Marketing mix

The marketing mix is a business tool used in marketing and by marketing professionals. The marketing mix is often crucial when determining a product or brand's offering, and is often synonymous with the four Ps: price, product, promotion, and place; in service marketing The marketer E. Jerome McCarthy proposed a four Ps classification in 1960, which has since been used by marketers throughout the world. Product - A product is seen as an item that satisfies what a consumer needs or wants. It is a tangible good or an intangible service. Intangible products are service based like the tourism industry, the hotel industry and the financial industry. Tangible products are those that have an independent physical existence. Typical examples of mass-produced, tangible objects are the motor car and the disposable razor. A less obvious but ubiquitous mass produced service is a computer operating system. Every product is subject to a life-cycle including a growth phase followed by a maturity phase and finally an eventual period of decline as sales falls. Marketers must do careful research on how long the life cycle of the product they are marketing is likely to be and focus their attention on different challenges that arise as the product moves through each stage. The marketer must also consider the product mix. Marketers can expand the current product mix by increasing a certain product line's depth or by increasing the number of product lines. Marketers should consider how to position the product, how to exploit the brand, how to exploit the company's resources and how to configure the product mix so that each product complements the other. The marketer must also consider product development strategies. Price The price is the amount a customer pays for the product. The price is very important as it determines the company's profit and hence, survival. Adjusting the price has a profound impact on the marketing strategy, and depending on the price elasticity of the product, often it will affect the demand and sales as well. The marketer should set a price that complements the other elements of the marketing mix. When setting a price, the marketer must be aware of the customer perceived value for the product. Three basic pricing strategies are: market skimming pricing, market penetration pricing and neutral pricing. The 'reference value' (where the consumer refers to the prices of competing products) and the 'differential value' (the consumer's view of this product's attributes versus the attributes of other products) must be taken into account. Promotion - represents all of the methods of communication that a marketer may use to provide information to different parties about the product. Promotion comprises elements such as: advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion. Advertising covers any communication that is paid for, from cinema commercials, radio and Internet advertisements through print media and billboards. Public relations is where the communication is not directly paid for and includes press releases, sponsorship deals, exhibitions, conferences, seminars or trade fairs and events. Word-of-mouth is any apparently

informal communication about the product by ordinary individuals, satisfied customers or people specifically engaged to create word of mouth momentum. Sales staff often plays an important role in word of mouth and public relations (see 'product' above). Place - refers to providing the product at a place which is convenient for consumers to access. Place is synonymous with distribution. Various strategies such as intensive distribution, selective distribution, exclusive distribution and franchising can be used by the marketer to complement the other aspects of the marketing mix.

Grameenphone Marketing Mix

A product is anything that can be offered to a market and that is potentially valued by a target market for the benefit or satisfactions it provides, including objects, services, organization, places, people and ideas. As in a service providing business Grameenphone provides different types of service in its market as its products. In telecommunication business coverage and quality is more important than the number of product or service offered. With its best coverage and good quality Grameenphone has become the number one mobile operator in Bangladesh. Grameenphone has categorized its products in two types. These are 1. Standardized and 2. Customized Products

Product

Standardized

Customized

PrePaid

PostPaid

Standardized Product Standardized Product also has been divided into two types: Pre-Paid and Post-Paid. Pre-Paid The brand name of prepaid products is Smile Prepaid Standard and Smile (Mobile toMobile). Smile (Prepaid Standard)

Shohoj Package Aapon Package Bondhu Package Smile Standard prepaid allows consumers to make and receive ISD and NWD call inall telecom operators. Smile (Mobile to Mobile) Smile Mobile to Mobile allows its consumers to make and receive call from any mobile Postpaid Xplore Xplore is the brand name of post paid product of Grameenphone. It is categorized in two types: Xplore Package 1 and Xplore Package 2. Both of these Post-paid products has BTTB (Local, NWD, ISD and Economy ISD) connectivity, Flexible Credit Policy, Wide collection of value added service (SMS, EDGE, Welcome Tune, Voice Mail, Voice SMS) and International Roaming facility. Customized Product Business Solution is provided as a customized service to different medium and large organization and Professionals. This customization allows interesting call and sms charge among the member of the organization, fax and internet service within the organization branch. The customized service of one organization is never told to other or disclosed. Separate Strategic Business Unit (SBU) is responsible for the success of each of this product. As the way, this organization has proved that SBU is important for the success of a product in its market. Interestingly d-juice, which is claimed as a life style brand of Grameenphone, is not mentioned with this product line. Different types of value added services are provided with these products as product feature. Value Added Services With Grameenphones VAS, consumer can use mobile phone for many other purposesthan making voice calls. With Grameenphones VAS, consumer can use mobile phone to:

Send and receive text messages, picture messages, and voice messages Download ring tones, logos, wallpapers Obtain news updates, cricket score updates Browse the Internet and also send and receive e-mails

Transfer data and send fax Participate in competitions and vote for opinions Health line services

Branding The name or names that identify a companys products can be very important in positioning them. The brand name distinguishes a product from competitors products. A strong brand identity creates major competitive advantages. A brand that is recognized by buyers encourages repeat purchases. Grameenphone is successful in its products branding. All most every prepaid mobile phone user is aware about its Smile prepaid package and business consumers are aware about Business Solution. This Branding images comes from good quality of Grameenphones products as well as its high promotion activities. Corporate branding places primary emphasis on building brand identity using the corporate name. Grameenphone has become a corporate name in telecommunication business in Bangladesh. Corporate branding offers the advantage of using one advertising and sales promotion program to support all of the firms products. And it is often Grameenphones Strategic Analysis of Existing Products Grameenphone regularly evaluates the performance of its product. This evaluation of the performance of the product portfolio provides its management with diagnostic information to guide its strategies for new products, product modification, and product elimination. But the strategic analysis of existing products requires tracking the performance of the products in the portfolio, as shown below:

For tracking product performance Grameenphones management first establish the criteria and levels of performance for gauging product performance. These include both financial and non financial factors. Because of the various demand and cost interrelationships among products, an information system is established to measure how well a particular product is doing. The purpose of this tracking system is to maintain a product review process that will help to spot problem products or products features. Grameenphones management uses the diagnosis to help select a strategy for eliminating the problem. Action includes adding new products, cost reduction, product improvement, marketing strategy alteration or product elimination.

Product life cycle analysis The length of product life cycle is shorter in telecommunication business. So in a few years Grameenphones products moved from its introduction in to the growth stage and it is now in maturity stage. This first movement through the product life cycle