2.1. Concepts
2.1.1. Marketing Strategy
Marketing strategy is a long-term course of action designed to optimize allocation of the scarce resources at the disposal of a firm in delivering superior customer experiences and promote the interests of other stakeholders. Scarce resources include monetary capital, human capital, technology, time. Beside, Marketing strategy is intimately tied with strategic planning – the process of creating a firm’s strategy. However, marketing strategy should be linked with the firm’ missions, and values (Hausman & Associates [LinkedIn], 2011).
2.1.2. Marketing Mix Strategy The marketing mix is the set of controllable, tactical marketing tools that a company uses to produce a desired response from its target market. It consists of everything that a company can do to influence demand for its product. It is also a tool to help marketing planning and execution. The marketing mix can divide into four groups of variables commonly known as the 4P’s: Promotion, Product, Place and Price (MaRS Discovery District [marsdd], 2014).
Promotion: refers to the act of communicating the benefits and value of your product to consumers. It then involves persuading general consumers to become customers of your business using methods such as advertising, direct marketing, personal selling and sales promotion.
Price: concerns the amount of money that customers must pay in order to purchase your products. There are a number of considerations in relation to price including price setting, discounting, credit and cash purchases as well as credit collection.
Place: is in regards to distribution, location and methods of getting the product to the customer. This includes the location of your business, distributors, and the potential use of the internet to sell products directly to consumers.
Product: are the goods and services that your business provides for sale to your target market. When developing a product you should consider quality,