Essay, Research Paper
Report for the attention of Mr Pakanawa
Why launch an advertisement campaign?
To start off, when your company is just becoming established in the British market, consumers will have no knowledge of your product, we must encourage or persuade the consumer to buy your product. To make customers aware of the product we must advertise.
Large scale advertising mainly consists of advertising on TV, Radio, newspapers and other large scale media. This ensures that advertising reaches the largest amount of people in the shortest amount of time. It is likely that the consumer will be more interested in the product if they hear of on a national level such as TV or Radio.
We must watch out for other companies in Britain that sell a similar product or overseas companies that sell in Britain so Pakanawa can analyse the British marketing strategy and improve upon it.
Market Segmentation is also another factor to take notice of. Market segmentation helps to differentiate products for different age groups. For most product, there are segments of the market that you need to specifically advertise to. Fore example, different methods of advertising would be needed if you were to advertise to parents than to the children. For a lot of products their are a lot of age groups that you need to advertise for and these must be taken into consideration. We must analyse the different market segments that are applicable to Pakanawa and investigate how we can exploit these different market segments. An ad campaign is a very sensible idea because no-one will know about our products without the use of advertising. This means that we must concentrate on a good ad campaign so people will know about our products. Approximate prices are shown below for large scale advertising:
TVPrice agreed with company (500,000 + )
Radio(250,000 + )
Newspaper lineage ad250
Newspaper full page700-900
Cinema booklets650.00 per cinema
Flyers0.08 per flyer
As is shown above, advertising is very expensive when done on a large scale so to justify any form of large scale advertising it must be proven to be effective. At Pakanawa? we must consider all angles of the media and come to a conclusion about advertising.
What sort of advertising should you use?
By far the most far reaching of these strategies is Television advertising. A large amount of people watch TV and this type of advertising will reach many social groups. Although this type of advertising is very expensive and even more so during peak times, TV advertising should be seen by the masses and encouraging a lot of new customers, so in time, TV advertising will pay for itself. This will prove to be a very effective form of advertising media and should be adopted in the Pakanawa situation. To boost sales even more, and to prolong the life of the Pakanawa product line, another form of advertising should be taken aboard. Newspaper advertising would also be a good idea. Newspaper advertising would reach another section of the consumer market and would also be very effective in the right context. A full page newspaper advert is a lot of money but would bring in a lot more customers and make many more people aware of the product. It is important to make people aware of the product so they will buy it, there are many advantages of the Television over the newspaper, such as the fact that TV is a captive market and if you can vary the showing times of the advertisement then you can vary the consumer group that will be receiving them. A bad point, however, as is with most forms of advertising, is the delay between seeing the advertisement and buying the product. There is also a delay similar to this with newspaper advertisements but the delay is not usually as long as is the one with TV advertising.
Below the line promotion
Below the line promotion refers to advertising that does not rely on large scale media such as TV or Radio. Forms of this are direct mailing, exhibitions and trade fairs, sales promotions and product placing. In the case of Pakanawa it would be sensible to follow some of these ideas but not all of them. For example, it would not really be a good idea to exhibit the product at a trade fair without first having a sales promotion or product placing. The only form mentioned that would not be suitable would be direct mailing, to which the g
Branding
Multiple product branding would be the best idea for Pakanawa as with multiple branding the firm is not always known as the same one and with Pakanawa?s toys, the different products under different brands could inhibit the sale of the other brands. With multiple product branding the company would be recognised as selling all these products and with a well established market this would benefit the company although multiple branding has one advantage over this, if the company has had bad publicity, with the other brands, a knock on effect of the other products is limited. Therefore, I think that the best form of branding for Pakanawa?s toys would be multiple product branding.
Product Development
We must also consider product development to extend the product life cycle and retain interest in the series of products produced by Pakanawa. To fully conduct a product development scheme we must conduct some market research into the attitudes of the customers and what they think can be done to improve the products provided by Pakanawa. We must come up with new ideas fairly frequently and brainstorming should be encouraged. Safety must always be improved on in Pakanawa products and a team of designers must be considering product development all of the time.
Merchandising and packaging
Merchandising is an attempt to influence customers at the point of sale. The point of sale is anywhere that a customer buys a product. Customers are intended to buy based on what they see rather from a sales assistant. Therefore at Pakanawa a vital factor in influencing customers is the way in which the items are displayed. To sell the products effectively we must take into consideration the effect that the packaging should have on the customers and the way in which displays of this particular product are arranged. A good idea would be to have a ?space ship? or something similar to encourage people to look and to buy the product. To influence customers at the point of sale, a number of tactics must be employed as we must first draw the customers attention to the display and to the product, and finally, to the price of the product.
Why a sales team?
The job of a sales team is to create interest in the product with the public and retailers. The overall aim of a sales team is to create the highest level of distribution of the product and to promote the product so representatives of a firm are interested in purchasing this product to sell it in their shops. They should initially aim to start small and encourage interest in the media, the public and shareholders. The whole image of the company rests on the sales team as it is their job to promote the product and the company and to stop any bad press about the company. They should try and convince buyers with market research that there product will sell and that buying this product is a good investment. They could offer commission or discounts to firms for bulk buying and high sales. A sales team should also be allowed full control over the bartering of the goods and should set there own guidelines within a broad range of company guidelines.
Legal and Public problems
A few problems may be made of the fact that the product is cuddly yet violent in its own kind of way, with the image being of a scary bear. Some extremists may consider this to be unacceptable and may want the bear banned from sale or put out a campaign against the product. This should easily be solved with a well briefed PR team that have a capacity to lie. All doubts should be dispelled and children illustrated playing happily with the bear and there should be no other legal or PR problems, but it helps to have a well briefed PR team.