Banking Marketing Aptitude Marketing Mix Marketing Mix

Introduction

According to Philip Kotler: Marketing mix is a set of controllable, tactical tools-Produce Price, Place and Promotion (4p?s) that the firms blend to produce the response they want in target market. The marketing mix consists of everything the firms can do to influence the demand for their product.

Marketing mix is the set of controllable variables that a company can use to influence the customers response within a given marketing environment .The four elements or the 4P's are controllable because they are internal to the company. Apart from these four elements the marketing manager has to take another set of variable which are part of the external environment.

Marketing can be understood as interaction between marketing mix elements and environmental variables. Using the elements of the marketing mix the manager tries to tackle the external factors. He carefully selects and makes necessary adjustment with the external variables. In actual practice the marketing manager considers a number of different alternatives and finally selects the most appropriate alternative. In other words, the manager can realize his goal by using different combination of the marketing mix. For example-when a company is launching a new product in the market the company can set a high or low level for each of these variables.

4p's

(a) Product: it is a bundle of utilities which gives economic, social and psychological satisfaction. It is a combination of tangible and intangible properties that are designed to provide need satisfying experience to the customers. A product is a complex of intangible and tangible attributes, including Packaging, Color, and Price. Manufacturer's prestige and retailer's prestige and manufacturer's and retailer's services which the buyer may accept as offering satisfaction of his wants or needs.

(b) Price: It is the amount of money which founds the consideration for the transfer of legal title to a product or service. It is a unique element in the marketing mix since it relates directly to the generation of revenue. Pricing occupies an important place in the marketing of goods and services by a firm. No product can be launched without a tag or at least some guidelines for pricing. Pricing is often used as a regulator of the demand for a product. Generally if the price of a product is increased, its demand comes down, and vice versa. Pricing is considered to be an effective competitive weapon. Hence most of the marketing firms give high importance to the fixation of price for their products and services.

(c) Place: Place or distribution includes all those activities which the company undertakes to make the product available and accessible' to the target customer. It is concerned with making goods and services available at the right place, so that people can purchase the same. There are two important things in this aspect- one regarding physical movement of goods from producers to consumers or users and two, regarding the channels or using intermediaries in the distribution process. It includes channels of distribution, transportation, inventory control etc.

(d) Promotion: Promotion is the process of marketing communication which is done to inform, to persuade, to remind, and to influence people in favor of the company's products and services. It is a broad term which includes advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, publicity that are adopted to fulfill the sales target. The main purpose of promotion is to attract the customer, awaken their demand and to stimulate them to act as desired by the company. In other words promotion is an important element of marketing mix by which marketers make use of various tools of communication to encourage exchange of goods and services in the market.

Letter the extended Marketing Mix components is called 7p's. These are as follows:

(a) People: "Controlling men is like handling a piece of string. If you push it, it will go anywhere. If you lead it, you can make it go anywhere you want

      -            Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th President or the USA.

Like manufacturing organizations, service organizations are also trying to use technology to get their tasks done more effectively and efficiently. Tellers in banks are being replaced by ATMs, call center operations in service carters are being replaced by computers and many such jobs are being automated. However, service organizations have realized that they cannot completely replace people with machines. They do need people because machines can act and respond only in the way they are programmed and therefore cannot deal with exceptional situations. On the other hand, people can be trained to deal with difficult customers and exceptional situations. However, it is not very easy to attract and retain good people. People have their own set of expectations from the organization and from their jobs. They are also bogged down by their personal and social responsibilities apart from the responsibilities as employees towards their organization. At work too, employees might face varied problems as they strive to achieve their personal and organizational goals. Hence proper employee selection, training, and motivation is very important.

(b) Process: Process is an element of the extended marketing mix. A process outlines the procedures and methods to be followed to produce and deliver goods and services. It also determines the extent of customer involvement and participation required in service creation and delivery. Therefore, process explains series of activities, their sequence and the role to be played by the service provider, the intermediaries and the customer. It plays an important role in determining the quality of service design, production and delivery.

(c) Physical Evidence: It refers to the physical environment in which goods and services are delivered. Services are low in search qualities, that is, they cannot be tested like products, for their features or characteristics before using them. They are high in experience qualities, i.e., the quality of a service can be judged after it is utilized. For example, it is only after a beautician cuts and shapes a customer's hair that she knows whether the hair has been styled to her satisfaction. Some services are also high in credence qualities, i.e., the quality cannot be judged even after experiencing the service. For example an organization might approach a consultant for implementing an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. However, even after implementation, it will be difficult for the organization to judge if the system is the most suitable for its needs.

Factors Affecting Marketing mix:

            (i) Consumer desire and needs.

            (ii) Buyer behavior

            (iii) Quality of product and services.

            (iv) Pricing policy

            (v) Competition

            (vi) Transportation and  

            (vii) Tax policy

            (viii) Liberalization and Globalization.