Marketing and Sales
Marketing and Sales tests the marketing mix, market research, segmentation, the product life cycle and the sales process.
Core rules
- Marketing identifies and satisfies customer needs profitably; selling is only one part.
- 4 Ps: Product (features, brand, packaging); Price (cost-plus, penetration, skimming, competitive); Place (channels, coverage); Promotion (advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, publicity, digital).
- Research: primary (surveys, interviews) versus secondary (reports, statistics); the sample must be representative.
- Segmentation: demographic, geographic, psychographic, behavioural.
- Product life cycle: development, introduction, growth, maturity, decline - the mix changes at each stage.
Worked example
A school-leaver sells cupcakes to teachers and learners within 2 km. Ingredients and packaging cost E4 per box; labour and overhead E2; total cost E6. A 50% mark-up gives E9. A competitor charges E10, so E9 supports penetration. Place: tuck shop plus WhatsApp orders. Promotion: free samples, Instagram, loyalty card. She measures daily sales and repeat customers. If the mark-up were calculated on selling price instead of cost, the price would be wrong.
Traps
- Treating promotion as advertising only.
- Ignoring the target market and trying to appeal to everyone.
- Confusing mark-up, which is on cost, with margin, which is on selling price.
- Using maturity-stage pricing when the product is new.