The Marketing Mix

Product

Product refers to the goods or services provided by a business to fulfill the customers’ needs and wants.
Features: These are the aspects or characteristics of a product that offer a certain level of satisfaction or benefit to the customer.
Branding and Packaging: A brand is the identity of a specific product, service, or business. Packaging plays a crucial role in marketing as it protects the product and attracts consumers.
Product Life Cycle: The process a product goes through from its initial design and development until it is removed from the market. The life cycle can be divided into Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline.
Portfolio Analysis: This is the process of reviewing a business’s product portfolio to maximize the market value of products, align with business strategy and ensure long-term growth.

Price: This is the amount of money consumers are willing to pay for a product or service.
Pricing Strategies: Businesses use various strategies to price products, such as cost-based pricing, penetration pricing, competitive pricing, and skimming pricing.
Price Elasticity: This refers how responsive demand is to a change in price.
Discounts: Reductions to a basic price of goods or services, used to reward customer loyalty, promote new products or reduce inventory.

Place: This aspect of the marketing mix concerns how a business gets its product to the market/place of consumption.
Supply Chain Management: It involves managing the sequence of suppliers that contribute to creating and delivering a product, from raw material to the final product.
Channels of Distribution: These are the paths that a product or service follows from the producer to the final consumer. These can include wholesalers, retailers, and distribution centres.
E-tailing: Selling of retail goods on the internet, an evolution given the increasing usage of digital platforms.

Promotion: It encompasses all methods used to inform and persuade consumers about a product or service.
Advertising: Paid promotion to raise awareness and create a positive image or stimulate interest for a product, service or brand.
Public Relations (PR): This activity promotes goodwill and positive image through stories and events that garner media or public attention.
Sales Promotions and Offers: Short-term incentives to encourage purchase of products, like discount codes, seasonal sales and loyalty rewards.