Marketing Mix and Strategy A marketing strategy outlines the manner in which the marketing mix is used to attract and satisfy the target market(s) and accomplish an organization's objectives.Specifically, marketing strategy is develop by considering the following factors. Pricing Strategy A marketer should understand the relationship between price and consumer purchases and perceptions. This relationship is explained by two economic principles : the law of demand and price elasticity of demand and market segmentation. Marketing Communications Plan for New Product The starting point for the advertising plan is the setting of objectives. The statement of objectives would follow the same format as the overall marketing objective. It would include what to communicate to whom and with what results. Should the advertising generate sales, produce leads, or enhance an image? To whom must the message be communicated to make that happen? What will be the result of this communication? $X revenue? Product Development Stages The new-product planning process involves a series of steps from idea generation to commercialization. Idea generation is a continuous, systematic search for new product opportunities.It involves delineating sources of new ideas and methods for generating them. 12 Steps for New Product Development New product development can play a variety of roles in defining corporate strat¬egy to gain competitive advantage. This variability makes the process of new product development subject to the emerging organizational issues of the day. In general, a long-run, focused, and ongoing strategic commitment to attractive market opportunities should define the role of new product development. New product development should be integrated into an organizations strategy and significantly contribute to its perpetual renewal. Adoption Process of New Products The growth rate and total sales level of new products rely heavily on two related consumer behavior concepts: the adoption process and the diffusion process. The adoption process is the mental and behavioral procedure an individual consumer goes through when learning about and purchasing a new product. Experiential Marketing The concept of experiential marketing comprises of five core elements : sense, feel, think, act, and relate. SENSE marketing appeals to the senses with the objective of creating sensory experiences through sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. SENSE marketing may be used to differentiate companies and products, to motivate customers, and to add value to products. Key Factors in Developing New Products An empirical research by Robert Cooper found three key factors that distinguish winning projects from the losers. Factor 1: A High-Quality New Product Process. Does your business have a superb new product process or roadmap to guide and speed new products from idea through to launch? The top performers do. Merely having a process does not make the difference, however. It is the nature of that process, and whether it possesses key success ingredients, that makes all the difference. Customer Life Cycle Customer equity management recognizes that customer-firm relationships, like all relationships, evolve over time. Prospects, new buyers, and long-time customers do not have the same needs, and as their relationships with a company change, so do their expectations and behavior. The concept of the customer life cycle provides a framework for understanding and managing these differences. Exploratory Marketing Research Exploratory research can be effectively used to develop insights and understanding about a marketing problem or issue. While exploratory research is applicable in numerous situations, it is extremely useful for understanding a problem, screening alternative solutions, and discovering new ideas. We will discuss these three applications in this section. Creating An Effective Advertising for Service Products Experts agree that while some aspects of advertising are the same for goods and services, the special characteristics of services require additional strategies to make advertising of services most effective. These include the following: 1) Present vivid information. Advertisers should use information that creates a strong or clear impression on the senses and produces a distinct mental picture. Using vivid information cues is particularly desirable when services are highly intangible and complex. Three Levels of Marketing Performance The boldest level of marketing occurs when a company introduces a product or service that nobody asked for and often could not even conceive of. No one in the 1950s asked for a Sony Walkman, a Sony Betamax, or a Sony 31/2-inch disc. Yet Sony, under its brilliant founder and chairman, Akio Morita, introduced those and many other new products that since have become everyday staples. Advertising Variables There are some variables or factors that need to be considered when creating an advertising. These factors are waste, reach, frequency, message permanence, persuasive impact and clutter. Waste is the portion of an audience that is not in a firm's target market. Because media appeal to mass audiences, waste is a significant factor in advertising. Research to Discover New Product Ideas There are many methods that can be deployed to discover ideas for developing new products. Dimensional Analysis lists all of the physical characteristics of a product type. Having obtained such a list, creativity can be triggered by asking questions such as: "Why is the product this way?" "How could the product be changed?" or "'What would happen if one or more of the characteristics were removed?" Developing Product for Service Sectors What are the keys to developing successful new services? The following descriptions identify the critical success factors in day-to-day new service development. These are the activities that occur within projects that differentiate winning new services from losing ones. Category System of Consumer Goods There are three-category system of consumer goods : convenience, shopping, and specialty goods.Convenience goods are those purchased with a minimum of effort, because the buyer has knowledge of product characteristics prior to shopping. Principles of Managing New Product Development A key task of managing new product development is linking it to an organization's strategy. This linkage occurs through the typical situation analysis that provide the basis for developing strategic options (for example, assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and problems). Such analysis begin with recognizing major global forces with pervasive trends (such as economic systems, demographics, or technology) that lead to complexity and rapid change, a major source of uncertainty. Types of Market Research Data Another type of primary data of interest to marketers is the subject's psychological and life-style characteristics in the form of personality traits, activities, interests, and values. Personality refers to the normal patterns of behavior exhibited by an individual. It represents the attributes, traits, and mannerisms that distinguish one individual from another.