Marketing Mix

There are many possible ways to satisfy the needs of target customers. A product can have many different features and quality levels. Service levels can be adjusted. The package can be of various sizes, colours, or materials. The brand name and warranty can be changed. Various advertising media - newspapers, magazines, radio, television, billboards - may be used. A company’s own sales force or other sales specialists can be used. Different prices can be charged. Price discounts may be given, and so on. With so many possible variables, is there any way to help organize all these decisions and simplify the selection of marketing mixes? The answer is yes.

It is useful to reduce all the variables in the marketing mix to four basic ones:

Product. Price. Promotion. Place.

Product area is concerned with developing the ”right” product for the target market. This offering may involve a physical good, a service, or a blend of both.

Merchandise generally similar in appearance, that is, in style or design, but varying in such elements as size, price, and quality is collectively known as a product line. Product lines must be intimately correlated with consumer needs and wants.

In order to develop a line effectively, marketing research is conducted to study consumer behaviour. Changing attitudes and modes of living directly affect the salability of products. For example, the trend to informal dress has changed clothing styles drastically. Also, a high-income economy triggers a demand for products very different from those selected in a declining business cycle. The availability or lack of disposable income, meaning income over and above that spent for basic necessities such as food, shelter, and clothing, affects the buying pattern for so-called luxury products. Similarly, the purchase of durable or long-lived goods, such as refrigerators, cars, and houses, may be deferred when the economy is declining and may increase rapidly in periods of prosperity. Staple goods, such as food and clothing, tend not to be seriously affected by the business cycle.

Consumers today are conditioned to expect product innovations and tend to react favourably to new features. This has an important bearing on the usable life deliberately designed into a product, which in turn has a significant effect on the costs to the manufacturer and ultimately on the price to the consumer. Competition between manufacturers of similar products naturally accelerates the speed of changes made in those products.

Price. The two basic components that affect product pricing are costs of manufacture and competition in selling. It is unprofitable to sell a product below the manufacturer’s production costs and unfeasible to sell it at a price higher than that at which comparable merchandise is being offered. Other variables also affect pricing. Company policy may require a minimum profit on new product lines or a specified return on investments, or discounts may be offered on purchases in quantity.

Attempts to maintain resale prices were facilitated for many years under federal and state fair-trade laws. These have now been nullified, prohibiting manufacturers from controlling the prices set by wholesalers and retailers. Such control can be still maintained if the manufacturers wish to market directly through their own outlets.

Attempts have also been made to maintain product-price competition in order to minimize the danger of injuring small businesses.

Promotion is concerned with telling the target market about the “right” product. Promotion includes personal selling, mass selling, and sales promotion. It is the marketing manager’s job to blend these methods.

Personal selling involves direct communication between sellers and potential customers. Personal selling usually happens face-to-face, but sometimes the communication occurs over the telephone. Personal selling lets the salesperson adapt the firm’s marketing mix to each potential customer. But this individual attention comes at a price; personal selling can be very expensive. Often this personal effort has to be blended with mass selling and sales promotion.

Mass selling is communicating with large numbers of customers at the same time. The main form of mass selling is advertising - any paid form of nonpersonal presentation of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. Publicity - any unpaid from of nonpersonal presentation of ideas, goods, or services - is another important form of mass selling.

Sales promotion refers to those promotion activities - other than advertising, publicity, and personal selling - that stimulate interest, trial, or purchase by final customers or others in the channel. This can involve use of coupons, point-of-purchase materials, samples, signs, catalogues, novelties, and circulars. Sales promotion specialists work with the personal selling and mass selling people.

Place is concerned with all the decisions involved in getting the “right” product to the target market’s place. A product isn’t much good to a customer if it isn’t available when and where it’s wanted.

A product reaches customers through a channel of distribution. A channel of distribution is any series of firms (or individuals) from producer to final user or consumer.

Some products are marketed most effectively by direct sale from manufacturer to consumer. Among these are durable equipment, for example, computers, office equipment, industrial machinery and supplies, and consumer specialties, such as vacuum cleaners and life insurance. The direct marketing of products such as cosmetics and household needs is very important. Formerly common “door-to-door products”, these are now usually sold by the more sophisticated “house party” technique.

Most consumer products, however, move from the manufacturer through agents to wholesalers and then to retailers, ultimately reaching the consumer. Determining how products should move through wholesale and retail organizations is another major marketing decision.

Wholesalers distribute goods in large quantities, usually to retailers, for resale. Some retail businesses have grown so large, however, that they have found it more profitable to bypass the wholesaler and deal directly with the manufacturers or their agents.

Retailing has undergone even more change. Intensive preselling by manufacturers and the development of minimum-service operations, for example, self-service in department stores, have drastically changed the retailer’s way of doing business. More recently, warehouse retailing has become a major means of retailing higher-priced consumer goods such as furniture, appliances, and electronic equipment.

Transporting and warehousing merchandise are also technically within the purview of marketing. Products are often moved several times as they go from producer to consumer. Products are carried by rail, truck, ship, airplane, and pipeline. Efficient traffic management determines the best method and timetable of shipment for any particular product.

Sometimes a channel system is quite short. It may run directly from a producer to a final user or consumer. This is especially common in business markets and in the marketing of services. Often the system is more complex - involving many different kinds of intermediaries and specialists. And if a marketing manager has several different target markets, several different channels of distribution might be needed.

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