Marketing strategy includes

→ Basic and long-term marketing activities.
→ Formulation, evaluation, and selection of market-oriented strategies.
→ Several strategies and interrelated components called the marketing mix.

Marketing Mix

→ Refers to the ingredients or the tools or the variables which the marketing mixes in order to interact with a particular market.
→ Has four basic components: Product, Price, Promotion, and Place.

Product

→ Is the item being sold.
→ Looks into customer wants & satisfaction, features, usage, appearance, experience, name, branding, distinguishing from the competitors, etc.
→ 4 main components of Product Mix are: Branding, Logo & Tagline, Labeling, and Packaging.

Why Do People Buy A Product?

→ Because it satisfies a generic requirement (example: detergent cleans clothes).
→ However, if products were sold by generic names, it would be difficult to distinguish an entrepreneur's products from that of competitors.
→ To prevent this, people give a name to their products, also known as a brand.

Branding: A Concept

→ Branding word origin—Brandr (Norwegian): to burn.
→ A brand is a name, a term, a sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of the above.
→ Branding, on the other hand, is a process, a tool, a strategy, an orientation where a product is branded to help in identification of the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of the competitors.

Branding has 3 components.

(i) Brand Name:
Part of a brand which can be vocalized. Example: AsianPaints.
(ii) Brand mark:
Part of a brand which can be recognized but not vocalized. Example: 'Girl of Amul'
(iii) Trade mark:
Part of a brand or the brand that is given legal protection against plagiarism.

Qualities of a good brand name

→ Short, simple, and easy to pronounce.
→ Noticeable, easy to recognize, & remember.
→ Pleasing and impressive when spoken,
→ Adaptable to packaging & labeling requirements and to different media and languages.
→ Linked to the product.
→ Symbolically eye-catching.
→ Contemporary & capable of being legally registered and protected.
→ Not obscene, negative, offensive, or vulgar.

Types of Brand Names

(i) Individual Brand Name:
→ Entrepreneur chooses a different name for each of their products.
→ Example: HUL has 3 soaps: Lifebuoy, Liril, and Lux.

(ii) Family Brand Name/Umbrella Branding;
→ Entrepreneur opts for a company or successful family name for their products.
→ Example: Amul Milk, Amul Dark Chocolate, Amul Buttermilk, etc.

(iii) Corporate Brand Name:
→ Corporate name or logo is used together with a brand name.
→ Example: Tata Agni, Tata Motors, etc.

(iv) Alpha-numeric Brand Name:
→ Uses alpha-numeric words for branding.
→ Signifies the physical characteristics of the product.
→ Example: i10, 120, etc.

Logo

→ Logo is an identifying symbol for a product or business & can be a design, mark, or sign.

Purpose of a Logo
→ Anchors the company's brand.
→ Is the identity of an enterprise.
→ Provides essential information about the company to the customer to relate with the brand
→ The key visual component of an enterprise's brand identity.
→ Shortcut to advertising & other marketing materials.

Tagline

→ A simple, short, and powerful message to communicate the goals, mission, distinct qualities, etc. of an enterprise.
→ Can be in the form of statements, questions, or exclamations.
→ Example: McDonald's 'I'm loving it!'

Packaging

→ Is the key element in assisting consumer goods companies to achieve a comparative advantage.
→ The packaging decisions require concern over the function of the product packaging and its performance in different degrees as well as the aesthetics.

Labelling

→ The display of information about a product on its container, packaging, and/or the product itself.

Intellectual property rights are legally recognized and exclusive rights provided to creations of the mind. The law grants owners certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets.

1) Patent

→ A patent grants an inventor the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, and importing an invention for a limited duration in exchange for public disclosure of the invention.
→ Art process, method, or manner of manufacture; substances produced by manufacturing' machine, apparatus, or other articles' computer software, etc. can be patented.

2) Copyright

→ A copyright grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it for a limited duration.
→ Can be applied to a wide range of creative, intellectual or artistic forms or work.

3) Industrial design

→ An industrial design protects the visual design of objects which are not utility-related.

4) Trademark

→A trademark is a recognized part of the brand which gives it legal protection against plagiarism.

Advantages

→ Company knows the amount of expenditure increased on the production of a product & hence can add profit margin to achieve desired revenue.
→ Simplest method.
→ The company uses its own data to decide the cost, making it easier to evaluate reasons for escalations in expenses & taking corrective action immidiately.

Disadvantages

→ Does not take future demand into account.
→ Does not take competitor's actions & their effect of pricing into account.
→ Can lead to company overestimating the price of a product—method includes sunk cost but ignores opportunity cost.

Advantages

→ Fast diffusion and adoption—high market rate—edge over competitors.
→ Creates goodwill among early adopters.
→ Creates cost control & cost reduction pressures from the start.
→ Discourages entry of competitors.
→ Can create high stock turnover throughout the distribution channel.
→ Can create enthusiasm and support.

Disadvantages

→ Establishes long-term price expectations and image preoccupations which are hard to change.
→ Ways to rise the price is debated and here are some ways:
(i) gradual raise over a period of time.
(ii) employing a single large increase.
(iii) set the initial price at long-term market price—give an initial discount—go back to the original price.
→ Low profit may not be sustainable long enough for the strategy to be effective.

Advantages

→ Helps the company in recovering research & development costs.
→ Company's strategy can work great if it caters to quality conscious consumers rather than price conscious ones.

Disadvantages

→ Can backfire if close competitors introduce the same product at a lower price.
→ Is not a viable option when there are strict legal & government regulations regarding consumer rights.
→ If the company has a history of price skimming, then the consumer will never buy a newly launched product and rather wait a few months and buy it at a lower price.

Advantages

→ Sellers can use this to move goods or services that have failed to perform as anticipated and get an acceptable recoup.

Disadvantages

→ Can lead to losing other customers who paid full price for their purchases after learning the others got it for lower.

There are four pricing methods, each with its own benefits and drawbacks.