Marketing mix - Criterionessays

4Ps of marketing

The 4Ps

Every marketer is faced with a challenge of presenting the products or services to the customer with the best strategy to maximize on sales and a brand loyalty. In the traditional model, the marketer is more concerned with presenting the product in the right way, at the right or best place, at the best price and takes care of what product to present to what market. Therefore, the marketer is greatly concerned about the mode of combining product with positioning, pricing, promotion, and place to achieve his objective (otherwise referred to as 4Ps). By coming up with an effectual marketing strategy, the marketing manager is able to carefully bring together all the 45Ps into a selection of activities that budge a range of customers up the ladder.

the test

Product

The marketer, in regard to the product, must be aware that be it a service or a product that he is endeavouring to sell, he must present the commodity in a way that attracts the targeted customers. The marketer must also be aware of the different customer needs in relation to the product. This is because two customers may be consuming the same product while in the real sense, they are actually consuming different products based on the benefits they derive from the consumption. The marketing manager must understand the life cycle of his product. This is to make sure that strategies like coming up with new products that are meant to be a response to the market needs are accomplished in a satisfactory manner. When thinking about the product, the marketer must present a product with distinct features to fit in a particular class of products. Knowing how the consumers use the product can help the marketing manager to capitalize more on the product features that can make the product stand out and attract customer loyalty. The sales manager will also count it as an achievement if the sales staff members are thoroughly knowledgeable regarding the product they are presenting for sale.

Place

Another item in the mix is the place. It can also be described as the strategy that ensures distribution of the products to the marketplace. In regard to this strategy, the marketing manager or sales manger must identify the best channels of distribution that can be used to get the product to the prospect market or target customers. The marketing manager must choose wisely the channel members, and he must not forget to look at areas like market coverage, logistics as well as the levels of service. Wrong decisions in this marketing mix item might cause delays among other inconvenience that may work well against the objective of the marketer. For instance, if the channel of distribution is too long while the market is not as vast, this might also cause additional costs in addition to delaying delivery to the final consumer.

Pricing

Pricing still remains a challenging task in the market. The marketing manager must ensure that while making the pricing decisions, he takes into account the profit margin of business and the pricing response other competitors are likely. Price plays a critical role in the marketing mix of the marketer in that prices can be readily altered. The price is extremely visible and any changes effected on it can be communicated with ease hence impacting on the consumer perceptions. Where the market is characterized by an elastic demand, the marketing manager may use price as a very effective tool. Nevertheless, the marketing manager must be aware that price is ever close to the consumer’s mind and therefore any tinkering with it may be very harmful.

Promotion

Promotion is one area that the modern marketer has to consider and is very essential in providing a chance to dwell on the salient features of the product. In this area, decisions made include those with respect to communicating and selling to prospective consumers. Given that these costs can be large in as compared to the product price, the marketing manger must carry out a break-even analysis whenever he is faced with the task of making promotion decisions. The important thing for the marketer in relation to the promotion decisions is that it is helpful for him to establish the value of a customer to facilitate determination of whether more customers are worth the cost of obtaining them. Promotion must be made part of marketing strategy by first establishing the wants and needs of the customers so that when carrying out promotional events like advertising, media types, special events and public relations the main aim is actually purposing to satisfy an already identified want or need of the consumer.