketing of Works provides short definitions of various concepts, including the subject, object, and matter of marketing activity. It makes clear why the ownership of objects is not transferred from the customer to the contractor in the market of works, and compares the main characteristics of marketing activities in the production of goods, execution of works, and provision of services. The text’s analysis of the shortcomings of existing marketing classifications will be useful for theorists in order to search for new knowledge, and it shows that contractors execute works by renewing, modernizing, or re-equipping facilities to overcome their physical, moral, or structural deterioration.  

It details the concepts of market donors and market acceptors, as well the dynamic form of the SWOT analysis matrix. Firms’ objective and subjective competitive abilities are also defined, as are their lifecycles in accordance with their total competitiveness. Through the book, the reader will also learn how to draft commercial offers and calculate the “cost-duration” of contracts.

The project organization of works is a key tool for the marketing of works. As such, the text analyzes which project factors can be controlled by marketers and which cannot. It shows how to calculate the marketing department’s degree of independence and how to maneuver the company’s resources when planning the execution of works orders in space and time.

The performance of external marketing research and internal marketing audits of companies are also explained in the book. The reader will learn how to narrow a search field and save time and money when obtaining data, as well as how to calculate key information indicators, including secrecy, accuracy, and urgency. The “personalization of activity” and contact schedules with potential customers are also considered.

The book highlights how one can determine the amount of lost profits from a lack of advertising, as well as losses due to the disclosure of the company’s secrets in the market of works. Readers will become familiar with the procedure for calculating the danger of leaking data about the company, in addition to the requirements for establishing the degree of confidentiality. They will also learn how to protect company trade secrets and counteract the spy activities of competitors.

The book also discusses the peculiarities of market segmentation according to the nomenclature of works and the technologies used, as well as the ranking of market participants based on their rating numbers. It makes it clear how one may build the coordinate axes of a multidimensional market space, taking into account the degree of customer loyalty and competitor hostility.

The popular, but not fully understood, “marketing vector” also appears in this book, with a detailed exploration of the practical meaning of the vector’s modulus, tilt angles, projections, and planes in its coordinate system. The difference between a multi-product company’s “marketing specialization” and “product specialization” is also explained in detail. Marketers always sell several product elements, in actual fact using the general marketing of goods, works, and services for those sales. Moreover, the joint sale of two or three elements of the product will save on marketing costs as a result of the synergy effect. The text shows how to calculate the synergy coefficient and the amount of reduction in marketing costs when selling multiple product elements together.

The Marketing of Works provides insights into the concept of works’ market capacity in a certain territory and for a certain period, showing the reader how to calculate the level of fullness of a firm’s portfolio of orders, the stability coefficient of fulfilling orders, the volume of effective and potential demand, and the number of orders that arose and disappeared. It also deals with issues of using the contractor’s own production facilities and involving subcontractors to carry out large contracts.

After taking the limiting parameters of production facilities and the maximum permissible intensity of works into account, firms’ marketing and production departments compose and optimize the space-time matrix of the production loading. Marketers can manage start and end dates for new contracts during negotiations with customers. The book details the skills to control the real and planned tension of orders for works to prevent downtime, and how to use boundary conditions and criteria to optimize production loading.

In addition, the text develops the concept of hybrid offerings, making the distinction between works that add value to hybrid offerings and services that only maintain sales. The difference between general and particular hybrid offerings will become clear, as does the sequence of product placement in those offerings. The reader will also learn that, in the marketing of works, the object of promotion is the executing company itself.     A firm’s policies, strategies, and tactics in the market of works, are described in the textbook. Variable and non-variable contract parameters are determined, and attention is paid to the specifics of pricing long-term contracts based on the compounding procedure. The reader will see the difference between absolutely and relatively profitable or unprofitable orders, as well as how advances and deferred payments, in addition to bonuses and penalties, affect the cost and timing of contracts.

The history of the ‘4Ps’ model of the marketing mix for goods and the ‘7Ps’ model for goods and services is also briefly covered. The book discusses how the general marketing of goods, works, and services became the basis for an extended ‘9Ps’ model for the marketing mix of goods, works, and services, and how two new factors specific to the marketing of works were discovered: namely, “period of time” and “payment terms.”

The book discusses the exchange of objects and products in barter transactions, considering homogeneous and heterogeneous, as well as one-pass and multi-pass barter, transactions. It is important to ensure the exchanged products’ value equivalence and to plan for a timely exchange of works and services. The procedure for drawing up a “barter roadmap” is also shown.

Marketers must calculate the level of customer dissatisfaction with the contractor and monitor changes in the interdependence of the contract parties. The text pays special attention to the use of “hospitality costs” in the marketing of works, and examines their economic efficiency. In addition, it details informal methods of influencing decision-makers.

The use of Internet technologies, mobile communications, and social networks to find works orders is briefly discussed. The book describes how negotiations are conducted between the customer and the contractor online, and highlights the features of electronic document management in the marketing of works. It also studies the cryptographic protection of electronic documents, participation in electronic auctions for the procurement of works, and registration of the qualified advanced electronic and digital signatures. The textbook also covers the use of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies.

The peculiarities of selling and executing works are considered through the examples of industry, construction, agriculture, transport, communications, healthcare, education, film and audio businesses, public administration, information technology, sports, recreation, and entertainment, the beauty industry, and scientific research. The reader will learn how narrow technological specialization in one type of work allows firms to successfully operate in several sectors of the economy.

The life cycle of a marketing team can be examined using graphs and calculation formulas. The book discusses the rotation of marketing managers and specialists, the consequences of psychological pressure on marketers, and the periodic change of marketing teams. The use of progressive, regressive, and directly proportional scales to reward marketers with bonuses based on their performance will interest company managers.

Finally, the textbook covers the processes of moving financial, material, labor, and information resources by the exporting of works across borders, taking into account the use of local resources.

Dr Sergiy E. Pogodayev is a marketing practitioner with many years of experience in Ukrainian and American industrial companies as Marketing Director and Commercial Director. He has been a member of the American Marketing Association since 2011, and is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Economics at the Academy of Labor and Social Relations, Russia. He received his PhD in Economics from Ternopil National Technical University, Ukraine, in 2014. Dr Pogodayev is the author of the scientific discovery of the marketing of works (four copyright certificates in 2011-2012). In the United Kingdom, he has published an article about it in 2013. He is also the author of the rating theory of market and firm (copyright certificate in 2012) and has published relevant monographs in Ukraine (2013) and Germany (2015). His research interests include the study of multidimensional market space, accelerated market time, and the rating metrics of management.

The Marketing of Works: A Textbook on General Marketing of Goods, Works, and Services is available now in Hardback at a 25% discount. Enter the code PROMO25 at the checkout to redeem.

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