4. Marketing

Marketing is a complex area of business which includes buying, selling, market research, transportation, storage, and advertising.

There are four principal controllable factors – the four P’s : product, Price, Place and promotion.

Place includes location of production and distribution. The place to see your product could be in dealers’ showroom or directly from the factory or from catalogs, direct-mail coupons, even telemarketing with telephone sales people or through computer shopping services.

Promotion includes all forms of marketing communication (advertising, direct mail, image ). The two basic types of advertising are: product and institutional. Both product and institutional can be subdivided into three categories according to purpose : to inform, persuade or remind.

The most controllable of these factors is the first “P ” - product (service). All product life cycle are: introduction, growth, maturity and decline.

5. Advertising

Advertising is a paid, non-personal sales communication, directed at the large number of potential buyers.

There are eight principal media for advertising. Perhaps the most basic medium is the newspaper, which offers advertiser’s large circulations, a readership located close to the AD’s place of business, and the opportunity to alter their Ads on a frequent and regular basis.

Magazines , the other chief print medium, may be of general interest or they may be aimed at specific audience and offer the manufacturers of products of particular interest the chance to make contact with their most likely customers.

Television and radio are able buy short spots of time, usually a minute or less in duration . AD spots are broadcast between or during regular programs, at moments sometimes specified by the advertiser and sometimes left up to the broadcaster. The other AD media include direct mail, which can make a highly detailed and personalized appeal, outdoor billboard and posters, transit advertising which can reach the millions of users of mass.

Transit systems and miscellaneous media include dealer displays and promotional items such as match-boxes or calendars. Other media include AD in movie theatres and on airline movie screens.

6. Market. Market segmentation

A market is one of many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services (including labor) in exchange for money from buyers. It can be said that a market is the process by which the prices of goods and services are established.

Geographic segmentation

The market is segmented according to geographic criteria- nations, states, regions, countries, cities, neighborhoods, or zip codes.

Demographic Segmentation

Demographic segmentation consists of dividing the market into groups based on variables such as age, gender, family size, income, occupation, education, religion, race and nationality.

Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographics is the science of using psychology and demographics to better understand consumers. Psychographic segmentation: consumer are divided according to their lifestyle, personality, values.

"Positive" market segmentation

Market segmenting is dividing the market into groups of individual markets with similar wants or needs that a company divides into distinct groups which have distinct needs, wants, behavior or which might want different products & services. Broadly, markets can be divided according to a number of general criteria, such as by industry or public versus private. Although industrial market segmentation is quite different from consumer market segmentation, both have similar objectives. All of these methods of segmentation are merely proxies for true segments, which don't always fit into convenient demographic boundaries.