Marketing Mix- Product

CORE PRODUCT is the BENEFIT of the product that makes it valuable to you. For example, when you buy a car, you can travel anywhere at your convenience. Your convenience of traveling anywhere and anytime you want is the BENEFIT of buying a car.

ACTUAL PRODUCT is the tangible physical product. The car that you bought is the ACTUAL PRODUCT. With leather seats, an iPOD dock, sun roof, 17 inch mag wheels, etc.

AUGMENTED PRODUCT is the non-physical part of the product. It usually consists of lots of added value, for which you may or may not pay a premium. Using the same product, the car dealership gives you an offer to finance the car by paying 10% down payment and the rest will be payable in 12 months with 0%. Or if you decide to pay the full price of the car, the dealership will give you a 25% discount on all repairs and services. The financing of the car and the discount on the repairs and the services are the augmented products which the buyer will not have to pay for it but an added value of the car.

Which of these benefits does your target market really care about? Have you asked them? Your important benefit and theirs may not align.

Understand Your Product,
Samuel Carrara

SC Marketing Education

Don’t be BROkE, watch the video that will show you how to create your website.
100% Guaranteed at: Easy Website Creator

Copyright by Sam Carrara’s Marketing Education

The Marketing Mix is probably the most famous marketing term. The term became popular after Neil H. Borden published his 1964 article, The Concept of the Marketing Mix. Borden began using the term in his teaching in the late 1940’s after James Culliton had described a marketing manager as a “mixer of ingredients.”

Marketing Mix Overview

The marketing mix set a set of controllable, tactical marketing tools that work together to achieve company’s objectives. These controllable tools are the four Ps of marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. These four Ps are the parameters that the marketing manager can control, subject to the internal and external constraints of the marketing environment.

The goal is to make decisions that center the four Ps on the customers in the target market in order to create perceived value and generate a positive response. Think of it like baking a cake. Flour, eggs, sugar and butter are the ingredients for the cake. Mixing them with the right measurements will produce a not-too-sweet soft moist cake. But if you add more sugar or separate the egg whites and make soft peaks, the cake will turn out different – a sweeter and lighter cake.

Over the coming weeks I will go more in depth of each aspect of the Marketing Mix. I actually took a cake decorating class recently and have been experimenting with different cake icing flavors and what to decorate. Just when you think you have the “right” mix, your can add something different and see how your customer (target market) reacts to it. These split tests can help your marketing mix to better match your intended audience.

Marketing Mix It Up,
Samuel Carrara

SC Marketing Education

Introducing the First Point and Click System for Creating Your Own Products That Sell Like Crazy!
100% Guaranteed at: Easy Product Creator

Copyright by Sam Carrara’s Marketing Education

Product Life Cycle- Decline

You may also discontinue the product, liquidating remaining inventory or selling it to another firm that is willing to continue the product. Unit costs may increase with the declining production volumes and eventually no more profit can be made. There is intense price-cutting and many more products are withdrawn from the market. Profits can be improved by reducing marketing spend and cost cutting.

Every firm in the cosmetics industry has the similar product as yours. It has obtained some loyal customers thats why you have continued to produce the lipstick even though there is increase in production cost. Smoothe, another cosmetic company, is about to introduce an eye shadow-lipstick that changes color with a higher SPF and a moisturizer with Vitamin E.

Lipstick Tombstone- Death of a Product

There are three things you can do: 1) Continue to produce the lipstick for your loyal customers; 2) Add new features to the lipstick to rejuvenate it or 3) Sell the lipstick to another firm that will continue to produce it. What would you do?

Innovate or Die,
Samuel Carrara

p.s. The product doesn’t have to die, just be aware of what is going on and move faster than your competition. Or you may sell off that product line and go into something else just as the decline starts.

SC Marketing Education

Discover The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy
Triple-Your-Money-Back Guarantee at: Amazing Marketing

Copyright by Sam Carrara’s Marketing Education

Product Life Cycle- Maturity

At this point, market saturation is reached and prices tend to drop due to the proliferation of competing products. It is important to maintain or increase market share at this stage of the life cycle through brand differentiation and feature diversification (how can you be different in a way that the end use consumer cares). Maybe some features like this picture?

Lipstick with features of a Swiss Army Knife

Now, let’s use the same product from the last blog entry about Product Life Cycle: the lipstick that is both a moisturizer and sunscreen that changes color depending on the wearer’s body temperature. The lipstick is in every woman’s purse and becomes a household name.

All major cosmetic companies are about to start or have started to introduce similar lipsticks. And this has prompted you to further drop the price to keep your customers and attract even more. To keep customers loyal to your brand/product you add new features to the lipstick like being waterproof or bundling the lipstick with matching eye shadow or blush. Is all this enough?

Help Your Product Mature and Not Die,
Samuel Carrara

SC Marketing Education

Subscribe to keep up with the latest Internet Marketing information.
Click Subscribe now

Copyright by Sam Carrara’s Marketing Education

Product Life Cycle- Growth

Your advertising and distribution channels have paid off! More consumers are aware of your product in the market and competition is on the rise. Other manufacturers will think of a product that will compete with yours and this will result in a price decrease.

Lipstick with Sunscreen

Picture this, say you came up with a lipstick that is both a moisturizer and a sunscreen that changes color when you change body temperature – when you feel hot your lips will turn hot red and if you feel chilly it turns into neutral pink. You gave samples at Target, WalMart and other stores for customers to try. Anita Wantaproduct, editor-in-chief of American Fashion picked your product as the new “IT” thing of the season.

Because of the feature article in American Fashion, people will become aware about the lipstick and everybody (well at least the women) will want to have one or two for each purse. Lancome and Maybelline came out with a similar lipstick but in a different shade. This may prompt you to reduce your price from the original $10 each to $8.95.

What do you think will happen next? Will it continue to rise and be an item in every woman’s purse? Or will it be just another ordinary lipstick?

Grow Your Sales,
Samuel Carrara

p.s. I don’t think they should directly compete with the other products and lower their price, but that can be discussed later.

SC Marketing Education

Don’t be BROkE, watch the video that will show you how to create your website.
100% Guaranteed at: Easy Website Creator

Copyright by Sam Carrara’s Marketing Education

Product Life Cycle- Introduction

For product awareness to pick up, the manufacturer should advertise the product using print, video and audio advertising, along with multiple channels of distribution. They can also spread the word by giving out samples of the products (think of sample booths at Costco or Sam’s Club).

Also non-traditional methods of spreading the marketing message like social media (online videos, social bookmarks, community posting and many other ways) are more ways to help create product awareness. This is a crucial stage in the products “life” it can become the next Cherry Coke or will be discontinued like Pepsi Blue. Both shown below with comments:

Pepsi Blue was launched in the mid2002 and discontinued in 2004. Even with the heavy publicity by Britney Spears and the bands SEV and Papa Roach, it failed to be a household mainstay.

Cherry Coke on the other hand, is the first flavored Coke introduced by Pink Floyd to a test audience at the 1982 World’s Fair. Cherry Coke is available in most of Europe, New Zealand and Japan.

Introduce Your Product,
Samuel Carrara

SC Marketing Education

Introducing the First Point and Click System for Creating Your Own Products That Sell Like Crazy!
100% Guaranteed at: Easy Product Creator

Copyright by Sam Carrara’s Marketing Education

In theory, it’s the same for a product. After a period of development, it is introduced or launched into the market (bird drops the seed on the ground); it gains more and more customers as it grows (shoots out leaves and roots); eventually the market stabilizes and the product becomes mature (little seed became a big tree); then after a period of time the product is overtaken by development and the introduction of superior competitors, it goes into decline and is eventually withdrawn (death of tree).

Product Life Cycle

To say that a product has a life cycle is to assert four things:

1. That products have a limited life,
2. product sales pass through distinct stages, each facing different challenges, opportunities, and problems to the seller,
3. profit rise and fall at different stages of product life cycle, and
4. products require different marketing, financial, manufacturing, purchasing, and human resource strategies in each life cycle stage.

However, you must remember that a product life cycle even under normal conditions, to all practical intents and purposes often do not exist. Dhalla & Yuspeh in 1976 criticizes the product life cycles states that:

…clearly, the PLC (Product Life Cycle) is a dependent variable which is determined by market actions; it is not an independent variable to which companies should adapt their marketing programs. Marketing management itself can alter the shape and duration of a brand’s life cycle.

So, the life cycle may be useful as a description, but not as a PREDICTOR; and usually should be firmly under the control of the marketer. The important point is that in many markets, that product or brand life cycle is significantly longer than the planning cycle of the organizations involved.

For more about the product life cycle visit: http://www.samcarrara.com/marketing/product-life-cycle-overview/

The Product Journey,
Samuel Carrara

SC Marketing Education

Discover The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy
Triple-Your-Money-Back Guarantee at: Amazing Marketing

Copyright by Sam Carrara’s Marketing Education

Good movement, but I’m not done yet. I’m doing a big push now to move to 150,000.

I’m asking for a little help.
Go to the post below and come to my site over the next few days:
http://www.samcarrara.com/marketing/more-traffic-download-the-alexa-toolbar/

Thank you for your help.

Also, this Friday I have a product being released that you won’t want to miss, it will have over 60% savings for only 24 hours. After that time period, the price goes up.

Keep watching here each day, next week I release the Alexa Secrets that has propelled my blog and others using this method.

Stay Tuned,
Sam Carrara

p.s. Download the Alexa Toolbar now- http://www.alexa.com/site/download

SC Marketing Education

Upgrade your grill- Grill to the Max at:GrillAce.com

Copyright by Sam Carrara’s Marketing Education

http://www.cybercashology.com/practically-free-special-offer

I just got the free DVD he’s offering in the mail. I also bought the upsell because he has great information. I’ll be looking thru the material this week.

Load up on inexpensive information to jumpstart your business.

Educate Yourself,
Sam Carrara

SC Marketing Education

Upgrade your grill- Grill to the Max at:GrillAce.com

Copyright by Sam Carrara’s Marketing Education

The four stages are defined as: (From a business to consumer B2C point of view.) (Added links for further explanation of each stage.)

• Introduction- Here the company tries to educate the consumer about how the product works, why its needed and work on distribution of the product.
• Growth- Now that consumers know more about the product, companies try to build brand loyalty and increase their market share.
• Maturity- Sales begins to slow and competitors appear to have the same or similar product. Companies are trying to defend market share.
• Decline- A product may become obsolete, need to be revamped or just continues to make sales. Some products do not face being obsolete.

The picture shows one way a product life cycle may evolve. Sometimes it may cycle back and forth between maturity and growth due to innovations of ideas. Where is Your product on this curve? Just because it is in the Introduction or Decline stage, doesn’t mean you should or shouldn’t be marketing the product.

In future posts I will talk about each stage in more detail.

Know the Life Cycle,
Sam Carrara

SC Marketing Education

Upgrade your grill- Grill to the Max at:GrillAce.com

Copyright by Sam Carrara’s Marketing Education