MARKETING AFRICA MAL 18/17 mal 18:17 online | Page 20

commonly dubbed as price wars. Price
is completely married to value and
value sits right in the laps of customer
convenience. Price therefore is a factor
of real and perceived value and the
unspoken need that drives customers
to procure goods and services.
The need to tap into both their
emotional and functional needs, and
to set product pricing in a way that
responds directly to those needs is
important. With the customer at
the center of the pricing process,
the elements of season, location,
buying power, value systems, cultural
attachment, scarcity perception and
the competitor landscape, must be
taken into consideration from a
people-perspective.
Every marketer must debate
candidly and conclusively about
the convenience of price to the
customer’s situation at every possible
stage. With the current bottom
of the pyramid dynamics in this
continent particularly, and with
the existing marketing strategies
aimed at adapting to, and unleashing
opportunity at this level, price is
tied to convenience of reach and
convenience of affordability.
The ‘Mwitu’ market has
revolutionized the way products
are produced, packaged, priced and
placed, with new lower level markets
and new low income geographies
playing a much bigger role on the
marketing scale than was ever thought
or imagined. Price works at the
behest of convenience and customer
convenience is the new pricing policy.
Placement
Placement decisions should be
anchored around both physical and
online availability, for products be
they customer oriented and pricing
customized, are really no good
to the originating brand if they
cannot reach the target market,
or are in an unsuitable location to
18 MAL 18/17 ISSUE
‘‘ Accessibility is the name of the product
placement game, and accessibility dines at
the table of customer convenience. Products
and services need to be right in front of the
target audience, both physically to inspire
uptake or digitally to stimulate conversion
from keyboard or touch pad strokes, to online
payment and delivery discussions.’’
encourage patronization.
Accessibility is the name of the
product placement game, and
accessibility dines at the table of
customer convenience. Products and
services need to be right in front of
the target audience, both physically to
inspire uptake or digitally to stimulate
conversion from keyboard or touch
pad strokes, to online payment and
delivery discussions.
Placement is declared to be the most
‘artistic’ segment of the marketing
basket, for time and thought goes into
human behavior and what influences
impulse procurement. People buy
goods and services first with their eyes
and then their wallets are compelled
to follow. Eye stimulation is both an
art and a science and the good gospel
of where customers are ‘most likely to
engage’ with the product is preached
from every marketing strategy agenda.
From the outer physical location of
the proposed ‘selling point’, to the
inner physical location of the goods
placement, to the digital location of
the online ‘shop’, to the exact location
of the product or service within this
area, should not be left to chance.
Every single placement strategy must
deeply consider customer convenience
from both the inside and out.
Promotion
Promotion that bundles up all the
other P’s in the marketing mix into
the stroller and takes them out for a
walk, requires that the target customer
to whom the message is specifically
addressed is actually in the right place
at the right time, and in the right
frame of mind to be receptive to the
communication.
With all the creative genius that
is churned out into the marketing
industry daily, and with players in
the promotional space falling all
over themselves to innovate around
communicating with customers
in a way that intrigues, hooks and
persuades them; there is unabated
brilliance that continues to illuminate
brand messaging.
The promotion schemes be they above
or below the line, are as strategic
in delivery as they are graduated in
diversity and multiplicity, towards
catering to different generational
audiences. How convenient the
promotion is in terms of reaching the
relevant target market based on the
current profiling and customer sifting
tools, is what determines the success
of each promotion project.
Interesting product placement
strategies have emerged from different
categories, with both the private and
public sector exploring unchartered
waters in a bid to speak distinctly and
audibly to their customers. Business
development plans have customer
convenience at the base, from which
activations, events, visits, calls and
written communication are then