THE NEW MARKETING MIX

A new paradigm concerning the relationship between the company and the customer has emerged. Formerly, it was stated that the Marketing Mix – the four concepts of marketing on which companies base their efforts towards creating strategies of sales and communication to the customer – was made up of four basic concepts called the 4 Ps: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Even I, studying International Negotiations, learnt these four concepts as the elements of Marketing Mixes throughout several of my major’s subjects. Nevertheless, the present is introducing us to a change of concepts. The Marketing Mix presents a new paradigm, in which the four elements that compose it are better describing it through being 4 Cs: Client, Cost, Convenience and Communication.

I think that these new concepts have the same fundamentals as those from the former paradigm, but are more comprehensive and in-line with the current state of market. Clients are currently seeking more when purchasing a product or hiring a service. Competence is so wide, being a highly globalized world in which one’s competitors are no longer in the same country or even the same continent, that customers can demand not only the final good or service that they mainly seek, but a complete purchasing experience, that will make them decide amongst brands that, because of the same globalization, mainly, are each day more similar and have to struggle more to become unique.

For this situation it is that the New Paradigm was created, changing the concept “Price” for “Cost”, since a client is not only paying a monetary value for a product, but also other kinds of prices that are involved in the purchasing decision and in the experience that comes after buying. Also, and more in focus with the main subject of this whole course, clients are looking for more than just promotion – they seek ‘Communication’ with the company. The idea that they have of a brand influences widely on the decision they make to purchase from it and this idea is formed by what the client has heard or learned about the brand. Thus, companies spend great efforts on creating communication strategies that go directly to the mind of their target markets, controlling to the best extent possible this idea, in their favor, to incite the client to act upon it and purchase from them.

References:

ITESM RUV. (2010). Marketing Communication – Topic 1. [Video] Retrieved from the Blackboard Platform.

La Cadena de Suministro [The Supply Chain]

La cadena de suministro es una red de instalaciones y medios de distribución que tiene por función la obtención de materiales, la transformación de dichos materiales los cuales pueden convertirse en productos en proceso y productos terminados, finalmente busca que los productos terminados se distribuyan al consumidor final.  Por lo cual se pueden resumir en 3 etapas: suministrar, fabricar y distribuir.

[The supply chain is a network of facilities and means of distribution that has the function of obtaining materials, transforming them and turning them into products in process and finished products, and finally seeks that these are distributed to the final consumer. This process can be synthesized into 3 steps: supply, manufacture, and distribute.]

La cadena de suministro tiene varios objetivos, los cuales son: dar un buen servicio al mercado, tener menos inventario en el sistema, siempre tener lo que el consumidor final desea y nunca perder un cliente.

[The supply chain has several objectives, these are: provide a good service to the market, have fewer inventories in the system, always have available that which the consumer wants or needs, and never lose a client.]

Las funciones de la cadena de suministro son administrar la cartera de productos y servicios, servicio al cliente, control de producción, abastecimiento y distribución. Administrar la cartera de productos y servicios es muy importante ya que la cadena de suministro se diseña y se ejecuta para soportar a la demanda del mercado. El servicio al cliente es otra función importante ya que la cadena de suministro es la responsable de conectar la necesidad del cliente con la empresa, de esta manera se logra satisfacer a la demanda, para esto se tiene que asegurar que se cuenta con los recursos. El control de producción se refiere a encargarse de programar la producción, y esta va muy de la mano del abastecimiento, ya que se necesita proveer los insumos necesarios para satisfacer a la producción. La última función, la distribución, como lo hemos mencionado se encarga de hacerle llegar el producto al consumidor o a la red de distribución, la cual puede incluir almacenes u otros centros de distribución.

[The functions of the supply chain are to manage the product or service portfolio, customer service, and manage the production, supply and distribution of the products or services. It is important to manage the portfolio of services or products since the supply chain is designed and used to support the market's demand. The customer service is another important function since the supply chain is responsible of connecting the necessities of the customer with the company to satisfy this demand; it is thus also important to assure that you have the resources to achieve this. The production control refers to taking over the production program, and this goes hand in hand with supply, since you need to have the input necessary to complete the production. The last function- distribution-, as we have mentioned before, is in charge of ensuring that the product or service gets to the final consumer or to the distributing network, which can include warehouses or other distribution centers.]

Al implementar la cadena de suministro se generan algunos beneficios como son la mejora significativamente de la productividad del sistema logístico operacional, se incrementan los niveles de servicio al cliente, se mejora la administración de las operaciones y se desarrollan relaciones duraderas con los proveedores y clientes clave.

[By implementing the supply chain, you can generate benefits like the significant improvement of the operational logistics system's productivity, increase the customer service quality standards, improve the operations management, and develop long-lasting relationships with key suppliers and consumers.]

References:

"supply chain n."  The New Oxford American Dictionary, second edition. Ed. Erin McKean. Oxford University Press, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  ITESM Campus Monterrey.  20 September 2008 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t183.e76732>

Wipro Technologies. (2004). Supply Chain Management. Recuperado de http://www.wipro.com/itservices/scm/index.html

Tratados de libre comercio de México con el mundo

Marketing communications in business decision-making

The world is constantly changing, and every day, the pace of this change is more rapid. It affects not just the environment, or knowledge, but also how people think, what they believe, and the way in which they communicate.

Marketers have to take this into account when they try to approach a potential customer through an advertising campaign, so that they can make sure that the message they are trying to convey reaches the customers in such a way that they will receive it, adopt it, understand it the way it was meant to be understood, and take it into practice, in other words –purchase.

But customers are more complex every time, and the way in which they see the world is more and more related and linked to the set of beliefs, experiences and knowledge that they carry, and so the message that companies launch are received in millions of different ways. So it becomes harder to make one single message have the same effect in millions of such unique minds.

For example, imagine a company that sells ice-cream. Pretend that the company’s brand image, the mascot, so to say, is a dog. There are most certainly millions of people who love dogs and think they are funny, cute, and might feel attracted to the brand if the advertisement shows a really beautiful collie in a prairie under the bright sun, licking an ice-cream cone from the hand of a cute-but-not-so-much-as-the-dog child. They would look for the brand of the gorgeous collie in the supermarket freezers. On the contrary, to me personally and probably my mother too, the advertisement would result disgusting. We are in the minority of people who feel dogs are dirty and smelly animals who should definitely not be licking ice-cream from the cone of a kid who will at least get some kind of stomach infection. We love ice-cream, and buy it regularly, but would never go for the brand that’s being advertised by the cute kid and smelly dog.