H. Borden's Marketing Strategies

Term Paper

Executive Summary

The effectiveness of a management is often valued based on the profit they are bringing in to the firm. Profits in the simplest term are the result of sales over various costs of a firm combined. In order to increase the profits management has to find a way to sell more and this is done with the help of marketing. To be more precise the area that helps management to create more customers in marketing is known as the Marketing MIX. Marketing is a combination of various activities related to marketing; some say there are 7 activities in total but the commonly used version has only four and they are 1) product, 2) place, 3) promotion and 4) pricing. Product refers to the various kinds of goods and serviced provided

Furthermore it helps in market planning and execution as well as influencing the demand and supply of the product. Marketing MIX came in to light from the article written by Neil. H. Borden, which was published in 1964 “The Concept of Marketing MIX”. Marketing MIX is a dynamic process which needs careful attention because if dealt wrong it cause company a loss that will take years to recover. Initially Marketing MIX included product, place, personal selling, packaging, advertising and so on, but later E. Jerome McCarthy grouped them in to four product, price, place, promotion. These are considered as the parameters the manager can control, subjected to both their internal and external affairs.

Components or Elements of Marketing MIX

Marketing mix is the combination of mainly four elements of marketing and the role they play in creating value to your product and delivering them to the target customers. There are ongoing arguments about the components of Marketing MIX some management thinkers state them as 7 in numbers yet a few acknowledges 5, however across globe or universally there are mainly four, and they are :-

1)

No manager will place his product at a price greater than that of the competitor in fear of losing customers; also he will not go for a reduced price as it can result in a price war.

d) Objectives: - objectives of each firm may be different from each other some might have profit maximisation, sales maximisation, market enhancing etc.

e) Government regulation: - in case of some products like rice, bus fares, medicines, etc the government may make a price ceiling which will not allow firms to charge more.

Methods in price fixation

Methods of fixing the price can be broadly divided in to: -

a) Cost based pricing: - under this method the price of the product is determined after considering the cost of production and the margin expected.

b) Competition based pricing: - when there is a strong competition and the quality of products of the competing brands are not much different, pricing is done based on the price of the competitor or rather market price

c) Demand based pricing: - when demand is high price can also be set high as customers will be willing to buy it even if the cost is high however, in case of a low demand the price must be kept under check as a high price can result in a significant lose of