UBTKM 1013 OCT Tutorial Questions

5. Describe at least three characteristics that you want people to associate with your brand. (1-3 sentences. 3.0 points)

Marketing Myopia is the short-sighted approach of management of focusing on a particular product and not identifying the correct industry the organization is in. (Levitt, 1975) In essence it implies that organizations should not define their business based on their products and should attempt to identify the business based on customer centric evidence. Organizations need to focus on customer wants and use customer centric evidence forming strategic decisions.

Determine and discuss a pricing strategy (penetration or skimming). Determine and discuss pricing tactics (product line pricing, value pricing, differential pricing, or competing against private brands) to be used for your product. Identify any legal and ethical issues related to the pricing tactics. Prepare a marketing distribution channel analysis identifying the wholesaler, distributor, and retailer relationships. Discuss how the distribution strategy fits the product/service, target market, and overall marketing objectives for the company.

Price skimming is a strategy which firms often using when starting enter into the market, which offers high price at the introductory stage of the production cycle and lowering the price when competitors have been attracted by the high profit margin to enter the market (Ma & Hernandez 2011).

7) The significance of the shift from transaction-based marketing to relationship marketing is that firms realize that just attracting customers to buy their products is not quite as important as establishing and maintaining relationships with them so that they will turn into loyal repeat customers. Relationship building begins early in marketing. It starts with what customers want and need, and then developing high-quality products to meet those needs.

Define what is meant by "brand equity" and discuss what a company can do to maintain brand equity.

Companies can choose many ways to set prices, skimming price strategy where a company sets a higher price than normal and a penetrating price where low initial price is set. “Pricing

3.) Transactional marketing, in the perspective of luring the customer for a one off purchase, focuses strongly on price and short term benefits and product performance, with limited service. Relationship marketing is all about generating repeated sales and customer interactions, thus focusing on bringing value to the customer, and assuring long term performance and service, all aspects of quality become major concerns. Relationship marketing brings customer centricity to the spotlight. This vision has

The second pricing strategy is the penetration pricing where the product enters newly into the market. To gain some consumer base from the competitors, the seller initially charges a lower price than the competitors. For example the ticket prices initially charged for IPL, Indian Premier League, matches were lower than the ticket price of the competition ICL matches. On the contrary, price skimming strategy is to grab the financially top class of the market and to do this, the seller charges high prices. The effectiveness of this strategy is based upon

Describe and give examples of some of the following types of pricing objectives: profit, market share, competitive effect, customer satisfaction, and image enhancements.

Since an increasing number of people focus on brand names instead of product, brands become important elements for customers to choose products (Carroll, 2008). When customers trust the brand, the benefits for the manufactures are generated. In the first place, brands can be used by products as the tool to identify and differentiate themselves from various products. Secondly, brands are helpful for companies to build a competitive advantage (Bick, 2009). Therefore, organisations take more attention to branding.

Today’s highly competitive business world forces companies to create different tactics and relatively rely on multiple pricing strategies to conduct business.

 Marketing Myopia suggests that businesses will do better in the end if they concentrate on meeting customers’ needs rather than on selling products. The mistake of paying more attention to products a company offers than to the benefits and experiences produced by these products.

5. RELATIONSHIP MARKETING: In this competitive era, companies are always looking for ways to develop and maintain a long lasting relationship with customers, employees and even suppliers. Relationship marketing is two way traffic; it goes beyond just making ‘sales’ and companies are beginning to realize. Good relationship with customers is a strategic weapon for any company, this is because long term customers buy more, do referrals and give back valuable and truthful feedback. Keeping a customer requires an extra effort. According to the founder of Walmart: “There is only one boss, the customer, and he can fire

Price, which is one of the most important elements of the marketing mix, can be difficult to get right. Pricing too high, or low, can negatively impact on customer satisfaction and revenue. Adopting a pricing strategy is necessary to achieve desired sales objectives (Chan & Wong 2005).