marketing mix

For supermarkets the market segmentation is the way in which the market is split up into smaller markets where the customers have the same needs. This can be many different segments, for example the basics such as bottle sizes, food (veg pots), but also others like business makers, sellers etc.

Price

To set a price for a new product a business needs to take into account different things. These are the 3 C’s (cost, competition and customers). The overall price of a bottle of smoothie needs to take in to account costs the amount of ingredients needed. The place it is made in is fruit towers. There is a lot of competition for smoothies at the supermarket e.g. Tropicana smoothies etc, but if the prices are not good enough then customers could move on to rival smoothie producers for example Tropicana smoothies, supermarket brand smoothies etc. Also for customers of the product, more segments a business has will help to attract more customers to their coffee shop which will then bring them in more profit. (The owner of the business should decide on the price however if it is too high it will not be sold and if it is too low the business will not make enough profit to cover the expenses of making the product. A price should be decided so that all of the product will be sold as well as leaving the business with a profit.) There are many different ways to decide a price; one is to use a rival businesses price as a starting point.

Another is to ask customers how much they would be willing to pay for the particular product and depending on the type of business one-off pricing could be used.

Innocent use a range of pricing strategies such as psychological pricing depending on the product this is because £1.99 sounds less than £2 which would make customers think its cheap or good value.

Promotion

Promotion is what a business needs to do to show existing and potential customers its new product. Once the business has seen who its target audience is and has made a suitable product that meets the needs of its target audience it should go ahead to promote the product. Promotion techniques are: Personal selling, Packaging and merchandising, Sales promotion, Advertising and public relations. Below the line advertising is concentrated on Starbucks controlling their own promotion such as merchandise. Above the line advertising is carried out by advertising agency’s that have been paid for by the business for example television adverts and magazines, Starbucks only tend to spend a small amount 1.4% of their profit on this unlike the 11% from Coca Cola.

Advertising

Innocent smoothies at first did not make an advertisement because they did not have enough money, but when the business was a success they were generating enough money to start an advert using their own simple homemade ad.  

 

Packaging

Innocent packaging is a good way to advertise as the background colour always uses bright colourful colours which makes their logo stand out. This is free advertisement to anyone who walks past whilst shopping for other groceries in the super markets. The packaging should stand out so that it is instantly recognisable to anyone walking past.

Merchandising

Merchandising is where a company sells small products that are not its main business to promote itself. For example at a concert the place it is being held would sell t-shirts, badges, key rings, posters etc.

Place

I would expect to find innocent smoothies at stalls, coffee shops, supermarkets and certain shops. This is because when I researched this I found out that the products sold were at stalls, coffee shops and supermarkets. I also would expect the company to be a standalone one but no. I would not expect to innocents products to be everywhere, just places where they think that it would sell i.e. shopping centres. Also from the questionnaires this is the most favourite choice I think that Coventry does not have enough places to sell these products as it is not as high profile as other. More profit can be made if there are more people around where the product itself is sold; there are not as many people in Coventry as there are in other parts of the country where more profit could be made.