The Marketing Mix

The success of a product in any business is heavily dependent on how the product is marketed. With the advancement of technology, marketing platforms have become an important factor in the success or failure of products (Van Waterschoot & Van den Bulte, 1992). As a startup, The Home Essentials Inc. must master marketing in order to have a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The report will identify The Home Essentials Insmarketing .’s problem, assess it, and offer potential answers and recommendations.

The problem in any marketing mix scenario can only be determined after understanding the mix’s constituents. These ingredients are known as the 4Ps of marketing and include product, price, place, and promotion. The problem in the scenario is the promotion as an element of the marketing mix strategy.

Analysis of the Problem

The analysis of the promotional problem of the product demands an understanding of the other Ps of the marketing strategy since all the four are interrelated. Price is the value that is put on a product, for instance, the Home Essentials Incorporation has placed a price of $100 for the product. The product, on the other hand, refers to the item that is on sale, for instance, the product on sale is the baby gate. Place refers to the point of sale of the product, for instance :” Is the product physically sold or is the product sold online?” Finally, promotion refers to all the activities undertaken to make the product or service is known to the potential consumers (Van Waterschoot et.al., 1992).

The problem could have been caused by a wrong choice of a promotional strategy or a poor implementation of the promotional strategy selected. The other possible problem in the scenario is overpricing of the product hence the supply of the product exceeds demand. According to Raju et al. (1990), solutions to the problem of promotion can be suggested by understanding the types of promotional strategies.

Possible Solutions

According to Narasimhan, C. (1988), a promotional strategy is the function of informing, persuading, and influencing a consumer decision. This is managed through the five elements of the promotional mix which includes advertising, personal selling, public relations, sales promotion, and the direct marketing.

Personal Selling

Personal selling involves direct spoken information between sellers and potential buyers. Although sales persons are included in most marketing mixes, personal selling can be expensive. The Home essential Incorporation can consider using the promotional strategy to expand the sales.

Advertising

Advertising is the primary form of mass selling. Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation of ideas, goods, or services by a sponsor. It includes the use of magazines, radio, televisions, direct mails as well as new media such as the internet. While advertising must be paid for, another form of mass selling- publicity is ‘free.’ This is the best promotional strategy that the company should use.

Sales Promotion

Sales promotion is the promotion activities other than advertising, publicity and personal selling that stimulates interest. Compared to the other promotion methods, sales promotion can usually be implemented quickly and gets results sooner. In fact, most sales promotion methods are designed to produce immediate results. The company can use sales promotion to reach a large number of potential buyers.

Publicity

Publicity is any unpaid form of non-personal presentation of ideas, goods, or ideas. If a firm has a new message, publicity may be very effective than advertising. For instance, the company can use publicity to announce a decrease in price from $100 to $90 or a change in place of selling the product. Besides, it is through publicity that the company can tell the public about their five - star rating of the product. Trade Magazine, for example, may carry articles featuring the news worthy products of regular advertisers in part because they are regular advisers (Wilcox et al., 2015). The firm’s publicity people write a basic copy, and then they try to convince magazine editors to print it. A consumer might carefully read a long magazine story but ignore an advert with the same information.

Direct Marketing

This category embraces such tools as mailing, email, and text messaging. These channels offer potential to send personalized messages to highly targeted micro-segments. Commercial services are available that combine company collected data with reach a third party, online, and offline data sources.

Direct marketing through advancements in technology gives rise to permission marketing where customers are encouraged to learn more about the company’s products. The company can use the strategy to get views from the buyers about their preferred price of the product.

Recommendation

The best promotional strategy to use is advertising as it gives the company the opportunity to enlighten the potential buyers on the price of the product, the place where the product is offered, and the information about the product at a much lower cost as compared to other promotional strategies.

References

Borden, N. H. (1964). The concept of the marketing mix. Journal of advertising research, 4(2), 2-7.

Narasimhan, C. (1988). Competitive promotional strategies. Journal of Business, 427-449.

Raju, J. S., Srinivasan, V., & Lal, R. (1990). The effects of brand loyalty on competitive price promotional strategies. Management Science, 36(3), 276-304.

Van Waterschoot, W., & Van den Bulte, C. (1992). The 4P classification of the marketing mix revisited. The Journal of Marketing, 83-93.

Wilcox, D. L., Cameron, G. T., & Reber, B. H. (2015). Public relations: Strategies and tactics. A. Dodge (Ed.). New York, NY: Pearson.