Marketing Management

Discussion 1:

Topic:

Discuss the unique marketing characteristics a product or service requires based on the specific phase of the product life cycle.

Initial post:

A 350 word for initial post must be posted to the discussion forum.

Secondary Post:

Please write a response to the below answer

Answer:

Every organization is trying to make profit in order to satisfy their backers, who maybe investors or shareholders. To this end, every organization develops a product or service that it wishes to sell to the mass market. Every product or service, regardless of the industry, belong to, has 4 stages in its’ life cycle: introduction, growth, maturity and finally decline. Risk also dissipates as the product goes through the various stages. Let us briefly discuss the unique characteristics of each stage:

Introduction:  This stage is considered the first stage in product’s life cycle that is initiated when a new product or service is developed. Risk in this stage is the highest as the organization is introducing a product first time to the market. During this stage, organizations are heavily invested in creating awareness about their product’s launch. Organization can document customer behavior and response and thus tweak the launch of its products while they can to maximize its awareness in the market. Organizations also partake in excessive amounts of market research before introducing the products.

Growth:  This is the second stage in a product’s life cycle and is generally considered the stage when the consumer is aware about the products’ existence and this is reflected in the increase in sales compared to the previous stage. The incumbent competition also notices your presence and changes their strategy accordingly to thwart the product’s growth of market share. Organizations try to outsmart competitive though clever marketing and trying to gain the customer’s attention.

Maturity:  The third and penultimate stage of a product’s life cycle is maturity which can be marked from the day the product starts to see a slow but steady decline in sales, indicating that the product has reached its maturity. This impacts the profit margin earned as the price of the product needs to be reduced in order to sustain daily sales figures. These offers might be marketed in grocery stores in the form of coupons for example.

Discussion 2:

Topic:

Discuss how the marketing mix will vary in relationship to the offering of a service and of a product.

Initial post:

A 350 word for initial post must be posted to the discussion forum.

Secondary Post:

Please write a response to the below answer

ANSWER:

The term Marketing Mix is a unique terminology that has defined to uniquely identify the sub product names of a product or brand and which helps as a stand alone item for any of the competitors that would help in designing the brand. This strategy also helped in choosing the right product for a right customer and placing the product in the right place. This is the key for building a right product and to meet the consumer requirements. Also when you start designing a product always think how this product can be useful to the consumer and always think in their perspective and try to reach the goals of the product design and this will definitely make them satisfy and that’s how we get success in the market.

When coming to the variance of the Product Marketing Mix along with  Service Marketing Mix, It’s a matter of building a product and circulating it in the Market but this would require multiple rounds of analysis of the product and intensive testing and more understanding of the product between the consumer and the producer and make up a strategy that would ensure to meet the happiness of both sides. The models that were defined to find out the variance between the product and the service plays a major role in the learning process and in the successful delivery of the product. According to (Magrath, 2009) the marketing plans have incorporated these elements as the major blocks for the implementation of the business programs. The Four P’s of the marketing mix strategy is mainly Price, Product, Place and Promotions and these 4 p’s are the strategic weapons because all these 4 play a major role in deliver the product to the customer

On the contrary we have a service Marketing Mix that mainly does the promotions with 7p’s strategical measures. According to (Meir,2016) This includes the traditional 4 p’s along with the three more p’s like personnel, physical assets and process management and these three additionally provide the services that greatly influence the pricing and the actual physical distribution of the service and these services are often made believe by the consumers because they buy the product eventually and they have to believe the services promises when the purchase a product

Discussion 3:

Topic:

Discuss the notion that firms should stop doing business with customers who constantly generate losses versus the notion that the customer is always right.

Initial post:

A 350 word for initial post must be posted to the discussion forum.

Secondary Post:

Please write a response to the below answer

ANSWER:

Company business and Customer satisfaction – The two aspects any business has to consider for creating a balance. The companies that are in customer-dealing business, like goods or products industry, retail industry, services industry or any other Business to Customer (B2C) business, striking this balance is very crucial. The notion of “Customer is always right” has been followed since a long time because it is important to increase customer base, as well as, maintaining the existing customer base. Satisfying the demands of customers, even if it is unjustified, is considered as important. This strengthens the bonding between customers and the company. (Fader, P., 2020)

However, it is not always correct to follow the notion of following customer demands, especially if it takes a hit on the business. Companies have to make a right balance in understanding the needs of the business versus the needs of a customer. At the same time, politeness in rejecting a request is very important. The companies should emphasize on training the front-line employees appropriately, so that they can deal with rejecting an invalid request politely and offer better services in lieu of the current transaction or issue. Most relevant example is the impact on airline and travel industry during this pandemic of covid-19. Millions of customers requested for refunds against their bookings and the companies had to cater to the needs of customers, even though taking a hit on their business. The companies have to keep in mind that they will be in business again and customers are important for their revival. Therefore, handling customer requests politely and honestly is very important for them. (Gothelf, 2017)

Customers would always try to get advantage of a situation, where a company made a mistake. It is in best interest of both customers and companies to survive in a dual relationship that is healthy, prosperous and long-term association.

Discussion 4:

Topic:

Select a problem that a firm might have bringing out a new product or service and discuss how the firm could overcome that problem.

Initial post:

A 350 word for initial post must be posted to the discussion forum.

Secondary Post:

Please write a response to the below answer

ANSWER:

Developing a new product or the service is an extensive process and it includes lot of problems, risks associated with it. There will be lot of phases in the Product development life cycle. This involves designs, code reviews, assessment from all the departments involved, budgeting and accounting numbers to make sure they are aligned with the quoted value. Design should be fixed in the very initial phases only so that it would be easy for the development. Otherwise, there will be issues with the development, design teams in terms of the cost, time and the committed deadliness and the features of the product (Ayağ, Z. (2016)). Selection criteria is very important as there will be already lot of similar products available in the market and lot of alternatives already exists. The new product should be something unique and should depict the quality services associated with it. In today’s world and modern technologies, changes happen more rapidly and lot of advances in the technologies, to gain the market value and the customers pulse companies are often forced or asked to look for the new products or the services in order to suit with the high-tech market and its demand. This increased the competition among the firms, needs of the customers and looking for the fast innovation process.

As we already know that change is always good and we need to be able in a state to suit the adaptable changes in the society. This innovation process and handling the new products, services are not an easy task to deal with. There will be lot of pressures, expectations from the firms, customers on the innovations groups and the technology trends (Davis, S. M., & Moe, K. (1997)). To avoid these problems there must be better analysis done on the products before we even think about the ideas, development cycle. This include the Multi-dimensional analysis during the concept selection process. Just the single aspect should not be taken into the consideration to design completely a new product. We should take into consideration multiples domains, constraints and variables so that this helps in the good decision making process and will end up in the required solution for the problem statement, else we may end up in failures at some domains as we don’t pass their expectations. Analytical network process to determine the qualitative and quantitative analysis to make sure we meet the criteria of the practitioners.