The marketing mix
Marketing can be a difficult term to define but overall it is based on the benefits that a company provides its customers in an exchange. Dove and many other brands use extensive amounts of marketing to sell their products or services through many techniques. Marketing is about satisfying not only the customers needs but also their own profibility given their resources. The most important factor of marketing is the marketing mix.
The marketing mix is the method behind marketing as a whole. It is the structure that is followed to produce successful marketing campeigns. The marketing mix is the planning used in every company to decide the best route to market a product. Companies such as Dove will first start their marketing by carrying out market research this is mostly done through the use of focus groups to gain knowledge of what the customers expect from a product or service. Once they have this knowledge they can develop this into their finished marketing mix. The marketing mix consists of the 4p's these are the four elements that will form a product and its selling process.
The 4p's
The 4p's consist of price, product, promotion and place.
The first thing they will consider is product. To create their product they will consider many elements such as
- Branding - To provide and identity to the brand and item.
- quality- The higher the quality the higher the cost.
- Features- What is an added bonus to the product or service
They will hopefully finally create a product that provides all three in a way that will benefit the customer.
The 2nd p is pricing. Pricing is a difficult step for a company as they have to balance the supply and demand relationship. They have to make a small profit whilst not making the product expensive.There are many pricing strategies including ;
- Penetration pricing
- product line
- Skimming
- Bundle
- competition
- Phycological
Promotion has to carry out a multitude if tasks as they need to inform new customers pursuading them to but the product. They may do this by showing the benefits of the products whilst maintaining a good image.They will also tailor the promotion to their traget audience that would be earlier decided from the feeback given in the focus groups. To get the promotions to the public they may use multiple way such as :
- Advertising
- public relations
- sales promotion
- personal selling
- direct mail
- internet- e commerce
I the final P I think is the most important. Place, this is how they are going to distribute their product they could do this is two ways eaither through direct distrubution or indirect distrubution, Direct distrubution is just how it sounds it is where the product travels direct from the manufacter to the consumer where as indirect will sell through a relater such as a supermarket.
The 4p’s- How do the 4p's work within dove ?
Product
The main product that I will be focusing on is the specially
formulated dove soap bar. First created in 1950 the bar gained its difference
by formulating a bar that consisted of not only soap but also was 25%
mosterizing cream. The soap bar has now been launched in more the 80 countries.
The most important technique to remember when dove was
creating the product was the many options that are available and the many
brands that people may prefer. Potential customers may buy a product for a particular reason whether this be the
price or the qualities that the customer may provide.
To gain further knowledge in the market they would have
carried market research to show what the target audience want from there
product whether this be good ethics or improved science they needed to discover
what would appeal there audience the most.
Dove chose to use the idea of body Image. This is a hugely
controversial subject that appeals to most of women kind. It debates that idea
that companies such as dove should be realistic and should use real women to
advertise there products so the product should appeal to these people. This is
what they have done in there most recent campaign for their popular soap bars
that now have an established audience.
Their products stick to a basic formula that has kept them
selling for many years this allows the audience to grow because the name has
become realiable growing an audience that are mostly made of mainstreamers
although they also try to appeal reformers. They do this so that they can
spread there audience hopefully appealing to a larger audience.
Price
Dove over the years has become highly sort after this often
means it has a higher price but this is because it is seen as higher quality.
This is where the connection in the publics heads is used as it is often seen
that anything of higher price must mean they have put more into it and it must
be a improved or better quality product.
Some of Doves most
famous soap bars are at a higher price they have recently tried to change their
strategy by creating a cheaper range that can appeal to the typical family this
has less quality but carries that brand
name making it sell.
They have tried to alter the prices many other ways by
adding less packaging or trying to alter their price strategies. They often try
to bring the price down for limited times to grasp peoples attention after they
have tried the product and liked it they will hopefully carry on buying the
product even though the price may change.
There are many ways that dove could price their product. They might use cost plus pricing this is the basic way of calculating the price of a product, to complete this they would take the total cost of producing the product and adding the needed profit margin and this will give you a final price that the product could be sold at without making a loss.
Every company including Dove will have many compititors for example Nivea which provide a simlair product possibly at a cheaper cost. To compete with these other companies Dove may change its price or they might also change the quality of the product. To make their product sell above competitors they will also focus on their unique selling point this is the one this that tears the product away from the rest in the case of Dove this is the added moisteriser in their soap bars to make the bar softer for the skin.
They may also use penetration pricing which is commonly used for higher quality products. Penetration pricing in basic term is when the price is dropped for a short period of time commonly when it is first being introduced to consumers and this may mean there be losing money for a short period of time but this will be fixed later when the price resumes to normal. This attracts a buyer who possible would not buy the product because of the higher price to try the product and then they will hopefully become hooked and will still buy the product at a higher cost.
This can be done the other way round when the product may be put in the market at a higher cost to get a reaction this also makes the product seem eaither of high quality or as something unique this will cause a high demand once this goes down the price will also lower. This is used commonly to create an appeal to people that like a higher quality of product who may not of tried it at the lower rate.
The last kind of pricing that is needed more in todays age is destroyer pricing this is when the price is lower then any other product on the market. This can mean a lot of cuts when creating the product as the price must still cover the producing costs and have a small profit. This pricing is also commonly used to knock away other competitors as they may not be able to take this risk.
Overall I think the Dove uses a range of pricing techniques which allow the price to be higher to become known as a higher quality and more stable brand.
Every company including Dove will have many compititors for example Nivea which provide a simlair product possibly at a cheaper cost. To compete with these other companies Dove may change its price or they might also change the quality of the product. To make their product sell above competitors they will also focus on their unique selling point this is the one this that tears the product away from the rest in the case of Dove this is the added moisteriser in their soap bars to make the bar softer for the skin.
They may also use penetration pricing which is commonly used for higher quality products. Penetration pricing in basic term is when the price is dropped for a short period of time commonly when it is first being introduced to consumers and this may mean there be losing money for a short period of time but this will be fixed later when the price resumes to normal. This attracts a buyer who possible would not buy the product because of the higher price to try the product and then they will hopefully become hooked and will still buy the product at a higher cost.
This can be done the other way round when the product may be put in the market at a higher cost to get a reaction this also makes the product seem eaither of high quality or as something unique this will cause a high demand once this goes down the price will also lower. This is used commonly to create an appeal to people that like a higher quality of product who may not of tried it at the lower rate.
The last kind of pricing that is needed more in todays age is destroyer pricing this is when the price is lower then any other product on the market. This can mean a lot of cuts when creating the product as the price must still cover the producing costs and have a small profit. This pricing is also commonly used to knock away other competitors as they may not be able to take this risk.
Overall I think the Dove uses a range of pricing techniques which allow the price to be higher to become known as a higher quality and more stable brand.
Promotion
Doves main aim when trying to promote the brand is to make an easily reconisable brand that has an identity. They will try to make the products unique appeal attractive to the audience of which are mostly female.
To market a product in these modern ages they will cover all media including print, online and social media. Dove heavily relys on there TV adverts to market its product. These commercials have become widely known because they discuss the controversial subject of body image. This makes it seem that they have empathy with audience and are supporting their beliefs.
The brand uses images not of professional stereotypical models but of what they state are "real people" these are supposed to represent the wide audience in which they are trying to sell to. They have supported these beliefs throughout their advertising including in a series of events such as classes held to help people gain confidence in themselves this interactive way of advertising allows the brand to get involved with its audience and learn what they really want from the brand.
Dove like many other brand rely on direct advertising for example they will use sales counters in stores to show how the product works. They also use their followers to advertise by allowing them to comment on their products which in the modern age is easily accessable with social media.
This personal touch can also be done through celebrity endorsements. This is when they get a recognisable face or character to advertise their brand. This can be done in many ways they may pay the person to speak about the brand on platforms such as TV interviews or even social media or they might get the celebrity directly involved by getting them to star in the commercials and on their print media including posters and possibly they might be featured in the product itself.
Doves main promotion slogan stated on their website is to produce and promote products which "feel good, look good and get more out of life". This slogan is shown in the way they promote as you can see that they are taking care to make a good product that is promoted with good ethics whilst also providing more to their consumers.
Place
The placement if a product is the direct route its going to take from being the raw ingredients to becoming the final product in a store. This route will be mapped out by the company in a way that allows the product to be quickly produced and distributed.
Doves placement all starts under the roof of the main company called Unilevers these are the company that own all of the dove company. This company work in a unique way in which they do not outsource products but instead house all of their products in the same warehouses and then distribute them from here.
There are several warehouses which also make the ingridents that are placed into the basic bar of dove soap. They cover all stages by doing so leaving no connection between bringing the raw products to the maufactring process by doing this they not only save time but also cut down on expendatures.
To sell there product they do have to get it to the many locations in which it is sold to for example dove sells soap not only in England but also in Australia, Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, North America, Western Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. To get their products to this wide audience they use multiple ways of transport mostly thought trucks and shipment boats.
Then in the last step of the journey they will be taken to many stores in trucks. This is where they will be sold to the main public. To sell to their target audience the product will be sold at suitable stores including super markets like ASDA and middle market drug stores such as Boots.
