To characterize the product and branding strategy of a firm, one useful tool is the brand-product matrix, a graphical representation of all the brands and products sold by the firm. In the brand-product matrix all products offered under different brands are represented by columns. This helps marketers understand the current brand line and explore further opportunity in expanding the product line. In the brand-product matrix all current existing brand are represented in form of rows referred to as brand portfolio. The brand portfolio analysis is essential to design and develop new marketing strategies to target a given product category. Brand-product matrix helps in showcasing different brands in any given product category. In that respect brand hierarchy is graphical representation of company’s products and its brands. Hierarchical structure starts with corporate brand and then showcases different product category and below brands. This sort of presentation helps devise marketing strategy at many Continue reading
Marketing Management
Marketing management combines the fields of marketing and management. Marketing consists of discovering consumer needs and wants, creating the goods and services that meet those needs and wants; and pricing, promoting, and delivering those goods and services. Doing so requires attention to six major areas – markets, products, prices, places, promotion, and people. Management is getting things done through other people. Managers engage in five key activities – planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. Marketing management implies the integration of these concepts.
Concept of Distribution Channels in Marketing
The Importance of Distribution Most producers use intermediaries to bring their products to market. They try to develop a distribution channel (marketing channel) to do this. A distribution channel is a set of interdependent organizations that help make a product available for use or consumption by the consumer or business user. Channel intermediaries are firms or individuals such as wholesalers, agents, brokers, or retailers who help move a product from the producer to the consumer or business user. A company’s channel decisions directly affect every other marketing decision. Place decisions, for example, affect pricing. Marketers that distribute products through mass merchandisers such as Wal-Mart will have different pricing objectives and strategies than will those that sell to specialty stores. Distribution decisions can sometimes give a product a distinct position in the market. The choice of retailers and other intermediaries is strongly tied to the product itself. Manufacturers select mass merchandisers Continue reading
The Role of Big Data in Marketing
Big data is large and complex data sets that are collected by companies and governments. The data that involve many types of information arriving in increasing volumes and with the incredibly fast rates. Big data signifies colossal volumes of data are being generated from assorted sources such as business processes, machines networks, and social media. Historically, it is a challenge to reserve the enormous volume of data, by the progression computing capacity that storage is not an issue anymore. Big data can be classified into three types of data which is structured data, unstructured data, and semi-structured data. The structured data being easily entered, processed, queried, stored and recover into a fixed format. The typical examples of structured data contain numbers and dates. The unstructured data cannot be fit or classified into a net box and the process and analysis are very hard and time-consuming. For instance, objects from blogs, Continue reading
History of Advertising in India
Indian Advertising starts with the hawkers calling out their wares right from the days when cities and markets first began. Concrete advertising history begins with classified advertising. Ads appear for the first time in print in Hickey’s Bengal Gazette, India’s first newspaper (weekly) . To ‘advertise’ meant merely to ‘inform’ until the end of the eighteenth century, and the early newspapers and periodicals announced births, deaths, arrivals of ships from England, sale of household furniture, etc. some journals like the Bengal Journal (first published in 1785) even offered to print government advertisements free. The front page of most such journals carried only advertisements. But before long persuasive copy began to replace mere information. This is evident from the appearance of punch lines such as ‘superior to anything of the kind hitherto imported’ and ‘warranted to the first quality’. Discounts and special services also began to be offered by the beginning Continue reading
Guerrilla Marketing – A Case of Non-Traditional Marketing
When some starry-eyed startup or a small company takes on the big budget corporate in the marketing domain with an underground marketing campaign that costs nothing but causes shock-waves for months, its called guerrilla marketing. Guerrilla marketing is a different kind of marketing which does not involve big budget but it is about out of the box thinking; it is about using anything around to market a product, an idea or a social message virtually anything under the sun. It believes in entertaining and engaging the target customer. It does not involve preaching or educating but it is about exciting the viewer to find out a secret or solve a puzzle. Guerrilla campaigns purely depend on creativity, intensive word of mouth campaigns and its oddness like using unconventional locations. Some guerrilla campaigns are so brilliant that it has made bystanders feel lucky to be there to witness them. AMA defines Continue reading
Advertising Agency – Meaning, Functions and Benefits
An advertising agency is an independent organization set up to render specialized services in advertising in particular and in marketing in general. Advertising agencies started as space brokers for the handling of the advertisements placed in newspapers. Over the years, the function of the agencies has changed. Their main job today is not to aid media but to serve advertisers. An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients. An advertising agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client’s products or services. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and sales promotions for its clients. Typical ad agency clients include businesses and corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Agencies may be hired to produce an advertising campaign . Continue reading