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ROLE OF IMC IN
MARKETING PROCESS

Priyanka Nair
Marketing and Promotions Process Model
 Marketing Strategy & Competitive Strategy

Marketing strategy evaluates the various ways and options for achieving
marketing objectives and selects the right way to accomplish those
objectives. Competitors are companies that satisfy the same or similar
consumer need.

Once the company identifies its competition, it must identify its

objectives, strengths and weakness, current strategies etc. in order to
frame its own competitive strategies and the most important area is
competitive advantage.

Competitive advantage is a company’s ability to perform in one or more

ways that are superior to the competitors and difficult to copy with or
emulate. For example Maggi’s in taste, Lux in celebrity image, BSNL in
extensive remote area network etc.
Marketing Strategy & Competitive Strategy

A company can:

MAINTAIN: its leadership position by attracting

more customer, discover and promote new
product uses, encourage product usage etc.

CHALLENGE: a leader by offering price

discounts, innovative products, improved
services or its intensify its advertising etc.

FOLLOW: it can follow a leader by emulating

the leader’s products, cloning or improving
them.
Marketing Strategy & Competitive Strategy

Segmentation divides a large market into smaller and more

manageable submarkets in order to identify:

(a) homogenous markets (consumer groups), that are similar in needs

and reactions to a company’s marketing activities
(b) are considerable different from other such groups in the market.

A market segment is thus a group of consumers in a market who

have similar needs. For e.g. in case of cars not all can buys a costly
cars.

The opposite of segment marketing is mass marketing, which is the

practice of selling the same product with the same marketing actions
to all consumers in market.
Marketing Strategy & Competitive Strategy

A market can also segmented in two ways: consumer market and business
market. The market are segmented in following ways:

Geographic
Demographic
Psychographic and
Behavioral
Type Of Market Segmenting

GEOGRAPHIC: in this approach, markets are divided on the basis of

geographic variables like cities, towns, regions or nations. This
technique is useful if a company finds consumers of different regions
exhibiting different needs, buying patterns, reactions to marketing
strategies etc.

DEMOGRAPHIC: in this approach market is divided on the basis of

population characteristics like age, income, education, occupation,
gender, family size, race, religion etc.
Type Of Market Segmenting

PSYCHOGRAPHIC: it classifies consumers according to their attitude,

aspirations, values, lifestyle, personality traits etc. in this segmentation
is also done by (AIOs) method which is activities, interest and opinions
and by (VALSs) value and lifestyle.

BEHAVIORAL: here consumers are divided on the basis of various

behavior like loyalty, product purchase, use occasion etc. loyal people
are those people who never change the products, split loyal are people
who stay loyal to 2- 3 products and switchers who keep on changing
products.

BENEFIT SEGMENT: consumers may segmented on the basis of the

benefit they seek from same product.
 Selecting A Target Market

Companies has the choice of three approaches:

UNDEFERENCIATED OR MASS MARKETING: wherein it offers the same

product with the same marketing strategies to all segments in the market
by ignoring the difference among segments. E.g. LPG, DRUGS etc.

DIFFERENCIATED MARKETING: here the firm recognizes the differences

among the segments and develops tailored products or uses different
marketing strategies for selected segments.

CONCENTRATED MARKETING: wherein a firm concentrates on single

segment , gains strong knowledge of segments needs, specializes in its
product offering and marketing strategies and thereby gains a large share
of this segment.
Differentiating & Positioning
The process of creating a meaningful and valuable difference in the
minds of the consumers for a firm’s product compared to its
competitor’s products is called differentiation/ positioning. A product
can be differentiated on the basis of different characteristic:

PRODUCT CHARACTERITICS: features, size, shape, color, design,

durability etc.

SERVICE CHARACTERITSTIC: after- sales- service, maintenance and

repairing

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS: competency and courtesy of sales

people, credibility, communication skills etc.

DISTRIBUTION CHARACTERISTICS: coverage area, availability etc.

Type Of Market Segmenting
FOR DRY SKIN BUT
GENTLE
FIGHTS WITH CAVITY
AND FAMILY ORIENTED
FAMILY ORIENTED AVG
PRICED BIKE

FOR DRY SKIN BUT FOR FRESH BREATHE FOR YOUTH AND
INTENSE AND FOR COUPLE ADVENTOUROUS
Type Of Positioning

CONSUMER FOCUSED POSITIONING:

highlights the type of consumer who use the
products etc.

COMPETITIVE POSITIONING: positioning

according to competitors.
Type Of Positioning

ATTRIBUTE POSITIONING: focuses on

products design, number of awards, years
of experience. E.g. Parle Monaco tries to
position the biscuit as very light weight.

USE OR APPLICATION POSITIONING:

a product can be associated itself with
specific use or application. E.g. Milkmaid
originally launched as milk substitute later
went to reposition as ‘a recipe enhancer’.
Type Of Positioning

IMAGE POSITIONING: feeling,

emotion, associating brand with a idea.

BENEFIT POSITIONING: e.g. Nokia

as “user friendly phone”, Odomos “non
sticky mosquito repellent”.
Type Of Positioning

USER POSITION: the product claims to be

made for; or associated itself with a particular
user group. For e.g. Elle 18 for teen age girls,
Johnson & Johnson for babies & mothers etc.

QUALITY PRICE POSITIONING: the product

claims to be offering best vale, either in terms
of price or quality. E.g. Nirma & Surf or Parle &
Sun feast.

PRODUCT CLASS POSITIONING: instead of

competing with individual brands, the product
bypasses competition by positioning itself into
another product category. E.g. Cadbury
Colour scheme

COMPETITOR POSITIONING: the product

pitches itself against a named or apparent
competitor and claims to be better in some way
than the competitor. E.g. Captain cook salt
positioned itself as free- flowing than Tata Salt,
Savlon positioned itself as non- burning, non-
smelling antiseptic compared to Dettol.

IMAGE POSITIONING: the brand tries to

associate itself with a strong image or
personality. For Lux is best known for celebrity
image, Axe deodorant for women attracting
image.
Push and Pull Strategy

A company along with customers have to do promotional activities to

influence, motivate and persuade channel members so that they carry,
merchandise, promote and sell an organization's products in an
advantageous manner.

Such strategy of directing promotions to the channel members is called a

promotional push strategy since a product is pushed through channel
members to its customers. An alternative promotional strategy is the pull
strategy that involves the manufacturer using advertising and promotion to
induce consumers to ask for the product and pull it through the distribution
channel.

The objective of this strategy is to build demand among the end- users who
are encouraged to request the product from reseller.