Marketing, Public Relations and Segmentation

Marketing

Mass marketing is differentiated from target marketing, in that the target customer is pretty much everybody. A firm that has a target market will either have all of its sales, or a significant portion of them, in an specific identifiable group. Thus, the product should span across race, gender, age and geography. Such a product's target market would be better understood in terms of who doesn't buy it than who does. Wal-Mart would be a good example of a mass market retailer, based on their size, their geographic spread, the wide variety of products that they sell and the ubiquitous nature of many of those products -- many mass market retailers target very broad groups (Investopedia, 2015).

A mass market product, therefore, would be a product that broadly appeals. I will go with Charmin. The target market for Charmin is almost everybody. There are only a few groups that may not use Charmin. Infants have diapers and specialized wipes. The very elderly might, too, as would people with skin conditions in such sensitive areas. Koreans, Japanese and some Muslims prefer various spraying devices or high-tech toilets, but even the use of water to perform the proverbial "Charmin function" does not specifically preclude the need for something soft to dry off with. Also, the incarcerated probably get stuff that is much worse than Charmin, though who knows what is stocked in the commissary. And if anybody is a "conscientious objector" to the use of toilet paper, well it might be better just to pretend such individuals do not exist. But at any given point in time, a solid 90-95% of Americans are in Charmin's target market. The product ticks all the boxes for the mass market -- universal appeal, basic function, reasonable price, mass distribution, not targeted at a niche, and the marketing is not specific to anybody. And one never knows who the key influencer in a family might be in terms of this decision -- some people care more than others about this issue.

In this product category, the default position is to target the mass market. Where there are exceptions -- organic products for example -- they are niche products that define themselves against the mass market brands.

Topic 2. For the ad analysis, I chose "Blazed," by the New Zealand Transportation Association. This advertisement depicts three children playing in a car, and the message is that driving while on drugs is dangerous, in particular sending the message that it is a risk to one's children. There are several characteristics to the target market:

Maori

Male

Parents

The actors are all Maori, the ad is subtitled "Drug driving in Aotearoa," which is the Maori name for New Zealand, and the YouTube clip is posted by Maori Television. So this ad is specifically targeting the Maori community. The target is males. The children specifically reference "my dad" throughout the ad, and the driver at the end of the clip is a man as well. Further, I think most people realize that risk-taking behavior like driving while on drugs occurs more with males, but in any case this ad is not subtle about this.

The target market is also a parent. The use of children hammers home this point, and the driver is a parent. The ad seeks to convey the risks of driving while on drugs to parents, in particular where they put their children at risk. In many cases, such individuals will put themselves at risk quite willingly, but the ad appeals to their desire to protect their children, asking them to specifically take their children into account in their actions.

Week 5, Topic 1

An offering is the product or service that is on offer. The offering contains a number of different elements that will serve to entice the consumer to your product, that the consumer will weigh against the offerings of your competitors. The offering exists in the context of the product/service mix that a company offers, and these product lines will have varying degrees of depth and width (Symes, 2015). To understand an offering, perhaps an example can be used, one of a free-range egg.

The features of the free range egg are, on a functional level, the same as any other egg. It is a versatile source of protein and fat, that can be cooked in any number of different ways and can contribute to any number of different cuisines. The free range egg has the added benefit of assuaging one's guilt over the treatment of the chickens that lay eggs. Some people probably also believe that there are also flavor or health benefits associated with free range eggs.

The price of the offering is higher. Basically, the price reflects the fundamental features of any egg, plus a premium for the guilt/health/taste benefits that the consumer perceives there to be. If you go to a Whole Foods or similar store, there are different types of free range eggs (i.e. organic feed, cage-free, and varying definitions of 'free range') and these all come in at different price points, highlighting the value of each aspect of free rangeness to the consumer. The total cost of ownership of an egg is the cost of the egg. In generally the only incremental costs are the need for refrigeration (actually this is a perceived need, and in most countries eggs are not refrigerated) and for some sort of means of cooking the egg. Most people already have these things, so the total cost of the egg is the price of the egg.

A free range egg can actually be defined clearly on the product/service continuum. The product attributes ("the egg") are priced by the market price of the egg. The premium on that is the price of the free range aspect, which is basically the service provided in terms of guilt. So if a regular dozen eggs costs $2.50 and free range eggs cost $4, that means that the free range eggs are, in economic terms, 62.5% product and 37.5% service. A conventional egg would be 100% product, and a very expensive type of advanced free range egg that sells for $6 a dozen would be 41.67% product and 58.33% service.

Topic 2

The four categories of consumer offerings are convenience offerings, shopping offerings, specialty offerings and unsought offerings. For a convenience offering, there are things like gasoline. Mostly, I would buy gas where the price is lowest, or where the closest station is. The product itself is undifferentiated, and the branding does not matter much to me. Whether I care that much about price is determined by how much time I have to drive out of the way, though if I am in a rush I will focus on convenience but maybe will not buy as much. Still, gas is something that for me meets the criteria of a convenience purchase (Tanner & Raymond, 2015).

A shopping offering is one that the consumer will take time to research before buying. A shopping offering might be a car. This is an expensive product, something where there are a lot of details. The details matter, especially since you might have the car for a decade or more. So a lot of work needs to be done just to get a short list of cars that are worth investigating. Then, there is a whole process of test-driving the different options. Then, there may be discussions with respect to financing, and these discussions may affect the final purchase decision as well.

The third type of offering is the specialty offering, which is a highly-differentiated product that people will not only research but will specifically seek out because of its uniqueness. I saw a Polaris Slingshot the other day and I feel that definitely fits into the specialty offering category, as a highly unique product offering in the motorcycle field, being a trike with a fairly original design and no real competitors.

The fourth type of offering is the unsought offering is the offering that the consumer does not seek out, until such point as they have to. This is a different class for a company, because they have to ensure that they are the first choice for their target market, effectively marketing to people who are not yet seeking their services (Tanner & Raymond, 2015). An example of this might be a window replacement service. One may not be actively in the market for a new window, but if one gets broken, the person becomes in the window market very quickly, and the company that wins the business will likely be the first or second company that the consumer thinks of when a window gets broken.

Week 6, Topic 1

The indirect channel for a company is the series of distributors that get the product from the company to the consumer. For Coca-Cola, this will vary from one country to the next. They own most of their bottlers in the U.S., but even then may delegate transportation to a third party. Even if not, they will typically use the retailer's transportation network at some point. For example, Coke might deliver to a Wal-Mart warehouse, but that warehouse will then use its own trucks to move the Coke to the different stores, from where it will be sold to the consumer. In many other countries, Coca-Cola utilizes local bottlers. In some smaller countries, there will be one bottler for the whole country, so Coke, Pepsi and all the beer will go through that one company. Coca-Cola will typically sell a syrup base to these companies, who then produce the product and handle all of the distribution. Where selling to large companies like Wal-Mart might be done direct, in other cases, there may be a further intermediary to handle local distribution to all the little shops and restaurants that carry the product (Coca Cola Company, 2015).

Each part of the system provides a different service or value. Where there is an independent bottler, they actually produce the product by mixing the syrup with their own carbonated water. Where there is finished product, the distributors will then either deliver the product to the retailer, or to another distributor that handles the local level. The retailer actually gets the product to the consumer by offering it for sale. So there is a basic tier of producer-distributor-retailer, but there can at times be different layers within this, or even some layers removed in the case of large customers where Coca-Cola can handle self-distribution.

Week 7, Topic 1

An integrated marketing campaign is defined as a campaign that cuts across multiple media and promotions, with everything being integrated in a manner that the different elements of the campaign are complementary to one another (Olenski, 2013). If we look at the iPhone launch several years ago, Apple had a lot of advertising, but they also built a substantial public relations campaign around this. They had a splashy product launch, and indeed they continue to have such launches to introduce each new product. The result of that was a heavy blast of public relations. There were lineups outside of stores, and the product sometimes sold out shortly after launch, each of which was covered in the mainstream media, creating intense public relations elements to the campaign. The overall campaign was to promote the iPhone as the hippest thing ever, something that would be an integral part of a modern lifestyle, and Apple was able to successfully combine public relations, consumer advocacy (there were many Apple fans basically working to promote iPhones online in chat rooms, blogs and other sites devoted to the product) and advertising to create a fully-integrated marketing campaign to successfully convey this image.

Another company that relies heavily on public relations is Tesla. There are a few ways that Tesla cultivates PR. First, it has technological advantage, so the unique elements that make for a good media story. Second, it has a CEO who gets in front of a camera a lot. Third, Tesla's stock is pretty volatile so it gets written up in the business press a lot. Four, Tesla does the same splashy product launches that Apple did. The launch of the Powerwall in April was a media circus. While the company admits that this product is going to initially be marketed in places like Germany where it is economically viable, the Powerwall nevertheless received no end of press in North America, too. Tesla's unique selling model and subsequent legal battles, its ambitions, and tying the company's brand to that of Elon Musk, who also has other business ventures, only seeks to further fuel the hype machine. Everything about the way Tesla markets its products -- cars, batteries and all -- is taken from the Apple playbook, and that is why Tesla is becoming a master and generating press and public relations.