Question

Scenario: You work in the marketing department of a new company. The company intends to sell European made kitchen appliances online. These include dishwashers, stoves/ stove tops, ovens, exhaust fans/ canopies/ range hoods, refrigerators, freezers, garbage disposals, sinks and taps, microwaves. They have organised an efficient and effective import procedure for the products they are offering. They now need to develop an appropriate marketing mix for the company. This is a new business and it is important to make the market aware, not only of the products being offered, but of the service associated with the products and of the business itself.

Explain: What you, as part of the marketing team, will need to know about your market.

How you will acquire this information.

How you can make the buying public aware of the company.

How you could promote the products.

What the appropriate marketing mix for the products will be.

How service will come into the marketing mix, what its importance is and what service should be applied.

Justify the marketing mix in terms of the four Ps and write a report that can be submitted to senior management outlining the procedures followed to determine the best marketing mix and the reasons for selecting the different components.

Explain how you should monitor the marketing mix and what metrics you could use.

Explain why these procedures have been selected. Initial market take-up has not been as good as you expected. What will you do? Senior management have asked for a report. What information will you need to collect, analyse and document? What actions will you take?

Answer 1

We need to know the following things about our market:

Firstly, we should know who will be out target customers – Business Class, Service Class, etc.

Find out what is their interests, taste and choice. What is the trend in that market, who will be our competitor! List down diversification for customers based on Age, location, income level, religion, etc.

To acquire this information:

We can arrange a survey from the existing customers. We can make a surprise and secret visit to our competitors and can get the information at which price, quality and services they are selling. We can reach out the people nearby area. We can employ Marketing trainees for this purpose who will do this survey for us.

To make buying public aware of the company:

• Share them on the blogs, websites and social media like Facebook
• Event coordination where people are show casting your product and brand
• You may arrange sponsorship or joined hand with other business for your publishing
• Take advertising package from Metro, public transport to paste it.

To promote the products:

• Social media a great platform for promoting like LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.,
• Take help of press/ media
• Arrange some campaign or events in some famous crowded street or malls and involve random public in games and distribute free samples to them as a gift
• Go for you-tube post
• You can promote via emails through customer data base

The appropriate marketing mix for the products will be.

• To define the area of expertise where the product will serve best
• How will this product will be different from any existing product in the same line
• How will we brand this product
• What other benefits can be given via this product

How service will come into the marketing mix, what its importance is and what service should be applied

Not just a product but after sales services matters a lot for customers. When a product is sold like Air Conditioner, after sale services like servicing, cleaning, Annual maintenance services matters a lot for customers for long term retainership. Employees must be motivated enough to deliver the services efficiently and effectively.

Four P’s

Product – The defined product to deal with after planning

Price – Competitive price of selling the same

Promotion – The method of promotion as discussed above

Place – The target market

Initial stage is very complicated for every business. At initial stage business faces loss or no profit no loss. We should move on as per our policies and procedures set. Pay more attention on innovation, customer satisfaction and customers demands, Understand the competition and competitive product existing in the market and respond accordingly.

• Advertise more
• Be active on social media
• Involve friends and relatives
• Offer some incentives to employees for services
• Offer some attracting schemes to customers
• Write over blogs
• Promote on local transport vehicles., etc.