Marketing Final Exam Essay Questions:

Service Differentiation: (List & Explain)

When the physical product cannot easily be differentiated, the key to competitive
success may lie in adding valued services and improving their quality. Service
differentiators include:

• Ordering ease: how easy it is for the customer to place an order with the
company.
• Delivery: how well the product or service is brought to the customer. It includes
speed, accuracy, and care throughout the process.
• Installation: the work done to make a product operational in its planned
location. Ease of installation is a true selling point for buyers of complex products.
E.g.: heavy equipment.
• Customer training : helps the customer’s employees use the vendor’s
equipment properly and efficiently. E.g. X-Ray Equipment in Hospitals.
• Customer consulting : includes data, information systems, and
advice services the seller offers to buyers. E.g. IBM & Oracle consulting services.

• Maintenance and repair: programs help customers keep purchased products in

good working order. E.g. Hewlett Packard Online Technical Support.

• Returns :

1- Controllable returns result from problems or errors by the seller or

customer and can mostly be eliminated with improved handling or storage,
better packaging, and improved transportation.
2- Uncontrollable returns result from the need for customers to actually see,
try, or experience products in person to determine suitability and can’t be
eliminated by the company in the short run through any of these means.
Packaging:

Packaging is considered the fifth P and includes all the activities of designing and
producing the container for a product.
Various factors contribute to the growing use of packaging as a marketing tool:
1- Self-service. An increasing number of products are sold on a self-serve
basis as in supermarkets. Package must perform many sales tasks: attract
attention, describe the product’s features, create consumer confidence,
and make a favorable overall impression.
2- Consumer affluence. Rising affluence means consumers are willing to pay a
little more for the convenience, appearance, dependability, and prestige of
better packages.
3- Company and brand image. Packages contribute to instant recognition of
the company or brand.
4- Innovation opportunity. Unique or innovative packaging such as re-
sealable spouts can bring big benefits to consumers and profits to
producers.
Packaging must achieve a number of objectives:
1. Identify the brand.
2. Convey descriptive and persuasive information.
3. Facilitate product transportation and protection.
4. Assist at-home storage.
5. Aid product consumption.
Macro model of the Communications Process:
Marketers should understand the fundamental elements of effective
communications.
Macro model got Nine Key factors in effective communication:

1- Major Parties: Sender & Receiver

Senders must know:
- What audiences they want to reach and what responses they want to get.
- How to encode their messages so the target audience can decode them.
- They must transmit the message through media that reach the target
audience and develop feedback channels to monitor
their responses.
- The more the sender’s field of experience overlaps that of the receiver, the
more effective the message is likely to be.
2- Major Tools: Message & Media
3- Major communication functions: Encoding, decoding, response, and
feedback.
4- Noise: random and competing messages that may interfere with the
intended communication.

MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS MIX (List, Discuss & Examples)

The Marketing Communications Mix is the specific mix of advertising, personal
selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing a company uses to
pursue its advertising and marketing objectives.
1- Advertising: Any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas,
goods, or services by an identified sponsor.
E.g. : Print & Broadcast Ads, Billboards,, Display Signs, DVD’s, Broachers & Booklets.
Characteristics: Pervasiveness, Amplified expressiveness, Impersonality.
2. Sales promotion: A variety of short-term incentives to encourage trial or purchase
of a product or service including consumer promotions.
E.g.: (samples, coupons, and premiums), trade promotions (such as advertising and
display allowances), and business and sales force promotions (contests for sales
reps).
Characteristics: Incentives, Invitation, Communication.
3. Events and experiences: Company-sponsored activities and programs designed to
create daily or special brand-related interactions with consumers.
E.g. Sports, Entertainment, Festivals and Street Activities.
Characteristics: Relevant, Involving, Implicit.
4. Public relations and publicity: A variety of programs directed internally to
employees of the company or externally to consumers, other firms, the government,
and media to promote or protect a company’s image or its individual product
communications.
E.g.: Speeches, Seminars, Annual Reports, Charitable Donations and Company
Magazine.
Characteristics: High Credibility, Dramatization, Ability to catch Buyers off-guard.
5. Direct & Interactive marketing: Use of mail, telephone, fax, e-mail, or Internet to
communicate directly with or solicit response or dialogue from specific customers
and prospects.
E.g.: Email, Websites, Catalogues, Tele-Marketing
Characteristics: Customized, up-to-date, Interactive.
6. Word-of-mouth marketing: People-to-people oral, written, or electronic
communications that relate to the merits or experiences of purchasing or using
products or services.
E.g.: Person to Person, Chat Rooms, Blogs.
Characteristics: Credible, Personal, Timely.
8. Personal selling: Face-to-face interaction prospective purchasers for the purpose
of making presentations, answering questions, and procuring orders.
E.g.: Sales Meetings & Presentations, Fairs & Trade
Characteristics: Personal Interaction, Cultivation, Response.
Consumers-Goods Classification:
It is the classification of consumer goods on the basis of shopping habits, we
distinguish among convenience, shopping, specialty, and unsought goods.
Convenience goods: purchased frequently, immediately, and with minimal effort.
Examples: soft drinks, soaps, and newspapers
Consists of:
- Staples are convenience goods consumers’ purchase on a regular basis, like
Toothpaste.
- Impulse goods are purchased without any planning or search effort, like candy bars
and magazines.
- Emergency goods are purchased when a need is urgent, like umbrellas during a
rainstorm.
Shopping goods: are those the consumer characteristically compares on such bases
as suitability, quality, price, and style.
Examples include furniture, clothing
Specialty goods : have unique characteristics or brand identification for which
enough buyers are willing to make a special purchasing effort.
Examples include cars
Unsought goods: are those the consumer does not know about or normally think of
buying.
Example: smoke detectors.

Consumer Reference Pricing:

Consumers usually compare Prices to a reference price that they maintain in their
mind for a specific product. A reference price is the price that people expect for a
specific product. Several factors affect Reference price:
• “Fair Price” (what consumers feel the product should cost)
• Typical Price
• Last Price Paid
• Upper-Bound Price (reservation price or the maximum most consumers would pay)
• Lower-Bound Price (lower threshold price or the minimum most consumers would
pay)
• Historical Competitor Prices
• Expected Future Price
• Usual Discounted Price

Market Followers Strategy: (Mention & Explain)

Many companies prefer to follow rather than challenge the market leader
however,
They must know how to hold current customers and win a fair share of new ones.
Each follower tries to bring distinctive advantages to its target market location,
services, financing, while defensively keeping its manufacturing costs low and its
product quality and services high. They follow four broad strategies:
1. Counterfeiter: duplicates the leader’s product and packages and sells it on
the black market or through disreputable dealers. E.g. Apple, and Rolex
2. Cloner: emulates the leader’s products, name, and packaging, with slight
variations. E.g. For example, Ralcorp Holdings sells imitations of name-brand
cereals.
3. Imitator: copies some things from the leader but differentiates on packaging,
Advertising, pricing, or location. The leader doesn’t mind as long as the imitator
doesn’t attack aggressively. E.g. Telepizza & Domino’s
4. Adapter: takes the leader’s products and adapts or improves them. E.g.
introducing new flavors in Nectars.

Value Networks:

A broader view sees a company at the center of a value network, a system of

partnerships and alliances that a firm creates to source, augment, and deliver
its offerings. A value network includes a firm’s suppliers and its suppliers’
suppliers, and its immediate customers and their end customers. The value
network includes valued relationships with others, such as university researchers
and government approval agencies.
A company needs to orchestrate these parties in order to deliver superior value to
the target market.
Marketers, for their part, have traditionally focused on the side of the value
network that looks toward the customer, adopting customer relationship
management (CRM) software and practices. In the future, they will increasingly
participate in and influence their companies’ upstream activities and become
network managers, not just product and customer managers.
Product Level Hierarchy:

Example: Panadol
- Core Product: Pain Killer.
- Basic Product: Tablets (Medicine).
- Expected Product: Strong pain relief, No side effects, long
duration.
- Augmented Product: gentle on Stomach, Suitable for Infants.
- Potential Product: Different attributes: Panadol joints, Panadol
Stomach, etc.
Product Mix Concept:
Type of Intermediaries:
A marketing channel performs the work of moving goods from producers to
consumers and Marketing channels require making decisions in many aspects,
among which is, identifying major channel alternatives.
Channel alternatives differ in three ways: the types of intermediaries, the number
needed, and the terms and responsibilities of each.
Marketing Intermediaries are businesses that help your company to promote, sell,
and distribute your products and services to your customers. They can include
resellers, physical distribution firms, marketing service agencies, and financial
intermediaries.
1. Merchants:
Wholesalers and Retailers whose buy, take title to, and resell the merchandise.
2. Agents:
Brokers, Manufacturers, representatives, Sales agents whose search for
customers, negotiate on the producer’s behalf but do not take title to the goods.
3. Facilitators:
Transportation companies, banks, advertising agencies whose assist in the
distribution process but neither take title to goods nor negotiate purchases or
sales.
1- Types of intermediaries: depends on the service outputs desired by the
target market & the channel’s transactions costs. The company must search
for the channel alternative that promises the most long-run profitability .

2- Number of intermediaries: Three strategies based on the number of

intermediaries are:

Exclusive distribution: Limited number of intermediaries to maintain control

over the service level and outputs.
Selective distribution: The intermediaries willing to carry a particular product, it
can gain adequate market coverage with more control and less cost.
Intensive distribution: Places the goods or services in as many outlets as
possible, consumers buy frequently or in avariety of locations.