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Marketing is a process, which identifies, anticipates and satisfies customer needs efficiently and profitably. Modern marketing begins with the customer and ends with the customer. The functions of marketing can be broadly classified as buying, selling, assembling, transportation, and storage, financing, grading and marketing information. There are a large number of decision areas in marketing. Most of these pertain to the four basic elements of marketing mix, i.e., product, price, place and promotion. A marketer is always in search of a well-knit marketing mix that has good consistency within its elements. Product decisions include decisions on the product attributes, packaging, branding, etc. Pricing decisions are quite complex and have substantial bearing on the profitability of the firm? Promotion encompasses decisions on the product mix, personal selling and sales promotion. Place includes decisions on marketing channel and physical distribution. The role to be assigned to each one of them has to be determined depending upon their utility in a particular situation. The right marketing mix is important for any product to have a long cycle.
In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin produce (re) '(to) lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced. Since 1695, the word has referred to "thing or things produced".
In economics and commerce, products belong to a broader category of goods. The economic meaning of product was first used by political economist Adam Smith.
In marketing, a product is anything that can be offered to a market that might satisfy a want or need. In retailing, products are called merchandise. In manufacturing, products are purchased as raw materials and sold as finished goods. Commodities are usually raw materials such as metals and agricultural products, but a commodity can also be anything widely available in the open market. In project management, products are the formal definition of the project deliverables that make up or contribute to delivering the objectives of the project. In insurance, the policies are considered products offered for sale by the insurance company that created the contract.
A related concept is sub product, a secondary but useful result of a production process.
Marketing mix is a broad concept which includes several aspects of marketing which related to creating awareness and customer loyalty. The term is often summarized as referring to the "four P's": price, promotion, product, and placement. “When these are effectively blended, they form a marketing program that provides want-satisfying goods and services for the company’s market.
The term "marketing mix" was coined in 1953 by Neil Borden in his American Marketing Association presidential address. However, this was actually a reformulation of an earlier idea by his associate, James Culliton, who in 1948 described the role of the marketing manager as a "mixer of ingredients", who sometimes follows recipes prepared by others, sometimes prepares his own recipe as he goes along, sometimes adapts a recipe from immediately available ingredients, and at other times invents new ingredients no one else has tried.
The term became popular in the article written by Neil Borden called “The Concept of the Marketing Mix.” He started teaching the term after he learned about it with an associate.
The prominent marketer, E. Jerome McCarthy, proposed a Four P classification in 1960, which has seen wide use.
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Elements of the marketing mix are often referred to as the "Four 'P's", a phrase used since the 1960's
It is a tangible good or an intangible service that is mass produced or manufactured on a large scale with a specific volume of units. Intangible products are service based like the tourism industry & the hotel industry or codes-based products like cellphone load and credits. Typical examples of a mass produced tangible object are the motor car and the disposable razor. A less obvious but ubiquitous mass produced service is a computer operating system. Packaging also needs to be taken into consideration. Every product is subject to a life-cycle including a growth phase followed by an eventual period of decline as the product approaches market saturation. To retain its competitiveness in the market, product differentiation is required and is one of the strategies to differentiate a product from its competitors.
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Pearl Soap |
Treat your skin with tender loving care
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| Type | Toilet Soap |
| Toilet Soap Type | Bath Soap |
| Style | Bar Soap |
| Form | Solid |
| Handmade | No |
| Transparent | No |
| Medicated | No |
| Ingredient | Chemical |
| Ingredient Import | China |
| Feature | Antiseptic |
| Place of Origin | Bangladesh |
| Brand Name | pearl |
| Weight | 80gm, 120 gm |
| color | Pink, Purple, white, Green |
| Batch No | 172725 |
| BSTI BDS | 483319 |
| Age Group | Adults |
| Gender | Female |
| Company | JAK private Ltd. |
| Manufacturing Date | 17 December 2011 |
| Expire Date | 17 December 2013 |
| Website | |
| Quality | 100% Halal |
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Its formula provide thorough cleansing and is further infused with one of the best whitening active, Pearl soap enzyme known to give a healthy, glowing whitened skin. The pearl soap bar had contained, Sodium tallowate, Sodium cocoale or Sodium palm, water, sodium chloride, Sodium silicate, magnesium sulfate, fragrance .The soap bar had a determined ph value 9.5,new verities of pearl soap contains Ingredients such as in “pearl soap” Sodium tallowate. Sodium Pvvalmate, Water, Sodium cococate or Sodium palm, glycerin, fragrance. One or more flowing: Coconut acid, palm acid ,EDTA.
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•Wake Me Up - For recharged and fresh with refreshing mineral salts & seaweed
•Pearl brings out the star in you, Making women who use it more gorgeous naturally! Pearl is here to remind, encourage, inspire women and have fun with them
• Pearl has always been the only choice for many film stars such as Sharika,Tisha etc.
• Pearl, with its abundance of exotic beautifying ingredients has lead to beautiful skin
The price is the amount a customer pays for the product. The business may increase or decrease the price of product if other stores have the same product. Of all the aspects of the marketing mix, price is the one, which creates sales revenue - all the others are costs. The price of an item is clearly an important determinant of the value of sales made. In theory, price is really determined by the discovery of what customers perceive is the value of the item on sale. Researching consumers' opinions about pricing is important as it indicates how they value what they are looking for as well as what they want to pay. An organization’s pricing policy will vary according to time and circumstances. Crudely speaking, the value of water in the Lake District will be considerably different from the value of water in the desert.
Our pearl soap price is 80gm= 15Taka, 120gm=25 Taka
Although figures vary widely from product to product, roughly a fifth of the cost of a product goes on getting it to the customer. 'Place' is concerned with various methods of transporting and storing goods, and then making them available for the customer. Getting the right product to the right place at the right time involves the distribution system. The choice of distribution method will depend on a variety of circumstances. It will be more convenient for some manufacturers to sell to wholesalers who then sell to retailers, while others will prefer to sell directly to retailers or customers.
Distribution (Place) Decisions
Distribution is about getting the products to the customer. Some examples of distribution decisions include:
Distribution channels
Market coverage (inclusive, selective, or exclusive distribution)
Specific channel members
Inventory management
Warehousing
Distribution centers
Order processing
Transportation
Reverse logistics
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In the context of the marketing mix, promotion represents the various aspects of marketing communication, that is, the communication of information about the product with the goal of generating a positive customer response. Marketing communication decisions include:
Promotional strategy (push, pull, etc.)
Advertising
Personal selling & sales force
Sales promotions
Public relations & publicity
Marketing communications budget
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Market segmentation is the identification of portions of the market that are different from one another. Segmentation allows the firm to better satisfy the needs of its potential customers.
The marketing concept calls for understanding customers and satisfying their needs better than the competition. But different customers have different needs, and it rarely is possible to satisfy all customers by treating them alike.
Mass marketing refers to treatment of the market as a homogenous group and offering the same marketing mix to all customers. Mass marketing allows economies of scale to be realized through mass production, mass distribution, and mass communication. The drawback of mass marketing is that customer needs and preferences differ and the same offering is unlikely to be viewed as optimal by all customers. If firms ignored the differing customer needs, another firm likely would enter the market with a product that serves a specific group, and the incumbent firms would lose those customers.
Target marketing on the other hand recognizes the diversity of customers and does not try to please all of them with the same offering. The first step in target marketing is to identify different market segments and their needs.
Requirements of Market Segments
In addition to having different needs, for segments to be practical they should be evaluated against the following criteria:
- Identifiable: the differentiating attributes of the segments must be measurable so that they can be identified.
- Accessible: the segments must be reachable through communication and distribution channels.
- Substantial: the segments should be sufficiently large to justify the resources required to target them.
- Unique needs: to justify separate offerings, the segments must respond differently to the different marketing mixes.
- Durable: the segments should be relatively stable to minimize the cost of frequent changes.
A good market segmentation will result in segment members that are internally homogenous and externally heterogeneous; that is, as similar as possible within the segment, and as different as possible between segments.
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Consumer markets can be segmented on the following customer characteristics.
- Geographic
- Demographic
- Psychographic
· Behavioral
Geographic Segmentation
The following are some examples of geographic variables often used in segmentation.
- Region: by continent, country, state, or even neighborhood
- Size of metropolitan area: segmented according to size of population
- Population density: often classified as urban, suburban, or rural
- Climate: according to weather patterns common to certain geographic regions
Demographic Segmentation
Some demographic segmentation variables include:
- Age
- Gender
- Family size
- Family lifecycle
- Generation: baby-boomers, Generation X, etc.
- Income
- Occupation
- Education
- Ethnicity
- Nationality
- Religion
- Social class
Many of these variables have standard categories for their values. For example, family lifecycle often is expressed as bachelor, married with no children (DINKS: Double Income, No Kids), full-nest, empty-nest, or solitary survivor. Some of these categories have several stages, for example, full-nest I, II, or III depending on the age of the children.
Psychographic Segmentation
Psychographic segmentation groups customers according to their lifestyle. Activities, interests, and opinions (AIO) surveys are one tool for measuring lifestyle. Some psychographic variables include:
- Activities
- Interests
- Opinions
- Attitudes
- Values
Behavioral Segmentation
Behavioral segmentation is based on actual customer behavior toward products. Some Behavioral variables include:
- Benefits sought
- Usage rate
- Brand loyalty
- User status: potential, first-time, regular, etc.
- Readiness to buy
- Occasions: holidays and events that stimulate purchases
Behavioral segmentation has the advantage of using variables that are closely related to the product itself. It is a fairly direct starting point for market segmentation.
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We have adopted demographic segmentation for our pearl soap.
A comparable purposive segmentation was found in the closely related bathing soap field. The key split was between women whose chief requirement of soap was that it should clean them adequately and those for whom bathing was a sensuous and enjoyable experience. The company (a new contender in this highly competitive field) focused its sights on the first segment, which had been much neglected in recent years. A new soap was shaped, designed, and packaged to appeal to this segment, a new advertising approach was evolved, and results were very successful.
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Today, the most popular market approach is demographic segmentation. Unfortunately, it appears to be a relatively poor predictor of purchase behavior.
The demographic premise implies that differences in reasons for buying, in brand choice influences, in frequency of use, or in susceptibility will be reflected in differences in age, sex, income, and geographical location. But this is usually not true. Markets should be scrutinized for important differences in buyer attitudes, motivations, values, usage patterns, aesthetic preferences, or degree of susceptibility. These may have no demographic correlatives. Above all, we must never assume in advance that we know the best way of looking at a market. This is the cardinal rule of segmentation analysis. All ways of segmenting markets must be considered, and then we must select out of the various methods available the ones that have the most important implications for action. This process of choosing the strategically most useful mode of segmentation is the essence of the marketing approach espoused in this article. Demography can play an important analytical role, both when brand preference apparently is not important and is absent (as in commodity markets), and when the demographic characteristic itself is directly related to — and perhaps causes –consumption.
In summary, demographic analysis, as a market segmentation tool, may be helpful for identifying market potential, but it appears too insensitive for predicting specific brand choice. It will therefore be of little help in aiding marketers to understand what action they must take to realize untapped potential within a market.
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Al last I say that, Marketing research is the means by which the information necessary to run a business is obtained. It helps an entrepreneur to take decisions concerning the type of product, the price policy, the channel of distribution, and sales promotion can be made rightly with the help of marketing information at the right time. It is the gathering, recording, and analysis of all facts about problems relating to the transfer and sale of goods and services from producer to consumer.
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Lecture sheet of MRK-101 www.marketing segmentation.com www.marketing products.com