Marketing Mix

1. Marketing Mix

2. The product • Value of a product: Value of a product means the relationship between the consumer's expectations of product quality, to the actual amount paid for it. • Value = Benefits / Price • Or alternatively: • Value = Quality received / Expectations. • There are parallels between cultural expectations and consumer expectations; the value in the marketplace varies from place to place as well as from market to market.

3. The product • For a firm to deliver value to its customers, they must consider what is known as the "total market offering." This includes the reputation of the organization, staff representation, product benefits, and technological characteristics as compared to competitors' market offerings and prices. • The key to deliver high perceived value -- making consumers believe that what you are offering is beyond expectation -- helping them to solve a problem, offering a solution, giving results, and making them happy.

4. Components of the market offering through product • planning its market offering, the marketer needs to address five product levels: • The fundamental level is the core benefit: the service or benefit the customer is really buying. • At the second level, the marketer must turn the core benefit into a basic product. • At the third level, the marketer prepares an expected product, a set of attributes and conditions buyers normally expect when they purchase this product. • At the fourth level, the marketer prepares an augmented product that exceeds customer expectations. • At the fifth level companies search for new ways to satisfy customers and distinguish their offering.

5. Requirements of a good advertisement • The AIDA principle. Attention, Interest, Desire and Action: • Attract attention (awareness). • Stimulate interest. • Create a desire. • Bring about action (to buy the product).

6. Planning for advertising • Any advertising plan addresses the following stages: • Who is the potential target audience? • What does the company wish to communicate to this target audience? • Why is this message so important to them? • What is the best medium for this message to take? • What would be the most appropriate timing? • What resources will the advertising campaign need? • How does the company control its advertising and monitor success?

7. Personal sales • Oral presentation given by a salesperson that approaches individuals or a group of potential customers: • Live, interactive relationship. • Personal interest . • Attention and response . • Interesting presentation. • Clear and thorough.

8. Sales promotions • are Short-term incentives to encourage buying of products and to get the following advantages: • Instant appeal. • Anxiety to sell. • People are given an incentive to buy, but this does not build customer loyalty or encourage future repeat buys. • Marketing Public Relations (MPR) • Stimulation of demand through press release giving a favorable report to a product • Higher degree of credibility • Effectively news • Boosts enterprise's image.

9. Pricing • is the process of determining what a company will receive in exchange for its products. Pricing factors are manufacturing cost, market place, competition, market condition, Quality of product. • What a price should do? • A well chosen price should do three things: • Achieve the financial goals of the company (e.g., profitability). • Fit the realities of the marketplace (Will customers buy at that price?). • Support a product's positioning.

10. An efficient price is a price that is very close to the maximum that customers are prepared to pay. • Promotional pricing: refers to an instance where pricing is the key element of the marketing mix. • Reference prices Research has shown that although consumers may have fairly good knowledge of the range of prices involved. Reference prices when customers examining products, consumers often employ reference prices, comparing an observed price to an internal reference price they remember or to an external frame of reference. • The price/quality relationship refers to the perception by most consumers that a relatively high price is a sign of good quality. The belief in this relationship is most important with complex products that are hard to test, and experiential products that cannot be tested until used (such as most services).

11. Distribution (or place) is one of the four elements of marketing mix. • An organization or set of organizations (go-betweens) involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user , we can name it as the distribution channel, or distribution chain. • The distribution channel • Frequently there may be a chain of intermediaries; each passing the product down the chain to the next organization, before it finally reaches the consumer or end-user

12. A number of alternate 'channels' of distribution may be available: • Selling direct, such as with an outbound salesforce or via mail order, Internet and telephone sales. • Agent, who typically sells direct on behalf of the producer. • Distributor (also called wholesaler), who sells to retailers. • Retailer (also called dealer or reseller), who sells to end customers. • Advertisement typically used for consumption goods.

13. Channel decisions • The channel decision is very important. : the cost of using intermediaries to achieve wider distribution is supposedly lower. Many suppliers seem to assume that once their product has been sold into the channel, into the beginning of the distribution chain, their job is finished. but, if they have any aspirations to be market-oriented, their job should really be extended to managing all the processes involved in that chain, until the product or service arrives with the end-user. This may involve a number of decisions on the part of the supplier: • Channel membership. • Channel motivation. • Monitoring and managing channels.