Marketing Management
Question 1: Week 7: Tutorial 6 (10 marks)
Watch the video and answer 3 following questions in 300 words total:
- What is the message that P&G wants to send to its customers? (3 marks)
P & G has several brands, and it can be difficult to build a brand for each. P & G used the mothers who are loving and caring towards their children and how they help their children achieve a lot in life. Just like how mothers are caring, P & G expresses how they help the mothers through their brands such as Pampers, Gillette, Pantene, and Tide/Aerial to care for their children.
- According to your opinion what does the benefit P&G gain when they implemented the
Thank you Mom campaign’? (3 marks)
Thank you Mom was beneficial to P & G as it created awareness of the brands under P & G to the international market. It was the most emotional marketing campaign the company has ever done and was very successful. The campaign was done at the right time during the Olympics games, which is an international event; hence the promotion reached many people internationally. The campaign was well communicated as using the P & G products is associated with the love and care of a mother. As everyone has a mother, and there is a strong connection between children and their mothers (Zhang & Luo, 2018).
- What kind of emotions does this video evoke in you? Explain what you felt and why. (there
are no wrong answers here, just you thinking (4 marks)
The video evokes emotions of sadness and happiness. Mothers are seen accompanying their children in their struggles to achieve success in their life. For example, a mother is seen bandaging a child’s injured knee, sharing the pain the child is feeling. I felt for the mothers for what they go through in caring for the children. There are moments a mother is seen happy for the achievements of their kids, such as witnessing a child being crowned a gold medal in the Olympics games. There is also feeling good emotions when the children thank their mom for helping them be successful. These emotions help consumers practically connecting with the brand of the company (Zhang & Luo, 2018).
Question 2 Week 8: Tutorial 7 (10 marks)
Watch the video and answer 2 following questions in 200 words:
- Who do you think is the target customer of this product? (5 marks)
The target consumers of the Gululu Go Interactive water bottle are parents and children. This is because parents will want to take care of their kids even if they are far from them, such as when they are in schools or out playing with friends. The bottle creates a good habit to the children of drinking water as they interact with the pet on the bottles when they drink the water making it funny. It encourages children to take more water often, and the parents will be able to determine the amount of water their children are drinking. Drinking sufficient water is healthy especially to the kids and the water bottle is an ideal way for the parents to encourage their children to drink the required amounts (Kim & Sullivan, 2019, pp. 1-16)
- Do you think this product will be a success, if yes, why and how? If no, why not? (5 marks)
I think the product will be successful as it offers parents an ideal solution for being able to know the amount of water their children are taking. Products should offer solutions to consumers, such as the interactive water bottle. Besides, the advertisement has featured children and who are the users of the products, which will make the children influence their parents to purchase the interactive water bottles for them. The children will want to have a practical experience just as the children in the advertisement. Children are the most influential buyers in a family, and the children and parents have been targeted, which will be a great success to the product (Kim & Sullivan, 2019).
Question 3 Week 9: Tutorial 8 (10 marks)
Agatha’s Inc. is about to introduce a new product in the market but is not sure as to how it should price the product. The company is facing intense competition from five other companies. In such a situation, what should be Agatha’s Inc. pricing objective? Explain your answer.
Agatha’s pricing objective will be ensuring that the product makes sales and profit to ensure the company’s business activities are sustained. To achieve the objectives, Agatha will execute strategies of penetration and skimming pricing. In a penetration strategy, Agatha will aim at making high sales volume and establishing the product in the market. This is where the new product will be priced lower than the competitor’s prices (Feng et al., 2019). This will enable the company to make high sales and a lower profit margin. However, the product will establish quickly in the market. Penetration strategy will also depend on the chances the company has for putting its costs low, the price-sensitive customers, sufficient resources an organization has to meet the demand and the availability of the potential customers for the product. On the other hand, the company can employ a skimming pricing strategy, where the price will set higher than the competitors’ prices. This will enable the company to reap high profits as it will target customers that will be willing to pay for the price to acquire the new product. This will also depend on the uniqueness of the product and the high demand for the new product (Feng et al., 2019).
Question 4 Week 10: Tutorial 9 (10 marks)
Briefly explain in 300 words the 4 levels of marketing channels with example.
There are four levels of marketing channels, which include direct sales, intermediaries usage, dual distribution, and reverse marketing channels. Direct selling is where the producers sell their products directly to the consumers who are end-users, for example, selling door-to-door, physical shops of the producer, or through Internet selling such as mail method (Demko, Plakias & Katchova, 2017).
Besides, the use of intermediaries is another marketing channel for distributing products. This is where the product passes through several intermediate distributors before reaching the consumers. Some many producers and retailers require intermediaries to coordinate the supply chain of the product to the end-users. For instance, a producer sells the products to its agent, who resells the product to the wholesaler, then it is sold to the retailer, and finally, the retailer sells the product to the end-user (Demko, Plakias & Katchova, 2017).
producer Agent Wholesaler Retailer End-user (Consumer)
Dual distribution is yet another marketing channel that involves a broad range of marketing arrangements where the producers or wholesalers employ several channels of distribution to ensure the end-user gets the product. The products can be sold directly to the end-users through the producers’ physical shops, or the producer can sell the product to another company to resale the product on its behalf (Demko, Plakias & Katchova, 2017). For example, franchising, where a company may license another organization to operate some of its marketing units. The company continues to own and operate other marketing units.
Lastly is the reverse marketing channel where the flow of the products reverses and starts from the end-user to the beneficiary. The flow of the products will start from the consumer, goes through the intermediaries, and finally to the beneficiary. In this case, there is no producer as the end-user; an example of a reverse marketing channel is recycling (Demko, Plakias & Katchova, 2017).
Question 5 Week 11: Tutorial 10 (10marks)
Focus on Technology: Tracking Customers
According to Nielsen, more than 50 percent of mobile phone consumers own smartphones. Many of them use free Wi-Fi when available for faster connections and to reduce data usage charges. But even when they don’t log on to Wi-Fi, the device continues to search, giving information on users’ locations. By using the signals emitted by shoppers’ smartphones, retailers can keep tabs on shoppers, knowing where they are and what they are searching for on their phones’ browsers.
Retailers can learn on which aisles shoppers are most likely to check online prices at retailers such as Amazon.com and can send an alert to a sales representative. “Heat mapping” identifies traffic patterns and locations, attracting the greatest number of shoppers checking the Internet. This gives retailers an idea of the products most vulnerable to “showrooming”—the practice of shoppers visiting stores to learn about and try products and later purchasing them for less online.
- What is shopper marketing, and how might retailers use Wi-Fi technology to implement it? (5
marks)
Shopper marketing entails a multifunctional discipline developed to enhance performance through actionable intuition of connecting with the shoppers and influencing their behavior in their path of purchase. It gives the retailers a holistic approach to identifying the consumers of their brand and improving the customers’ shopping experience.
The retailers have started adopting technology in integrating the process of shopper marketing, such as can Wi-Fi technology, to implement. First, the retailers will install Wi-Fi technology analytics in the store, which will connect the consumers’ smartphone devices while in the stores automatically to the Internet. This will enable the retailers to access information on what the consumers are looking for in the store, how often they visit the store, and the common items they purchase. This also helps the retailers in creating the personalized advertisement to different consumers (Gajanova, Majerova, & Nadanyiova, 2020, pp. 115-120). Next is segmenting the store into sections for better dwell time and traffic analysis of the consumers. This will help the retailers monitor the consumers’ movements and are instrumental in figuring out where to display different products. The next step will be identifying variance in the performance of the stores. The retailer will be able to know if the sales are growing and the contributing factors such as high traffic or the best display of products in the store. It offers the best way to solve the marketing problems the stores might be experiencing. The retailer should ensure that the network is secure for the consumers and the company to safeguard sensitive information from cyber-attacks and crimes. Then carry out the test of Wi-Fi marketing technology to assess its performance and effectiveness and finally execute the Wi-Fi analytics (Gajanova, Majerova, & Nadanyiova, 2020, pp. 115-120).
- What may be the likely response as more shoppers learn that retailers gather information without their knowledge? (5 marks)
Shoppers’ response to learning about retailers gathering information without their knowledge can be scary. Retailers have violated the privacy of the consumers without prior consultations or knowledge. The consumers can go public and taint the image of the company, or they may even go ahead suing the retailers for intruding into their private information. The shoppers will be very careful to disconnect their devices at any time they are in the retail stores to prevent being tracked. The shoppers also may stop visiting the retail shops, which can lead t losses to the retailers if action is not taken to remedy the situation. The retailers should consult the shoppers before tracking their smartphones to prevent any conflicting issues as each party will be in consent with the process.
References
Demko, I., Plakias, Z., & Katchova, A. (2017). How do farmers compose their portfolio of local food marketing channels?.
Feng, S., Hu, X., Yang, A., & Liu, J. (2019). Pricing Strategy for New Products with Presales. Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 2019.
Gajanova, L., Majerova, J., & Nadanyiova, M. (2020). WIFI TECHNOLOGY AS AN IMPORTANT CHANNEL OF MARKETING STRATEGY IN THE RETAIL ENVIRONMENT. Economic and Social Development: Book of Proceedings, 115-120.
Kim, Y. K. & Sullivan, P. (2019). Emotional branding speaks to consumers’ hearts: The case of fashion brands. Fashion and Textiles, 6(1), 1-16.
Zhang, Z., & Luo, Y. (2018). Study on the Influence of Emotional Marketing on Consumers’ Purchase Intention.