Best marketing mix for selling refrigerators

Wholesaler and retailer have many resembles, but also they have many differences. Wholesaler and retailer are working together for making a profit. Wholesaler sells to the retailer, retailer sell the products to the end consumer. Wholesaler sell only on large quantities and their prices are for whole quantities, on the other hand retailer sells on smaller quantities and is marked up from the wholesaler’s prices. Wholesaler and retailer “receive goods from wide range of different sources and then redistribute them to convenient locations along with a marketing package that is valued by their customer of the final consumer” – according to Brassington and Pettitt (2003). There is a big distinction between wholesaler and retailer, because wholesaler is focused on business B2B (business to business), on the other hand retailer is focused on B2C (business to consumer).

Retailer is the most important part in business, because they connect brands to final consumer. As Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong (2010) retailing includes all the activities involved in selling products or services directly to the final consumer for their personal, nonbusiness use. Also, retailer has much more cost than wholesaler. For example: rent, employees, taxes, loss/breakage, advertising. On the other hand wholesalers have to pay for less stuff. For example: the phone bill or clerks payroll for taking an order. Wholesaler is also an important par in business. Wholesalers help the manufacturers to reach many small customers at a low cost, wholesaler also select items and build assortments to sell to their customers and many other aspects. According to Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong (2010) there are four types of wholesalers:

Merchant wholesalers – “are the largest single group of wholesalers, accounting for roughly 50% of all wholesaling. ” They have two broad types: full service wholesalers and limited-service wholesaler.

A broke – “brings buyer and sellers together and make negotiations.

Agents – “represent buyers and sellers on a more permanent basis.

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Personal Selling is the impersonal arm of the promotion mix. A company’s salesperson create and communicate customers value through personal personal interactions with customers (Kotler and Armstrong , 2010). Personal selling is available for many years and maybe this is the oldest profession in the world. People who do selling have many different names such as salesperson, sales representative, district managers, account executives, sales consultants, sales engineers, agents and account development reps. Personal selling according to Keegen & Green (2011) is person-to-person selling communications between a company representative and a prospective buyer. On the whole, the salesperson is persuading the potential customer to make a purchase and his job is to present the product well by using its advantages and disadvantages. Also the main step in persuading a person to make a sale is to understand customers` needs and organize the company`s efforts to solve customers problems. Most of the salespersons are well-educated, well-trained professionals who add value for customers and make customer relationships. Keegen & Green (2011) share that personal selling is also a popular marketing communication tool in countries with various restrictions on advertising. The term salesperson cover a wide range of positions – for example they can be an order taker such as the department store salesperson, who is standing behind the counter. According to Armstrong and Kotler (2011) personal selling involves interpersonal interactions between salesperson and individual customers – whether face-to-face, by telephone, via e-mail, through video or Web conferences, or by other means. Actually, many people consider that personal selling can be much more useful and better than advertising the products. Salesperson always can explore, probe the customer, to learn about their problems and to implement an marketing offer to them, which will fit the potential customer`s needs.

Advertising in WEBSITES v. Advertising in DAILY NEWSPAPERS

2Advertising is a tool to persuade people to purchase a goods or services. It is mostly used by business firms, organizations, agencies to promote their products to various target publics. According to Kotler and Armstrong (2008) you have to make four important decisions, when developing and starting an advertising program:

• Setting advertising objectives – this is the first step and it should be defined very well, also it should be based on past decisions. Advertising should be accomplished with a specific target audience for a period of time.

• Setting the advertising budget – according to Kotler and Armstrong (2011) there are four common methods used to set the possible budget.

Affordable method

Percentage of sales method

Competitive parity method

Objective and task method

• Developing advertising strategy – it consist of two important elements to be your advertising good:

Advertising messages

Selecting advertising media

• Evaluating advertising campaigns – to choose the best places for you campaign according to you target mission.

Advertising is defined by Kotler & Armstrong (2005) as any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services through mass media such as newspapers, magazines, television or radio by an identified sponsor.

3Advertising in websites is one of the most known types of advertising. It has its advantages, but on the other hand it has many some limitations, disadvantages. On the whole, it is good to advertise in websites, because you have high selectivity, low cost, immediacy and many interactive capabilities. But also we should have in mind the disadvantages such as demographically skewed audience, relatively low impact, audience controls exposure. Online advertising appear as banners, pop-ups, flash movies, email advertising, backgrounds, wallpapers and so on. Here you can see an example of banners:

Sources: www.abv.bg, www.vbox7.com , www.sportni.bg

A great advantage of advertising online is that you can administrate and run your media anytime. And there are different types of purchasing your advertisement, but of them are most used:

CPC (Cost per click) – advertisers pay only when visitors click on banners and are redirected to their websites.

CPA (Cost per action) – when a member complete a transaction, such as a purchase or sign-up. Advertiser , in most cases,prefer this type of advertising, because it ignores any inefficiency in the sellers.

CPM (Cost per Mile) also it is as ‘cost per impressions’ – Advertiser pay per thousand impressions or loads of his advertisement, which has shown in the website.

Paul Baines, Chris Fill and Kelly Page (2008) claim that these forms of advertising are best way to “drive traffic” to your website and also encourage people to make a purchase. Also they assert that online advertising the fastest – growing advertising medium in history.

As Frances Brassington & Stephen Pettitt “print media, such as local and national newspapers, special interest magazines and trade publications, have thus become the primary focus for most organizations.” Advertising in newspapers give us the opportunity to communicate with our potential customers quickly and flexible. Newspapers are regularly scheduled publications, which contains news, articles, information and advertisements. This type of advertising offers us a wide range of advertising opportunities and audiences. There are two types of newspapers:

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Daily newspapers: are published every day with some exceptions. For example on Sundays and some holidays. They are issued in the morning and they consist of advertising inserts, stories, news from the previous day and are posted at the last page some jokes and crosswords.

Weekly newspapers: this are newspapers which are smaller than daily newspapers and are also published two-three times a week.

Newspapers are of the most used types of advertising and their advantage is that they can be afforded not only by national chains of retailers, car manufacturers but also to small companies, which start a business. The main problem of newspaper advertising according to Brassington & Pettitt (2006) is targeting. It is linked to its cost-efficiency and advertisers want to have more selection in targeting, because in newspapers wastage rates is high. Newspapers have shorter lifespan, because they are used and people throw them and do not use more.

BENEFITS SOUGHT or DEMOGRAPHIC segmentation

Market segmentation is the process of dividing large heterogeneous markets into smaller, homogeneous subsets of people or business with similar needs and/or responsiveness to marketing mix offerings (Kinnear and Bernhardt, 1990). Segmentation have wide definition. There are many examples of market segmentation: when you go to a shop in soft-drinks section you will find soft-drinks to different brads, with sugar, no sugar, with and without caffeine, “in different flavors, in returnable bottles, in cans, in individually containers or in six packed”- this is the concept of market segmentation. Segmentation has many types, but in this paper will be reviewed only two: benefits sought and demographic segmentation.

Benefits sought is a type of segmentation and it groups people in different benefits that they seek from the product. According to Gary Armstrong & Philip Kotler (2011) benefit segmentation requires fining the major benefits people look for in the product class, the kinds of people who seek for each benefit, and the major brands that deliver each benefit. And also they give some examples:

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“Fit and Polish” consumer want something, which is balanced between function and style, “they exercise for results but want to look good doing it.”

“Serous Sports Competitors” – they desire a combination between performance and function.

“Value Seeking Moms” – they are shopping for the family and they are looking for durability and value.

“Thus, each segment seek a different mix of benefits.” – Gary Armstrong & Philip Kotler (2011).

Demographic segmentation is concerned about segments, which are based on

Age – consumer needs and want change with age

Gender – this segmentation is used in clothing, cosmetics, toiletries and magazines.

Family size

family life cycle

Income

Occupation

Education levels of population

Religion

Race

Family

Nationality

Generation

6According to Gary Armstrong & Philip Kotler (2011) demographic segmentation is the most popular bases for segmenting groups. As Thomas Kinnear & Kenneth Bernhardt (1990) “segmentation is the most popular way marketers identify important market segments and target markets”. Demographic changes can create opportunities for marketing innovation according to Wareen Keegen & Mark Green (2011). Moreover they give us an example of two entrepreneurs in France, who have significantly improved their business. They started with a small specialized stores of about 5000 square meters floor space and as a demographic segmentation they made a big corporation and now they are one of the biggest companies in the world.

Analysis section:

As we saw in this paper, selling is not an easy task. You should have many skills, you have to find customers needs to persuade them to buy and the most important thing is the customer to be satisfied from the product, which he bought. Nowadays, it is difficult to decide which distribution channel, marketing mix or which segmentation to use because the world is becoming more and more different and people are influenced by different things. Selling refrigerators is actually difficult, because every people have different preferences. What is best for selling refrigerators – wholesalers-retailers connection or personal selling, which has been proved with the years as one of the best ways to sell something. Wholesaler-retailer is a good method to sell refrigerators in this particular case, because it is possible not to have the products, which customer is need and immediately you may purchase them from the wholesaler, it will ask the manufacturer for the given type of refrigerator and delivery will be done. The customer will be glad that have receive a refrigerator, which he want most and the wholesaler-retailer will be satisfied that will earn money. On the other hand personal selling is other good way for selling refrigerators, because you are with the potential customer and you could easily to understand what are his desires and to suggest the best product, which will fit the customer.

In this paper I will use the results of a marketing research, which was made in Sofia’s malls.

7Figure1. Who influenced men and women, when shopping.

In our marketing research men and women were asked about the person, who influenced their decision, when making a purchase or who they asked when they have questions concerned about the best product. In Figure1 we can see that men and women request assistance, when they are buying something. Lets assume that these men and women will buy refrigerator, they will be influenced by shop assistant, which means that personal selling is a good method to persuade the customer to make a purchase. I do not want to say that wholesaler-retailer is not a method which help running many business. On the whole, it will help and will be a way of selling, but according to customers opinions, personal selling is better.

What about the advertising, nowadays there is so much that sometimes managers get confused. One of the most powerful advertising tools available are websites and newspapers. In our case, which will help us more to persuade people to buy a refrigerator. Once more we will make a consultation to our previous marketing research about which advertising influenced more men and women.

Figure 2. Which advertising influenced men and women as potential buyers.

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Advertising in websites or newspapers is the given task in our case. Actually I have to mention here that Internet is becoming more and more in our live, so advertising in websites will be one of the most preferable places to advertise your product. In figure 1 we can see that men and women are influenced by advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Moreover, nowadays, most managers and companies decide to advertise their products by magazines, newspapers. For example we can find their offers freely everywhere. Most companies published every week a magazines/newspaper with their top and cheap products. Really, advertising in Internet is a good idea, we can have a strong advertisement, but is not preferred than newspapers. In newspapers customers may see a large photo of the product, their options and advantages, while in Internet they can only saw a banner and nothing more. People who want to buy technologies are more common to be influenced by advertisements in newspapers or magazines. So, as a conclusion we have to have in mind the customers preferences and their opinion about what influenced them to make a purchse and here newspapers advertising is better than advertising in internet. Definitely, advertising in Internet give us a grat opportunity to choose between different types to run our advertisements and to target specific group of people, but we observe that people are more influenced by advertisements in newspapers.

Benefits sought and Demographic segmentations are appropriate for selling refrigerators, in our case. As to Palmer (2000) customer are becoming increasingly diverse in their needs. According to him some of the bases for identifying different types of customer are familiar such as age, gender, geographical location. Other such as attitudes and lifestyle. The main mission of segmentation is to identify groups of people, who will buy and respond to an offer. In our particular case, demographic segmentation and benefits sought will help us to sell more refrigerators. According to Jobber (1998) when examining criteria, the marketer is trying to identify good predictors of differences in buyer behavior. So, here you find analyses about better segmentation when purchasing a refrigerator.

9Benefits sought determine the people with different preferences, on the other hand demographic segmentation help us to find the best place to advertise our product. For example if we advertise in newspapers, we can choose the best place, which meets our targets and to advertise there. Demographic segmentation give us the

opportunity to segment people and to choose best part, where we will buy more. Benefits sought also segment people according to their preferences. For example some people will need a white, black, noir or purple refrigerator, others will want to buy small or big, others will prefer to have a refrigerator which have many options (such as to make ice, to purified water and so on). In general, refrigerators are unique product among the white technologies and every family needs this technology. In an ideal world, each individual buyers would be considered to have

10unique set of needs, which they seek to satisfy – Palmer (2000).