Marketing Mix Notes

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix is the set of controllable elements or variables that a company uses to influence and meet the needs of its target customers in the most effective and efficient way possible.

Positioning

Three Overlapping Objectives:

  • Positioning has an enterprise perspective

  • Positioning has a competitive perspective

  • Positioning takes the customers’ perspective

Product

Four General Types of Product:

  • Breakthrough Products: Offer completely new performance benefits. They may double the performance at half the cost. They may be much more convenient and easy to use. Example: New Vaccines

  • Differentiated Products: Try to claim a new space in the mind of the customer different from the spaces occupied by existing products. Example: Transition Eyeglasses

  • Copycat Products: This will not make much impression on the customers’ mind. The marketer should make up for this lack of mental space by offering more physical space in the shelves, lower prices, easier access, promotional freebies. Example: Beer na Beer brand- San Miguel Beers Pilsens / Softdrinks

  • Niche Products: They do not intend to compete directly with the giants. They are products with lower reach, lower visibility and lower top of mind. They are content to play minor roles in specific and smaller market segments. Example:

Packaging

Packaging is one of the most critical aspects of marketing your business. It can make or break a sale and be the difference between a customer remembering your product or forgetting it.

Products are wrapped in ordinary packaging that prominently displays the brand name, main attributes of the product in small medium, and large sizes without much variation in the material, shape, and purpose of the packaging.

Purpose of the packaging

  1. Packaging identifies the product and describes its features and benefits.

  2. Packaging differentiates the product from its competitors and even from its other brand offerings

  3. Packaging lengthens the lifespan, physically protects, and extends the usefulness of the product

Place

Location is defined as a place or structure occupied by a firm to run its operations. This includes any structure or establishment used in conducting a business.

Choice of Location must be based on the following:

  1. Image and location conditions

  2. Exact fit to target customers

  3. Clustering of competitor establishments

  4. Future Development

  5. Fiscal and regulatory requirements

People

People are the ultimate marketing strategy.

  • People sell and push the product.

  • People search hard to find the right market.

  • People distribute promote, price, and sell the products in the most attractive places.

Price

Market Price

Pricing depends on the business objectives set by the enterprise.

While price is a major factor for the customer in buying a product, it is not the only factor, such as in the case of buying premium products.

The enterprise should set the prices of its product or based on its business objectives such as the following:

  1. Profit Maximization

  2. Revenue Maximization

  3. Market share maximization

  4. Attainment of the desired prestige or quality leadership

  5. Penetration, survival, or liquidation

  6. Scarcity pricing or market skimming

  7. Cost recovery

  8. Subsidy pricing

  9. Marginal pricing