Friday, October 2, 2009

Marketing Partioning

Market partioning is a way to discover new segment by investigating the hierarchy of attributes that consumer examine in choosing a brand.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

what is an SKU


A SKU or Stock Keeping Unit is an identifier that is used by merchants to permit the systematic tracking of products and services offered to customers. Usage of the SKU system is rooted in the drill down method, pertaining to data management. SKUs are assigned and serialized at the merchant level. Each SKU is attached to an item, variant, product line, bundle, service, fee or attachment.

SKUs are not always associated with actual physical items, but are more appropriately billable entities. Extended warranties, delivery fees, and installation fees are not physical, but have SKUs because they are billable. All merchants using the SKU method will have their own personal approach to assigning the numbers, based on regional or national corporate data storage and retrieval policies. SKU tracking varies from other product tracking methods which are controlled by a wider body of regulations stemming from manufacturers or possibly third-party regulations.

Consider this: a ball has a part number of 1234, it is packed 20 to a box, and the box is marked with the same part number 1234. The box is then placed in the warehouse. The box of balls is the stock keeping unit (SKU), because it is the stocked item. Even though the part numbers are interchangeable to mean either a ball or a box of balls, the box of balls is the stocked unit. There may be three different colors of balls; each of these colours will be a separate SKU. When the product is shipped, there may be 50 boxes of the blue balls, 100 boxes of the red balls, and 70 boxes of the yellow balls shipped. That shipment would be said to have been a shipment of 220 boxes, across three SKUs.

Successful inventory management systems assign a unique SKU for each product and also for its variants. For example, different flavours or models of product, or different bundled packages including a number of related products, have independent SKUs. This allows merchants to track, for instance, whether blue shirts are selling better than green shirts.

Viral Marketing


viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth,"

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on message to others

Ambush Marketing


Ambush amrketing is commonly an unauthorised association by businesses of their names, brands, products or services with a sports eveent or competition through any one or more of a wide range of marketing activities. "Unauthorised" in the sense that the controller of the commercial rights in such events, usually the governing body, has neither sanctioned nor licensed the association itself or through its commercial agents.
Example-

the 1996 cricket World Cup held in the sub-continent. Though Coca-Cola was the `official' sponsor of the event, Pepsi stole the limelight with its `Nothing official about it' tagline. The instance perhaps marks the most famous example of `ambush marketing' (a marketing tactic which gained prominence globally in the Eighties) in India.

demarketing


it is a process done to reduce the demand of a particular product that is available in scarce.ex:water
it can also be done for the welafare of the public.ex:alcohol

Pull Vs Pull Strategy

Pull strategy is applied when the product or the brand has a unique selling proposition and has a clear competitive advantage over its competitors. In such situations the demand is created and the market itself pulls the product and drives it.
Under this strategy the firm concentrates mostly on distribution, supply chain, awareness is grown. Other aspects of marketing take the back foot except the specific competitive advantage.
Eg. iPod
Push strategy is used normally when product or service or brand is not that attractive to create its own demand. In such cases to attain profitability the firm pushes the product into the market so that its use and consumption can be increased ...in due course of time the specific product may create its demand. Company focuses on increasing sales and use anyhow.
Eg. Insurance

Above the line and below the line advt


ATL is when a company uses channels not within its control and which are gen. costly ( newspapers ) to indirectly market the product.... its genreally mass targetted and the objective is to create awareness of the product.


BTL on the other hand.... is done to persuade the customer through use of cheap channels. It is more targeted than the ATL ( like direct marketing.... mailers.... discounts... etc )