Services

This past weekend I went to get a pedicure. My toes desperately needed to be painted. While I was sitting in the chair I started to think of all my finals and my marketing final came to mind. Getting my toes painted is a form of a service. Normal when I get my nails done, my hair cut, or eyebrows waxed I do not ever really think about what is actually happening; the service that I am receiving that in turn will make me feel happy once I am all done. Not only that, but as the lady is asking me what color I wanted for my nails, I started to apply my skills from marketing class and realized that was the service encounter. The actual interaction that was being taken place between the wonderful nail lady and myself. It was fun to pick out parts of marketing while sitting in the chair getting the wonderful service of getting a pedicure done to myself.

Promotions

A marketing strategy that companies use to try and get their product out there and to get customers interested in new products is promotions. A promotion is Encouragement of the progress, growth, or acceptance of something; or as we have learned in our marketing 360 class it can also be defined as the coordination of a marketer’s communication efforts to influence attitudes or behavior. "As seen on TV" products often use promotions to try and entice customers to try out these products. You often hear lines such as "if you call within the next 30 minutes we will take 50% off the price of your product" or "call now and receive not just one, but two for the price of only one." These lines draw the attention of new customers and they believe they are receiving a deal and should buy this product.







In the final seconds of this video they announce the price of the EZ Cracker and then stop and offer you another item for a $20 value but will give it to you for free if you call now. When people think they are receiving something "two for the price of one" they believe they are getting a good deal and are more willing to buy that product. Promotions are a great way to get your new product out on the market and make an immediate customer base. Promotions do not have to be just for new products though, you can use promotions for a product that already exists. If the product started to slump in the market, promotions are a good way to get that product back into the market and bring up sales for that specific product.

Materials Handling

Materials handling is the process of moving products into, within, and/or out of warehouses. In this video it shows materials handling gone wrong.

Materials handling is very valuable to a company. It is the process of making sure that their products are moved and stored correctly. As you can see in this video with one small incident can lead to the company losing hundreds of dollars. Materials handling must be done in the correct manner and the handlers cannot mess around on the job.

Inelastic demand vs. elastic demand

A product has inelastic demand when the demand for a product has no change when there is a slight change in price. An example of an inelastic product would be a car. If the price for certain parts of a car go up the price of the car will stay relatively the same and the demand of these cars are still going to be the same. A product would be considered to have an elastic demand if when the price of a product goes up or down so does the demand of that product. For example, if the price for gum was to drastically increase, the demand for gum would decrease; which then in turn would lead to the demand of mints to rise.

This graph shows that for and inelastic product that when the price increases or decreases, the demand (quantity) of that product shows little change. But on the other side, for elastic demand, when price goes up and down, the demand of the product also will change drastically.

Pricing: The Use of Online Auctions

This day in age the use of the internet is becoming more and more part of everyone's daily activities. Many rely on it for communicating to others via email and other social networks, banking, and shopping. A form of shopping that is becoming ever more popular is online auctions. This allows customers to go online and bid on certain products. Just like a normal live auction, whoever then has the highest bid wins that product. The use of Ebay is now becoming a household name. Ebay's popularity is growing daily. Not only does Ebay allow people to bid on everyday products, in hopes to receive them at a lower price, but it also allows customers to sell their unwanted products in hope of a profit. Many even now depend on Ebay to make them their profit. The process of buying and selling products through online bidding have lead people to leave the old jobs and merely make their money by buying one product for a low cost and turn around and sell for an even better deal.

This is an image of Ebay's home page. It is a little hard to see, but you can search for the category you want to bid on such as art, cosmetics, electronics, etc. This way you can narrow you search for exactly what you are looking for to buy. Once the category is selected it allows you to type your specific item which really narrows the search. The items are displayed with the bidding price and how much longer in the auction. Customers now have the convenience of bidding right at home to get the best price instead of traveling from store to store to find the best price for the product you want.

Product Line vs. Product Mix

When you are strolling the isles of a grocery store, you may see a ton of different types of chips or a bunch of different types of cereals. You pick the flavor you like and you go on without any other thought about it. Each of those products belong to a specific product line. A product line is a firm's complete set of all their products that are designed to satisfy a single need and or desire. You may like Doritos Cool Ranch chips, but those are only one product in their entire product line. A product line can often times get confused with a product mix. A product mix is all the product lines that a firm has to offer, sometimes it may be only one line, but other times it may be many. Avon, even though commonly know for their make-up, also has other product lines such as jewelry, and clothes. These three product lines make up Avon's product mix.

The first picture is of Excedrin's product line. You can see all the different types of Excedrin medicine, but they are all within the same product. Where as in the second picture it is Proctor and Gamble's product mix. There is a collage of all their different types of products ranging from batteries to chips to detergent to toothpaste. The product mix is not just one type of product and the different flavors or variations of that product, but it is all different products that fall under one company's name.

Co-Branding

An example of co-branding, which is an agreement between two brands to work together in marketing a new product, is the sports kit which was developed by Apple and Nike. It is a kit that links your Nike shoes to your iPod. It tracks your work out and then sends all the data to your iPod or iPhone. These two brands worked together to design a new form of working out that brings your data from your work out straight to your home.