Final blog update for marketing principles!!

4/21 class

For this class we covered sales promotion and everything that sales promotion entails. Sales promotion is any marketing communication activities other than advertising, personal selling and public relations in which a short term motivation influences a consumer to make a purchase. There are two categories of sales promotion. First, consumer sales promotion is entirely aimed at all types of consumers. The other is trade sales promotion which is aimed at the different parts of the distribution channel. Consumer sales promotion has multiple tools at it's disposal. These tools include coupons,rebates, premiums, loyalty membership programs, frequent buyer programs, contests/sweepstakes, sampling "which is one of the most effective of all", point of purchase promotion, and lastly online sales promotion. Trade sales promotion often times uses trade allowances and push money. Personal selling is typically used for high value products in which there is high risk for cognitive dissonance, and most often times is a tailored presentation to it's prospects. Companies also utilize relationship selling which is a sales practice that involves building, maintaining and enhancing interactions with customers to develop long term satisfaction through mutually beneficial partnerships. The steps to the selling process are 1. Generate leads 2. Qualifying leads, recognize leads and their buying power/receptivity and accessibility 3. Needs assessment 4. Handle objections 5. Closing the sale 6. Following up. While closing the deal it's important to look for signals from the customer, keep an open mind, negotiate and tailor to each market.

4/28 class

This class was devoted to choosing a price strategy. Most companies and firms are able to estimate the approximate price that they anticipate to sell their products at this is called a base price. Once you have determined your base price you are able to fine tune and adjust you price using a few different pricing strategies. On strategy that many companies use for high class and high value products new to the market is price skimming. A price skimming policy usually has a high introductory price then followed by a gradual reduction over the rest of it's product life cycle. Another attic commonly used is called penetration pricing, which offers a low introductory price to capture a large market share and to attain economies of scale. The third is called status quo pricing, this is commonly used in markets such as car dealerships, sales of appliances, tire stores, and grocery stores. These all use status quo pricing which strives to match or beat competitors prices. This can be beneficial or detrimental to companies because if a firm has a good distribution channel then they can afford to offer the lower price and still make a profit because they are able to ship the goods at a lower cost to the company. Where as some other companies are not as organized with their distribution channels so for them to match some competitors price can essentially reduce the profit margin so much that it could potentially drive the company out of business. Another strategy is value based pricing, this entails setting the price at a level that seems to the customer to be a good value as opposed to other options from competing companies. Many companies now days are trying to implement value based pricing, the reason for this is because consumers are all looking to get the best product for the lowest price possible so by creating a deal that appeals to the consumer as being a good value you will gain a greater market share. These are all tools used my marketers to fine tune the prices of their products, they can use any one of these of a combination of more than one.