Marketing plan part 4

Marketing Strategies

Marketing is pivotal to the success of a business, whether small or big. In this regard, there are four marketing strategies often referred to as the “four P’s” of marketing that may be utilized by business owners to ensure success of their businesses. These four P’s include product strategies, place strategies, pricing strategies and promotional strategies. A combination of these strategies forms the marketing mix, which enables a firm to achieve its desired results in a particular target market. The description of each marketing strategy is as follows:

Product Strategies

A product is a good or service that a business or firm provides for sale in a specific target market (Pride, 2011). When a firm or a business is developing a product, it should consider certain factors such as quality, design, features, packaging, customer service and any subsequent after-sales service (Kotler & Armstrong, 2011). Athletics Supreme Company produces and sells sportswear products including T-shirts, shoes, and other sportswear equipment. Through market research, the company has realized that there is a growing interest in sportswear and therefore they are also seeking to expand their products to include a sports line and other sport related items. While developing these products, their goal are to maintain a strong brand while at the same time provide customers with the best sports shopping experience.

The company’s sportswear equipment is designed with quality and utmost safety in mind and thus giving it a clear edge over other similar sportswear equipment produced by rival companies. This sportswear equipment mainly target amateur athletes and it is designed in such a way that it makes the athletes feel like a professional. Athletics Supreme Company has also expanded its target market to kid and teen athletes. The company has also realized that many athletes especially the younger ones are now considering safety, precaution and fashion factors when deciding which brands to use for athletic purposes and therefore it is now implementing several safety changes for the young athlete, including a 7 point padded shirt and replaceable helmet padding designed to help reduce concussions. These changes are intended to create a safe and comfortable line of sports gear that targets athletes of all ages and sizes.

In overall, the company has focused on quality, design and the safety and precautionary measures when developing their sports equipment. This has given them a competitive advantage in an industry that is growing and becoming very competitive each day. Competition in the sportswear industry has made Athletics Supreme Company to be more innovative so that it can continue being on top of the game. Thus, in my view, Athletics Supreme Company has a competitive advantage with respect to product.

Place Strategies

The place is with respect to distribution, location and methods of getting the products to the consumer (Kotler & Armstrong, 2011). It includes the location of the company, shop front, distributors, logistics and the potential use of the Internet to sell products directly to consumers (Pride, 2011). Athletics Supreme Company is strategically located in an urban area where there are some big institutions of learning including high school, colleges and universities. This is one main advantage that the company has with respect to place, i.e., being closer to the potential target market. Almost all the students in the institutions of learning participate in sporting activities and therefore they are likely to purchase sports equipment. Thus, the company considered this factor when locating its headquarters, which is also the central production and distributing point.

The company has also established stores in various parts of the country and it is planning to extend its operations to overseas in the near future. Currently, the products are distributed from the main manufacturing point to various stores in the country and then sold directly to customers. Some customers also purchase the product straight from the company but in wholesale. Also at the moment, no product is being delivered online to customers. However, future plans of the company include online delivery of its sportswear equipment. This will be achieved through investment in technology. Thus in my view, the company may have some competitive advantage with respect to place but it still needs to invest in technology and in particular the online system of delivering goods so that it can earn a good competitive advantage.

Pricing Strategies

Price is the amount of money that a consumer must pay in order to acquire a particular product (Enis, 2013). A company must take into consideration several factors related to price including price setting, discounting, credit and cash purchases and the credit collection (Enis, 2013). Sportswear companies that produce sports equipment are mushrooming and this is bringing stiff competition. To remain competitive, Athletics Supreme Company is offering high quality and safety sports equipment at highly discounted prices and in fact it is planning to make them cheaper in the near future. This is in a bid to make them more affordable to the customers and thus attract many customers. Also the company allows credit purchasing in some low-income areas. Through price discounting and credit purchasing, the company is expecting to win the hearts of many customers. The company is still building up on this strategy and it expects to earn a good competitive advantage by using this strategy.

Promotional Strategies

Promotion refers to the act of communicating the benefits and value of your products to customers. It entails persuading customers to purchase products using techniques such as advertising, direct marketing, personal selling and sales promotion (Kotler & Armstrong, 2011). Athletics Supreme Company uses media advertising especially the TV and radios to advertise its products and brands. The advertisements are mainly done at peak audience hours, i.e., the time when many people are watching TV or listening to radio. This is usually the evening hours. The company is also making good use of roadshows to advertise its products and in fact the roadshows has become more preferable than media advertising because it delivers the message more easily and quickly at a lower cost. Currently, the company has mainly focused on advertising to market its products but it plans to venture in other ways of marketing such as Internet marketing. Thus in terms of promotional strategies a lot still need to be done as the company only relies on advertising and roadshows. In this case, I think the company does not have a good competitive advantage with respect to promotion at the moment. But to earn this competitive advantage, there is need to explore other methods of product promotion such as Internet marketing (Kotler & Armstrong, 2011).

Conclusion

In, summary there are four P’s of successful marketing. The marketing mix blends these strategies together to produce the results that a company desires to achieve in a specific target market. Thus Athletics Supreme Company may currently use a combination of product and place strategies to successfully win the hearts of many young athletes since it has a competitive advantage with respect to these two strategies. However, in future the company needs to invest in technology so that it may earn a competitive advantage in all the four strategies.

References

Enis, B. M. (2013). Marketing principles. Santa Monica, Calif: Goodyear Pub. Co.

Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (2011). Principles of marketing. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall.

Pride, W. M. (2011). Marketing principles. South Melbourne, Vic: Cengage Learning.