Product (The first of the 4ps)- Business admin and marketing students

Products can be defined as 'anything that is offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption and that might satisfy a need or a want.  Products include more than just tangible goods' (Kotler et al, 2009)

There are three levels to a product:

1. Core product-Whati s the buyer really buying?
2. Actual product-This is built around the core product
3. Augmented-these are the little extras that you might get for free or have to pay a fee for when you purchase a product or a service.  Examples include, warranty, guarantees and insurance.

An important element of a product or service is its branding.  De Chernatony and McDonald (1993) have 'defined branding as 'an identifable product, service, person or place augmented in such a way that the buyer or user perceives relevant unique added values that match their needs most closely'. 

A brand can deliver four meanings:

1. Attributes
2. Benefits
3. Values
4. Personality

Brand Equity
A powerful brand can have high brand equity.  High brand equity has many advantages:

1. A powerful brand will ensure a high level of consumer brand awareness and loyalty
2. Consumer will expect retailers to carry the brand
3. The brand name carries high credibility
4. A powerful brand offers the company some defence against fierce price competitors

Brand personality
Brand personality can reflect the nature of the product and the target market. 


Why do companies spend time on creating a branding strategy:

1. Reduces risk
2. Symbolies quality
3. Helps in introducing new products
4. Facilitates promotional effort
5. Fosters brand loyalty resulting in long term sales stability
6. Facilitates quick and easy decision making

Packaging and labelling
What are the major benefits of packaging?

1. Product protection
2. Breaks bulk
3. Keep perishable items freshers for longer
4. Label or packaging may contain valuable information regarding what is in the product
5. Aid promotion of the product-the label will contain the name of the product, where is was produced and  what ingredients are in the product.

Equine Science-creating customer value, loyalty and satisfaction

Customer Analysis
Why do we need to analyse our customers?  We need to analyse our customers to try and figure out who our target market is, how much our customers are worth to us, can we encourage customers to form relationships with us and how can we offer a better product or service to our customers?

In order to find out more about our customers it may be necessary to conduct market reserach.  There are a number of steps involved in the market research process:

Step 1  Problem definition
Step 2 Secondary data
Step 3 Primary data
Step 4 Data analysis
Step 5 Recommendations
Step 6 Implementation of findings

Ethical issues in marketing
There are a number of ethical issues to be considered when conducting market research. 

• Have to ensure that the participant or respondent is willing to take part in the research
• If information is supplied by the respondent, the researcher has to ensure that it will not be passed onto a third party without their consent.
• Invastion of privacy
• Deceptive practices
• Impositions

By conducting research it is possible to find out what customers value in regards to our services or products. 

When we analyse customer value we need to look at the following factors:

1. What attributes and benefits do customers value?
2. What are the importance of these benefits and attributes to the customer?
3. Where do our customer see our company in relation to the competition?
4. Need to monitor customer values over time.

Relationship marketing
The idea here is to create relationships and not transactions.  However, not all customers will be equally worth the effort needed to move them up the ladder.  The company needs to ensure that their is mutual trust between all parties involved.  Companies need to ensure that there is employee involvement and commitment to relationship building and maintaining those relationships over a period of time.  In order to build relationships it is necessary to:

1. Building in loyalty benefits
2. Create structural ties
3. Create delighted customers

Busienss admin and maketing-marketing segmentation, targeting and positioning

Market segmentation consists of 'diving a market into distinct groups of buyers with different needs, characteristics or behaviour, who might require separate products or marketing mixes '.  (Kotler et al, 1999)

In order to ensure that the segment will be effective it is essential that each segment has the follwing factors:

1. Measureability
2. Accessibility
3. Sustainability
4. Actionability
5. Stability

Market Segmentation

A market can be segmented using the following variables:

• Geographic
• Demographic
• Psychographic
• Behavioural

Geographic-marketers need to take into consideration the differences in consumer tastes based on where the consumer is located.

Demographic-age, life-cycle, gender, income and geodemographic.

Psychographic-social class, lifestyle and personality

Behavioural-occassions, benefits sought, user status, usage rate, loyalty status and attitudes towards the product.


Market Targeting
The company should only enter segments where it can offer superior value and gain advantage over competitors.  There are three market coverage strategies:

1. Undifferentiated marketing-firm  might decide to ignore whole market segments differences and go after the whole market with one offer.
2. Differentiated marketing-firms decide to target several market segments and design separate offers for each.
3. Concentrated marketing-go after a large share of one or a few submarkets.

Market Positioning
A product's position is the way the product is defined by consumer's on important attributes.  A positioning strategy can be based on what is real (quality, performance, capacity, value for money and durability) or what is imaginery or image based.

The Changing Market Environment-Equine Science

We we refer to the marketing environment we are referring to a number of factors that have a profound impact on how the organisations is run.  The marketing environment is made up of the following:

1. Macro-Environment
2. Micro Environment

The Macro Environment is often referred to as PEST, STEP and STEEPLE. The Macro factors are factors that are outside the control of the organisation and as an organisation we have to ensure that our plans are flexible enough to allow for changes in the Macro Environment.  The following are the Macro Environmental Factors:

Political/Legal-Laws (Company and consumer), Pressure groups, European Union and the ASAI

Economical-Recession, interest rates, consumer's disposal income, unemployment and inflation

Technological Forces-Fast pace of technological change, cost of research and development and increased regulation.

Society-deomographic environment, cultural influences on marketing, corporate social responsibility and  consumer market

Environmental -physical forces

Marketing Strategy-Equine Science

Strategy is concerned with being effective rather than being efficient. 

When a company is devising their marketing strategy there is a number of

questions they should consider first:

1.What is the business doing now?

2.What is happening in the environment?

3.What should the business be doing?

There is a process involved in devising a marketing strategy

1. Establishment of a core strategy Management need to

     undertake a SWOT analyses

2.The creation of the company’s competitive positioning. 

    There are three ways of achieving competitive advantage.

      (1) Cost leadership

     (2) Differentiation, (3) focus

3 Implementation of strategy-Always need a contingency plan

The marketing plan

There are a number of stages involved in developing the

marketing plan. 

These include:

1. Background situation
2. Marketing objectives
3. Marketing strategy
4. Marketing mix
5. Action plans
6. Budget
7. Organisational implications

There are of course a number of barriers to developing a

marketing plan.  These include:

1. Hostility
2. Lack of information
3. Lack of skills
4. Once a year ritual

Market Research-Fieldworkers

When a market researcher decides to undertake primary
research they also need to look at employing fieldworkers to conduct surveys if it is decided that this is the method that will be used to collect data. 

Fieldwork involves the market researcher having to select, train and supervise a number of people who will collect the data for a market research project. There are a number of stages involved in choosing fieldworkers for a market research project.  These stages are:

•Step 1: Select the field worker-it is essential that a job

description is devised so that the market researcher has

a clear picture of the type of person/people they will

need to fill the position of fieldworker(s)

•Step 2: Train the Field worker-fieldworkers will need to

be trained in the art of making the initial contact with a

respondent, asking questions, probing, recording

information and terminating the interview

•Step 3: Supervise the field worker-Fieldworkers need to

be supervised to ensure that the right sample is chosen

and that cheating does not occur during the research

•Step 4: Validate the field worker

•Step 5: evaluate the field worker                        

Market Research-Measurement Techniques

For this session we focused on measurement and the importance of being able to develop scales in order to caputre data regarding a respondents attitudes, behaviour or opinions. 

A scale is set of symbols so constructed that the symbols or numbers can be assigned by a rule to the individual (or their behaviour or attitudes) to whom the scale is applied.

There are four levels of measurement which are:

1. Nominal
2. Ordinal
3. Internval
4. Ratio

Nominal Scales

These partition date into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive categories. Can use labels like user/non user, occupations etc.


Ordinal Scales

Ordinal scales are nominal scales that can order data.  They

are used to measure preferences for brands, social class

etc.

Internval Scales

These are ordinal scales with equal intervals between points

to show relative amounts.  This allows the researcher to use

more powerful statistical tests and to compare the size of

difference between members.  For example, the grade point

average on a 0 to 4.0

 

Ratio Scales

These are interval scales with a meaningful zero so that

magnitudes can be compared.  For example units sold,

number of purchasers, probability of purchase.

 

When we are focusing on measurement we also have to take

into account two important factors which are reliability and

validity

 

Reliablity is where a measurement provides consistent

results over time

 

Validity -This focuses on whether we have measured what

we set out to measure

 

Attitude Scales

Scaling refers to a procedure for the assignment of numbers

or other symbols to a property of objects, in order to impart

some of the characteristics of numbers to the properties in

question.

There are two different types of attitude scales:

• Unidimensional Scales
• Multidimensional Scales