An Advertising agency is an organisation whose business consists in the acquisition of the right to use space of time in advertising media and the administration of behalf of the advertisers of advertising appropriations made by them. It renders advice and creative services for its clients. It does not sell any tangible products, but sells creative talents and past experience. Thus it is an organisation specially created for rendering services in advertising. The services of an advertising agency in general can be summarized as follows: It makes the advertisements pleasant and serves the purpose. It can get the advertisements published at the appropriate times. It can help the advertiser in the preparation of the advertising budget. It can free the Continue reading
Industrial Marketing Strategy
Industrial Product Development
Industrial product is defined as a complex set of economic, technical, legal, and personal relationship between the buyer and the seller. A product is a combination of basic, enhanced, and augmented properties. Basic properties are included in the generic product, with fundamental benefits sought by customers. Generic products are made differentiable by adding tangible enhanced properties such as product features, styling and quality. The augmented properties include intangible benefits such as technical assistance, available of spare parts, maintenance and repair services, warranties, training, timely delivery, and attractive commercial terms. The product package as expected by the prospective customers should be well understood by the industrial marketer. Industrial product development is the process by which the product ideas are generated, assessed, Continue reading
Long-Term Industrial Product Strategies
Industrial marketing firms have to adopt the following three important steps for developing long term product strategies for existing individual products and products lines. Assessing the performance of all the existing products or product lines by using product evaluation matrix. Examining the relative strengths and weakness of the firm’s products in comparison to competitors’ products by using perceptual mapping technique. Deciding the product strategies for the existing products based on the above analysis. 1. Product Evaluation Matrix Yoran Wind & Henry Claycamp have developed a technique called product evaluation matrix to be used to assess the product performance. Performance parameters of a product such as industrial sales, company sales, market share and profitability are combined in the matrix. Industry sales Continue reading
Product Life Cycle and Industrial Pricing
Pricing strategies vary as the industrial product moves through its life cycle. The industrial pricing strategy is a key factor in each of the four cells of product life cycle. Introductory Stage Pricing Strategy: There are two pricing strategies available for a new product which is in the introductory stage of its life cycle. These are: (a) Penetration Strategy, and (b) Skimming Strategy. An industrial marketer must analyze the price from the angle of the buyers. How soon the firm should try ton recover the investment on the new product is another important factor to be considered by the industrial marketer. Penetration Strategy: When the price elasticity of demand is high or the buyers are highly price sensitive, strong threat Continue reading
Cost-Benefit Analysis in Industrial Pricing
To formulate an appropriate industrial pricing strategy it is very essential to have an analysis of the costs and benefits of the industrial product from the customer’s point of view. The benefits can be grouped into soft and hard benefits. Soft benefits includes those benefits which are very difficult to assess, such as customer training, warranty period, customer services, company reputation etc. Hard benefits are the physical attributes of the products such as production rate of machine, rejection rate of component and price/performance ratio. The costs for an industrial customer mean price plus other expenses that are incurred in purchasing and using the product. For example, the cost of a new oil refinery machine purchased by oil mill includes price, Continue reading
Pricing of Industrial Products
The industrial marketers should understand the various aspects of the pricing, since pricing is the most critical part of industrial marketing strategy. Different strategies such as market segmentation strategy, product strategy, and promotion strategy are related to pricing strategy. In order to achieve the dual objective such as to meet the company objective and satisfy the market needs, the industrial marketer has to integrate the various strategies. When the members of buying committee of a buying firm, purchase a particular industrial product, they are buying a given level of technical service, product quality, and delivery reliability. The other elements such as the reputation of the supplier, friendship, a feeling of security and other personal benefits flowing from the buyer-seller relationship Continue reading