Marketing Mix and Market Segmentation

Marketing mix
What is the marketing mix?
The marketing mix is probably the most famous marketing term. Its elements are the basic, tactical components of a marketing plan.
The flowing marketing four p elements product price place and promotion of marketing mix
The term “marketing mix” was first used in 1953 when Neil Borden, in his American Marketing Association presidential address, took the recipe idea one step further and coined tterm “marketing-mix. Marketing Mix is a major concept in modern marketing and involves practically everything that a marketing company can use to influence consumer perception favorably towards its product or services so that consumer and organizational objectives are attained, i.e. Marketing mix is a model of crafting and implementing marketing strategy. It is the same with the marketing mix. The offer you make to you customer can be altered by varying the mix elements. So for a high profile brand, increase the focus on promotion and desensitize the weight given to price. Another way to think about the marketing mix is to use the image of an artist’s palette.
Some commentators will increase the marketing mix to the Five P’s, to include Others will increase the mix to Seven P’s,
Price
There are many ways to price a product. Let’s have a look at some of them and try to understand the best policy/strategy in various situations.
Customers directly relate price to quality, particularly in case of products that are ego intensive of technology based. Sony being a company which emphasize product quality, it tends to sell its products with price range from moderately-high to high-prices, depending on the use and the targeted customers.
For example, Lets consider Sony series of VAIO laptops. Sony has tried to categorize the laptops according to style, user, purpose, mobility and performance, and each a corresponding price.
Another element of Neil Borden’s Marketing Mix is Place. Place is also known as channel, distribution, or intermediary. It is the mechanism through which goods and/or services are moved from the manufacturer/ service provider to the user or consumer.
Product
For many a product is simply the tangible, physical entity that they may be buying or selling. You buy a new car and that’s the product – simple! Or maybe not. When you buy a car, is the product more complex than you first thought? The Three Levels of a Product
The Product Life Cycle (PLC) is based upon the biological life cycle. For example, a seed is planted (introduction); it begins to sprout (growth);
The Customer Life Cycle (CLC) has obvious similarities with the Product Life Cycle (PLC). However, CLC focuses upon the creation of and delivery of lifetime value to the customer i.e. looks at the products or services that customers NEED throughout their live.
Promotion
Sales promotions for example includes free samples, discount, rebates, coupons, contents and sweepstakes, premiums, scratch cards, exchange offers, early bird prizes, etc.
Another one of the 4P’s is promotion. This includes all of the tools available to the marketer for ‘marketing communication’.
Sales promotion is a marketing discipline that utilizes a variety of incentives techniques to structure sales – related programs targeted to customers, trade, and/or sales levels that generate a specific, measurable action or response for a product or service.
People
People are the most important element of any service or experience. Services tend to be produced and consumed at the same moment, and aspects of the customer experience are altered
Public Relations and Publicity Public relations is a broad set of communication activities employed to create and maintain favourable relationship with employees, shareholders,to meet the ‘individual needs’ of the person consuming
Process
Process is another element of the extended marketing mix, or 7P’s.There are a number of perceptions of the concept of process within the business and marketing. For example – to achieve a 30% market share a company implements a marketing planning process. Limitation of Marketing Mix Analysis (4Ps of Marketing)
Despite the fact that marketing mix analysis is used as a synonym for the 4Ps of Marketing, it is criticised (Kotler & Armstrong, 2004) on the point that it caters seller’s view of market analysis not customers view. To tackle this criticism, Lauterborn (1990) attempted to match 4 Ps of marketing with 4 Cs of marketing to address consumer views:

Product – Customer Solution
Price – Customer Cost
Placement – Convenience
Promotion – Communication

How to Write a Good Marketing Mix Analysis
To follow a simple and best approach for marketing mix analysis, it is imperative to understand the purpose of this analysis. So the basic key is to analyse the company’s overall marketing strategy primarily through the strategies it follows under the 4Ps of marketing
Information for Marketing Mix Analysis
Students may seek information regarding market mix analysis (4 Ps) from two basic sources: market and academic. For market sources, information is easily available from a company’s website, business reports, newspapers/published data on marketing, independent market survey reports and, in some cases, students may visit a retail outlet to analyse a product, its pricing and promotional strategies. However, to get more specific details, marketing and advertising academic journals and secondary data in the form of case studies can be the ideal source.

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Developing the marketing mix Many non-profit organizations are skilled at event marketing . Events are organized to raise the funds, including dinners, dances, coffee mornings, book ales, sponsored walks and others.The pricing god the services provided by non-profit organizations may not follow the guidelines applicable to profit oriented pricing. For example the price of CE curse organized by non-profit CE center for Gypsies may be held low to encourage poor families to take advantage of this opportunity. Some non-profit organization even provide free access to services.
Marketing in non-profit organizations
Non-profit organization attempt to achieve some other objectives than profit. This does not mean that they are uninterested in income as they have to generate cash to survive. However their primary goal is non – economic, e.g. to provide education.
Marketing is of growing importance to many non-profit organizations because of the need to generate funds in an increasingly competitive arena. Even organization who rely on government – sponsored grants need to show how their work is of benefit to society: they must meet the needs of their customers. Many non-profit organizations rely on membership fees or donations, which means that communication to individuals and organization .Marketing strategy
A strategy gives business a defined route to follow and a clear destination. Build a marketing strategy and you will ensure that marketing is a long-term way of working, not a one-off activity.
A marketing strategy provides organisation with shared vision of the future. All too often, an organisation will perform a marketing task, such a direct mail shot, then sit back and see what happens. A strategic approach will ensure that you maximise returns on your marketing spending and boost the profits of your organisation.
Strategic marketing manager

has a clear picture of the future
anticipates changes in the market
works towards clear long/term goals
Non-strategic marketing manager
lives day to day without planning
reacts to canges in the market
has only short-term objectives

During the creating of the marketing strategy the marketing manager should proceed as follows:

create the team
review current situation
set objectives
plan action

Market segmentation
Market segmentation is a concept in economics and marketing. A market segment is a sub-set of a market made up of people or organizations with one or more characteristics that cause them to demand similar product and/or services based on qualities of those products such as price or function. A true market segment meets all of the following criteria: it is distinct from other segments (different segments have different needs), it is homogeneous within the segment (exhibits common needs); it responds similarly to a market stimulus, and it can be reached by a market intervention. The term is also used when consumers with identical product and/or service needs are “Positive” market segmentation.Market segmenting is dividing the market into groups of individual markets with similar wants or needs that a company divides the market into distinct groups who have distinct needs, wants, behaviour or who might want different products & services. Broadly, markets can be divided according to a number of general criteria, such as by industry or public versus private although industrial market segmentation is quite different from consumer market segmentation, both have similar objectives. All of these methods of segmentation are merely proxies for true segments, which don’t always fit into convenient demographic boundaries divided up into groups so they can be charged different amounts. These can broadly be viewed as ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ applications of the same idea, splitting up the market into smaller groups.
Market segmenting is dividing the market into groups of individual markets with similar wants or needs that a company divides the market into distinct groups who have distinct needs, wants, behavior or who might want different products & services.
Fig positive market segmentation in group.
Price Discrimination
Where a monopoly exists, the price of a product is likely to be higher than in a competitive market and the quantity sold less, generating monopoly profits for the seller.
Market Segmentation is Critical
Segmentation can make a huge difference in understanding your market. For example, when a local computer store defines its customer segments as “high-end home office” and “high-technology small business,” its segmentation says a lot about its customers. The segmentation helps the company plan its focus on the different types of potential customers
MANUFACTURER CUSTOMER RETAILER
Decisions with respect to distribution channel focus on making the product available in adequate quantities at places where customers are normally expected to shop for them to satisfy their needs. Depending on the nature of the product, marketing management decides to put into place an exclusive,
Summary
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Executive Summary3
In brief, this assignment is concerned about marketing management. It covers in details about the concept of marketing mix with the aid of Sony organization which I have taken as a case study in exploring the way this organization has applied the marketing mix.
In this assignment the following points are going to be discussed:

Sample List of Marketing Mix being used By the organization.
Find out if the marketing mix used by organization is satisfactory.
My suggestion to the organization concerning the marketing mix

Conclusion
The customer needs, usage and budgets, ajay has provided several home products ranging from small packages to big audio systems. They boast on their Hi-Fi which deliver rich music, made richer with preset equalizer  settings. Among other features which Sony boast to offer are like, multiple disc changers which for putting many discs at a go. Also, some even house additional features such as the ability to handle multiple formats, track programming and repeat and random play.