Student’s Name

Institution

Course

Date

Business, Accounting and Finance

BSBMKG502 Establish and adjust the marketing mix

Student Assessment

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 Written Questions and Answers

1. Identify the key characteristics of products or services and estimate their significance

to the market. Please describe and expand to include 4 & 7 Ps, 3 major pricing

strategies, at least 2 distribution strategies, characteristics of service and the

products such as PLC Stages.

Products or services are characterised by the product life cycle stages. The PLC has four

stages; the introduction, growth, maturity and the decline. Introduction in the market creates

the awareness of the product, growth establishes high market share, maturity helps in

fighting competition and decline helps to minimize marketing. 4 & 7 Ps should focus on

product, promotion, price, place, packaging, people and position which are important in

linking all aspects of marketing. Pricing strategy like price skimming, price reduction and

price penetration are good in determining competition of markets. Important distribution

strategies include; building of selective outlets of distribution, maintaining intensive

distribution and minimizing costs of distribution

2. As a manager when you are reviewing the pricing policy and analysing pricing

variables to determine their effect on demand, what are some key factors? You need

to consider the pricing procedure, 4Cs, what pricing variables support the pricing

policy, company considerations and pricing decisions associated with costs.

When reviewing pricing policy and analysing pricing variables to determine their impact

on demand it is good to consider factors like costs, customers and competitors.

Competitors are good backmarkers for pricing procedure and helps in attracting customers

and must go hand in hand with costs, convenience, customer value and communications

called the 4Cs of marketing. Pricing policy varies on the basis of sales location and date.

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 Companies must consider cost needs when making decisions of pricing are concerned

because a business cannot be sustained when costs exceed profits.

3. After an analysis on promotional methods in your organisation, explain how you

determine their importance to the marketing outcomes.

Measuring results and having a data-driven approach is one way to determine the

importance of promotional methods in marketing outcomes because they can show the

invested funds and prove if the field efforts have contributed in improving sales. Data is the

biggest tool used to analyse the direction of business at the end of the day because it gives

account on profits, sales volumes, customer satisfaction and achievement of set goals.

4. Explain the results from a review on channels of distribution in your organisation

and estimate their significance to marketing outcomes.

In channel distribution several variables come to play when maximizing value is needed,

investment can be made for future earnings or profits can be maximized for the time being.

The profit of product can be measured by use of a number of ways, for instance if one sells

a computer for $950 targeting $1000, the gross profit is just 5% but selling a $5 to make

$10 results to higher profit percentage. This results in marketing outcomes helps to know

which products are better to sell so as to make more profit but also it is good to assess

demand on that commodity.

5. Explain how you would identify and analyse the level of customer service provision to

determine its significance to marketing outcomes.

Analysing the minimum quality for a certain service or product expected by customers, this

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 helps in analysing expected, desired and the unanticipated levels of customer service

provision. Making customers happy by standardizing quality by putting down policies and

regulations helps to maximise profits.

6. What do you need to consider when identifying the organisation’s potential customer

base and key pressure points?

To identify the potential customer base of an organization and key pressure points it is

good to consider things like product, promotional, pricing, service and distribution

variation. Doing sampling before setting the organization can be used to assess possible

customers and products needed.

7. Part of an effective marketing plan, you need to analyse and test effect of components

of marketing mix on each other and establish their relative importance to the

customer base. What are some of the things you need to do?

Firstly, it is good to carry out an analysis that will help in understanding the market. It is

key to consider variations of products, promotions, pricing, services and distribution for the

purpose of ensuring adjusted marketing mix to meet all the requirements for budgeting.

8. Identify and assess environmental factors, and their impact on marketing mix by

elaborating on an a) environmental analysis, b) PEST analysis and c) SWOT

analysis?

Factors like; the resellers, suppliers, competition, customers, general public, demographic

forces, physical forces, legal forces are some of the environmental forces which affect

marketing mix. These factors greatly affect the success of marketing and should be

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 involved greatly when considering the decision making in a market. Political economic,

social and technological factors have a huge influence on business and used in the

assessing of strengths, weakness, opportunities and also threats.

9. Explain how you identify the consumer priorities, needs and preferences affecting

marketing mix.

By effective planning and research, it is easy to know the needs, priorities and preferences

of customers so as to know the elements which need to be put in place. The research is

based on the 4Ps of marketing namely; price, product, promotion and place which directly

affect consumers.

10. Consider product, pricing, promotional, distribution and service variations, and

evaluate these against marketing objectives, target market characteristics and desired

positioning.

Products are the intangible services or tangible good manufactured on specific volumes

units and promotions are used to represent the marketer’s communication in the selling

grounds hence connected to marketing characteristics, objectives and positioning because

of public relations, advertising and personal selling. Pricing, and the distribution of

services and distribution determine how much a customer’s pays.

11. Identify a marketing mix that best satisfies your organisation’s target market and

meets the marketing objectives and explain the strategy.

Promotion is the marketing mix which satisfies the target market of my organization and

meets the marketing objectives because of the focus on market segment. Word of mouth

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 and thorough digital platforms it is easy to reach out to people and gain business on regular

basis.

12. How do you ensure the marketing mix decisions meets organisational, strategic and

operational marketing objectives?

To ensure that marketing mix meets the strategic, operational and organizational marketing

objectives it is mandatory to ensure that scarce resources are well allocated. Also, it is good

to test both price, promotion, place and product by means of isolation.

13. As a manager you need to monitor the marketing mix against marketing performance

and isolate components for testing. Elaborate on how you would approach this.

As marketing mix contains all the 4 components; price, place, promotion and place every

component is isolated for testing. In isolation of every component each must be tested and

its market particular recorded. Done by means of benchmarking of sales, checking the

effectiveness of product, promotion, and place.

14. What do you need to consider when evaluating the implications of altering one or

more components of the marketing mix in relation to market factors and consumer

response?

What is mostly considered in evaluating the implications of altering components of

marketing mix is marketing strategy. Consumer response is key because price component

can only be altered in great consideration of consumers’ responses.

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 15. What do you need to consider when adjusting components of the marketing mix in

response to test results and market-response evaluation?

The benchmark of competitors is used to adjust components of marketing mix in response

to market response evaluation and test results. One can assess the price of competitors to

see the price stay below or above recommended retail price.

16. How do you ensure the adjusted marketing mix meets budgetary requirements?

To ensure that adjustment of marketing mix meets all the budgetary requirements it is

good to adjust the price to meet the benchmarks and the competitor’s prices assuming

that there will be increased sells.

17. What is involved in ensuring the adjusted marketing mix continues to meet

organisational, strategic and operational marketing objectives?

Specifying the performance goals for the business helps in knowing what to do the

marketing mix in order to achieve them. All the strategic, organizational and marketing

objectives should be written down so as to know the direction in which one is going to

adjust the market mix.

18. What statistical techniques are commonly used by business organisations to gather

marketing information? Summarise several techniques and explain how you might use

them to identify markets and marketing opportunities. Conduct appropriate research

to answer this question.

Statistical techniques used for marketing research are surveys, interviews, observations,

experiments, secondary research and focus groups. Surveys can be used as either feedback

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 cards given to people to respond to questions or web survey question and good in

identifying markets and market opportunities. Surveys are good because they measure

things objectively and gives people chance to measure their feelings and desire. Focus

groups gives people a platform to express themselves and organization are able to view and

know what areas to change so as to capture the markets and enjoy marketing opportunities.

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