Integrated Marketing Communication in Retail Marketing. MBA Marketing study material

There are numerous ways of planning the strategies for the retailers to communicate effectively with their customers. At the outset, the tactics which retailers are using to make an effective communication with the people are the tools of integrated marketing communication in a retail marketing environment. Let’s get first to know what is marketing communication?

What is Marketing Communication?

Marketing communication refers to the means implemented by marketer or retailer to strokes the marketing efforts like advertising, public relation, sales promotion, campaigning, publicity etc. to convey the information about the product or service either directly or indirectly to the customers with intention of sales.

It’s nothing but the exchange of information about the product or service and makes aware of the brand, organization and its policies. It is also a part of getting a feedback in the form of information from the customers.

What is Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)?

Integrated Marketing Communication is a strategically planned process to ensure the implementation of marketing efforts are linked together to reach the overall marketing goal.

It’s important for retailers to convey a right message to the right target market and receiving a right feedback from the customers and it is possible only through integrated marketing communication. It is nothing but the integrating the marketing or promotional tools while applying the communication efforts to customers.

 Integrated Marketing Communication Tools:

·         Advertising:

Advertising is a non-personal tool of promotion to communicate with the target market to persuade them for buying the products or services. It is a paid form of marketing through which retailers can convey the message about the brand, product, and organization overall. Advertising mainly focuses on attracting new customers by outlining a target market. TV Advertising, radio advertising, banners are commonly used forms of advertising.

·         Sales Promotion:

Sales promotion is a set of schemes or tactics for the limited period of time to increase the sales by influencing the potential market. Basically, these tactics involve the campaigns that offering extra value, incentives to the distributor or end user which aims to an immediate sale. It rarely builds long-term customer loyalty.

·         Direct Marketing:

It is a classic tool of IMC in which marketers or retailers, in case of retail marketing, directly communication one-to-one with the customers or end users and provide the information about their products or services. There are many ways to communicate directly with the customers such as personal selling, email marketing, tele-calling or point of sale etc. In modern marketing, email is the most popular form of communication.

·         Public Relation(PR):

PR is a process of communicating with the audience or target market directly or indirectly through a media or press releases to increase the awareness of product and organization. PR mostly focuses on strong and long term relationship with the target market and maintain the positive image of the organization in the marketplace.

·         Internet Marketing:

It is a modern form of marketing communication through the interactive source of the internet where there is a two way communication possible with the contribution of the target market or customers. It also called as an online marketing. Website, social media, email blasts are the commonly used features for marketing.

In retail marketing environment, integrated marketing communication tools play a very important role in a reliable way to boost the sales and profit margin. 

What is Retail Marketing? MBA Marketing study Material.

The concept of retail shops transformed over the period of time from small booths and roadside sellers to the big modish shopping malls of the modern age. This post gives you a complete detail about what is retail marketing? Before going to the retail marketing, first, let’s have a look at the meaning “Retail”.

What is Retail?

Retailing embraces business activities of selling a product or service to the consumers for their personal, family and household use.  Purpose of retail is the sale of the product to final consumers. Retailers are always performed as an intermediate between manufacturer and consumers. Retailers accumulate the variety of products from different sources and sell it in small quantity to the consumers. In many industries, manufacturers have modified their products with the help of retailer’s reviews and feedbacks. Further, Retail environments factors can be alienated into:

• The macro environment includes following state and local laws that confirm business activities are fair and do not take advantage of the consumers through unrealistic pricing, wrong advertising, and disingenuous promotions.
• The micro environment involves considering customers and competitors as a whole.

What is Retail Marketing?

Retail marketing comprises the range of marketing activities undertaking by retailers to influence the consumers or the end users to buy the product or service for their personal use. Retail marketing aims to increase the awareness and interest of product or service which can influence the people to buy it for their use. It simply the promotion of products or services in the market to in an effort of generating sale from end users. There are many different strategies to approach the consumers like advertising, PR etc.

Retail Marketing Mix: 4 P’s of Retail Marketing.

Approaching a right marketing mix can lead to the profitable growth and higher returns on investment. Below, you will find 4 P’s of retail marketing:

1.      Product:

In retail marketing, product decision includes deciding what goods or services should be offered for sale to a particular set of consumers. Selection of product category is very important in product mix. The categories involve durable goods such as appliances, furniture, electronic goods and sports equipment and food, soft goods or consumables such as clothing, furnishings, cosmetics, paper goods and other items with a typical lifespan of a year or less. Product mix involves each decision which varies from product choice.

2.      Price:

Price mix in retail marketing involves a set of decisions taking by retailers for their product aims to reach up to the profit margin. Pricing decisions can be taken by considering policies such as everyday low pricing, high-low pricing, competitive pricing, psychological pricing etc. In retail marketing, a price can be decided by considering the cost of the product plus transportation, apart from these costs all other costs are negligible.

3.      Place:

The place is a key element of retail marketing mix. Where to sell a product or service? An answer to this question decides the location of the business. In retailer’s point of view, location or place is very important element because these decisions concerning the distribution channels to be used and their management, the locations of outlets, methods of transportation and inventory levels to be held. The aim is to certify that products and services are available in the proper quantities, at the right time and place.

4.      Promotion:

Increase the sales volume of a product through influencing customers to buy it is the main objective of promotion mix in retail marketing. To promote the product, retailers have to obtain various strategies such as print advertisements, television advertisement, internet marketing, outdoor billboards, radio, Magazine advertisements, PR campaigns etc.  Promotion mix can be influenced by factors such as the competitive retail environment, the profit margin on sales and the budget available for promotion purposes.

These are the fundamental retail marketing mix in every retailing business.

Applications of Marketing Research. MBA Marketing study material.

Marketing Research plays a significant role where the organization and people associates to each other through the process of data collection and data analysis to identify the scope of the market for product or services. Applications of marketing research is an instinctual interface which provides statistical or graphical practices for market research analysis. It does not only help to identify the target market but focuses on evaluating choices and preferences of potential consumers.

Application of Marketing Research Process:

·         Product Research:

Product research usually conducts to calculating possible acceptance of a new product, upgrade or additions to existing products, making wise decisions on product packaging and determining product acceptability over market competition. Product research mainly focuses on how customers might react to a product.

·         Pricing Research:

Pricing research is dealing with the decisions on pricing strategies of a product according to the cost of production and profit margin for the organization. It helps to determine the acceptability of price of product or services where consumers feel that it is worth to pay for it. It makes you understand the variety of price level as per the competitive market to achieve desired profit.

·         Concept Testing:

Concept testing comprises of assessing new product concept, brand names, advertising concept etc. It basically focuses on the process of generating a new product and its concept behind developing it with pricing concept, ad appeals, and positioning.

·         Positioning Research:

Positioning Research covers all the study of how the existing product or services has been positioned in the competitive marketplace and how to launch and presenting a new product in the potential market. This research helps to define the consumer’s responses or reviews about the product or services so that organization can find out the scope for its positioning.  

·         Advertising Research:

It consists a set of decisions on advertising a product or services, ads developments or advertising campaigns to find out the scope where the organization can apply advertising practices to influence the customers. An organization often conducts a campaign in advertising research to find out whether it is really beneficial to invest in advertising platform for its product and if it's beneficial then this research helps to find out from how many ways the organization can invest to achieve its advertising goals.

·         Market Segmentation:

A market segment is a research process of dividing a market into sub-categories according to the special characteristics. It is normally divided potential consumers into segments by looking at features such as shared needs, common interests or similar lifestyles. This research helps to recognize the high yield segment or profitable segment of the market.

·         Branding Research:

In this type of research, an organization makes an opinion about the product value by reviewing the consumer’s statements on the product. Branding is what are the opinions of people about the product and, what people think about the organization. It assists with the creation, development, and ongoing management and strengthening of brands. Branding research conducts to understand the landscape and develop a launch strategy in the competitive market.

·         Sales Analysis:

Sales Analysis is a research to conduct and analyze the customer records and other available data to identify the sales opportunities in the market. Sales research also analyze whether the sales presentation is effectively moving over the competition in market or not. It helps to record and calculate percentage of sales, stock inventory sales force and other sales related activities.

Applications of marketing research demand the forecasting of the studies in every area such as product, sales, price, advertising etc. which has explained in above process.

Marketing Research and Its types. MBA marketing study material

Undoubtedly hard topic for MBA marketing students, this blog comprises meaning of marketing research and its types/methodologies.

Marketing Research:

Marketing research is a set of a systematic process of investigating, collect, analyze the information which links to producers, customers, end users, competitors to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems and refine marketing action accordingly.

In short, marketing research is a process of collecting information to refine decisions to solve marketing problems.

The process often concentrates on understanding the “Customer” (purchasers, consumers, influencers), the “Company” (product, promotion, pricing, service, sales), and can also be stretched to the situation to include “Competitors” (how their market offerings interact in the market environs).

1. Primary/ Qualitative/ Exploratory marketing research process:

It also is known as field research. This is the firsthand gathering of new data from a primary source such as survey, interviews, newsroom etc. to directing analysis. Primary research helps the organization to know the customers need or what customers want and what the problem is. But this method of research is only to show the problems instead of how to solve it and it’s comparatively expensive than others. Let’s check out its types:

 Focus group: It is a process of producing a qualitative data from specific target audience (most often 5 to 10 in person) by essentially learning their feeling and views about product and company.

One-to-one Interviews: As the name itself this method is used for collecting and analyzing data by interviewing each consumer one by one.

Survey: In this process, company form a questioner and taking a survey of the market by asking questions. It can be done through phone calls or internet. 

Test Market: A test market is a group of individuals or sample size used in marketing research to represent a larger target audience.



2. Secondary/ Quantitative/ Descriptive marketing research process:

It also is known as Desk Research. It is a process of using and analyzing the data or information which is already collected and stored by someone else. Here someone else can be government statistics, publications, private research firm etc. This process is comparatively useful to quickly understand the problem with a solution to it. It may appear in following forms:

Sales data: This is an easily accessible source of collecting data which is available in the company itself. This will help not only to analyze profit and target segment but to discover a market trend.

Government publications and statistics: There are many publication or books, government legal websites and statistics are available where a company can find readymade data for their marketing research.

Commercial Organisations: Company can buy a data and information by establishing market research organization such as Mintel and IBISWorld to help to improve marketing research.

3. Causal Research:

It also is known as Experimental marketing research. This method is based on cause-effect relationship. It focuses on “If…Then...” phrases in which company is trying to solve the problem by analyzing the effect of manipulation independent variable on the dependent variable. In short, it’s an experimental technique to overcome the problem. 

Difference between Marketing, Advertising and PR (Public Relationship)

MBA Marketing specialization

Here are the differences in between Marketing, Advertising, and PR (Public Relationship)-

Marketing	Advertising	Public Relationship (PR)
Marketing is the overall process of boosting up public awareness of a product, person, organization or service.	Advertising is a method of influencing a target audience to buy a product.	PR is a process of transfer and maintain positive awareness of the organization.
Engage in taking Organisation’s promotional decisions from target customer, researching the market to setting a marketing budget, product launches and evaluating the success.	Engage in searching target market and influencing them to buy a product through television, radio, print publications, the internet, posters or billboards etc.	Engage in giving information and making news about the organization through writing press releases, contacting media, public forums, taking clippings from print publications, writing in-house magazines and newsletters etc.
Marketing includes the process of Advertising and Public relationship management (PR).	Advertising is a short time campaign of Marketing.	A public relationship is the vital part of Marketing which may fall in advertising campaign nowadays.
An immediate goal is the promotion of organization as well as product or service by taking right decisions.	An immediate goal is to sell the product to target consumers.	an immediate goal is to maintain informatics and positive relations between organization and public
The inherent aim is to make the mission successful towards a vision of the organisation.	The inherent aim is profit.	Inherent aim is to build and fruitage goodwill of organization in public
A measure of success is the decisions taken towards accomplishing a vision of the organization.	A measure of success is the number of sales and/or the revenue it generates.	A measure of success is public reviews and opinion about a company.
Supply of decisions and money.	Supply of product and services.	Supply of information of organization and its products and services.
Focus on Branding of an organization.	Focus on sales.	Focus on organization’s goodwill.