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Personal Selling

P ersonal Selling. Personal selling occurs where an individual salesperson sells a product, service or solution to a client. Salespeople match the benefits of their offering to the specific needs of a client. Today, personal selling involves the development of longstanding client relationships. In comparison to other marketing communications tools such as advertising, personal selling tends to: Use fewer resources, pricing is often negotiated. Products tend to be fairly complex (e.g. financial services or new cars). There is some contact between buyer and seller after the sale so that an ongoing relationship is built. Client/prospects need specific information. The purchase tends to involve large sums of money. There are exceptions of course, but most personal selling takes place in this way. Personal selling involves a selling process that is summarised in the following Five Stage Personal Selling Process. The five stages are: 1. Prospecting. 2. Making first contact. 3. The sales ca
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Bowman's Strategy Clock

Bowman's Strategy Clock The Strategy Clock: Bowman's Competitive Strategy Options The 'Strategy Clock' is based upon the work of Cliff Bowman (see C. Bowman and D. Faulkner 'Competitve and Corporate Strategy - Irwin - 1996). It's another suitable way to analyze a company's competitive position in comparison to the offerings of competitors. As with Porter's Generic Strategies, Bowman considers competitive advantage in relation to cost advantage or differentiation advantage. There are six core strategic options: Option one - low price/low added value. likely to be segment specific. Option two - low price. risk of price war and low margins/need to be a 'cost leader'. Option three - Hybrid. low cost base and reinvestment in low price and differentiation. Option four - Differentiation. (a)without a price premium: perceived added value by user, yielding market share benefits. (b)with a price premium: perceived added value sufficient to to bear pric

The Adoption Process

The Adoption Process. The Adoption Process (also known as the Diffusion of Innovation) is more than forty years old. It was first described by Bourne (1959), so it has stood the test of time and remained an important marketing tool ever since. It describes the behaviour of consumers as they purchase new products and services. The individual categories of innovator, early adoptor, early majority, late majority and laggards are described below. Innovators are the first to adopt and display behaviour that demonstrates that they likely to want to be ahead, and to be the first to own new products, well before the average consumer. They are often not taken seriously by their peers. The often buy products that do not make it through the early stages of the Product Life Cycle (PLC). Early adoptors are also quick to buy new products and services, and so are key opinion leaders with their neighbours and friends as they tend to be amongst the first to get hold of items or services. The early majo

Four Banding Alternatives

Exercise - Four Banding Alternatives Banana Computers Banana Computers is a well-established personal computer (PC) manufacturer. Designers and computer enthusiasts alike prefer the brand and it has a cult following all over the World. Banana is innovative and creative. Your Task. Apply the Four Banding Alternatives to the scenario of Banana Computers. How should they progress with their branding strategy?

The Marketing Environment

The Marketing Environment. What is the marketing environment? The marketing environment surrounds and impacts upon the organization. There are three key perspectives on the marketing environment, namely the 'macro-environment,' the 'micro-environment' and the 'internal environment'. The micro-environment This environment influences the organization directly. It includes suppliers that deal directly or indirectly, consumers and customers, and other local stakeholders. Micro tends to suggest small, but this can be misleading. In this context, micro describes the relationship between firms and the driving forces that control this relationship. It is a more local relationship, and the firm may exercise a degree of influence. The macro-environment This includes all factors that can influence and organization, but that are out of their direct control. A company does not generally influence any laws (although it is accepted that they could lobby or be part of a trade o

Public Relations(PR) - Page Three

Public Relations(PR) - Page Three. Public relations as part of the marketing communications mix. Product placement in media. This is an interesting and original use of PR. There are very many examples in movies and TV programmes that 'place' products. For example, a car manufacturer places a car in a movie and the hero drives it, or wears a watch that is looked at by the villain displaying the time, underscored by the manufacturer's logo. Today, computer games include banners and posters during game-play as the action unfolds. Examples of product placement in games would include field sports with adverts placed alongside a pitch, or car racing games where you pass billboards displayed in a city. Lobbying government bodies. Lobbying is named after the 'lobby' area of the British Houses of Parliament where traditionally 'lobbying' would have occurred. Lobby in the past would have meant catching the eye of a Member of Parliament, in order to persuade him or her

Public Relations(PR) - Page Two

Public Relations(PR) - Page Two. Public relations as part of the marketing communications mix. Organising events. Corporate events are used to woo publics in both a formal and an informal manner. A formal corporate event could include a manufacturer inviting employees from all of its many distributors to visit its manufacturing plant for a training day. This has a direct business payoff. A more informal event could include a day at the races or a short-break abroad, where clients are wined and dined at the cost of a company, in order to generate goodwill. This has an indirect business payoff. Facility visits. Visits to a factory, such as a chocolate factory, or a facility, such as a nuclear power plant also generate a positive perception of an organisation. In the case of a factory visit, loyal customers or other interested parties can experience for themselves what is behind a well-known product. In the case of a nuclear power plant, concerned or misinformed publics have the chance to