Evolution of 4P
The traditional levers of the marketing mix were broadened until to come to the 6P that besides four factors above indicated considers also the Personal Selling and the Positioning.
The Personal Selling is it together of the activity of support and information for the potential customer. They are able to be understandings like of the activity to additional value for the buyer, turns for example from the intermediary, or from the same vendor. This fifth P, actual of the marketing business to business, is taking foot also in the marketing business to consumer.
The Positioning is the position of the mark, a fundamental factor in the perception of the consumer. A time that the consumer has done an idea over a mark is almost impossible to make them change warning. Example: a well-known mark to produce the low price products, it will not succeed to itself in the market of the luxury without change position
The 4C
Moving the focus from the prospective of the enterprise to that of the customer transform the 4P in 4C:
· produced in Customer Value, value of the product perceived from the consumer;
· price in Customer Costs, you cost supported from the buyer (disbursement);
· distribution in Customer Convenience, convenience of the corrupt point;
· Promotion in Customer Communications, communication.
The supporting columns of the marketing
(The Marketing Concept)
Beyond the 4P there are also the supporting columns of the marketing[1]:
· Concentration and focusing on the market.
· Orientation to the customer.
· The maneuvers of Marketing coordinated.
· The profit (it is realized) means the satisfaction of the customers.
It can define the supporting columns of the marketing like the Marketing Concept.
The marketing concept is a business philosophy crystallized in the mid-1950s and it holds that the key to achieving organizational goals consists of being more effective than competitors in integrating marketing activities toward determining and satisfying the needs and wants of target markets.
Professor Theodore Leviit of Harvard drew a perceptive contrast between the selling and marketing concepts to delimit the two concepts:
“Selling focuses on the needs of the seller; marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied whit the seller´s need to convert his product into cash; marketing whit the idea of satisfying the needs of the costumer by means of the product and whole cluster of things associated whit creating, delivering and finally consuming it”
Interpreting the thought of Professor Theodore Leviit of Harvard, it can deduct that the selling concept takes an inside-out perspective that it starts whit the factory, focuses on the company´s existing products, and calls for heavy selling and promoting to produce profitable sales.
Vice versa, the marketing concept takes an outside-in perspective. It starts whit a well-defined market, focuses on costumer needs, integrates all the activities that will affect customers, and produces profits by satisfying costumer.
The Elements of the Marketing Concept
The definition of the concept of marketing concept serves therefore to include other important concepts of the marketing that Target market, Costumer needs and profitability.
Target market: no company can operate in every market and satisfy every need. Companies do best when they define their target market(s) carefully and prepare a tailored marketing program. One example of successful target marketing came about after the 1990 census focused marketers´ attention on minority groups´ increasing buying power.
Customer needs: A company can define its target market but fail to fully understand the customer´s needs. Although marketing is about meeting needs profitably, understanding customer needs and wants is not always a simple task. Some customers have needs of which they are not fully conscious. Or they cannot articulate these needs. Or they use words that require some interpretation.
We can distinguish among five types of needs:
· Stated needs;
· Real needs;
· Unstated needs;
· Delight needs;
· Secret needs.
Responding only to the customer`s stated need may shortchange the customer and customer-oriented thinking requires the company to define customer needs from the customer´s point of view. Every buying decision involves trade-off, and management cannot know what these are without researching customers. The key to professional marketing is to understand their customers´ real needs and meet them better than any competitor can.
Profitability: The ultimate purpose of the marketing concept is to help organizations their goals. A company makes money by satisfying customer needs better than its competitor do.
Concrete application of the Marketing Concept
The definition of the marketing concept is useful to conceptualize the distinction between Responsive marketing and Creative marketing.
The Responsive marketing finds a stated need and fills it
The Creative marketing discovers and produces solutions that customers did not ask for but to which they enthusiastically respond.
Hamel and Prahalad believe that companies must go beyond just asking consumers what they want.
Second, marketing must be well coordinated whit other company departments. Marketing does not work when it is merely a department; it works only when all employees appreciate their impact on customer satisfaction.
To foster teamwork among all departments, the company carries out Internal marketing as well as External marketing.
External marketing is marketing directed at people outside the company.
Internal marketing is the task of successfully hiring, training, and motivating able employees who want to serve the customers well. In fact, internal marketing must precede external marketing. It makes no sense to promise excellent service before the company´s staff is ready to provide excellent service.
Many managers who believe that the customer is the key to profitably consider the traditional organization like a pyramid whit the president at the top and costumer in the bottom.
Master marketing companies invert the chart and at the top of the organization are the customers.
Unfortunately too few companies actually practice the Marketing Concept. Only a handful of companies stand out as master marketers: Apple C., Disney, McDonald´s, American airlines, Several Japanese companies (Sony,Toyota,Canon),and U.E companies like IKEA,Ericsson,Club Med,Marks&Spencer.
Most companies do not embrace the marketing concept until driven to it by circumstances. Any of the following developments might prod them to take the marketing concept to heat:
· Sales Decline: When companies experience falling sales, they panic and look for answer.
· Slow growth: many companies realize that they need marketing know-how to identify and select new market or opportunities.
· Changing buying patterns: many companies operate in markets characterized by rapidly changing wants.
· Increasing competition: complacent companies may suddenly be attacked by powerful marketing companies and forced to meet challenge.
· Increasing marketing expenditures: companies may find expenditures for advertising, sale promotion, marketing research and customer service getting out of hand management then decides it is time to undertake a marketing audit to improve its marketing.
The Customer (or consumer)
An entire analysis cannot ignore from the figure of the customer that in substance he is the aim of the marketing action, the subject that it is directed.
It does not result false that the marketing can influence a subject in the choices but it is true that action of the marketing can to be influenced from the consumers also.
Kotler describing the strategies of approach to the market aside of companies, for example, he speaks about marketing myopia or inside-out that them are some cases in which the company loses sight of the needs of the consumers.
Obligation results to investigate on the psychological impulses that they persuade to buy something.
How quite we know the human being behaves in grounds at the needs and to make it he/she uses one decision process.
The decision process can be distinct in impulsive decision (when it´s non conscious need or want to buy something immediately), limited decision (when he/she buy products occasionally or when he/she to obtain information about an unfamiliar brand), or extensive decision (when he/she needs time to decide).
In all these cases the trial of decision are characterized from phases separated but join.
1. Problem recognition
2. Information search( Internal Search in his/her memory-External Out of memory)
3. Evaluation of alternatives(criteria for comparing products )
4. Purchase( when consumer chooses which product or brand wants to buy)
5. Post-purchase evaluation(the buyer begins)
This decision-making trial is influenced from varied outside factors and inside at the individual.
These factors are:
Personal influences ( Democrafic,situational,involvement)
Psychological influences ( Perception,Motives,Learning,attitudes-personality)
Social influences (Roles and family, references group, social group, cultural/subculture)
The Psychological facts
Perception is the process of selecting organizing and interpreting information input to produce meaning received trough sight, taste, hearing, smell and touch.
The perceptions are selected and adapted by self-concept and personal motives that they can change in the running time whit the experience and to the change of the personality.
Thesis of marketing
To the light of the elements acquired in this simply short and synthetic analysis on the basic ideas of the marketing, we can pass to examine in the specific one the tools and the levers that the marketing exploits in its action.
The mine personal opinion is that the focal point of the marketing is the product that it is sold.
The intrinsic content of the product for the consumer is the expression of his/her needs and wants while for the company is the profit.
The definition of product is: a set of tangible and untouchable qualities to get a benefit to a consumer.
The marketing defined it like all what is able to be dedicated to a market for caution, acquisition, I use or I consume, to satisfy a desire or a need. A product is not therefore alone the physical object in himself, but includes also services, persons, places, organization and ideas.
The promotion is the work that stretches out to make acquaintance and to appreciate a service, a product or an idea.
To promote something it is served us of effective technologies of communication, following the well-known model proposed from Shannon and Weaver, based on the connection to stimulate-answered-feedback.
The promotional trial of communication, in the marketing of an enterprise, it is articulated long these phases:
· Identification of the public-target
· Definition of the objectives of the communication
· Elaboration of a communication strategy
· Definition of the means and tools to use
· Definition of the budget planning of the promotional mix
· Creation of the messages and execution (technical accomplishment)
· Spread measuring of the results achieved (evaluation of the effectiveness of the
Communication).
Concepts of segmentation, brand and positioning
In this area we can define the concepts of segmentation, brand and positioning.
In the marketing, the segmentation consists in a together of proceeded that carry to the definition of an objective market on that introduce a product or a service.
The trial of segmentation is divided in three phases:
1. Segmentation of the market: subdivision of a market in equal groups of potential buyers (segments), every one of which asks for different strategies (different mix)[2];
2. Definition of the objective market (targeting) : chosen of one or more objective segments in which to find;
3. Positioning of the product: Creation of a competitive position for the product with respect to those contributing.
Types of marketing in base to the segmentation: TO second of the type of product and of the potential customers, therefore of the segments to that are interested, the enterprises can choose between the following typologies of marketing.
Mass Marketing: comes used the same product, or the same type of promotion/distribution, for all of the customers; in practice it is not carried out segmentation, from the moment that the preferences are considered homogenous. Segment Marketing either differentiated multiple either segmentation: consists in the adapt the offer to the needs of one or plus segments; it is used in the markets in which the preferences are conglomerates, that is to say obvious every group flavors that move away themselves from those of another group.
Concentrated Marketing on an alone segment: the enterprise concentrates his resources on an alone segment. It is the example of the businesses of transportations.
Niche Marketing: consists in to adapt the offer precisely to one or more sub-segment, each of which is characterized from little competition. It is like to the marketing concentrated, with the difference that here the enterprises have a wallet much more differentiated of products. This strategy comes employed from the luxury of assets of producers, like you Shoe it.
Micromarketing or marketing personalized: develop produced themselves and programs on measure for segments geo-, psico-sociografic quite defined.
The brand management is the application of the technologies of marketing to one specific produced, line of product or marks (brand). The purpose is to increase the value perceived from a consumer with respect to a product, increase of reflection the brand equity (value of the brand or property of mark). The operating of the marketing see in the mark it "promise" implicit of quality that the customer is waited from the product, determinate so the purchase in the future.
It is considered that the brand management is a born discipline to the Procter & Gamble how resulted of a well-known memorandum of Neil H. McElroy.
Chosen some brand : A brand of success has the following features: easy to pronounce easy to remember easy to recognize easy to translate it attracts the caution advises characteristic and benefits of the product advises a reference to the business image distinguishes the positioning of the product with respect to the adjustable competition legally.
Brand is a term name, design, symbol and any other feature that identifies one seller´s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.
The brand name is the part of a brand that can be spoken, including letters, words and numbers.
Brand mark is the element of brand that cannot be spoken, often a symbol or sign o design.
Trade mark is a legal designation indicating that the owner had exclusive use or brand.
Trade name is the full and legal name of an organization.
Brand equity. The marketing and financial value associated whit a brand´s strength in a market.
Brand Loyalty is a strongly motivated and long-standing decision to purchase a particular product or service.
Brand personality is the physiologic cues and less tangible, desirable facets of a well-presented brand.
Typologies of brand- it exists different types of brand, each provided of very different features. In reference to the breadth of the wallet produced to that they report themselves: Mono brand: used by one or little products, and therefore evoking determined functional features of the product to that is reported.
Family brand: reported to a lot produced, and that therefore recalls not specific features (given that is are different for every product of the "family"), but emotional situations or abstract values.
Corporate brand: used is for the products, is to recall the image of the business and distinctive his skills (of habit the same brand of the business).
Furtive brand: far away from the business identity, referable alone to determine produced. Typologies "hybrids":
Brand endorsed: incorporates two brands belonging to two different typologies between those above cited.
Individual brand: different brand for every product.
The Positioning is the activity of marketing orientated to create a distinctive image and effectively competitive for a mark, in the mind of the consumer. Means the procedures of positioning l' organization orientated to the market goes around the mental filters of the consumer and, so doing, makes conditional its behavior d' purchase. The positioning, that today is the more used strategy of marketing in the world, was invented from To The Ries and Jack Trout in 1968, with a series of articles titled "The Positioning Was Cometh", for it reviewed Industrial Marketing. The concepts created from Ries & Trout to the end of the sixties are considered valid still today.
Promotional Mix
In the language of the marketing and of the communication of enterprise, the promotion is the work that stretches out to make acquaintance and to appreciate a service, a product or an idea[3].
To promote something it is served us of effective technologies of communication, following the well-known model proposed from Shannon and Weaver, based on the connection to stimulate-answered-feedback.
The communication whit individuals, group or organizations in order to facilitate exchanges by informing and persuading audiences to accept a company´s product.
The promotional trial of communication, in the marketing of an enterprise, it is articulated long these phases:
· identification of the public-target
· definition of the objectives of the communication
· elaboration and definition communication of strategy of the means and tools to use
· definition of the budget
· planning of the promotional mix
· creation of the messages and execution (technical accomplishment)
· spread measuring of the results achieved (evaluation of the effectiveness of the
· communication)
The Product Adoption Process
The Product Adoption Process is a series of five stages in the acceptance of a product that the companies have to programmer in them communication and decisions and it consists:
Awareness: it uses the mass communication sources like tv, radio, net, magazine; in the beginning the people know that one product exists but they have a few of information about it.
Interest: it uses the mass communication sources but not necessarily the same of awareness; in this stage the people are motivated to obtain information about the product.
Evaluation: it is a personal source that becomes from relatives or friends; and the people persuades themselves that the product will satisfy certain criteria and this is the crucial moment for a company to meet the specific need of the people.
Trial: it is a personal source that becomes from sale people or other professional people; when people accept the product.
Adoption: it is a personal source that becomes from communication. This stage is when people start to adoption the product.
Direct and Internal marketing
The direct marketing is an interactive system of marketing, that uses one either more advertising media to breed a measurable reply or a transaction in any part of the distributive system or the direct marketing is a system planned of record, analysis and traceability of the salient features of a customer (consumer), actions to develop an efficient strategy of connection.
In the specific one we understand to report us to the possibility of to succeed unequivocally to monitor, across the utilization of the actions to it pertinent, is each to push of an entire route than its final result. To obtain this result means to be in a position of:
To optimize the activity in the course of the actions to the until of the objectives of project to individualize the yield of the personal selling Give place to the management of an attentive, precise one and profitable activity of prospecting (search)
The internal marketing is a strategic role in the company to positioning the employees of the enterprise in a competitive area and management across the business communication, training, motivation and spirit of corps.
Sources:
Philip Kotler: Fundations of Marketing;
Philip Kotler: Marketing management 2005;
William Pride, O.C. Ferrel: Marketing. McGraw-Hill, 2005;
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing ;
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_management
Christian Chizzoli, Quali marche domani? Nuove tendenze nella gestione del brand portfolio. Il caso Danone, in Economia & Management, Etas, n. 2/2002.
AA. VV., Brand Management, Egea, 2006;
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmentazione_%28marketing%29;
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix;
[1] It means a communication aimed and adapted to the specific situations create better activity of commerce with reductions in the costs of transaction and with a reduction of the coordination of the opponent, for example the purchase in factory puts directly in communication the enterprise with the customer while the food purchase of son-in-laws asks for an intermediary, for example a supermarket.
[2] Criteria of segmentation :The division of the market in segments happens using different bases, or variable of segmentation: Geographic area geographic partner climate population-demographic study of title occupation income sex age I level of education I number of components in family religion psychographic class social personality life of style behavioral advantages researched (quality, price.) Attitude (Consciousness (informed, unformed, brand, loyalty).
[3] The promotion is one of the "four P" of the marketing mix, namely of the together of operating tools of marketing that the enterprise can use for influences its market.
