Role of 4 Ps of the Marketing Mix in Marketing Strategy

Product. First you should decide what you will offer to the market. It is very important in marketing strategy to identify all the advantageous features of each product which is offered to the market. That can help define the unique selling points of the product or identify features of the product which are valuable to customers. Secondly, the product should meet the needs of the customers meaning a supplier should offer the products which will meet the needs, wants and demands of the customers. Otherwise, the firm will not be able to sell it’s product and generate profits. It is all about creating the right product for the right customer. However, creating a right product demands analyzing and controlling it’s features, benefits, quality, warranty, safety, service, packaging, and branding. Thus, meeting the demand means creating the product which customers will buy and with which they will be satisfied. Moreover, it is important to decide how the firm will position it’s product in the market or how the product will be different from competitor’s product. If for example I decide to launch a new product within current product line in my company I should ask myself a question: “Will the new product fit into the market?” If “Yes”, how can I achieve this? Sometimes the right product cannot be sold profitably and generate profits. Why this happens? There can be many reasons; however, poor planning of the projected sales, marketing, distribution and other costs, and lack of thorough research can lead even the launch of the right product to fail. If I understand why the product is important for customers, then I can convince the customers why they need my product and what’s in it for them. The evidence of the importance of the product factor in a firm’s marketing strategy can be found in many businesses, and I want to bring some examples from my home country Kazakhstan. If taking Almaty, when the customer buys a computer or other electronic device, the firm just sells the product. There are only few firms that contact customers after the purchase. Hence, they lose opportunity to create long-term relationships with customers or in other words to make their potential customers loyal, which can help to generate profits for the company. So, product is a crucial factor for every company’s marketing strategy: it should meet needs, wants and demands of the customer and have its unique selling points.

Price. One of the sensitive factors that has direct relationship to generating the profits for the company. Price can be also defined as what consumers are able to pay for the product’s benefits and features. Choosing the right pricing policy is one of the hardest decisions marketing managers ever make.In Kazakhstani market there is a belief that if company puts lower price on their products they will attract more customers. It is not always true. In their purchase decision customers consider not only the price factor but also quality of the product. So the company should very accurately assign the price to its product considering production, distribution, marketing, administrative and other costs. In addition a firm should meet legal requirements concerning price: whether it is a monopoly/oligopoly/pure competition/monopolistic competition, etc. For example, there is only one big provider of telephone communication in Kazakhstan – KazakTelecom. They charge a lot of money for telecommunication because this company is a monopoly, one supplier in the market. Choosing the appropriate price needs much time and big consideration for the company. Therefore, each firm should carefully review it’s current position in the market, react on competitors’ pricing policies, and always be ready to adjust its current pricing policy to the changing marketing environment. If taking some Almaty supermarkets, for example, “Green”, the tagline which supports their pricing strategy and which they use in their advertising, sound like: “Only we offer the lowest prices in the city!”

Place. Place, or distribution channel in other words, should be chosen as comfortable as it can be in terms of geographic location and points of sales. Firm should decide which distribution channels for selling its products it should use. This include decision to launch a virtual store, or just sell the product in one of the stores, or even build it’s own store. If going global, company should have strong distribution channel systems in different countries so customers will be able to buy the product. What is important regarding place – consumers should have easy access to connect with the company such as visiting website for the purchase, or convenient place for service center after customer made a purchase. Place selection should be based on the comfort for customers of reaching the place. Some businesses in Kazakhstan didn’t take this factor as serious as it should be: they built their store centers far from the city center and nowadays these companies suffer from lack of profits.

Promotion. In other words promotion is the way of communication between the customer and the company. A firm should choose right promotion tool to meet firm;s objectives: advertising, sales promotions, etc. Correctly created advertising will catch the audience attention, especially the target market of the product. Currently many firms spend a lot of money from marketing budget for the advertising campaigns. Promotion implies using financial resources in cost-effective way, i.e. not to spend much money on the campaigns which in turn, will not generate the profits. Even the firms which use promotion should be responsible for every dollar of the marketing budget spent because initially they were aimed to achieve companies goals: generating profits for the selling period. Thus, place plays important role in company’s marketing strategy and should be controlled carefully.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-28