Discuss the 4 alternative branding strategies available to market organization?

Multiproduct branding, multibranding, private branding, and mixed branding. In Multiproduct Branding a company uses one name for all its products in a product class. In Multi branding, alternately, a company can engage in multi branding, which involves giving each product a distinct name. Disney uses the Miramax and Touchstone pictures names for movies directed for adults and its Disney name for childrens films. Compared with the multi product approach, promotional costs tend to be higher with multibranding. The company must generate awareness among consumers and retailers for each new brand name without the benefits of any previous impressions. The advantages are each brand will be unique to each market segment and there is no risk that a product failure will have any affect on other products in the line. In private branding a company uses private branding, often called private labeling or reseller branding, when it manufactures products but sells them under the brand name of a wholesaler or retailer. Private branding is popular because it typically produces high profits for manufacturers and resellers. Mixed Branding is a compromise between manufacturer and private branding is mixed branding, where a firm markets products under its own name and that of a reseller because the segment attracted to the reseller is different from their own market. Discuss the four Is of services? The four Is of services are intangibility, inconsistency, inseparability, and inventory. Intangibility is where the product cant be held, touched, or seen before the purchase decision. Because services tend to be a performance rather than an object, they are much more difficult for consumers to evaluate. To help consumer assess and compare services, marketers try to make them tangible or show the benefits of using the service. For example, airlines might show new seats in their planes and emphasize their size and other tangible benefits. Inconsistency means that a seller or a service industry cannot duplicate the quality of service all the time. However, the business enterprise offering it tries its best to give the optimum satisfaction to the customers. This is usually done through a series of orientations, in-service trainings and seminars to upgrade the knowledge and skill of their employees. For inseparability service is people-oriented. It cannot be separated from the people. The general public is being served. This is especially true to agencies or companies that earn money through servicing or rendering services to the people like hospitals, hotel, restaurants, and schools, among others. This kind of establishments must put human relations as their number two priorities in their list of concerns. For inventory, services cannot be stored. Services are evaluated not in terms of the number they are performed but the satisfaction that was effected. Usually done by conduction survey/interviews with the clients or customers, or by simply giving a checklist where in support the customers can give their opinions or evaluation regarding the services offered. Discuss the various pricing objectives and pricing constraints? Pricing objectives involve specifying the role of price in an organizations marketing and strategic plans whereas pricing constraints are factors that limit the range of prices a firm may set. Six broad objectives that tie into pricing are profit, sales, market share, unit volume, survival, and social responsibility. In profit, objectives such as managing long-run profits, maximizing current profits, and target return objectives are usually measured in terms of return on investment or return on assets. In sales, firms pricing objectives may be to either increase sales revenue or unit sales. Market share is the ratio of the firms sales to revenues or unit to those of the industry. Unit volume increases by employing sales incentives, such as lowering prices, giving rebates, or

offering lower interest ratescan reduce profit in short run. Survival is a more important objective than profits, sales, and market share. Social responsibility is where the firm recognizes its obligations to customers and society in general. Pricing constraints include, Discuss the four common approaches to help find the approximate price level? There are four different types of common approaches to help find the approximate pricing level. The 4 approaches are demand-orientated pricing, cost-orientated pricing, profit-orientated pricing, and competition-orientated pricing. Demand-oriented pricing is the method in which price of a product is changed according to its demand. Higher price is charged when the demand is strong and lower price is charged when it is weak. It involves skimming pricing which is setting the highest initial price that a customer is willing to pay. For example, when the I-Phone first came out people were willing to pay a good amount for the phone. It should be done if enough costumer are willing to buy the product immediately at the highest initial price to make these sales profitable, the price will not attract competitors, lowering the price has only a minor effect on increasing the sales volume and reducing the unit cost and customer understand the high price as signifying high quality. Another strategy is called penetration pricing. A penetration pricing strategy is designed to get more customers to buy the product, usually at a lower price than the top segments are willing to pay. A current example would be KIA, who prices their product low compared to others with similar quality and warranty in order to gain share. One more strategy is the prestige pricing strategy where it involves setting a high price so that quality consumers will be attracted to the product and buy it. Price lining is also a strategy used in demand oriented pricing. It a system of retail merchandising under which a merchant sets up fixed prices for various categories of goods and plans his buying and other expenses so as to be able to supply goods regularly at such prices. Odd-eve pricing is as well used which involves setting prices a few dollars or cents under an even number. For example, Sear's pricing its camera for $99.99 or Amazon pricing its TV for $399.99. Also, target pricing is as well used which estimates the prices a customer is willing to pay for a product and then the manufactures work backwards through markups taken by retailers and wholesalers to determine what price they can charge wholesalers for the product. Bundle pricing is done by marketing two or more products for a single pricing. For example, Pathmark is offering buy two and get one free offer with any cold beverages. Lastly, yield management pricing is the strategy used by charging different prices to maximize revenues for a set amount of capacity. It is a complex approach that matches supply and demand to customize the price if the service. Cost-oriented approach a price setter stresses the cost side if the pricing problem, not the demand side. It uses standard markup price where a company add a fixed percentage to the cost of all the items in a specific product class. It is impossible to set a certain margin for each product so they used this approach to put all the products and different class and add a certain percentage margin on them. Cost-plus pricing is the practice by a company of determining the cost of their product to them and then adding a percentage on top of that price to determine the selling price to the customer. For example, if a company sells a product for $1.00 then it may add a percentage on top of that $1.00 as the "plus" part of cost-plus pricing. That portion of the price is their profit. Furthermore, experience curve pricing will normally decline 25 to 30 percent each time the total accumulate experience has been doubled. Profit-oriented Pricing approaches is when a price setter may choose to balance both revenues and costs to set price using profit oriented approach. It uses target profit pricing when a firm

sets an annual target of a specific dollar volume profit and target return on sales pricing when a firm set a price which will give them a specified percentage. Competition oriented pricing is a strategy when a firm relates its prices to those of competitors rather than to cost or demand. It is not necessary to charge the same price as the competition because prices may be lower or higher by whatever percentage one wants. In an industry where products are not very different, competition oriented pricing takes the form of the going rate pricing, that is, most firms charge a similar price for much the same product. This price level reflects costs and a fair rate of return. Discuss the three major types of vertical marketing systems? Vertical marketing systems are professionally managed and centrally coordinated marketing channels designed to achieve channels economics and maximum marketing impact. It involves corporate systems, which combines successive stages of production and distribution under single ownership is established through common ownership. A contractual system is a vertical marketing system in which independent firms at different levels of production and distribution join together through contracts to obtain more economies or sales impact than they could achieve alone. Coordination and conflict management are attained through contractual agreements among channel members. The franchise organization is the most common type of contractual relationship. There are three types of franchises: manufacturer-sponsored retailer franchise system, manufacturer-sponsored wholesaler franchise system, and service-firm-sponsored retailer franchise system. The fact that most consumers cannot tell the difference between contractual and corporate VMSs shows how successfully the contractual organizations compete with corporate chains. An administered system is a vertical marketing system that coordinates successive stages of production and distribution, not through common ownership or contractual ties, but through the size and power of one of the parties. Manufacturers of a top brand can obtain strong trade cooperation and support from resellers (P&G). Large retailers such as WalMart can exert strong influence on the manufacturers that supply the products they sell. Discuss the various ways of setting the promotional budget? There are various ways of setting the promotional budgets. One way is the percentage of sales budgeting where a firm decides to spend a percentage of total sales on their marketing campaign. For example the company will decide to put aside 15% of total sales to their marketing and promotional campaign. Another way is the competitive parity, it is an advertising budget method whereby an advertiser chooses to use a level of spending on advertising that is similar to the advertising spending level being used by major competitors. On more way is the objective and task approach; here a company calculates how much they would need to reach their objectives for a particular campaign. For example if we were to launch a new games console how much money would be needed to raise sufficient awareness of this new brand and features to the target audience. A budget is then set with this objective in mind. Lastly, all-you-can-afford approach is in approach where the advertising budget that establishes the amount to be spent on advertising as the funds remaining after all other necessary expenditures and investments have been covered in the comprehensive budget for the business or organization. Discuss the stages and objectives of the selling process?

The selling approach process consists of six stages, prospecting, preapproach, approach, presentation, close, and follow-up. Prospecting focuses on developing a list of potential customers. Many salespeople use the telephone to prospect. Some firms get names of prospects from list brokers. Pre-approach involves the collecting of as much relevant information as possible prior to the sales presentation. The pre-approach investigation is carried out on new customers but also on regular customers. Approaching the customer, during this stage, the sales representative takes a minute or two to try to get to know the prospect. This phase usually involves some small talk to warm up the prospect and help them open up. Presentation is the process in which the salesperson has to present the product and describe its features in brief. The presentation should be matched with the approach of the prospect so that the salesman can continuously hold his attention and create interest in the product. Closing is fifth stage, after the objections have been removed, the only thing left to do is close the sale. This can involve writing up an invoice and providing any final information to the customer. The follow up is the last stage in the personal sales process. After the product or service has been delivered, the sales representative follows up with the customer to find out if they are pleased. If there were any issues with the product, the sales rep can work with the customer to get them resolved. If the customer is happy, the sales rep can also try to obtain additional referrals from the customer. Discuss Porter's generic business strategies? Porters generic business strategy involves four different strategies: cost leadership, differentiation, cost focus, and differentiation focus. Cost Leadership is the strategy that involves the organization aiming to be the lowest cost producer within their industry. The organization aims to drive cost down through all the elements of the production of the product from sourcing, to labor costs. The cost leader usually aims at a broad market, so sufficient sales can cover costs. Differentiation is the strategy where the organization aims to focus its effort on particular segments and charge for the added differentiated value. If we look at McDonalds, for example, it is differentiated by its very brand name and brand images of Big Mac and Ronald McDonald. New concepts which allow for differentiation can be patented, however patents have a certain life span and organization always face the danger that their idea that gives the competitive advantage will be copied in one form or another. Focus strategy involves controlling expenses, lowering product price targeted at a narrowing segment of the market and offer its products/services to that narrow segment. These offerings could be either following cost leadership or differentiation strategy. Finally, a differentiation focus strategy requires the products to have significant points of differences to target one or only a few market segments. For example, Honda planners discovered young city dwellers need smaller cars they can park in cramped spaces. This suggests offering a new Toyota models with an important point of difference for a narrow segment of buyers.