MARKETING ASSIGNMENT TYBMS-B

Group members: Abhijit Bhagavath Nikita Desai Shruti Kothari Vivek Hatode Ankit Chaubey Apeksha Khetan 105 91 72 94 81 131

1. Explain how advertisement helps marketing a product? Give example. (Explain with case study) Ans: Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common. Advertising messages are usually paid for by sponsors and viewed via various traditional media; including mass media such as newspaper, magazines, television, radio advertisement, outdoor advertising or direct mail; or new media such as websites and text messages. Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer and create value for their customers and for themselves. Marketing involves all of the activities, including advertising, which help get the product to the consumers. In a classroom business, marketing activities often begin during production. By doing so, students can begin selling their finished products immediately. Also, if there are not enough production jobs for all students, the marketing activities will keep many students busy. Selling the product and receiving the fruits of one's labors is one of the most enjoyable aspects of a classroom business. While this seems a rather straightforward part of the business, this section will help you to avoid some pitfalls which can put a damper on your business project.

ECONOMICS AND MARKETING

Marketing is an indispensable aspect of any business. Marketing involves all of the activities needed to get the product to the consumer. These activities include advertising, promotion, pricing strategies, store atmosphere and location, and packaging. Marketing is important to a business because no matter how good a product is, if consumers do not know about it, or if it is unavailable to consumers, then the business will suffer. Marketing is also important to consumers. Without effective marketing, consumers would have less information about products, and would have reduced access to them.

The purpose of advertising is to provide information about products to consumers in order to increase demand. The most fundamental reason that advertising exists is because information, like all other goods, services, and productive resources, is scarce. It is not freely available at a zero price. However, consumers need and want information about products so that they can make wiser and less costly purchasing decisions. When this information is provided honestly through advertising, businesses and consumers both benefit. Unfortunately, some advertisements are not completely truthful. To protect consumers, the government has established regulations which prohibit deceptive advertising practices. Business groups and professional organizations also have self-imposed advertising standards. It is not unusual for competing firms to take legal action against one another if they think a competitor's advertisement is false or misleading. Advertisers use various advertising techniques. The simplest advertisements provide basic, factual information about products and prices. More persuasive advertising techniques include testimonials by experts, association with celebrities and attractive people, conformity ("join the crowd") appeals, intellectual appeals using facts and figures, and suggestions that using a product will bring certain desirable results. Businesses almost always face competition, and therefore must be careful to sell at competitive prices. The price that "clears the market," i.e., that matches what businesses want to sell and what consumers want to buy, is the market price. If the price a business sets for a product is above a competitive market price, then there will be a surplus of that produce. In order to sell the entire product, the business must lower the price. If the initial price a business charges is below a competitive market price then there was a shortage. In this situation a business could raise the price and still sell all of the products, resulting in more revenues and more profit. The actual selling of a product by salespeople requires special skills. Salespeople are on the front line of a business. They must know the products characteristics both its strengths and weaknesses, and must learn how to make a sales representation that introduces their product to consumers in a truthful, yet positive and persuasive manner.

MARKETING THE PRODUCT

While there are various aspects to marketing, your classroom business will probably focus on advertising. Students have so much familiarity with this topic that they will respond eagerly to the challenge of getting information about their product to potential customers.

Students also should realize that they can increase sales by presenting their product in an appealing manner. Students should give their business an appealing "atmosphere," and also should package their product in a visually pleasing manner.

CASE STUDY
COLGATE-PALMOLIVE HAD A UNIQUE MARKETING CHALLENGE in launching Colgate Wisp, its new mini disposable toothbrush. Colgate began introducing the mini brush in April 2009 with help from Big Fuel, a social media marketing agency. The mini brush created a new product category for Colgate and meant marketing to a young, urban target18- to 25-yearold men and womena demographic the personal care giant doesnt typically focus dedicated attention on. It was clear that the company needed to figure out how to introduce the product into relevant conversations and contexts where its college student and young professional target hangs out. CHALLENGE: Colgate wanted to get Wisp into the hands of young, urban consumers who are active daters. The audience is active and mobile and dating opportunities can be created in an instant via text. Wisp is almost a brand new product category, said Avi Savar, Founding Partner and CEO of Big Fuel. Its an on-the-go product. The biggest challenge for us was making the product and brand relevant to the young consumer market. Not surprisingly, Colgate turned to social media to help it launch a multi-pronged campaign. But who wants to friend or follow a disposable toothbrush on Facebook? Colgate and Big Fuel tackled the challenge by conducting a lot of research. Big Fuel worked up several creative strategies and testing the concepts. We wanted to know, what does this product represent or mean to the audience? Savar said. Typically, Colgate talks to moms, but with Wisp, the marketer knew it needed unique social media components to introduce the product and seed interest. Big Fuel worked closely with Y&R and VML, Colgates creative and digital agencies respectively on the TV campaign, micro site, online banners and social media elements. STRATEGY: Big Fuel came up with a Be More Kissable creative platform that positioned Colgate Wisp as a kind of technology advancement that it believed would connect with the target audience. The idea centered around self-confidence: Everyone wants to be more kissable not just within the context of a physical kiss, but all the time. Feeling kissable is about feeling confident. From a social media standpoint, we thought it was a good platform, Savar explained. Colgate thought so too.

The concept, one of four that Big Fuel developed, was tested in four different markets. The linchpin involved creating irreverent online video content and syndicating it on YouTube and other video-sharing hubs. Along with a strategy focus on online video, Colgate Wisp developed a Face book application and a Be the Face of Wisp photo contest. At the heart of the strategyonline video. Big Fuel developed a series of viral videos, partnering with eight different publishers including College Humor and Your Tango and Web celebrities like Kip Kay, known for his how-to and prank videos, to syndicate the content. It released eight wacky videos targeting niche interests among the target audience, contextually integrating Colgate Wisp into how-to, comedy and talk show-genre video content. The goal was to achieve a seamless content integration with no heavy brand sell. Online video syndication offered Colgate the potential to scale its vast consumer target. The photo contest sought to identify the most kissable person in America: Participants who entered the contest uploaded a photo to colgatewisp.com and received a widget that enabled friends to vote for them. The widget was shared via the Facebook and MySpace networks and via the micro site. It was like a syndicated version of Are you hot or not?, Savar said. Big Fuel turned the contest into a social experience by enabling the widget to syndicate the photo content. Participants uploaded their photo, chose a specific Wisp color and placed it in the photo as an overlay. The contest enabled segmentation by geographic area as well. For example, when a man entered the contest, he could choose to look only at women in Chicago who entered the contest and decide whether they were kissable or not. On average, Big Fuel reports that there were 11 votes cast per person or one individual voting on 11 different people. To drive brand engagement further, Big Fuel created a Facebook app called Spin the Wisp. Once the app was installed, it had the names of the consumers Facebook friends. Consumers could have the app randomly pick Face book friends for the game or they could handpick up to 16 people to fill it. The Wisp landed on exotic locations and flavorsa woman could send a virtual kiss from Paris to her crush. Spin the Wisp became a novel way to flirt. RESULTS: Big Fuel reports that a Real Life Twitter video produced with College Humor netted more than 1.7 million plus views. The video featured man-in-the-street style interviews by a standup comic who walked around blurting out things like: I just found this new wisp. Anybody want a kiss? The Kip Kaye video Quick Draw Gadget in which Kip constructs a quick draw gadget out of a Colgate Wisp, has generated more than 1 million views. In total, the eight videos in the Be More Kissable series racked up more than 4.1 million views on YouTube as of late June 2010.The two most recent videos for Colgate Wisp are College Humor POV New Years Eve which logged 1,255,872 views and Michelle Phans Kissable Lips video which has 1,791,352 views as of late June. All the videos were seeded on multiple video-sharing sites.

The game saw a 10% click-through rate. Each time someone received a virtual kiss, they got a notification that appeared on their wall. The 10% click-through rate was based on the total number engagements vis--vis the notifications. The average number of spins per install on Spin the Wisp was 7.6. There were more than 100,000 engagements and 40,000 + installations of the widget and more than 1 million unique impressions of the widget. There were 500,000 views of a faux Wisp infomercial. Overall, as of May, 2010, Big Fuel reported 6 million+ total engagements with the Wisp campaign (widget installs, video views, game plays, pass-along). Big Fuel considered engagement as active participation, meaning someone played the game, shared it, watched a videothere was a 10-second minimum on viewingand commented on a video, Savar said. KEY TAKEAWAYS: Colgate learned the value of what an engagement is, according to Savar. It was the first time they ever measured anything based on engagements. They are accustomed to the number of impressions. Now, Colgate is working to extend the engagement metric to its more mature brands. The brand has begun to understand what the value of video, game and other content is vs. framing content only within the context of an ad buy, Savar explained. While the campaign was in the market for four months, the videos and game continue to run. NEXT STEPS: Colgate has moved forward with content marketing and social marketing for others of its product brands. Colgate shot new videos for the Wisp product site and two additional viral video. The brand says its looking to turn customers into audiences and its brands into social identities.

2. Marketing of goods and services is a must to increase market share of the company. Explain. Ans:He percentage of an industry or market's total sales that is earned by a particular company over a specified time period. Market share is calculated by taking the company's sales over the period and dividing it by the total sales of the industry over the same period. This metric is used to give a general idea of the size of a company to its market and its competitors. Order of entry has been demonstrated to have a significant effect on market share. A number of explanations for this effect have been suggested in the marketing and strategy literatures. To date, the market share advantage gained by pioneers has typically been treated as a main effectan automatic regularity. Treating order-of-entry as a main effect implies that there is no penalty on the effectiveness of a brand's marketing instruments for late entry and that a late entrant can compensate for being late by dedicating sufficient marketing resources to their product. In this study, we investigate the influence of order-of-entry into a market on the effectiveness of a firm's marketing mix decisions by asking the question, Can followers compensate for not being first by their marketing mix decisions? Also, even if they can compensate for being late, does this effort become increasingly more difficult with later entry? That is, are there asymmetries in the effectiveness of a brand's marketing mix variables that relate to its order of entry into the market, or as has been typically assumed to date, is order of entry strictly a main effect? An asymmetry exists, for example, if the market response to advertising is different for the first entrant versus the second or third entrant. An asymmetry also exists if the effects of, say, a price change by the first entrant on the second entrant are different than the effects on the third entrant. We develop a market share attraction model where the parameters vary as a function of order-of-entry. Our main contribution is in modeling the sources of order-of-entry advantage as asymmetries in the effectiveness of a brand's marketing instruments. Hence, distinct from previous research we explain why there are inherent order-ofentry effects. This paper is potentially of interest to researchers developing market share models and studying the effectiveness of marketing-mix variables. The substantive implication of our results concern directly academics interested in marketing strategy as well as the practicing marketing strategists. We model asymmetries in the market response of early entrants versus late entrants using data from two durables and three nondurables categories. With one exception, all data sets are established from the inception of the category and hence do not suffer from the possible bias of excluding pioneers who have failed. Results show that asymmetries in the effectiveness of a brand's marketing mix variables are an essential source of order-of-entry effects; we find that the main effects of order of entry are minimal. Order-of-entry effects do not necessarily lead to lower shares, but overcoming these effects is not without substantial cost to the late entrant.

Our results support previous research that has demonstrated advantages to early entry. In addition, we provide guidelines for how late entrants should compete. Later entry tends to reduce a competitor's price sensitivity, suggesting that they not instigate in a price war with earlier entrants in order to gain share. Order-of-entry tends to decrease response to quality and to promotion. To achieve the same impact on market share, later entrants need a bigger change in quality and need to spend more on promotion. Our data did not support an asymmetric effect on advertising.