MRKT 620 Final Exam

1. Supermarket chain Reynold's is considering stocking a number of private-label products

in order to offer customers the lowest possible prices. Explain how this strategy could
benefit the company.

Reynold's strategy to stock private-label products to offer customers the lowest possible prices
could benefit by diversifying the product range, increasing the customer base, increasing the
stores competitiveness and increases the potential sources of revenue. By diversifying the
product range, the store could attract new customers that may have not been interested in their
store previously and could buildup customer loyalty. By offering the products at the lowest price
the store is enticing the customers in the lower income groups to come to the store which will
increase the number of customers coming into the store. By incorporating the private-label
products Reynold’s will be able to increase the stores competitiveness against the large
supermarket chains. Finally, by producing the private-label products this will increase the
sources of revenue that comes into the stores and could help the stores expand.

2. What are the elements of the marketing communications mix?

There are eight total elements of the marketing communications mix. The first is
advertising, which is a form of paid promotion of an idea, good or service. The second is
sales promotion, this provides motivations for the customer buying the product or service
in the short-term. Events and experiences can bring the customers to the good or
service and entice them to try it. The fourth is public relations and is all about the
relationship that the good or service has with the public or the customer base, this could
mean creating good publicity or dealing with potentially unfavorable information from
getting out to that customer base. Next is online or social media marketing, the premise
is to engage the customer and bring direct or indirect awareness to the good or service
you are marketing. Mobile marketing is a type of online marketing but is broken into its
own element since it puts the information right in front of the customer on their
smartphones or tables. Seventh is database or direct marketing which uses the more
traditional methods of mailing, calling or emailing the customer to engage and introduce
them to your product. Lastly is the oldest and most traditional which is personal selling
which is the interaction with the seller and consumer face-to-face by making
presentations or answering questions.

3. Marco is working on promoting his company's Glazer brand of electronic razors. Market
research suggests that the target audience possesses an intent to use Glazers, but is
dithering over actually making the purchase. How can he modify the communications
program to get customers to purchase Glazer razors? (hint: use Hierarchy-of-effects
model)

Since most customers who will be using the razor already has a preferred razor, Marco
will have to market the product in a way that could entice them away from what is
familiar and try the Glazers razors. Since the customers are already interested in the
razor should highlight the strengths that the Glazers razor has over competing electronic
 razor brands. These strengths could include but are not limited to the durability, value,
and performance of the razor as compared to the competition.

4. In developing an advertising program, marketing managers can make the five major
decisions known as the five Ms. List and explain each of these Ms.

The five Ms that a marketing manager would need to decide on are mission, money,
message, media and measurement. The mission of the advertising program is what the
program hopes to achieve. The money is the budget that can be spent and spread
across all media types. The message is what the campaign is trying to say and get the
potential customer to understand. Media is when the managers have to decide which
type of media, they are going to use to promote the good or service. Finally,
measurement is how we can record the results of the program to know if it was a
success or impact that was made on the consumer.

5. What are the four types of advertising timing patterns available to marketers when
launching a new product?

The marketer has four types of advertising timing patterns that they can choose from
when they are launching a new product. The first advertising timing pattern is continuity.
Continuity is when the advertising type is shown evenly during the given marketing
period. The second advertising timing pattern is concentration. Concentration is the
spending of all the allocated advertising budget during a single period of time instead of
spread out. This pattern can best be exhibited in the toy industry during to the holiday
season. Fighting is the third advertising timing pattern that marketers can choose from.
The fighting pattern is when the campaign sees a sharp increase in exposure, which is
then followed by a cutting of exposure to zero followed by another sharp increase of
exposure. This pattern is most useful to seasonal goods or services that are cyclical and
do not necessarily have a large advertising budget. The final pattern is pulsing. Pulsing
is the constant and continuous advertising at low visibility which is followed by periodic
spikes in exposure.

6. What are the advantages and disadvantages of online marketing communications?

Online marketing communications has many advantages and disadvantages. One of the
advantages is that online marketing communications has four main categories that can
be used for varying applications dependent on your campaigns needs. These categories
are websites, search ads, display ads and e-mail. Some other advantages are that the
marketing team can automatically know how their campaign is doing by viewing the
number of unique visitors the online marketing category has received. This allows the
team to have the most up to date information quickly and gives them the ability to
change the marketing plan instantly based on the customer response and feedback.
Online marketing also allows the marketer the ability to place their good or service in
contextual placement where the item being sold can be seen by its direct customer
category. While there are many advantages, the disadvantage of online marketing
communications is that the customer has such a large quantity of messages daily that
the customer may screen out your advertising campaign because it does not interest
 them at that unique moment. The team may also have a misguided view of how effective
their campaign is going based on the amount of unique visitors that their campaign may
have due to “bogus clicks”. There is also the potential of loss of control since anything
and everything on the internet can potentially be hacked and corrupted. While there are
some disadvantages to online marketing communications the advantages far outweigh
the disadvantages.

7. What is the key takeaway from the “Sell me this pen” video in our last lecture.

In my opinion the key takeaway is that the key to selling anything is creating a sense of
urgency in the customer. This makes the customer feel like if they don’t buy in this case
a pen then they will lose out and be worse off than they were before if they do not buy
this pen.