Principles of Marketing at Procter and Gamble - Essay Example

? Principles of marketing Procter and Gamble is one of major players in the packaged household product industry. It has always followed the policy of quality product at reasonable price to attract the customers. P&G has an amazing ability to commercialize its products faster than any of its competitors. Due to this reason the company has always earned good revenue and high profit for most of its brands. P&G has implemented three most important strategies for Tide. They wanted to sell what the customers wanted, create value by differentiating their product from the competitors and make a product which is convenient to use. P&G has always tried to position their product differently according to the changing need and preferences of the people. In the detergent market, marketers are launching their detergents in small easy to handle containers at low price. In this way marketers wanted to prove that they were charging less for more. P&G reduced their commercialization and increase their perceived value by introducing Tide with bleach, cold water Tide, Tide with bounce, etc. So by this it could be clearly assumed that P&G has an excellent marketing team to plan out such marketing strategies, so that it always remains the market leader. Table of Contents PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING 14 1 4 Mission, Vision and Objectives of Procter & Gamble 5 Mission and Vision 5 Objectives 5 Market Overview 6 Competitors 6 Customer Expectations 7 Consumer Behavior 7 Cultural Factors 7 Social Factors 8 Psychological Factors 8 Personal Factors 8 SWOT Analysis 9 Strength 9 Weakness 9 Opportunity 9 Threat 9 Marketing Mix 10 Product 10 Price 10 Place 10 Promotion 11 Conclusion 11 References 13 Mission, Vision and Objectives of Procter & Gamble Mission and Vision Procter & Gamble is one of the largest packaged product companies in the world. This fact has always motivated the company for their purpose inspired growth. The company's mission is to improve the lives of the customers round the world. The long term visions of Procter & Gamble are: The company wants to use 100 percent renewable and recycled material for the products and packaging. The plants of the company should be powered by 100 percent renewable energy. They want zero manufacturing waste to go to landfills. The company wants to design the products for maximum customer delight and conserving the natural resource (P&G, 2012). Objectives The company wants to win the customers, and help its leading brands to grow and expand into different countries. It wanted to focus mainly on the core business and build is strong global market leaders. The company also has the objective maintaining growth and sustainability in different parts of the world. Market Overview In this study we would see the different aspects of the marketing principles and strategies with regards to a very popular brand of Procter & Gamble known as Tide. It is one of the most famous detergent brands of Procter & Gamble. It is one of the flagship brands of P & G. The basic policy of the company is to boost the sales and stimulate the customers to buy the products. This popular detergent was first launched in the market in 1946. The logo of Tide that we see today was slightly modified in 1996. P & G enjoys a well-established recognition in the developed countries of the world like United States, and Europe. The CEO of the company Bob McDonald announced in 2010 that they wanted to expand their markets and penetrate more into Chinese and Indian markets. Their aim is to reach the target of 1 billion customer base in these parts of the world. The closest competitor of P & G is Unilever and Henkel. In Figure 1 we can see that Tide is the market leader in the US detergent market among all the other brands and products of other companies. In fact, the P & G has the greatest market share among all the companies producing detergent. P & G has all its detergent brands in the top list of the consumers. Tide captures about 45 percent of the market alone. The other detergent brands capture 13 percent of the market share. Competitors Tide was among the top 20 detergent brands. It has the highest share of $3.0 billion in the world market. The strongest rivals of Tide are Ariel, the brand of the same company, Attack, Henkel's Persil, Purex, etc. But the brand faces strong competition from the brands of Unilever such as Surf, Persil, and Omo. Customer Expectations The differential taste, need and preferences of the customers compel a company to position its product differently in different market. The customers always expect continuous improvement and excellent services. The customers want innovative products to fulfill their needs. Customers also expect a reasonable pricing structure. In case of detergent the first criteria is a powder having the capability to clean clothes, and remove germs. Apart from this customers nowadays also expect nice fragrance in their washed clothes. The customers also want whitening and color locking abilities in their detergents. They would like the product if it does not destroy their clothes after regular wash. So if we keep Tide in this place and judge, we will see that Tide fulfils all expectation of the customers. So it has become the favorite product for most of the household round the world (Kubas, 2011, April). Consumer Behavior Cultural Factors The culture of the place affects the buying pattern and behavior of the people. The religion, racial group or geography determines the interest of the customers, so detergent powder such as Tide would have to be marketed keeping in mind the sentiments of the people of that particular country's culture. The promotional plan should be accordingly done so as not to hurt the religious sentiments of the people (Kotler, Bowen, & Markens, 2008, p. 222-224). Social Factors Social group consist of the reference groups from where the customers get information about the products, its usage and utility. The primary sets of reference group of the customers are friends, family, co-workers or neighbors. The family members influence the most in taking decisions on purchases. The secondary groups are the professionals, or the religious groups, etc. Tide was mainly targeted at the households, especially house wives. So it can be said that the social factor in this case mattered most because generally the household products become popular through word of mouth (Kotler, Bowen, & Markens, 2008, p. 222-224). Psychological Factors Psychological factors include the learning process of the individual, motivational needs and perception about the product or company. P&G already has a good reputation in the market, so the product of the same company already preferred by the people. People using the product have also learnt about its usefulness and USP. So Tide has captured a value spot in the minds of the customers (Kotler, Bowen, & Markens, 2008, p. 222-224). Personal Factors The personal factors are the age, personality, lifestyle and self-concept. Tide was mainly targeted at households and women aging from 25-50. The company had targeted the urban as well as semi-urban customers. The product was mainly purchased by those who had to wash large amount of clothes every day (Kotler, Bowen, & Markens, 2008, p. 222-224). SWOT Analysis Strength Weakness It is a product of one of the strongest companies in the world. The brand itself is a market leader. It is marketed as a strain fighter. It is available in different fragrances. The promotional activity. The pricing strategy was not up to the mark. There was no recall value for advertisement. Opportunity Threat There is huge untapped detergent market. The market revenue for detergent market is very high. The brand Tide is already a market leader, but it can also be a leader in other parts of the world. There are many established players in the market. The spurious products in the rural areas and fake products. The pricing strategies of different companies are very aggressive. Marketing Mix The primary targets segment of Tide was the households who had huge amount of laundry. It was an age old fact that loyalty was passed on from one generation to another generation (Gilbert, 2003, p. 113). Product The name Tide is a very good choice as a brand name. It gives the message of toughness. Tide has always been positioned differently, according to the changing preferences of the customers. When there was craze for white clothes, Tide was positioned as whitening detergent powder, when bright colors were in fashion, the campaign emphasized on color lock techniques of the powder. Tide was also launched in different fragrance too (Gilbert, 2003, p. 113). Price Price is the most important tool in marketing. It is decided according to the objectives and goals of the company. The strategy of P & G is to attract more customers by offering the best product at reasonable price. Tide has been launched as an economic product among the customers. The company has also offered attractive discounts to the household buyers so that they only buy tide whenever they buy detergents for their laundry (Gilbert, 2003, p. 113). Place P & G maintains an excellent supply chain management system to reach out to its customers everywhere and in time. Tide is found in all the departmental stores, supermarkets and even shops in the locality. So the product was launched keeping in mind that it reached out to the mass. For the people who were unable to buy large packets, small pouches were also introduced. This could be seen especially in the rural areas. The company must have its storage warehouses near to the market so as to supply the product just in time (Gilbert, 2003, p. 113). Promotion The company utilizes the audio visual media such as television to promote the product. Other sales promotion technique used by P & G to create awareness are point of purchase display in the stores and shops, radio advertisements, email ads and pop ups. The television advertisements are usually humorous, which explains the utility and effectiveness of the product. Sometimes comparison of the products with the competitors’ product is also done in an indirect manner, to draw the attention of the customers (Gilbert, 2003, p. 113). Conclusion The study is on the usage of marketing principles in the top level management of organization. The managers generally follow the stated marketing principles and strategy to design a product and make it marketable. In the process of doing so, they utilize various marketing tools to assess the market, get information about the needs and preferences of the people and develop the product accordingly. So in order to describe such nuances of marketing principles, we have chosen Procter and gamble as our company and the product on which we would focus on is Tide detergent powder. Procter and Gamble is one of the biggest and most successful companies in the packaged products industry. The company offers a wide range of products. The product line of the company is varied and the depths of those product lines are really appreciable. Most of the products offered by the company are the key brands in the market. So it can be easily assumed that the company enjoys excellent goodwill and a stable financial position in the industry. Tide is the flagship product of P&G. This proves that it one of the best selling brands of the company. The product captures the greatest market share in the detergent market in USA as well as in other parts of the world. Tide was mainly launched to target the households. The customers running families usually require an efficient detergent powder at affordable price for large amount of laundry. Tide was offered at a reasonable price in different fragrance to the customers. Moreover, it was positioned in the market according to the changing needs of the customers. Tide is the star product, earning revenue for the company. P&G should put in efforts to bring out innovative ideas for continuous improvement of the product, so that it remains where it is. References Ferrell, O. C., & Hartline, M. D. (2010). Marketing Strategy (5th ed.). Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Gilbert, D. (2003). Retail Marketing Management (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Pearson Education India. Kotler, P., Bowen, J. T., & Markens, J. C. (2008). Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism (4th ed.). New Delhi: Pearson Education India. Kubas, L. (2011, April). Lessons from the detergent industry to the news media industry. INMA. Retrieved from http://www.inma.org/modules/article/index.cfm?action=articleView&articleId=46028. McCoy, M. (2009, January). The Greening Game. C&EN. Retrieved from http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/87/8704cover.html. P&G. (2012). The Power of Purpose. Pg. Retrieved from http://www.pg.com/en_US/company/purpose_people/index.shtml. Appendices Figure 1 Source: (McCoy, 2009, January) Read More