MBA404 Anko Laundry Bag Assignment Sample

• Subject Code : MBA404
• University : Kaplan University My Assignment Services is not sponsored or endorsed by this college or university.
• Subject Name : Consumer Behavior and Marketing Psychology

Consumer Behaviour and Marketing Philosophy

Executive Summary of Anko Laundry Bag

Globalization has connected the business market to the world. All companies and businesses have a common goal of increasing their market performance and more market capitalization. Organizations nowadays are competing to become a market leader in that particular business and gain a competitive advantage. Thus, it is important for businesses to continuously adapt and alter their marketing strategies according to the needs and demands of the consumers in the new business world. Consumer attitude and the marketing mix of an organization greatly affect the product sale and success of business. More customer satisfaction results have positive effect on the loyalty of consumers. The marketing mix elements have positive impact on customer satisfaction and greatly influences the consumer’s buying decision. Thus, the following article elaborately explains marketing mix elements and its effect on consumer behaviour and buying decision. The article also sheds light on the importance of communication mix and its effect on consumer buying decision and provides recommendation for the same.

Overview of Anko Laundry Bag

Anko laundry bags are foldable laundry bags. These bags are available is variety of sizes from small ones which are pocket sized are portable to big ones which can be used at laundries. The integrated marketing communication plan of this product has helped to gain a position in the market place. With an effective marketing and communication strategy the product seems to perform well in the market. However, there still lies potential to increase the product’s market performance by formulating a more effective marketing and communication mix to that reaches maximum number of people. For creating a marketing or communication mix it is also essential to understand the term market performance. Market performance of a product is a term used described the performance of a product or the company in the market (Aksoy 2017).

Market performance thus in simple terms can be explained as the efficiency of an organisation’s marketing activities in relation to its market-related goal. The market performance of a product or service is greatly influenced by a variety of factors like marketing strategy of that product, consumer’s attitude and behaviour towards that product and other social and technical factors. Marketing strategies and communication activities influence intermediate outcomes like the thoughts, knowledge, feelings, attitude of the consumer, which in turn influence the firm’s financial performance. As doing laundry is a basic need of every consumer and is a part of their daily life, there is scope for increasing the market performance of this product by developing a good and effective marketing and communication strategies. The understanding of these strategies is thus described below.

Integrated Communication Mix

Communication strategies and marketing activities have an impact on the consumer’s behaviour towards a product or service. Good marketing and communication strategies assists the firms to make a difference in the market place. To develop a successful and effective marketing and communication campaign a company uses the idea of marketing mix and integrated communication mix. This marketing mix is the combination of four elements that are seen to affect the performance of a product and sale of a specific product. These four distinct functions are also referred to as 4 Ps of marketing. The marketing mix includes product, price, place, and promotion (Masterson, Philips and Pickton 2017). Product is the vital important element of the marketing mix. Product in the simplest term is a company’s offering in the market in return of a price. The marketing strategies are developed and created on basis of this product. The place element of the marketing mix is basically the channel, intermediary or place of distribution of the products. The basic aim of this element is to make the right product or service at the right place in the right quantities. The decision of distribution interrelates with other aspects of marketing mix. Price is the money charges for a product or service. It is what the business receives in exchange for all the efforts put in making that product of service. The objective of pricing is to achieve a return for the investment and market share, preventing competition and gaining competitive advantage.

Promotion is an important element of the marketing mix. Integrated communication mix is interrelated to this promotion element of marketing mix as its name suggests simply can be explained as the process of integrating all the promotional tools of the marketing strategy of a firm so that these tools work in coordination and synchrony to produce a more effective outcome. Promotion of a product is the process of communication of ideas, product features, product information, and product use to the target group of people. It is a tool used by companies to generate awareness about the brand. It provides lots of information which is related to product according to the targeted audience needs and desires. Moreover it also encourages the consumers to purchase the promoted product instead of the products of the competitors. Promotion is aimed at communicating the product message and the firm’s offerings to the customer.

Promotional elements comprise of tools such as advertisement campaigns, direct marketing, social media marketing, public relations, etc (Popescu 2016). Thus, an efficient promotion of product campaign is essential to register or to create the image of that product or brand in consumer mind in order to influence the buying decision of the consumer. Moreover to make the consumer brand loyal and gain competitive advantage (Mumbua, Stephen and Simon 2019). However, the consumer are attracted towards the brand or product more, if they are marketed properly through advertisements as visuals and attractive sounds remains for longer periods of time in consumer minds. Promotion tools helps in building the confidence of the consumer in the company and its product by creating a familiar relations. The basic principle of advertisement is to influence the consumer behaviour. A good quality communication mix most likely influences consumers to buy that product and also changes the consumer’s product opinion.

These four marketing mix elements have an impact on the decision-making process of the consumer in the today’s competitive market. It is important to consider all these four functions in planning of a marketing strategy and alter as per needs in accordance to the selected market, in order to create an effective strategy.

Relation of Communication Mix with Consumer Buying Decision and Other Related Factors

Nowadays the buying behaviour of consumer rely on the communication and product information circulated through its promotional tools. Thus, an effective marketing strategy or integrated communication campaign for a product is important to register in order to create a positive brand image in the consumer minds. Also, it influences the buying decisions of the consumer by making him loyal towards the brand and enables the firm to gain competitive advantage (Wu and Li 2016). It looks at how an individual consumer select and use products and services according to their needs, wants and desires. It is important for businesses to understand, analyse and keep track of this behaviour of the consumers if the businesses want to influence the purchasing habits of consumers and thus gain competitive advantage in the market (Bruhn and Schnebelen 2017). It is important for the organizations to understand the consumers and regional and cultural influences on this buying behaviour. Often a company reuses and alters its marketing and promotion strategy in different parts of the world according to the cultural factors and consumer behaviour of that region (Thieu et.al. 2017). It is important for businesses to adapt communication and promotion strategies must be adapted to suit the consumer’s need and taste.

There are lots of factors that influences consumer behaviour. These factors include knowledge, attitudes, demographics (lifestyle), personality, motivation, beliefs and feelings. It is important for a company to formulate its marketing and communication strategies keeping these variables in mind. The demographic or the lifestyle variables of a region also influence the marketing strategies of an organization. The marketing mix targets these variables to make a product successful. For example, for the product of Anko laundry bag, the place of distribution of this product would be in developed regions, towns and cities, where people are more familiar with the use of laundry bags. The company can formulate a comparatively higher pricing strategy as the people in these developed regions generally have a high income and also high spending capacity.

The promotion activities of this product will also be formularised in accordance the population of the region example inclusion of attractive advertisement campaigns, social media marketing, etc. Presently the customer largely relies on the use of traditional website and print media to communicate its product features and promotions to the consumers. Customer preferences and demands are changing rapidly and thus firms require new ways of maintaining the present customer and attracting the new ones. Therefore, companies largely rely on advertisement and promotion of their products. The businesses can make use of creative sounds, visuals, real life experiences and appealing product images in their promotional tools like advertisements to attract greater consumer’s attention (Chukwu, Kanu and Ezeabogu 2018).

Decision-making process of consumer for product or service is largely influenced by communication mix. The integrated communication mix is a trusted conceptual platform for marketers dealing with marketing issues. A number of factors are impacting the way marketers communicate with the consumers. Businesses are formulating their marketing and promotion strategies to generate immediate sales and profits. It is important for the companies to coordinate its all their communications efforts to send cohesive messages consumers, thus to influence their buying decision.

Recommendations on Consumer Behaviour and Marketing Philosophy

The companies are nowadays becoming active to become media-neutral and using ever form of communication marketing for the target market to build long term reputations. Some of the strategies used to develop a more integrated communication mix are brand development, e-marketing, consumer sales or consumer promotions.

Brand development is an important communication strategy that should be adopted by the company. It is important for businesses to develop relevant and creative image of their products in order to differentiate its brand and enable people to differentiate with other brands. Brand development involves creating impactful image in the consumer minds. Brand development is essential to create a brand loyalty among the consumers (Dimyati 2015). It is this brand image which influences the decision making of the consumer, makes a difference and the causes the customers to choose among other available options. Maintaining a brand image is interrelated with maintaining the quality and features of the product and service. Once this is achieved, the consumers become brand loyal and will always choose the branded product over other.

Developing a brand image for Anko laundry bags can be achieved by targeting the right set of people that includes the people of cities, towns and developed regions and using promotion activities like providing discounts, effectively displaying the product features, etc. Also, businesses nowadays use technique of endorsement by celebrities for the advertisement campaign. This helps in creation of high brand equity. Most of the advertisements often show celebrities experience in using the product so that the customer base can be increased. It is one of the effective way to convince the consumer to use the particular product or the service.

The method of e-marketing technique for promotional activities is an important technique that the companies should adopt to survive in the changing and technological forward market (Valos et.al. 2016). People nowadays spend most of their time on social media platforms. They are more inclined to online shopping methods to fulfil their needs. Thus, in addition to the traditional website, Anko laundry bags should make use of social media platforms such as facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube, pinterest, etc. These social media websites enable the company to reach a create brand awareness and reach a larger range of consumers (Stephen 2016). As most of the consumers stay active on these platforms, the company can flash its advertisement, product features and sales and increase its brand visibility. Search engine optimization is also one of the cost-effective techniques of e-marketing which can be used for promotion of Anko laundry bags. The social media websites will be used to display videos, promotions, updates about the product and will keep the customers engage.

Public relations and consumer sales and consumer promotions activities also help in increasing the sales of the product. Publicity and sponsorship can be employed to increase product visibility. Loyalty programmes are also a method to retain the customers. Discounts can be given to regular customers under this loyalty programmes. Seasonal sales can be organized to increase the sales. First time purchases can be given a free sample of detergents or mini size laundry bags. Buy one get one free strategy also increases the sales volume. Email marketing can also be used as a communication strategy to promote the brand.

The key importance of these integrated marketing and communication campaigns is to build brand awareness and communicate the need of the product to the target audience.

References for Consumer Behaviour and Marketing Philosophy

Aksoy, H. 2017. How do innovation culture, marketing innovation and product innovation affect the market performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)? Technology in Society, 51(1), 133-141.

Bruhn, M. and Schnebelen, S. 2017. Integrated marketing communication-from an instrumental to a customer-centric perspective. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), 464-489.

Chukwu, B.A., Kanu, E.C. and Ezeabogu, A.N. 2018. The impact of advertising on consumer buying behaviour. International Journal of Arts and Commerce, 8(1), 1-15.

Dimyati, M. 2015. The role of customer satisfaction in mediating marketing communication effect on customer loyalty. International Refereed Research Journal, 5(4), 75-87.

Mumbua, M.L., Stephen, M. and Simon, M. 2019. Role of branding on customer preference in the soft drink industry. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 6(9), 489-496.

Masterson, R., Philips, N. and Pickton, D. 2017. Marketing an introduction. London: Sage Publications.

Popescu, D.I 2016. Promotional mix and integration of communication into management policy-case study. Revista de Management Comparat International, 17(5), 466-476.

Stephen, A.T. 2016. The role of digital and social media marketing in consumer behaviour. Current Opinion in Psychology, 10, 17-21.

Thieu, B.T., et.al 2017. Linkages between marketing mix components and customer satisfaction: An analysis on Google in Hanoi, Vietnam. Journal of Economics and Business Research, 23(1), 123-147.

Valos, M.J., Habibi, F.H., Casidy, R., Driesener, C.B and Lousie, V. 2016. Exploring the integration of social media within integrated marketing communication frameworks. Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 34(1), 19-40.

Wu, Y.L. and Li, E.Y. 2016. Marketing mix, customer value and customer loyalty in social commerce. Available at: www.emraldinsight.com/1066-2243.htm. [Accessed on: June 11th, 2020].

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