CASE STUDY-1

Determining the Marketing 4 P’s Any business organization in order to be successful needs to have a clear picture about the 4 P’s of marketing. This forms the basis on which business functioning takes place. What are these 4 P’s and why are they important? Let’s assume that we are interested to start up a small business enterprise and for that we have the necessary capital, skills and people. And now, since we are in the initial stage of enterprise formation, we need to answer the previous question. Marketing mix comprises of the four basic elements or components which are termed together as 4 P’s of marketing. They are:

Product: what is it that we have to offer to the market? What can it include? In what ways can it be modified, changed, expanded, diversified etc.? Will our products be accepted in the market? If not, how do we create a market for our products?

Price: at what value should the products be offered in the market? What should be the returns? Will it be worth to the buyers? What variations, differences and strategies can we adopt in order to earn a fair margin and also gain customer satisfaction?

Place: where must be our products available? How soon it’s demanded in the market? How quick we can deliver it to the consumption points? Who do we need to involve in the distribution of our products? How much will they charge for their services?

Promotion: why do we need to promote our products? Will people be aware of our products if we don’t do any promotion? If we need to promote our products, what kind of message we should convey to the market? In what ways and methods we can carry out the promotion?

Unless we know the answers to the above questions, we cannot make our business function. Therefore, after considering the strengths and weakness of our likely enterprise and studying the market opportunities, we decide to manufacture wax crayons.

The main reason behind this decision is – 1. We can come up with an effective 4 P’s either by marketing the crayons ourselves and if not, we can take orders by being the suppliers to our clients. 2. We know that our market mainly comprises of educational institutions, drawing and painting classes/centres, artistes, even big companies use crayons extensively. 3. We realise the potential of wax crayons as we can offer variety in sizes, quality, colours, price ranges, wholesale and retail prices etc. We can even venture into related areas such as wax articrafts, wax candles, oil colours, paint etc. 4. We can have direct contact with our clients and in the long term we can even engage an agency to market the crayons. 5. We know that promotion strategies can be based on the type of our customer segment and we could easily do it through advertising on Television, newspapers, children’s comics, notebooks, school notice boards, etc. We can even sponsor or conduct drawing competitions, art exhibitions or we can have contractual agreements with the stationery outlets, art schools etc.

However, we are still apprehensive about our marketing mix. We are yet to confirm about our marketing mix and until then we are unable to finalize on our decisions or start with the implementation process. Now, how will you determine the marketing mix for our enterprise? Do you have any ideas to make our enterprise successful particularly by enhancing or improving the marketing mix? What do you think will be the challenges in making an effective marketing mix since our enterprise is a new one?