Fundamentals of

Marketing

Name: Angelica Ciolea

Banner no: B00399959

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 4Ps
(Product, Price, Promotion, Place).

Product

A product is an item or service that was provided in the market for sale. A product

can be a physical object or any virtual. Every product has its cost in which they are

sold in the market. The product is what a customer wants, that satisfies their need

(Blut, Teller and Floh, 2018). Products are classified differently according to the

sector they belong to, but in essence all products are made of three levels, which are

the core product, the actual product and the augmented product. The core product in

this case will be the core benefit hat the customer is looking to buy, the actual

product then consists of branding, features, quality, designated price, capabilities,

packaging and even the distribution channel.

Product features – in terms of product features there are decisions to be made in this

sense as these features will need to be incorporated in the product in line with the

target customer’s requirements. Product features will represent those benefits that

the consumer is looking for in the product (Kotler, 1989). It is very important though

to differentiate product features from product benefits. Product features will describe

the items while the benefits answer consumer’s question on ‘what is it in it for me’.

For example, one of the services that Vodafone offers are mobile plans. One such

plan is called RED 120GB + Entertainment. While some of the features can be

straight away discovered in the name of the plan, when choosing to see the details

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of the pack the features of this service are described and amongst them there are

120 GB of data, unlimited minutes and text within the UK and the option to choose a

free entertainment app such as YouTube Premium, Amazon Prime or Spotify

(Vodafone, 2021).

Product branding – a brand is defined as a name, term, symbol or design or a

special feature which has the aim of differentiating a seller’s good from other seller’s

goods (Marketing Dictionary, 2018). Branding is often used in businesses, in

marketing and especially in advertising with the scope of creating and storing value

as brand equity for the product identified and to the benefit of the consumers, owners

and shareholders.

In terms of branding Vodafone has again some very good examples. The British

telecom company is indisputably a very well known brand and beside that the

company renews its branding often. While in October 2017 they were launching as a

brand positioning strategy ‘The future is exciting. Ready?’, in March of this year

(2021) Vodafone has revealed ‘Together we can’, a new glad brand placing which

puts the emphasis on what the human spirit and technology combined can achieve

together (Spanier, 2021).

Product packaging – this product component can be defined as an art or science,

technology ofprotecting, enclosing products to prepare them for storage, distribution,

sale and usage. More on the marketing mix side of the definition the product

packaging refers to the designing and production process of these components

(Soroka, 2002).

In terms of packaging, Vodafone has won 2 awards for their innovation in 2015. The

awards came from Red Dot who admired the high quality design and German

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Designer Club awarded a bronze category for the good design. In terms of

packaging Vodafone introduced an eco-friendly design which is made from

approximately 80% recycled materials and is 100% recyclable. They use a regular

brown cardboard box which has a minimal ecological impact and the company logo

wraps around the box in a modern style and with a clear Vodafone identity

(Vodafone, 2021).

Price

Price is the value or the amount that we pay in the exchange of goods and services

provided by the company to the customer. It is a vital element for a company to stay

in the market and make a profit from it to grow more. Price plays an important role in

determining the organisation growth and success. There are several factors that are

to be noticed before deciding the price of the product, like competitor price, discount,

sales offers etc. which are the important factors that have to be kept in mind before

estimating a price. A slight miss fault or fluctuation may affect the demand for the

product. This relation of demand with the price is known as price elasticity of demand

(Nurendah, and Rainanto, 2019).

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Some of the subdivisions in terms of pricing would be strategies such as competitor

based pricing strategy, penetration pricing, bundle pricing, cost-plus pricing etc.

Customers and competitions–is a pricing strategy also known as competitor based

pricing which puts the emphasis on the existing market rate for a product or service.

This type of strategy doesn’t take into account the costs involved and the demand on

the market. A competitor based pricing strategy will take into account as a

benchmark competitor’s practices prices (Smith, 2016).

Vodafone provides their services and product on a pocket-friendly budget which

enable people to access their product whenever and from anywhere. They also

ensure that they provide a high quality of services as compared to its competitors in

the market and high-speed internet network service. It provides different kinds of

services and products in different price segments in the market to attract different

types of customers and to fulfil their needs. In today's market, Vodafone has raised

the price of their product as compared to their early price so that they can compete

with their rivals and which will be followed by many other competitors in the market.

To grow a company and to maintain a stabilised company, the price of the product

has to be increased over the course of time and related to the market rate (Lee and

Kotler, 2019). They have a special pricing strategy in which the company provide

rewards points for a definite sum of money that has to be spent while purchasing the

product from them in that airtime. That means when a customer goes to purchase a

product from them, if the customer purchase amount a certain amount of money,

then the customer will get an offer from them while purchase which might be

applicable that time or in future purchasing time so it will keep the customer with

them. Vodafone had competitors like Three, O2, EE etc.

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Cost-plus pricing – or mark up pricing strategy has its basis in the costs for

producing an item or a service to which a percentage is added as a markup. This

type of strategy is majorly used by companies that sell physical products. I have

personally experienced this awhile ago when I was working for a construction

company and as my role was also briefly dealing in the invoicing side of the

business, there have been instances where we would need to supply the contractor

with a product that didn’t need installation or there was no labour involved and

therefore, for this service, we would procure the set product and invoice the

contractor with a 20% mark up, a strategy which is widely used within this

sector(Smith, 2016).

Penetration pricing strategy – this refers to those instances when a company is trying

to enter a market and it does so by practicing a very low price which will draw

attention away fromcompetitors. This is not a viable strategy on the long run and it is

most of the times only applied for a short period of time(Smith, 2016).

Such an example is surely known to everyone by now and it happened when the

European supermarkets Aldi and Lidl have entered the UK market and competed

with the prices practiced by the local supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsbury’s. The

competition is clearly still tight as it is still visible when walking around Tesco or Asda

one can often see small banners with ‘Aldi price match’ written on them which is an

attempt to gain back customers and keep competition afoot.

Promotion

Promotion includes advertisement, public relations and strategies to promote the

product. It is the communication process with the customer related to the product

they want to buy. Promoting the product means why the customer will buy this

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product and why in this price segment customer will buy it. Marketers do promotion

and placement elements together so they can reach their core audiences. An

organisation may use camping like Instagram and PR camping for advertisement

purposes to attract customers, which helps in branding and product awareness to

the customer. Email camping is another process to reach audiences related to their

target market at the right time and place (Mac-Kingsley, and Pokubo, 2019).

Some of the promotion elements are advertising, publicity, public relations, sales

promotion, personal selling or direct marketing.

Advertising – is defined as a marketing message that uses a publicly sponsored ,

non personal communication to promote or sell a service, product or an idea

(Stanton, 1984).

Vodafone invests highly in their advertising and more specifically in commercials. In

one the latest commercials in 2020, Lewis Hamilton, six time F1 World champion, is

featured as a brand ambassador (Campaign Live, 2020)It helps in promoting their

global value and brand value as well. Customers get attracted towards a product if

any great person or any influencer advertise the product then they think that the

product might be good and nice that's why the person is advertising and people who

admire that influencer person will definitely trust the company product without any

kind of hesitation because they believe that person fully (Niaz and Medina, 2018).

Publicity – this refers to the public view or awareness for a product, service,

organisation or person. Publicity also refers to the process of taking some

information from its core to the general public and its mainly done so through media

nowadays (Erhenberg et al., 2002).

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This helps Vodafone get a good number of customers and trust for the local people

of that region. It also uses different advertising channels like television commercials,

billboards and social media sites like Instagram, Facebook due to which it reaches

more people. The company collaborates with the social media influencers and pays

them for the advertisement, and then they advertise their product on social media by

saying the advantages of the product like what kind of benefit they might get if they

use the product and they also use some promo code which is act as a discount to

the customer if they come through that person advertisement. So by this kind of

process customers get more attracted towards the product, and once they use the

product if they like it, then they will buy it again and also they will say about the

product to more than five to six people about the product that they can also try the

product if they like it and the cycle goes on. This is the power of social media

nowadays, and it also cost less than other advertising channels where they can

advertise their product but whereas people nowadays everyone use social media, so

it becomes easy for them to reach people through the social media platform, which is

a safe also.

Place

It is referred to as the geographical location where the organisation sells its product

and services to the respective customer. Every business start with the right selection

of location, which says that location is the most important factor for every

organisation in which it helps to select the right customer in marketing strategy. It is

important where the organisation is selling their product because selling a product in

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a non-interest area of customer does not make any kind of sense. The organisation

position should be in that place where they can get the potential customer for their

product who are ready to buy (Syapsan, 2019)

Place related variables include the channel of distribution, place of production and

consumption, storage and warehousing, transportation etc.

Channel of distribution – refers to the process that makes products and services

available to customers or businesses. This can be made directly by the maker or

service supplier but also with the help of intermediaries, distributors and other

indirect channels (Dent, 2011).

Vodafone has telecom services in over 20 countries and other services like IT

services in over 150 countries. Vodafone sells their services through their customer

care and their shops, which are all over the world, and they also sold their product

and services through retailers shops so that it will be easier for the customer to reach

because some people hesitated to go the customer care or in their shop where they

are more friendly with the retailer shop. As they have a larger number of stores all

over the world, it becomes easy for them to reach people anywhere and which helps

people also to get them.

Place of production and consumption–this refers to the geographical location of

where products and services are produced and where they are intended to be

offered to the market.

Vodafone is a multinational company with its headquarter in the UK. The company

has decided to extend more, so they are plane to extend by partnership with the

local operator in 47 nations (Amoako, Okpattah and Arthur, 2019). Vodafone has a

strong global presence for its services and its loyalty towards its work. Through

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which customers get fully satisfied with their services. They are one of the five top

companies in internet providers globally. The Vodafone services are accessible from

every corner of the world, which make it easier and useful for the customer through

different types of partnership and joint ventures. It helps the company to stay strong

globally. The company has divided its operation into different geographical locations

like Europe and the Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle east. This division enables to

understand in which region they should provide what kind of services and goods to

their customer as people differ from place to place and their choice of preference is

also different, so it is necessary for them to divide the geographical region and treat

them as the market wants them to do. Nowadays, everything is happening online,

and people are shifting to the online platform, so it is necessary for the organisation

to swift into an online platform place where they can interact with many other people

who are interested in being a part of it (Chaffey and Smith, 2017). Vodafone internet

services are the most famous because of their smooth working where other lack to

give this type of smooth network in every area, so this makes the company different

from others. They are one of the largest submarine cable operators in the world.

Vodafone knows where they have to do the marketing in which way so that people

will get attracted to them and eager to use their service. They use a friendly gesture

towards their customer through their customer care where the customer can clarify

their doubt if they have any of it, so it is helpful for them and for the company also

that they are reaching to people. As they also use retailer shops for their services

which is a good move for the company to reach people anywhere where there is no

customer care or any stores of the company.

Storage and warehousing - The phrase "storage" can refer to a storage structure

(warehouse) and its surroundings, as well as the products in the stock. Storage, in

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turn, refers to storage activities (warehousing, stock holding), and storage operations

are a subset of storage operations (warehouse operations).Companies that provide

logistics services to their clients provide warehouse services.Other firms in the

supply chain store items for a variety of reasons, and storage and storage plan

decisions are tied to the company's other decisions and strategies, most notably

manufacturing and transportation methods (O’Byrne, 2017).

A good example in terms of storage places and warehouses is Amazon. Their

premises are quite impressive in sizes and vary between 600,000 to 1 million square

feet in size.

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