Blog 10

An important concept I perceived to be the most effective in the course throughout the semester were the four P’s of marketing. Without understanding how to utilize product, price, place, and promotion your business will struggle to be successful.

• Product is defined as an item that will satisfy a consumer. There are many things that come with a product. The package, brand, and physical product itself. The package needs to be safe, preserving, and convenient. The brand is what your product represents. Branding leads to customer loyalty and separates a company from the competition.

• Promotion is the technique a firm uses to communicate information about a product. Promotions creates the image of what the company wants their product to portray. You can market a product to many channel such as social media, television, radio and many others. In the promotion stage you are able to present your brand to the consumers. A promotion can change a persons behavior and emotions and can be very influential in the purchase decision.

• Place is where and who the product or service is going to be sold to. There are many channels businesses can distribute their product to such as, online, retail, wholesale, and direct to consumer. The goal is to get your product into the right market, at the correct price, and at the right time compared to your competitors. It's critical to make sure a business markets and distributes their products in the most efficient locations. For example, expensive car dealerships are located in wealthy towns, because a person living in the suburbs would never be able to afford that product.

• Finally price can be the most influential out of all the four P’s in the marketing mix. A products price determines where it will be placed in the market. Prices are determined from competitors in the the market. There are many ways for a product to be priced to enter a market. Predominantly the two price methods used are price skimming and penetration pricing. Price skimming is the pricing strategy where businesses will set a high initial price for a product and then lower it over time. In contrast penetration pricing, which is when a product is priced low initially in order to attract customers away from competitors.

Using the marketing mix is the best approach while conducting our class practice marketing simulation. Our teams goal in the simulation was to design a cool desired pack that is environmentally friendly for college students to buy. After a few turns we were able to analyze the market and see what demographic the most units were being sold to, and in which markets. It was clear that the Urban commuters purchased the most backpacks in the market. Using the data, we decided to change our product and reposition it into the urban commuters market. We strategically used the marketing mix to change the product, distribution, target market, and price in order to gain share in the market. Without knowledge of how the four P’s work in marketing, we would never have decided to change the product. The end result of the repositioning was a huge success bringing our team into second place and skyrocketing our profit margins.

Amazon Dash button is no joke

Welcome back viewers

Today I want to talk about Amazon’s announcement of their new product called the Dash button. The button is a controller sized and has individual brands logos on them. The concept gives the consumer a tangible button to push, and consequentially a product from brand arrives at your front door. Amazon plans to have over a dozen brands compatible with the button. The company envisions that the consumer will place the buttons around their home, in the pantry, and on washing machine. This way, when you run out of the product next to the dash button, you will be able to push it, and have the product delivered directly to your door. Amazon prime members will be able to receive the product in two days with free shipping, not a bad deal. 

This concept of immediate purchasing seems like it would cause a lot of problems. Amazon, being the tech giant that it is, designed the button strategically so that all problem areas are covered. The buttons connect with the Amazon mobile shopping app and your home Wi-Fi network. Consumers assign specific products quantities each button via Amazon mobile. When the button is clicked, your smartphone gets a notification, then you have the option to cancel that order within a half hour. Also, if someone in your house pushes, for example, the Gatorade button 15 times, amazon made sure that you won't 15 orders. Only one of your assigned quantity, and if there is a order already on its way, it will automatically cancel.

Amazon tells the Wall Street Journal, “Our goal with the Dash Button is to learn as much as possible about what customers think about this,” Pearsall said, “whether people will want to stick tiny, Wi-Fi connected product logos around their homes remains to be seen.”

Amazon is not sure what is to come with the dash button, but they see the product as another way to add to the convenience of the consumer. Amazon is a company that started as an online bookstore, and has evolved into the largest online retailer. The company was able to do this by diversifying their website and adding MP3’s, video streaming, and everything else you would ever need. It will be interesting to see if the dash button takes away from any of the smaller brand companies. The button forces the consumer to be brand loyal. Without the consumer ever having the option to chose the smaller brand it could dissolve them from the market entirely.

Video: (https://youtu.be/NMacTuHPWFI)

Source:(http://blogs.wsj.com/personal-technology/2015/03/31/amazons-dash-button-is-not-a-hoax-its-phase-one/?KEYWORDS=amazon+button)

Coca-Cola Headlines the Final Four with new innovations

Welcome back to this weeks edition of the marketing blog

Coca-Cola is always at the top when it comes to new and innovative marketing campaigns. Recently, in preparation for the NCAA basketball final four tournament in Indianapolis, Coca-Cola released drinkable billboards. This is the first time this type of billboard has ever been created. The billboards are 26-by-36-ft placed in the White River State Park. This is the site of Coke Zero Countdown Concert for the final four. The billboards will magically dispense cold Coke Zero from a massive Coca-Cola bottle. The soda travels through 4,500 feet of tubing that spells out, “Taste It” then the soda is moved into free sampling station.  Also, while waiting in line, fans can play basketball-themed games for the chance to win prizes from Coke.

Video: (https://youtu.be/pTaP63EGkNA)

Danielle Henry, group director of Integrated Marketing Communications states, “It’s an engineering marvel when you factor in the tubing, lights, liquid, CO2 and everything else that went into this,” “Pulling this off in a short timeframe was no small feat.”

In addition to the “drinkable” billboard Coke plans to have a “drinkable” commercial that will encourage viewers at home to use the Shazam app in order to watch a glass on their mobile device fill up with Coke Zero as it’s poured from a bottle on TV. When the glass fills up, the app will give you a mobile coupon for a free 20-oz. bottle of Coke Zero, “at a participating retailer.” The commercial aired on Saturday night during the Kentucky v.s. Wisconsin game on TBS, and again Monday night during the national championship game on CBS.

Coke wasn’t done either, there were other drinkable elements all over Indianapolis that included interactive kiosks and flyers that turn into straws, all of which generate coupons. There were more than 150,000 free servings of Coke Zero were distributed in Indianapolis alone.

Danielle Henry, group director of Integrated Marketing Communications at Coke states, “We collaborated with our agency partners to create media vehicles that are actually drinkable – something we’ve never done before at Coca-Cola,” Henry said. “We wanted every ad to lead directly to an opportunity to try Coke Zero. Everything we’re doing results in an actual sample or a coupon.”

According to Henry, 60 percent of consumers who taste Coke Zero return to purchase it again. “We know we’ll be successful if we can get drinks in hand,” she added, “because once people try Coke Zero, they come back for more.”

Drinkable Ad Video: (https://youtu.be/cqlETDvgVwY)

The 2015 National Championship game attendance of 71,149 at Lucas Oil Stadium, which was the highest of any of the seven national championship games that Indianapolis has hosted. Also, it was the fourth largest crowd in NCAA Championship history. The game is a national event that watched by hundreds of thousands all over the U.S. Coke took full advantage of marketing opportunities to make sure that their soda headlined the event. This marketing strategy not only helps Coke in the short term through product sales, but it also means that Coke is related to the Final four forever. This innovation is the reason why Coca-Cola is one of the most recognizable brands in the world.

Source:(http://www.coca-colacompany.com/innovation/a-sign-of-great-taste-coke-zero-unveils-drinkable-billboards-and-more-in-indy)