Overall cost leadership – being able to consistently manufacture goods at lower prices than competitors due to economies of scale. For example 'Ford' motorcars selling large volumes of stock based on a lower profit margin than competitors.
Focus – operating within a niche market and having an overwhelming appeal to this audience, using a premium pricing strategy. For example 'Sunseeker' yachts who sell small volumes to a specific target audience based on a high profit margin.
Differentiation – This strategy falls into two categories, undifferentiated and differentiated. Undifferentiated markets are based around commodity products such as salt; obviously the only variables are quality and price.
Differentiated markets are those where many similar products are competing, but gain competitive advantage through positioning within the market and differentiating features such as;
1 Performance
2 Durability
3 Conformance
4 Reliability
5 Style
6 Design
For example, the range of 'ipods' from Apple, differentiated from other MP3 players through design and functionality.
By defining my products’ USPs earlier while looking at TEDA’s proposition I feel I have a clear understanding of what differentiates my VTAs from the wider market, so don’t feel it necessary to complete the suggested differentiation table.
Further reading
Unsatisfied by 'pinning all of my hopes' on such a generic marketing strategy, which seems to contradict with my experience and one of the integral learning points from other modules on the course of gaining success using a targeted marketing strategy, I decided to do further research.
I found that people often amalgamate 2 separate areas of marketing under the banner of marketing strategy when in reality they are separate. These areas are; Marketing Strategies and Marketing Management.
El-Ansary (2006:266) defines marketing strategy as "segmentation, targeting, differentiation and positioning" i.e. understanding the market, segmenting it, finding you target segment, designing your product to meet the needs of the target market, differentiating it from competitors and positioning in the customers' minds.
Marketing management is then designing a program that takes this formulated strategy and implements it to "create the value (product/price), communicating the value (promotion) and delivering the value (place)".
This suggests that my differentiation strategy above is valid as a strategy, but my focus needs to be on my marketing management, and that's where the 4 P's is appropriate:
Product
From all of the research so far I have realised the following about the VTA products:
1 Only product catering for ethnic diets – USP which must be promoted and could form an integral part of the ventures branding as an ethnic health authority.
2 Un-exploited market by competitors – avoid detection to prevent copycat products.
3 Intellectual property owned relating to diet specifications, and translations – Promote the bi-lingual feature to potential customers. Use this to develop further spin off products with reduced development costs.
4 Bespoke product folder/stand – given lead time for manufacture adequate stock levels must be maintained. Functionality and durability of product must be adequately conveyed to target audience.
5 Includes teacher guidance – convey feature and benefit to target audience.
6 Wide age appeal – monitor purchasers to constantly evaluate the most profitable target audience ultimately allowing for tailored promotion.
7 Developed by a charity with experience in this field – promote this message during sales calls to gain credibility.
8 Adaptable to new languages/formats – use client feedback to produce new versions either by request or popular demand.
9 Holistic approach to dietary advice – further develop the content of the VTA to cover wider issues such as understanding food labeling, or how to detect health issues.
10 Requires no specialist equipment – Promote this feature and benefit to target audience.
Pricing
A key area to review when formulating a marketing strategy is the price charged for goods. There are various considerations involved which include:
Pricing objective – high sales with low profit margin OR low sales with a high profit margin
Demand sensitivity – the elasticity of demand
Production costs – which in turn define the mark-up hence profit margin
Competitors pricing – setting a price will determine the market positioning of goods
Selecting the actual price – based on all of the information above
From discussion during the seminar this can be refined by using the 3 c's model:
1 costs
2 competitors pricing
3 customer assessment
The decision framework used to formulate my companies products can be seen below:
Place
Place refers to the distribution and marketing channels employed when selling goods. Selecting the correct channels has various cost implications and will ultimately define the success of the company.
If I had more money (tough for a student) or resources available to me (a sales force), The Ethnic Diet Association's product could be distributed through more channels, but from my research it is clear that 3 main areas stand out for distribution as cost effective and feasible options - Creating a website with sales facilities, cold-calling to generate leads/appointments, selling through 3rd party distributors (prevalent within the VTA market and usually done through catalogues).
In the future, trade fairs could be approached, but these require too much capital investment, time and travel to be initially feasible.
Promotion
Deciding on the types of promotion employed to market the VTAs will have a direct impact on sales of the products. Given the limited resources available at this stage, promotion channels must be selected which are low risk and involve minimal capital expenditure for maximum impact.
Various options are available and include:
1 Personal selling
2 Direct marketing
3 Sales promotion
4 Advertising
5 Branding
Decisions about the final choice of promotion methods can be seen below;
Building up a brand will be very important for me, as I have the potential to become the authority and point of reference for ethnic dietary advice due to the lack of competition. If I manage this, it will then create high barriers to entry into the market for any new competitors through my brand and reputation.
At the minute this pressure to create a formidable brand is down to me and my sales abilities. Usually companies would put together a large advertising campaign to promote a new brand, but this requires too much investment - I shall be relying on my skills, website and 'word of mouth advertising', wish me luck!
Recommended Links:
• Role of price – www.bizpeponline.com (software used to calculate price)
• Advertising – www.ipa.co.uk (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) and www.adassoc.org.uk (The Advertising Association)
• Internet marketing – www.adventivemarketing.com and www.wilsonweb.com
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