Mezcla de mercadotecnia: producto, precio, plaza y promoción
Four levers, one coherent offer
Product decisions set the offer: the core benefit, the actual product (features, design, quality, brand, packaging) and the augmented product (warranty, service, delivery). Classify goods as convenience, shopping, specialty or unsought, manage line breadth (number of lines) and depth (variants per line), and adapt strategy across the product life cycle. New-product development runs from idea generation through screening, concept testing, business analysis, development, test marketing and commercialization; diffusion follows innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.
Price rests on three C's - costs, customers' perceived value, competitors. Methods include cost-plus, target-return, perceived-value and going-rate pricing. Skimming suits innovators with inelastic demand and a defendable advantage; penetration suits price-sensitive mass markets with scale economies. Demand is elastic when |E| > 1, and a price cut then raises revenue.
Place covers channel levels, coverage intensity (intensive, selective, exclusive), intermediaries, logistics and channel conflict. Promotion integrates advertising, sales promotion, public relations, personal selling and direct/digital tools; push targets intermediaries, pull targets end users; AIDA describes the communication sequence.
Traps. Counting channel levels: producer → wholesaler → retailer → consumer is a three-level channel. Skimming fails where demand is elastic or switching costs are low. Elasticity items confuse sign with magnitude. Price is the fastest lever to copy and the easiest to misread in break-even items.
Worked example. Fixed costs 120,000; unit price 60; unit variable cost 36. Break-even quantity = 120,000 ÷ (60 − 36) = 5,000 units. At 4,000 units the firm loses 24,000.
Key points
- Three product levels; breadth vs depth.
- Price: costs, customer value, competition.
- Skim vs penetrate depends on elasticity and scale.
- Producer → wholesaler → retailer = three levels.
- Break-even = fixed cost ÷ unit contribution.