The marketing mix and the services marketing mix should be adapted for different organizational and business contexts. The examples below consider the contexts of FMCG, B2B, services marketing, voluntary and not-for-profit marketing and online marketing. Try to think of your own examples for each business context.
Service organizations are more likely to use the services marketing mix, which is also known as the 7Ps of marketing. So let’s consider a well-known service organization and evaluate how it adapts and modifies the marketing mix. For this example let’s look at Bupa which provide healthcare such as hospital care, health insurance, health assessments, care homes, dental care and other health services. Bupa also has some B2B services to businesses.
Voluntary and not-profit-organizations also apply the marketing mix in a slightly different way. Volunteering might include helping to clear land the good of the whole community or visiting elderly people in your area to care for them. Not-for-profit organizations will often run on donations or government funding, since they are not free but instead aim to breakeven. Examples include charities and local voluntary groups. For this example let’s consider the Olympic movement. Okay the Olympics is well-known for attracting huge investment from brands for sponsorship. However the Olympics depends on volunteers for many of its activities including media, editorial and press relations, international relations and all of the activities that go on at competition venues and Olympic villages – from laundry to restaurants.
Finally let’s look at how an online business would adapt the marketing mix for its own target market. In fact as you are more than aware there are very many diverse online businesses, and they themselves cross between the various organizational types from voluntary organizations to FMCG companies as we have considered above. The post-dot-com era has seen many new types of businesses such as the auction site eBay and online retailer Amazon. There will also be emerging social media businesses and time will tell as to the level and nature of their success – if any.
The example we will look at here is the online business ASOS which is a very successful online clothing and fashion retailer.
These are all examples of how the marketing mix can be adapted to suit different marketing contexts and business sectors.
FMCG stands for Fast moving Consumer goods. Examples of FMCG products would include chocolate bars, toothpaste, newspapers, razors and similar items. In essence these are products that are regularly bought by consumers – hence fast moving. There is little in the way of a buyer decision process once a person is brand loyal, and decisions tend not to be made by teams or Decision-making Units (DMUs). Here’s an example of how the marketing mix is applied and adapted to FMCG products.
Wrigley’s chewing gum is an example of an FMCG product.
A business-to-business organization is one which markets to organizations and companies rather to consumers. An example of a B2B organization is Oracle, the owner of Sun Microsystems.
Oracle provides databases, middleware, applications, and server and storage systems for many large organizations. Their slogan is ‘Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together.’ In this instance Oracle also use the marketing mix, but in a different way to Wrigley’s chewing gum.
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