Centralized and Decentralized Marketing Strategies

* Sales reps secure the best product placement in stores, conducting taste tests in stores and convincing “individual store managers to pull the product from the central buyer.” (Singer, 2008)

The promotionPromotion is the business of communicating with customers. It will provide information that will assist them in making a decision to purchase a product or service. The pace and creativity of some promotional activities are almost alien to normal business activities.The cost associated with promotion or advertising goods and services often represents a size-able proportion of the overall cost of producing an item. However, successful promotion increases sales so that advertising and other costs are spread over a larger output. Though increased promotional activity is often a sign of a response to a problem such as competitive activity, it enables an organization to develop and build up a succession of messages and can be extremely cost-effective.

• The promoters have been trying to promote the concept through press and meeting with retailers.

adopted by various companies to influence the masses towards their products at large is part of their marketing strategy . Offering discounts and

• The company should find effective way to communicate about the product in public to boost up the sale of existing product but this plan does not work every time and it can be tricky also.

Every company and/or organization starts and operates to achieve a single major goal, which is normally included in the company’s mission statement. Setting a goal, however, does not translate into success on its own; it is only the fist step. Understanding market segmentation is the second most important aspect of doing business. “Sellers and advertisers want to be able to determine what the potential market is for their product or service, as well as the best ways to reach potential consumers” (Terrell, 2013). Once a goal is set, an organization first must decide if it wants to operate locally, regionally, nationally, and/or internationally, as the size of the geographic coverage has a large

In terms of sales and marketing, we adapted our strategy based on how the products played in each segment. Our strategy was to spend efficiently in marketing & sales to keep the customer awareness and accessibility high for the premium products, while maintaining a decent level of awareness and accessibility in other segments.

Sometimes it’s not so important that your product fits the exact needs of the segment you target; rather, it’s vital that customers perceive that you do, even if it’s not true. In order to achieve this, the proper amount of advertising and sending the appropriate message are both vital.

In retail, an example would be in department stores; a salesperson can push or recommend a particular product.

Trade promotions and cooperative advertising are part of a push strategy. Trade promotion is directed towards retailers and takes the form of catalogs, trade magazine advertisements, booklets for consumers, and displays. Using gallery stores will attract and serve their target customers, the 40- to 59-year-old homeowner with an annual household income over $100,000. Also, 78% of the survey respondents state that displaying furniture in individual room settings is somewhat important to very important. Half of the $225,000 deducted from cooperative advertising will be added to the trade promotions fund. Also, an amount of $12,000 is added to the trade promotions fund to assist their salespeople servicing the 50 new accounts. The trade promotions fund will have a total of $591,500. Cooperative advertising is usually spent on newspaper advertising in a retailer’s city. The reduced funds of cooperative advertising for BatesManor will diminish the amount of newspaper advertisements.

* Augustine Medical, Inc. is using a push strategy. They are relying on distributors to push their products on to their prospective buyers.

Universal worked under the assumption that these strategies would not only increase the number of retail buyers but also move retailers to increase display space for Universal increasing Universal's ability to market their artist. (Smith, 2003).

The overall marketing communications campaign is analogous to a war. The many battles within the campaign are the communications mix elements or geographical areas targeted. For example the advertising campaign is a series of advertisements, and the activities that help produce them, which are designed to acieve interrelated goal.

Additionally, promotion can be considered as a marketing strategy which helps the increase in sales (Shimp 1997:42). Starbucks attempted to establish a national monopoly without having to use advertising. They relied on organizing events and promoting their brand – by using mugs and T-shirts on which they printed artworks that were a reflection of a city’s personality.

As stated in the case, the ban on door-to-door selling was lifted in 2005. Avon Products and Amway are taking advantage of this by using door-to-door selling as a method of marketing their products. The main advantage to using door-to-door selling in the sale of cosmetic products is that it is a cheap and cost effective method of getting products across to the customers. Companies do not incur the cost of setting up physical stores and hiring dedicated sales person when using door-to-door selling as the products are sold directly from the manufacturer to the customers via one level of sales representatives. Illustrating the success of this method of sales, Avon Products had already recruited 350,000 sales representatives by the end of 2006. We can assume that most of these sales representatives are being paid purely on a commission basis and Avon Products does not incur any other additional or fixed cost in employing these sales personnel thus making it a very cost effective method of selling products. This and the lack of intermediaries between the manufacturer and the customer mean that the