The Marketing Mix

The Marketing Mix

Marketers, in order to bring out desired responses from their target markets, use a number of tools that form a marketing mix. Marketing mix is defined as the set of marketing tools that an organization uses to follow its marketing objectives in the target market. McCarthy has classified these tools as the 4Ps of marketing which are product, price, place and promotion. (McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2002) The 4Ps are the ideas to take into account while marketing a product. They constitute the root of the marketing mix. In order to efficiently market a product, it is therefore imperative to get an optimally correct mix of the 4Ps. In an ideal situation, if a company is able to plan a promotion for the right product, at the right price and to get it to their preferred market, in the right place then it is highly effective for the company.

The most basic marketing mix tool is the product. This is the company's tangible offering to the market that includes the product quality, design, features, branding and packaging. Product can either be goods or a service that is available for sale either to an end customer or a commercial customer. A customer purchases a product and a consumer puts it to use. At times, a customer is also the consumer. For example a father might buy chocolates for his kids in which case the father is the customer and the kid is the end consumer. It is the task of the marketing manager to find out who his target market is what their product demand is, and offer it to them for sale at every stage in the sequence.

For a product to succeed in the marketplace, it has to be appropriately priced. A majority of the consumers associate a higher price with quality and hence one will expect to dish out more for buying a Rolls Royce car compared to a Ford. The price of the product should commensurate with the offer's perceived value in the absence of which the customer will choose to buy competition products. Pricing depends on the category of the products. In principle, one who produces luxury products will employ premium pricing or skim pricing during the initial stages so as to maximize its profits to recover costs incurred in undertaking expensive research and development rapidly. However, for a company having products in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods segment, like colas and beverages, penetration pricing is generally used. The company will be looking for an increased share of the market and therefore looking for volume sales for little profits on each product. In the long-term, they expect the income, and thus their profits to be high.

A company has to find the most optimal way to get the products in the hands of the consumer through network of dealers and retailers from whom the end consumer will be buying the products. The channels of distribution are the key to this area. Besides, direct marketing through catalogues, through the shopping channel of a TV and through the Internet through e-commerce have become widely popular, as the consumer can make his buying from home. This process helps the company in eliminating the people in the traditional distribution channels like dealer and retailer, and can thus rake in more profits. However, the bulk of the sales take place through the traditional chain of wholesalers and retailers ands this is the most widely popular form of distribution of products.

The primary objectives of promotion are to influence, notify and make people more conscious of a product brand, as also enhancing sales. The most extensively used type of promotion is advertising which can be delivered through a lot of channels like TV, radio, printed magazines, theatres, outdoor media like billboards, hoarding, posters and Point of Purchase. The Internet in the recent years has also become a potent media option for the marketers as also cell phone users through SMS. The particular segments of society which are marketing segments being targeted will influence the categories of media selected, as will be the cost. For a computer manufacturer, the right media will