pricing strategy paper

Case MKS

Team 16

MarketShare was a simulation that helped our group understand the process of marketing for a company. Through concepts we learned in class, we were able to test various marketing techniques for our company. This showed us different outcomes and made us improve our marketing strategy which was extremely beneficial.

4Ps

Every business that hopes to be successful utilizes the 4Ps, product, price, place, and promotion, to position their company correctly. For the Allstar brand, the product is All-Around. This product aims to meet Allstar’s consumer’s needs for an over-the-counter multi-use liquid. The price of the All-Around product reflects its quality product with a slightly higher cost than its competitors. All-Around's place is everywhere, with All-Around available in drugstores, grocery stores and mass merchandise locations. Finally, the promotion for All-Around is twofold. Firstly, All-Around is available to retailers at 30% bulk discount. Secondly, All-Around has recently started a social media strategy to interact with consumers directly.6

Developing a brand involves developing a market plan as well which consists of five steps. The first step to this is the planning phase which is when a brand designs and defines their mission that shows their overall purpose. This will affect the decision process after to make sure that customers view the brand in a way that aligns with the mission of the brand. Every decision should align with the company’s purpose and values, so that the brand perception will be maintained. The next step of the marketing plan would be to evaluate the players, both externally and internally, affecting the firm’s potential for accomplishment. This is also known as a SWOT analysis which is used to determine the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The strengths and weaknesses are the internal aspects of a company while opportunities and threats are the external factors affecting the company. Evaluating top competitors in the simulations helps us see how we can improve and better market our product. The next step would be the implementation phase which would be selecting a target market and positioning the brand to fit the needs of the market. Market segmenting is important because target markets are extensive, so breaking them down and dividing them into smaller groups is vital. Then you can provide products for each of these groups which will be even more targeted towards them. This follows into positioning the brand which calls for differentiating itself to broaden the choices for target groups. The control stage is the final step of the marketing plan and entails evaluating the performance of the marketing strategy using marketing metrics. Through the simulation, we were able to see our performance results and make any necessary changes to our marketing strategy to better performance and outcomes which is also part of the control stage.