Product and Brand Management

Module 2
 Topics
• Marketing Planning Process: Category
Attractiveness Analysis, Competitor Analysis,
Consumer Analysis and Sales Forecasting,
• Developing Product Strategy - Setting
Objectives, Selection of Strategic Alternatives,
Differentiation and Positioning.
 Marketing Plan
• A Marketing Plan is at the core of directing and
coordinating all marketing efforts within a firm.
• It usually operates at two levels, strategic and
tactical: strategic to identify the overall market
play and tactical to execute on the marketing plan.
• A Marketing Plan does not need to be long or
expensive to put together. If it is carefully
researched, thoughtfully considered, and
evaluated, it will help your firm achieve its goals.
 A Good Marketing Plan - Features
• A good Marketing Plan details what you want to accomplish and helps you
meet your objectives.
• A Marketing Plan should:
– Explain (from an internal perspective) the impact and results of past marketing
decisions.
– Explain the external market in which the business is competing.
– Set goals and provide direction for future marketing efforts.
– Set clear, realistic, and measurable targets.
– Include deadlines for meeting those targets.
– Provide a budget for all marketing activities.
– Specify accountability and measures for all activities.
 Overall Planning Process
• You should create and implement
your Marketing Plan.
Feedback and Control Process
• Some major steps involved in this
process are: MONI
– Planning SIGN TOR
• Define your corporate mission OFF
• Establish business units
• Assign resources to business units MEAS
• Assess growth opportunities URE

– Implementing
– Gaining Feedback and Control CORR
ECT
• Measuring results
• Diagnosing results INPU
T
• Taking corrective action

Developing a Marketing Plan 5

 The Marketing Challenge
Ask yourself these five critical questions:
1. What is unique about your business idea? What is the general need that your
product or service aims to meet?
2. Who is your target buyer? Who buys your product or service now, and who do
you really want to sell to?
3. Who are your competitors? How can your small business effectively compete
in your chosen market?
4. What positioning message do you want to communicate to your target
buyers? How can you position your business or product to let people know
about your product?
5. What is your sales strategy? How will you get your product or service in the
hands of your customers?

Developing a Marketing Plan 6

 The 10 Elements of a Good Marketing
Plan
A good Marketing Plan includes these 10 elements:
1. Describe Your Business
2. Conduct a Situation Analysis
3. Define Your Customer
4. Strategize Your Market Entry
5. Forecast your Sales or Demand Measurement
6. Define Your Marketing Budget
7. Integrate Your Marketing Communication
8. Identify Sales Channels
9. Track Marketing Activities
10. Evaluate Your Progress

Developing a Marketing Plan 7

Positioning
Positioning
Demographics - Gender
Demographics - Age
Psychographics – Attitude towards life
 1. Describe Your Business
• Small business owners often describe themselves by their product or
services; however, business must be viewed as a customer-satisfying
process, not goods-producing.
• Describe your business in detail and clearly identify goals and objectives.
• Answer the following questions:
– What is your product or service?
– How will your product benefit the customer?
– What is different about the product your business is offering?
– Is it a new business, a takeover, or an expansion?
– Why will your business be profitable?
– What are the growth opportunities?
– What is your geographic marketing area?

Developing a Marketing Plan 13

 2. Conduct a Situation Analysis
 A situation analysis details the context for your
marketing efforts by considering internal and Strengths Weaknesses
external factors that could influence your
marketing strategy.
 This section of the plan could include a SWOT
analysis to summarize your Strengths, Opportunities Threats
Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
– Strengths: assets or a resources that can be used to improve your business’
competitive position.
– Weaknesses: resources or capabilities that may cause your business to have a
less competitive position.
– Opportunities: situations or conditions arising from a business’ strengths, or
set of positive externalities.
– Threats: problems that focus on your weaknesses and which can create a
potentially negative situation.
Developing a Marketing Plan 14
 3. Define Your Customers
Defining your market does not need to be a difficult process. You do not need a
huge market base, but you need to be realistic and your market needs to be well-
defined.
– Who are your competitors, and who do they target?
– Who is your perfect customer and client base?
– What is your current customer base (in terms of age, sex, income, and geographic
location)?
– What habits do your customers and potential customers share? Where do they
shop, what do they read, watch, listen to?
– What prospective customers are you currently not reaching? How can you reach
them?
– What qualities do your customers value most about your product or service? Do
they value selection, convenience, service, reliability, availability, or affordability?
– What qualities about your product or service do you need to improve? How can they
be adjusted to serve your customers better?

Developing a Marketing Plan 15

Brand Image - Excitement
Brand Image - Ruggedness
Brand Image - Sincerity
Brand Image - Sincerity
Brand Image - Competence
Brand Image - Sincerity
 4. Strategize Your Market Entry
Once you have identified what is unique about your business and who
your target buyers are, focus on your competition:
– Identify your direct competitors and learn what they do.
– Sharpen your decisions about the best business category and market
segment in which to compete.

Developing a Marketing Plan 22

 5. Forecast Sales or Demand
Measurement
• Sales forecasting provides the basis for comparison over a period of time.
• Market demand is the total volume that could be bought by a defined
customer group in, a defined geographical area, in a defined time period,
and under a defined marketing program.
• You should:
– Correctly identify and estimate current demand by considering total market
potential, market share, and expected sales.
– Estimate future demand by considering past sales patterns, consumer trends,
and overall market projections.

Developing a Marketing Plan 23

 6. Define Your Marketing Budget
• Marketing budgets, especially in small and mid-sized businesses, are often
arbitrarily set as either x% of planned revenue or y% over the prior year's
marketing budget.
• Use targeted budgeting to more intelligently set your budget based on
company objectives.

Developing a Marketing Plan 24

 6. Define Your Marketing Budget
Answer the following questions:
– What previous marketing methods have been most effective?
– What are your costs compared to sales?
– What is your cost per customer?
– What marketing methods will you use to attract new customers?
– What percentage of profits can you allocate to your marketing campaign?
– What marketing tools (i.e. - newspapers, magazines, Internet, direct mail,
telemarketing, event sponsorships) can you implement within your budget?
– What methods are you using to test your marketing ideas?
– What methods are you using to measure results of your marketing campaign?

Developing a Marketing Plan 25

 7. Integrate Your Marketing
Communication
• Integrate marketing communication to A COLLABORATIVE
consolidate marketing tools, approaches, and APPROACH
resources within a company to maximize impact
and gain edge over the competition.
• Build on a "Marketing Mix“ and include the
following:
– 4P’s: Product, Price, Promotion, and Place
– Marketing & Advertising
• Internet
• Events
• Direct
• Database
– Public Relations

Developing a Marketing Plan 26

Well Balanced Communication
 8. Identify Sales Channels
• Part of the challenge of marketing is figuring out which distribution method
to use for your business.
• Include all relevant distribution channels:
– Retail: Stores selling to final consumer buyers (one store, or a chain of stores).
– Wholesale: An intermediary distribution channel that usually sells to retail stores.
– Direct mail: Generally catalog merchants that sell directly to consumers.
– Telemarketing: Merchants selling directly to consumer buyers at retail via
phones.
– Cyber-Marketing: Merchants selling directly to consumer buyers at retail prices,
or business-to-business products and services at wholesale prices via computer
networks.
– Sales force: Salaried employees of a company or independent commissioned
representatives who usually sell products for more than one company.

Developing a Marketing Plan 28

 9. Track Marketing Activities
• Tracking helps monitor the effectiveness of each marketing activity and is
especially helpful with your overall program evaluation.
• Include procedures for tracking each type of marketing activity you are using.
• Some examples are:
– Display advertising: With traditional consumer publications, tracking can be done
through the use of different phone numbers, special offers (specific to that
advertisement or publication), or reference to a specific department.
– Internet marketing: Usually, this is easily tracked by monitoring web traffic.
– Trade shows: A trade show’s effectiveness can be tracked by collecting the right
information at the show and following up on it.
– Database: Before your Marketing Plan is kicked off, make sure you have the
database structure in place to record this information.
• The tabulated results and customer information is very valuable information.

Developing a Marketing Plan 29

 10. Evaluate Your Progress
• Identify how you will measure your success and in what ways your
objectives have been met. Then, use these metrics to determine the
success of your marketing efforts.
• Answer the following questions:
– Did we reach our goals?
– Was the marketing campaign successful?
– Were we able to determine Return on Investment (ROI)?
– Did our efforts result in conversion? In other words, were we able to convert
an inquirer to a visitor, a visitor to a customer?
– Can we utilize our database to survey, capture additional information, or
establish a more comprehensive customer relationship program?

Developing a Marketing Plan 30

 Category Attractiveness
• Product Category can be identified a s a group
of competitors against which the company
competes regularly.
• It is the responsibility of the product manager
to ask whether the product category for both
the new and existing products is attractive or
not.
• It should justify increased and continuous
investment by the company.
 Category Attractiveness Factors
• Aggregate Market Factors
• Category Factors
• Environmental Factors
 Aggregate Market Factors
• Category Size
• Market Growth
• Sales Cycle
• Seasonality
• Profits
 Category Factors
• Threat of New Entrants
• Bargaining power of
• Bargaining power of suppliers
• Current Category Rivalry
• Pressure from Substitutes
• Category Capacity
 Environmental Factors
• Technological
• Political
• Economic
• Regulatory
• Social
 Competitor Analysis
• Threat of New Entrants
• Bargaining Power of Suppliers
• Bargaining Power of Customers
• Threat of Substitutes
• Industry Competitors
 Key Questions
• Who are the competitors?
• What are their strong points and weak points?
• What are their strategic objectives?
• What are their positioning strategies?
• What are their response patterns?
 Consumer Analysis
• Who are the customers for our products
• What is the customer buying and how do they
use it.
• Where do they buy the product from.
• When and how are purchasing decisions made.
• Why do customers choose a specific product
• How do they respond to marketing programs.
• Will the customer buy the product.
 Sales Forecasting
• Past Sales Trend
• Level of Critical Resources
• Company’s Market Share, Image
• Economic Environment Of the Business
• Inflation
 Techniques of Sales Forecasting
• Qualtitative
• Quantitative
 Qualitative
• Probability Asessment Method
• PERT
• Delphi Technique
• Visionary Forecast
• Historical Analogy
• Intention to buy survey
 Quantitative
• Time Series Analysis
• Simple Trend Analysis
• Moving Average
• Industry Survey Method
• Regression Analysis
• Exponential Smootheing
• Causal Methods
 Product Strategy
Involves the following elements:
• Setting the objectives
• Selection of strategic alternatives
• Selection of target customer
• Choosing the target competition
• Statement of core strategy
• Detailing the support marketing mix and
functional programs
 Differentiation
• Product
– Features
– Benefits
– Quality
– Design
• Promotional
– Image
• Price
– Price Sensitivity
– Right Values
• Distribution
– Convenience
– Service
 Brand Positioning
•  Involves identifying and determining points of
similarity and difference to ascertain the right
brand identity and to create a proper brand
image. 
 Marketers Need to Know…
• Target market
• Competitors
• Difference with competitors (POD)
• Similarity with competitors (POS)
 Target Markets
• Behavioural (Status, usage, time, loyalty,
benefits sought)
• Demographic (Income, Age , Gender, Race,
Family)
• Psychographic (Values, opinions, attitudes,
lifestyles)
• Geographic
 Target Markets - Behavioural Segment
(Benefits Sought)
• Sensory Segment (flavour)
• Sociable (appearance)
• Worriers (decay prevention)
• Independent (low price seekers)
 Target Markets – Brand Loyalty
• Convertible
• Shallow
• Average
• Entrenched
 Competitors
Levels of Competition:
• Product Type (colas)
• Product Category (all soft drinks)
• Product Class (all beverages)
 Points of Difference
• Attributes or benefits that consumers strongly
associate with a brand.
• Functional Attributes.
• Perceptual Attributes.
 Points of Parity
• Associations that are shared with other
brands.
• Category POPs
• Competitive POPs
 Positioning
• Physical
• Perceptual
 Physical Positioning
• Based on Physical, Functional and
Performance related attributes.
 Perceptual Positioning
• Based on perceptions, attitudes, values,
culture.
 Positioning Levers
• Marketing decision makers seek to endow
their brand with various kinds of attributes:
– Simple physically based attributes.
– Complex physically based attributes.
– Essentially abstract attributes.
– Price.
• Perceptual attributes must be considered in
positioning most products.
 Brand Positioning Process
• Step 1: Identify a relevant set of competitive
products
– A positioning analysis at the product or brand
level can be helpful.
– Marketers who omit important substitute
products or potential competitors risk being
blindsided by unforeseen competition.
 Brand Positioning Process
• Step 2: Identify determinant attributes
– Positioning can be based on a variety of
attributes:
• Features, benefits, parentage, manufacturing
process, ingredients, endorsements, comparison with
a competitor’s product, proenvironment positioning,
and price/quality.
– Marketers should rely primarily on determinant
attributes
 Brand Positioning Process
• Step 3: Collect data about customers’
perceptions for brands in the competitive set
– The marketer needs to know what attributes are
determinant for the target market and the
product category under consideration.
– The marketer also needs to know how different
brands in the competitive set are viewed on
these attributes.
 Brand Positioning Process
• Step 4: Analyze the current positions of
products in the competitive set
– The positioning grid, also called a perceptual
map provides a visual representation of the
positions of various products or brands in the
competitive set in terms of two determinant
attributes.
– Value curve comprises more than just two
dimensions.
 Brand Positioning Process
– Building a positioning grid
• Positioning for a new store could be done by
examining the positioning map for empty spaces
(competitive gaps) where no existing store is
currently located .
– Building a value curve
• Value curves indicate how products within a category
compare in terms of the level—high or low.
• Value curves are more multidimensional
Perceptual Map of Women’s Clothing Retailers in Washington,
D.C.
The Brand Positioning Process
– Marketing opportunities to gain a distinct
position
• Competing head-on against the leaders on the basis
of attributes appropriated by larger competitors is
not likely to be effective.
• A better option is to concentrate on an attribute
prized by members of a given market segment.
The Brand Positioning Process
– Constraints imposed by an intense position
• Threat of alienating part or all of the product’s
current users regardless of success with its newly
targeted group.
• Dilution of an existing intense position as a result of
consolidation.
• Temptation to overexploit the position by using the
brand name on line extensions and new products.
 The Brand Positioning Process
• Step 5: Determine customers’ most
preferred combination of attributes
– Survey respondents can be asked to think of the
ideal brand within a category.
– Respondents could be asked not only to judge
the degree of similarity among pairs of existing
brands but also to indicate their degree of
preference for each.
– Conjoint analysis
 The Brand Positioning Process
• Step 6: Consider fit of possible positions with
customer needs and segment attractiveness
– A market positioning analysis can simultaneously
identify distinct market segments as well as the
perceived positions of different brands.
The Brand Positioning Process
– By examining the preferences of customers in
different segments along with their perceptions
of the positions of existing brands, analysts can
learn much about:
• The competitive strength of different brands in
different segments.
• The intensity of the rivalry between brands in a given
segment.
• The opportunities for gaining a differentiated position
within a specific target segment.
 The Brand Positioning Process
• Step 7: Write positioning statement or value
proposition to guide development of marketing
strategy
– A positioning statement identifies the target market
for which the product is intended and the product
category in which it competes and states the
unique benefit.
– A value proposition is similarly explicit about what
the product does for the customer and typically
also includes information about pricing relative to
competitors.
 The Brand Positioning Process
– Both positioning statements and value
propositions should generally reflect a unique
selling proposition (USP) that the product
embodies.
– In its shortest form, a value proposition typically
looks like this:
• Target market
• Benefits offered (and not offered)
• Price range (relative to competitors)
 The Brand Positioning Process
– Positioning statement or value proposition should
state benefits that the user of the product will
obtain, rather than features or attributes of the
product itself.
– Typically not written in catchy consumer language.
 Positioning for Competitive Advantage

• Product Differentiation
• Price Differentiation
• Promotional Differentiation
• Distribution Differentiation
 Product Differentiation
• Adding features that benefits customers in a
way that rivals cannot match.
 Promotional Differentiation
• Based on the promotional messages
communicated.
 Distribution Differentiation
• Involves making the buying situation more
convenient for customers.
• E.g: Lakme Salon from Unilever
 Price Differentiation
• Involves estimating the price sensitivity of the
target market, and offering relevant values on
the basis of such an estimation.
Criteria for Successful Brand Positioning

• Clarity
• Consistency
• Credibility
• Competitiveness
 Clarity
• Clearly define the differential advantage and
the target market.
• Clearly communicate the value proposition.
 Consistency
• Stick to one positioning image.
 Credibility
• Deliver on the promise made to the customer.
 Competitiveness
• Deliver the differential advantage which the
competition has failed to deliver.