BLOG POST 10: WRAPPING IT UP

The day has come, my last post! This post is going to be different than the rest, being my last post, it is going to be a reflection on all the things I have learned and how they relate back to my marketing class's objectives and outcomes.

1. To examine and convey basic and emerging marketing concepts and terminologies

I believe I have achieved this class objective many times while writing this blog. A lot of the time, my posts were influenced by the current chapter we were learning in class from our book, Marketing by Kerin, Hartley and Rudelius. By writing about the chapter in the book in my blogs, I feel as though I examined marketing concepts and terminologies in depth, and by posting a blog about them I conveyed them to others as well.

2. To study and understand the marketing mix, target markets, consumer behavior, service marketing, social media marketing and the strategic and financial implications of marketing decisions on the other functional areas of business

In multiple posts, I discussed the marketing mix and how important it is to marketing. I also discussed target markets and consumer behavior as well. Simply by writing about these topics, I studied and learned to understand each topic very quickly. These blog posts were a good way of making sure I understood the material before I shared it with people I may not even know. I even had to use social media marketing to get people to follow me!

3. To have the opportunity to put marketing into action via team and individual projects, research, reports, and presentations

These ten blog posts definitely helped me put marketing into action via an individual assignment. I was able to learn about marketing and then convey it to you, my readers. Just by promoting my blog to the outside world through social media, I had to put marketing into action! In order to get followers on my blog I had to advertise to my friends and family, and even strangers. After each post, I copied my link to my blog into a tweet and a Facebook post. I quickly gained followers, and I even got comments on my posts about how cool it was I was making a blog about my class and sharing it with the internet world. 

4. Analyze and evaluate marketing opportunities in the internal and external environment across a variety of settings

Again, writing about marketing and posting these blogs helped me analyze and evaluate all different kinds of marketing opportunities both internally and externally. Internally, I had to write each post and understand the concepts before I exposed them to my readers. Externally, I had to market my posts to the outside world! One of the parts I am being graded on for these posts is to have 5 followers on this blog that weren't in my class. In order for me to do this I had to advertise that I was creating a blog and writing posts to my friends and family through social media. 

5. Critically evaluate, at a basic level, marketing issues and the marketing literature

By writing these ten posts I most definitely evaluate marketing issues and marketing literature at a basic level. Each post discussed marketing and the issues that went along with each top. I feel this outcome was one of the easiest to achieve.  

Well thank you all very much for following my blog through this past semester. I hope you all learned a little bit about marketing from these posts! Thanks again! 

- Aly Kibbee 

BLOG POST 9: PRICING (part two)

Here we go, on the final stretch of the semester! Only one post left after this, I hope you all enjoyed reading my blog!!
This post is a continuation of the discussion we had about pricing in my last post.

pricing approaches

Even though to a consumer it may seem easy to set a price for a product, there are many different approaches to go about pricing a product.

To start, you have to choose an appropriate price level. This is just a ball park guess of the range you want the price of your product to be in. From there, you choose one of the four pricing approaches I will go over in the following paragraphs. 

demand-oriented

Skimming pricing- Setting the highest initial price that customers really desiring the product are willing to pay.

Penetration pricing- Setting a low initial price on a new product to appeal immediately to the mass market.

Prestige pricing- Setting a high price so  that quality and status-conscious customers will be attracted to the product and buy it. 

Price lining- Setting a line of products made by a single company at a number of specific pricing points.

Odd-Even pricing- Setting prices a few dollars, or cents, under and even number.

Target pricing- Setting an estimated price that the consumer is believed to be willing to pay, and working backwards to adjust the price by looking at markups by retailers and wholesalers to determine the final price they will charge wholesalers for the product. 

Bundle pricing- Setting a price for two or more products as a single package price. 

Yield management pricing- Setting different prices to maximize revenue for a set amount of capacity at any given time. 

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cost-oriented

Standard markup pricing- Add a fixed percentage onto the cost of all of the items in a specific product class. 

Cost-Plus pricing- Summing the total unit cost of providing a product or service and adding a specific amount to the cost to arrive at a price. Generally there are two forms... cost-plus percentage-of-cost pricing, which is a fixed percentage added to the total unit cost, and cost-plus fixed-fee pricing, which is when the supplier is reimbursed for all costs, no matter what they are, but can only receive a fixed fee as profit that is completely independent of the final cost of the project.

Experience curve pricing- Based on the learning effect. This means that the unit cost of the product declines by 10% to 30% each time a company's experience at producing and selling the product doubles.

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profit-oriented

Target profit pricing- Setting an annual target of a specific dollar volume of profit.

Target return-on-sales pricing- Setting a typical price that will give the company a profit that is a specified percentage of the sales volume. 

Target return-on-investment pricing- Setting prices to achieve the target ROI that the company has previously set for themselves. 

dreamatico.com

competition-oriented 

Customary pricing- Setting prices based on tradition, standardized channels of distribution, or other competitive factors.

Above-, At-, or Below-market pricing- Intentionally pricing above, at, or below the market price for a certain product.

Loss-Leader pricing- Setting the price purposely lower than the products customary price to attract attention to it. 

www.gofrugal.com

Thanks for reading guys! My last post for the semester will be along shortly.. !

BLOG POST 8: PRICING (part one)

Hello! I am getting close to finishing up this blog! After this post I will only have two more left!
Today we will start talking about pricing products.

what is price?

What do you think price is? Price is the money or other considerations exchanged for the ownership or use of a product or service. To a consumer, price is just the amount you pay for a product. But what goes into coming up with the amount thats shown on the price tag?

Final Price = List Price - (Incentives + Allowances) + Extra Fees

Using this equation a company can easily determine the final price of a product. Depending on the product, the name of the price can change. 

value

Value is the ratio of perceived benefits to price. How is value different than price? Value is simply what you are willing to pay for a product, where as price is the amount of money a company is going to make you pay if you want to acquire the product. Most of the time if you think the price is more than what the product is worth, you will not purchase the product. For this reason, value is directly related to price. 

Value-pricing is the practice of simultaneously increasing product and service benefits while maintaining or decreasing price.

Value = Perceived benefits / Price

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profit

Pricing becomes really important when it comes to how much profit you'll be making because pricing has a direct effect on a company's profits. 

The profit equation is:

Profit = Total Revenue - Total Cost

          = (Unit Price x Quantity Sold) - (Fixed Cost + Variable Cost)

There are 3 different objectives that relate to a firm's profit. They are 1) managing for long-run profits, 2) maximizing current profits, and 3) target return. 

1) managing for long-run profits

In this objective, companies give up immediate profit by developing quality products to penetrate competitive markets over the long term. Products are priced low compared to their cost to develop, but the firm expects to make more profits later because it has a high market share. 

2) maximizing current profits

This objective is common in many firms because the targets can be set and performance can be measured quickly. 

3) target return

This objective happens when a firm sets a profit goal for themselves, meaning they set an amount they would like to have as profits at the end of a period and try to reach that goal.

Part 2 coming soon..!