The term marketing mix refers to the primary elements that must be

attended to in order to properly market a product. Also known as The 4 Ps of

Marketing, the marketing mix is a very useful, if a bit general, guideline for
understanding the fundamentals of what makes a good marketing
campaign.It is a set of controllable,tactical tools that the firm blends to
produce the responce it wants in the target market.Thus,the four groups "4
P's" are known as product ,price,place and promotion.

Product:

Product means the goods and services the company offers to the
target market.Hico provides a total of 63 products for three different markets
known as :

-Impulse : The market of ready to eat consumer goods (ice lollies, chocbars
and etc)

-Family: The market for consumption of few people (family packs -1litre and
etc)

-Corporate: The market for bulk buying for resale (10 litre packs)

There are 63 products out of which :

17 are for Impulse

23 are for corporate

37 are for families

(some products are of more than one category)

Hico provides its customers high quality products ensuring good health and
customer satisfaction.Its products are of 50% crean and 50% air and it has its
own dairy farms which ensure the highest quality. Hico provides diet ice
cream for health conscious customers to maintain its image and subsequent
market share.

Hico provides ice cream in all forms ;bars ,cups and in buckets/cardboard
packing.Unlike most of competing products that include gelatin in its ice
cream to maintain temperature, hico refrains from any such activities.

It uses enviromental friendly packaging material as all of the packaging is

recyclable even the ink used to write on the packaging is also food graded.It
acquires the packaging material from outside sourceS "Packages ltd" and
also imports the plastic from other countries. It carefully inspects the quality
of the packaging,hence ensures customer safety.

Hico icecream conforms to Switzerland's international standards and aims to

maintain this to sustain customer utility.

Price:

Price is the amount of money customers must pay to obtain the product.Hico
has competitive prices for some products as it prices its products closer to
the prices of similar products of its competitors although in some products it
doesnot make enough profits but it does not raise the prices as it does not
want to exceed the prices of the competitors.However,at the corporate level
some elasticity is required as it has to offer discounts for customers who buy
in bulk Like Shezan is offered discounts as it is one of its high volume clients.

Prices are not relatively very high or very low as Hico operates in a
developing country.Hico discontinued its orange lolly for a year although its
quantity was more than the competitors similar products but it could not
raise its price as a result it had to import machinery to produce orange lolly
of lesser quantity.

Place:

Place includes company activities that make the product available to target
customers.In case of Hico ,it has production facility only in Lahore but it
supplies across the country that reflects an efficient distribution network.It
divides its market into three categories which are:

-Lahore

-Rawalpindi ,Peshawar and Northern areas

-Karachi

There is no dealer involvement as Hico delivers its products directly.All the

fridges(1000+) ,trucks(60+) ,tricycles(300+) are company owned however
incase of tricyles it allows a commission of 17%. It decides who, what and
where to sell.

There are storage places in Karachi and Islamabad however the main storage
is in Lahore near its factory as the Dairy farm is also located in Lahore.All the
distribution between cities is carried out by road in trucks with special
refrigeration facilities.Despite of the organized distribution network Hico
faces some problems regarding distributions as customers in some areas
cannot find Hico products.

Promotion:

Promotion means activities that communicate the merits of the product and
persuade target customers to buy it.Good promotion always plays an
important role in the success of any product.Any good product can fail if not
promoted properly. Mr. Khan admitted that Hico does not indulge in many
promotional activities, and when it does they are on a limited basis at stores
such as Makro and Metro. The company recently advertised by placing
banners at Hyperstar's third anniversary. In the past, Hico made television
commericals for promotion use. This failed as the commercials featured the
old packaging, when the newly packaged products had been launched for
three months.It also uses the reminder advertisement strategy as it has
places its ads in billboards across Lahore.According to Mr.Khan the ice cream
companies in Pakistan are still not enough as Hico sells everything it doesnot
have a dire need to promote its image and products.

Hico has future plans of improving its image by several techniques like new
packaging with different theme which will be launched in 2011 and television
as well as billboard ads will be placed by the start of next year.