Marketing

A market-focused, or customer-focused, organization first determines what its potential customers desire, and then builds the product or service. Marketing theory and practice is justified in the belief that customers use a product or service because they have a need, or because it provides a perceived benefit.

Two major factors of marketing are the recruitment of new customers (acquisition) and the retention and expansion of relationships with existing customers (base management). Once a marketer has converted the prospective buyer, base management marketing takes over. The process for base management shifts the marketer to building a relationship, nurturing the links, enhancing the benefits that sold the buyer in the first place, and improving the product/service continuously to protect the business from competitive encroachments.

For a marketing plan to be successful, the mix of the four "Ps" must reflect the wants and desires of the consumers or Shoppers in the target market. Trying to convince a market segment to buy something they don't want is extremely expensive and seldom successful. Marketers depend on insights from marketing research, both formal and informal, to determine what consumers want and what they are willing to pay for. Marketers hope that this process will give them a sustainable competitive advantage. Marketing management is the practical application of this process. The offer is also an important addition to the 4P's theory.

The American Marketing Association (AMA) states, "Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.

Marketing methods are informed by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, sociology, and economics. Anthropology is also a small, but growing influence. Market research underpins these activities. Through advertising, it is also related to many of the creative arts. Marketing is a wide and heavily interconnected subject with extensive publications. It is also an area of activity infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture.

Questions involved in pricing

Questions involved in pricing

Pricing involves asking questions like:
How much to charge for a product or service? This question is that a typical starting point for discussions about pricing, however, a better question for a vendor to ask is - How much do customers value the products, services, and other intangibles that the vendor provides.
What are the pricing objectives?
Do we use profit maximization pricing?
How to set the price?: (cost-plus pricing, demand based or value-based pricing, rate of return pricing, or competitor indexing)
Should there be a single price or multiple pricing?
Should prices change in various geographical areas, referred to as zone pricing?
Should there be quantity discounts?
What prices are competitors charging?
Do you use a price skimming strategy or a penetration pricing strategy?
What image do you want the price to convey?
Do you use psychological pricing?
How important are customer price sensitivity (e.g. "sticker shock") and elasticity issues?
Can real-time pricing be used?
Is price discrimination or yield management appropriate?
Are there legal restrictions on retail price maintenance, price collusion, or price discrimination?
Do price points already exist for the product category?
How flexible can we be in pricing? : The more competitive the industry, the less flexibility we have.
The price floor is determined by production factors like costs (often only variable costs are taken into account), economies of scale, marginal cost, and degree of operating leverage
The price ceiling is determined by demand factors like price elasticity and price points
Are there transfer pricing considerations?
What is the chance of getting involved in a price war?
How visible should the price be? - Should the price be neutral? (ie.: not an important differentiating factor), should it be highly visible? (to help promote a low priced economy product, or to reinforce the prestige image of a quality product), or should it be hidden? (so as to allow marketers to generate interest in the product unhindered by price considerations).
Are there joint product pricing considerations?
What are the non-price costs of purchasing the product? (eg.: travel time to the store, wait time in the store, disagreeable elements associated with the product purchase - dentist -> pain, fishmarket -> smells)
What sort of payments should be accepted? (cash, check, credit card, barter) Pricing
Process of determining what a company will receive in exchange for its products. Pricing factors are manufacturing cost,market place,compitition,maket condition,Quality of product.

What a price should do
A well chosen price should do three things :
achieve the financial goals of the company (eg.: profitability)
fit the realities of the marketplace (will customers buy at that price?)
support a product's positioning and be consistent with the other variables in the marketing mix
price is influenced by the type of distribution channel used, the type of promotions used, and the quality of the product
price will usually need to be relatively high if manufacturing is expensive, distribution is exclusive, and the product is supported by extensive advertising and promotional campaigns
a low price can be a viable substitute for product quality, effective promotions, or an energetic selling effort by distributors
From the marketers point of view, an efficient price is a price that is very close to the maximum that customers are prepared to pay. In economic terms, it is a price that shifts most of the consumer surplus to the producer. A good pricing strategy would be the one which could balance between the Price floor(the price below which the organization ends up in losses) and the Price ceiling(the price beyond which the organization experiences a no demand situation).

Definitions
The effective price is the price the company receives after accounting for discounts, promotions, and other incentives.
Price lining is the use of a limited number of prices for all your product offerings. This is a tradition started in the old five and dime stores in which everything cost either 5 or 10 cents. Its underlying rationale is that these amounts are seen as suitable price points for a whole range of products by prospective customers. It has the advantage of ease of administering, but the disadvantage of inflexibility, particularly in times of inflation or unstable prices.
A loss leader is a product that has a price set below the operating margin. This results in a loss to the enterprise on that particular item, but this is done in the hope that it will draw customers into the store and that some of those customers will buy other, higher margin items.
Promotional pricing refers to an instance where pricing is the key element of the marketing mix.
The price/quality relationship refers to the perception by most consumers that a relatively high price is a sign of good quality. The belief in this relationship is most important with complex products that are hard to test, and experiential products that cannot be tested until used (such as most services). The greater the uncertainty surrounding a product, the more consumers depend on the price/quality hypothesis and the more of a premium they are prepared to pay. The classic example of this is the pricing of the snack cake Twinkies, which were perceived as low quality when the price was lowered. Note, however, that excessive reliance on the price/quantity relationship by consumers may lead to the raising of prices on all products and services, even those of low quality, which in turn causes the price/quality relationship to no longer apply.

Premium pricing (also called prestige pricing) is the strategy of consistently pricing at, or near, the high end of the possible price range to help attract status-conscious consumers. A few examples of companies which partake in premium pricing in the marketplace include Rolex and Bentley. People will buy a premium priced product because:
They believe the high price is an indication of good quality;
They believe it to be a sign of self worth - "They are worth it" - It authenticates their success and status - It is a signal to others that they are a member of an exclusive group;
They require flawless performance in this application - The cost of product malfunction is too high to buy anything but the best - example : heart pacemaker.
The term Goldilocks pricing is commonly used to describe the practice of providing a "gold-plated" version of a product at a premium price in order to make the next-lower priced option look more reasonably priced; for example, encouraging customers to see business-class airline seats as good value for money by offering an even higher priced first-class option.[citation needed] Similarly, third-class railway carriages in Victorian England are said to have been built without windows, not so much to punish third-class customers (for which there was no economic incentive), as to motivate those who could afford second-class seats to pay for them instead of taking the cheaper option.[citation needed] This is also known as a potential result of price discrimination.
The name derives from the Goldilocks story, in which Goldilocks chose neither the hottest nor the coldest porridge, but instead the one that was "just right". More technically, this form of pricing exploits the general cognitive bias of aversion to extremes. This practice is known academically as "framing". By providing three options (i.e. small, medium, and large; first, business, and coach classes) you can manipulate the consumer into choosing the middle choice and thus, the middle choice should yield the most profit to the seller, since it is the most chosen option.

Demand-based pricing is any pricing method that uses consumer demand - based on perceived value - as the central element. These include : price skimming, price discrimination and yield management, price points, psychological pricing, bundle pricing, penetration pricing, price lining, value-based pricing, geo and premium pricing. Pricing factors are manufacturing cost,market place,compitition,maket condition,Quality of product.

Approaches
Pricing as the most effective profit lever. (Template:Cite book:) Pricing can be approached at three levels. The industry, market, and transaction level.
Pricing at the industry level focuses on the overall economics of the industry, including supplier price changes and customer demand changes.
Pricing at the market level focuses on the competitive position of the price in comparison to the value differential of the product to that of comparative competing products.
Pricing at the transaction level focuses on managing the implementation of discounts away from the reference, or list price, which occur both on and off the invoice or receipt.

Pricing

Pricing is one of the four p's of the marketing mix. The other three aspects are product, promotion, and place. It is also a key variable in microeconomic price allocation theory. Price is the only revenue generating element amongst the 4ps,the rest being cost centers. Pricing is the manual or automatic process of applying prices to purchase and sales orders, based on factors such as: a fixed amount, quantity break, promotion or sales campaign, specific vendor quote, price prevailing on entry, shipment or invoice date, combination of multiple orders or lines, and many others. Automated systems require more setup and maintenance but may prevent pricing errors.

Branding

Branding Concept

Some marketers distinguish the psychological aspect of a brand from the experiential aspect. The experiential aspect consists of the sum of all points of contact with the brand and is known as the brand experience. The psychological aspect, sometimes referred to as the brand image, is a symbolic construct created within the minds of people and consists of all the information and expectations associated with a product or service.

Marketers engaged in branding seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience (see also brand promise), creating the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique. A brand is therefore one of the most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace. The art of creating and maintaining a brand is called brand management. This approach works not only for consumer goods B2C (Business-to-Consumer), but also for B2B (Business-to-Business), see Philip Kotler & Waldemar Pfoertsch.
A brand which is widely known in the marketplace acquires brand recognition. When brand recognition builds up to a point where a brand enjoys a critical mass of positive sentiment in the marketplace, it is said to have achieved brand franchise. One goal in brand recognition is the identification of a brand without the name of the company present. For example, Disney has been successful at branding with their particular script font (originally created for Walt Disney's "signature" logo), which it used in the logo for go.com.

Consumers may look on branding as an important value added aspect of products or services, as it often serves to denote a certain attractive quality or characteristic (see also brand promise). From the perspective of brand owners, branded products or services also command higher prices. Where two products resemble each other, but one of the products has no associated branding (such as a generic, store-branded product), people may often select the more expensive branded product on the basis of the quality of the brand or the reputation of the brand owner.

Brand name
The brand name is often used interchangeably with "brand", although it is more correctly used to specifically denote written or spoken linguistic elements of a brand. In this context a "brand name" constitutes a type of trademark, if the brand name exclusively identifies the brand owner as the commercial source of products or services. A brand owner may seek to protect proprietary rights in relation to a brand name through trademark registration. Advertising spokespersons have also become part of some brands, for example: Mr. Whipple of Charmin toilet tissue and Tony the Tiger of Kellogg's.
The act of associating a product or service with a brand has become part of pop culture. Most products have some kind of brand identity, from common table salt to designer clothes.

Brand identity
How the brand owner wants the consumer to perceive the brand - and by extension the branded company, organisation, product or service. The brand owner will seek to bridge the gap between the brand image and the brand identity.Brand identity is fundamental to consumer recognition and symbolizes the brand's differentiation from competitors.
Brand identity may be defined as simply the outward expression of the brand, such as name and visual appearance.Some practitioners however define brand identity as not only outward expression (or physical facet), but also in terms of the values a brand carries in the eye of the consumer. In 1992 Jean-Noel Kapferer developed the Brand Identity Prism, which charts the brand identity along a constructed source and constructed receiver axis, with externalization on the one side and internalization on the other. On the externalization side brand identity consists of "physical facet", "relationship" and "reflected consumer". On the internalization side brand identity consists of "personality", "culture (values)" and "consumer mentalisation". In this respect Kapferer positions brand personality as one factor within brand identity.

Brand personality
Brand personality is the attribution of human personality traits to a brand as a way to achieve differentiation. Such brand personality traits may include seriousness, warmth, or imagination. Brand personality is usually built through long-term marketing, as well as packaging and graphics.

Brand promise
Brand promise is a statement from the brand owner to customers, identifies what consumers should expect from all interactions with the brand. Interactions may include employees, representatives, actual service or product quality or performance, communication etc. The brand promise is often strongly associated with the brand owner's name and/or logo.
The brand promise may be expressed in a "tag line", for example a dining restaurant may create the following brand promise: "Carl's Steak House -"Our food is the best, but the memories we help you create are even better."" Other brand owners may develop their brand promise into a detailed statement on the values, characteristics and behaviour of their brand. For example BP describes its brand promise as "our fundamental beliefs" which have evolved over time. BP continues "At the core of BP is an unshakable commitment to integrity, honest dealing, treating everyone with respect and dignity, striving for mutual advantage and contributing to human progress."

Brand value
Brand equity or brand value measures the total value of the brand to the brand owner, and reflects the extent of brand franchise.
A brand can be an intangible asset, used by analysts to rationalize the difference between a company's "book value" and market value. For example, the market value of a company can far exceed its tangible assets (physical assets owned by the company, such as stock or machinery), and its brand value can account for some of the difference. Up to 85 percent of a company’s market value might be intangible (for example know-how, existing client relationships), and Interbrand, a brand consultancy, states that tangible assets may account for less than five percent of a company’s market value, for example in the case of Coca-Cola or Microsoft.
Brand value, especially in the case of consumer product brands, may arise out of customer loyalty. Brand value may also arise in terms of staff retention benefits (e.g. the ability of the company to attract and retain skilled and/or talented employees offering competitive salaries).
Brand value can be negatively influenced. For example, in 1999 Nike's brand value was estimated at 8 billion US$. Facing media exposure and consumer boycotts over supply chain issues, Nike's brand value declined in following two years to 7.6 billion US$, and rose back to 9.26 billion US$ in 2004 after Nike addressed its supply chain issues.
Campaigning groups may deliberately target a company’s brand value to force a company into adopting a certain position or practices. Some campaign groups have thought to do this by deliberately subverting a brand’s image, logo or message, creating a negative association among consumers. This attack may be visual, as pioneered by groups such as the Adbusters, or focusing on the message. For example, BP’s “Beyond Petroleum” branding is subverted by campaigners into headline such as “BP: Beyond Petroleum or Beyond Preposterous?” or “BP must move beyond petroleum as profits soar“.
See also: Main Article brand equity

Brand monopoly
In economic terms the "brand" is, in effect, a device to create a "monopoly" — or at least some form of "imperfect competition" — so that the brand owner can obtain some of the benefits which accrue to a monopoly or unique point of sale, particularly those related to decreased price competition. In this context, most "branding" is established by promotional means. However, there is also a legal dimension, for it is essential that the brand names and trademarks are protected by all means available. The monopoly may also be extended, or even created, by patent, copyright, trade secret (e.g. secret recipe), and other sui generis intellectual property regimes (e.g.: Plant Varieties Act, Design Act).
In all these contexts, retailers' "own label" brands can be just as powerful. The "brand", whatever its derivation, is a very important investment for any organization. RHM (Rank Hovis McDougall), for example, have valued their international brands at anything up to twenty times their annual earnings.

There are a number of possible policies:

Company name

Often, especially in the industrial sector, it is just the company's name which is promoted (leading to one of the most powerful statements of "branding"; the saying, before the company's downgrading, "No one ever got fired for buying IBM").
In this case a very strong brand name (or company name) is made the vehicle for a range of products (for example, Mercedes-Benz or Black & Decker) or even a range of subsidiary brands (such as Cadbury Dairy Milk, Cadbury Flake or Cadbury Fingers in the United States).

Individual branding
Main article: Individual branding
Each brand has a separate name (such as Seven-Up or Nivea Sun (Beiersdorf)), which may even compete against other brands from the same company (for example, Persil, Omo, Surf and Lynx are all owned by Unilever).

Attitude branding
Attitude branding is the choice to represent a larger feeling, which is not necessarily connected with the product or consumption of the product at all. Marketing labeled as attitude branding include that of Nike, Starbucks, The Body Shop, Safeway, and Apple Computer.[1] In the 2000 book, No Logo, attitude branding is described by Naomi Klein as a "fetish strategy".
"A great brand raises the bar -- it adds a greater sense of purpose to the experience, whether it's the challenge to do your best in sports and fitness, or the affirmation that the cup of coffee you're drinking really matters." - Howard Schultz (president, ceo and chairman of Starbucks

"No-brand" branding
Recently a number of companies have successfully pursued "No-Brand" strategies, examples include the Japanese company Muji, which means "No label, quality goods" in English. Although there is a distinct Muji brand, Muji products are not branded. This no-brand strategy means that little is spent on advertisement or classical marketing and Muji's success is attributed to the word-of-mouth, a simple shopping experience and the anti-brand movement. Other brands which are thought to follow a no-brand strategy are American Apparel, which like Muji, does not brand its products.

Derived brands
In this case the supplier of a key component, used by a number of suppliers of the end-product, may wish to guarantee its own position by promoting that component as a brand in its own right. The most frequently quoted example is Intel, which secures its position in the PC market with the slogan "Intel Inside".

Brand development
In terms of existing products, brands may be developed in a number of ways:

Brand extension
The existing strong brand name can be used as a vehicle for new or modified products; for example, many fashion and designer companies extended brands into fragrances, shoes and accessories, home textile, home decor, luggage, (sun-) glasses, furniture, hotels, etc.
Mars extended its brand to ice cream, Caterpillar to shoes and watches, Michelin to a restaurant guide, Adidas and Puma to personal hygiene.
There is a difference between brand extension and line extension. When Coca-Cola launched "Diet Coke" and "Cherry Coke" they stayed within the originating product category: non-alcoholic carbonated beverages. Procter & Gamble (P&G) did likewise extending its strong lines (such as Fairy Soap) into neighboring products (Fairy Liquid and Fairy Automatic) within the same category, dish washing detergents.

Multi-brands
Alternatively, in a market that is fragmented amongst a number of brands a supplier can choose deliberately to launch totally new brands in apparent competition with its own existing strong brand (and often with identical product characteristics); simply to soak up some of the share of the market which will in any case go to minor brands. The rationale is that having 3 out of 12 brands in such a market will give a greater overall share than having 1 out of 10 (even if much of the share of these new brands is taken from the existing one). In its most extreme manifestation, a supplier pioneering a new market which it believes will be particularly attractive may choose immediately to launch a second brand in competition with its first, in order to pre-empt others entering the market.
Individual brand names naturally allow greater flexibility by permitting a variety of different products, of differing quality, to be sold without confusing the consumer's perception of what business the company is in or diluting higher quality products.
Once again, Procter & Gamble is a leading exponent of this philosophy, running as many as ten detergent brands in the US market. This also increases the total number of "facings" it receives on supermarket shelves. Sara Lee, on the other hand, uses it to keep the very different parts of the business separate — from Sara Lee cakes through Kiwi polishes to L'Eggs pantyhose. In the hotel business, Marriott uses the name Fairfield Inns for its budget chain (and Ramada uses Rodeway for its own cheaper hotels).
Cannibalization is a particular problem of a "multibrand" approach, in which the new brand takes business away from an established one which the organization also owns. This may be acceptable (indeed to be expected) if there is a net gain overall. Alternatively, it may be the price the organization is willing to pay for shifting its position in the market; the new product being one stage in this process.

Small business brands
Branding a small or medium sized business (SME) follows essentially the same principle a branding larger corporation. The main differences being that small businesses usually have a smaller market and have less reach than larger brands. Some people argue that it is not possible to brand a small business, however there are many examples of small businesses that became very successful due to branding. Starbucks initially used almost no advertising and over a period of ten years developed such a strong brand that the company went from one shop to hundreds.

Own brands and generics
With the emergence of strong retailers the "own brand", a retailer's own branded product (or service), also emerged as a major factor in the marketplace. Where the retailer has a particularly strong identity (such as Marks & Spencer in the UK clothing sector) this "own brand" may be able to compete against even the strongest brand leaders, and may outperform those products that are not otherwise strongly branded.
Concerns were raised that such "own brands" might displace all other brands (as they have done in Marks & Spencer outlets), but the evidence is that — at least in supermarkets and department stores — consumers generally expect to see on display something over 50 per cent (and preferably over 60 per cent) of brands other than those of the retailer. Indeed, even the strongest own brands in the UK rarely achieve better than third place in the overall market.
This means that strong independent brands (such as Kellogg's and Heinz), which have maintained their marketing investments, are likely to continue their strong performance. More than 50 per cent of UK FMCG brand leaders have held their position for more than two decades, although it is arguable that those which have switched their budgets to "buy space" in the retailers may be more exposed.
The strength of the retailers has, perhaps, been seen more in the pressure they have been able to exert on the owners of even the strongest brands (and in particular on the owners of the weaker third and fourth brands). Relationship marketing has been applied most often to meet the wishes of such large customers (and indeed has been demanded by them as recognition of their buying power). Some of the more active marketers have now also switched to 'category marketing' - in which they take into account all the needs of a retailer in a product category rather than more narrowly focusing on their own brand.
At the same time, probably as an outgrowth of consumerism, "generic" (that is, effectively unbranded goods) have also emerged. These made a positive virtue of saving the cost of almost all marketing activities; emphasizing the lack of advertising and, especially, the plain packaging (which was, however, often simply a vehicle for a different kind of image). It would appear that the penetration of such generic products peaked in the early 1980s, and most consumers still appear to be looking for the qualities that the conventional brand provides.

Branding

A brand is a collection of images and ideas representing an economic producer; more specifically, it refers to the concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme. Brand recognition and other reactions are created by the accumulation of experiences with the specific product or service, both directly relating to its use, and through the influence of advertising, design, and media commentary. A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to a company, product or service. A brand serves to create associations and expectations among products made by a producer. A brand often includes an explicit logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols, sound which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality.

The brand, and "branding" and brand equity have become increasingly important components of culture and the economy, now being described as "cultural accessories and personal philosophies".

In non-commercial contexts, the marketing of entities which supply ideas or promises rather than product and services (e.g. political parties or religious organizations) may also be known as "branding".

Concept of Marketing

"Marketing"

is an instructive business domain that serves to inform and educate target markets about the value and competitive advantage of a company and its products. “Value” is worth derived by the customer from owning and using the product. “Competitive Advantage” is a depiction that the company or its products are each doing something better than their competition in a way that could benefit the customer.

Marketing is focused on the task of conveying pertinent company and product related information to specific customers, and there are a multitude of decisions (strategies) to be made within the marketing domain regarding what information to deliver, how much information to deliver, to whom to deliver, how to deliver, to deliver, and where to deliver. Once the decisions are made, there are numerous ways (tactics) and processes that could be employed in support of the selected strategies.

As Marketing is often misinterpreted as just advertising or sales, Chris Newton, in What is marketing? (Marketing Help Online, 2008), defined marketing as every strategy and decision made in the following twelve areas:

Identifying and quantifying the need in the marketplace
Identifying and quantifying the target markets
Identifying the optimum cost effective media – online and offline - to reach the target markets
Reviewing the priorities of the product offering in your overall product mix ‘matrix’
Identifying and developing the most effective distribution channels, be they wholesaler networks, partnering alliances, franchising, or any number of conduits to the market.
Testing different ways of packaging the concepts or products to find their most 'easy-to-sell' form

Testing to find the optimum pricing strategies
Developing effective promotional strategies and effective advertising and supporting collateral, offers, and launch strategies
Developing and documenting the sales process
Finding the optimum execution of the sales process – through testing of selling scripts, people selection, supporting collateral, skills and attitudinal training, tracking, measuring and refining
Ensuring that sales projections reflect realistic production capacities
Developing nurture programs to optimise the lifetime value of the customer

The goal of marketing is to build and maintain a preference for a company and its products within the target markets. The goal of any business is to build mutually profitable and sustainable relationships with its customers. While all business domains are responsible for accomplishing this goal, the marketing domain bears a significant share of the responsibility.
Within the larger scope of its definition, marketing is performed through the actions of three coordinated disciplines named: “Product Marketing”, “Corporate Marketing”, and “Marketing Communications”.

What is marketing

Marketing is an ongoing process of planning and executing the marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion often referred to as the 4 Ps) for products, services or ideas to create exchange between individuals and organizations.

Marketing tends to be seen as a creative industry, which includes advertising,distribution nad selling. It is also concerned with anticipating the customers' future needs and wants, which are often discovered through market research.

Essentially, marketing is the process of creating or directing an organization to be successful in selling a product or service that people not only desire, but are willing to buy.

Therefore good marketing must be able to create a "proposition" or set of benefits for the end customer that delivers value through products or services.