Advantages:
- Can have colourful advertisements, which have a great visual effect on the consumer.
- It might be more comfortable for some people to buy a magazine, because it’s easier to read and it is smaller in size than the newspapers, so you can take it with you all the time.
- Certain magazines are specialized target particular people. E.g. those people who read ‘Forbes’ magazine are more likely to buy some particular products, like: ‘Breitling’ watch, or a new BMW being advertised in the magazine.
- There can be specialist magazines, like ‘Spectator’, which is mainly about politics and ‘Man’s Health’, which is about fashion, health, sport and many other general things.
- It’s cheaper advertising in the magazines than advertising on TV or in the cinema.
- Advertising can be linked to features of the product.
- The reader can refer back to the article or an advert he was interested in.
Disadvantages:
- Advertising in the magazines is more expansive than advertising in the newspapers.
- By using different articles can target different socio-economic groups of people.
- Magazines are usually issued once a month, so it takes a long time to put your advertisement in the magazine. Also, there are not as many places for adverts in the magazine as in the newspaper. Because there may be many businesses who want to advertise their product, there’s a competition for getting a place for advertising your product in the magazine. Therefore, if the business wants to advertise its products in the magazine, it might need to reserve a place in the magazine in advance, which is expansive. In addition to this, there are different places in the magazines, which have stronger or weaker effect on the reader. For example, it would cost more money to advertise the product on the front cover of the magazine, than somewhere in the middle or the end of the magazine.
- Competitor’s products can be advertised. Sometimes next your products.
- There’s no movement or sound. However, some magazines include a CD or DVD, which has promotional videos, trial programs and sound tracks.
Using Posters
Advantages:
- There’s usually a big number of people and most groups being covered.
- It can be advertised in the whole country.
- Has a big size and high visual impact.
- May be placed on the highway next to the shops and restaurants. E.g. poster saying: ‘McDonald’s-400 m on the right.
- Can be seen several times.
Disadvantages:
- There’s a limited amount of information, which can be put on.
- It might be q need to do further research in order to find out the effectiveness of a particular poster.
- Sometimes, potential consumers don’t have enough time to look at the poster. For example, car drivers are likely to be concentrated on the road, rather than posters.
- It can be affected by bad weather (snow, rain, wind) conditions and small minorities of people who vandalize posters by graffiti.
Using Internet
Advantages:
- Can be easily spread through a big number of people, by using sending e-mails and advertising on websites.
- Can be advertised on specialist websites. E.g. program software for businesses is usually being advertised on Financial Times, Forbes and Harvard Business Review websites. Mobile phones with classical-business design and cars are also being advertised on the websites which have something to do with business. Companies do that, because they know that their potential customers-people who are willing to spend a lot of money to buy their goods, usually work in the business and go to these types of websites. Therefore, advertising on the specialist websites makes it more effective.
- Most businesses now advertise their products and services in the internet, because for some people it’s much easier to obtain the information they need from this particular source.
- Businesses who advertise their products in the internet can maintain a statistics of how many people actually look at their adverts in the internet by recording every click on their advert. Then, by using special programs in the internet, they can find out how long do the people who click on their page spend time on their website. This helps to find out on what websites their adverts work more effectively and also find out what particular types of adverts attract consumers’ attention best.
Disadvantages:
- Some people put filters on junk mail. Even some good and important adverts can be considered to be a junk. The message being sent might be ignored and so is not very effective.
- It’s relatively cheap to advertise products in the internet. It also works more effectively when businesses advertise their products on the search portals, like ‘yahoo’, where every time the person is trying to find something, he looks at the adverts displayed on the ‘home page’.
- There might be many other firms-competitors, which produce similar products, advertising their goods on the same website. If the business makes products, which are easy to be switched from one to another, then it creates a problem. For example, if there’s
Below-the-line promotion
These are basically all other types of promotion excluding advertising.
This is the list of examples of below-the-line promotion:
- Sponsorship- TV programs, sports teams
- Direct Mailing-junk mail, spam
- free samples
- exhibitions
- free gifts
- 3 for 2- BOGOF
- 25% extra free
- trade catalogues
- money off coupons, vouchers
These types of promotion are usually very expansive, but may change the behavior in the short term. If the consumer is brand loyal, then they are more likely to return to their preferred brand.
There are sales promotions, which include things like BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free), free gifts, ‘better value’, 25% extra of the product and etc. There also can be some competitions. E.g. Pepsi Co. introduced a competition where you had to collect certain number of ‘Pepsi’ bottles, which you could then change to a ‘Pepsi’ t-shirt, pen, radio, calculator and etc. These things help to encourage more sales of the products.
E.g. in the supermarkets it is very easy to find some points of sales, where you can try a new product and get a prize (pair of sleepers with the company logo). Trade-in is a very popular method in mobile phone warehouses and car saloons, where you can trade the product that you already have for something else. For example, in some mobile phone stores you can trade any mobile phone for the new one. Depending on the type of phone you have, they can give you a maximum discount of 20%. In some food stores, you may be offered to buy 52 packs of crisps for only 3pounds. Some companies do this to get rid of the old stock. Other businesses do this, in order to encourage more sales for the new products. These types of sales promotions are usually directly aimed at customers. However, there are also some other promotions, when suppliers give special offers to their retailers.
Place
A distribution strategy defines how you are going to create and satisfy demand for your products.
It also defines how you are going to move products from point of creation to points of consumption in an efficient and cost-effective manner, and how to develop and maintain customer loyalty. For Walkers a distribution strategy must be coordinated with how customers want to shop and buy. Nowadays customers are much different than ten years ago. Today costumers have an access to the Internet, which makes it easier for them to buy certain products, and makes it easier for some manufacturers to sell them. Despite this fact, manufacturers and distributors continue to support outdated distribution strategies that actually make it hard for customers to shop for and purchase their products. Maybe that’s why when we want to buy a car, we usually go to the car store, test the car and then buy if we like it.
In order to sell their products, manufactures need to think about how they are going to distribute their products to consumers. There are different distribution channels, which businesses use depending on the kind of products they produce. Manufacturers are the businesses which produce the products. Wholesalers are those businesses, which buy the products in bulk in order to receive a discount and then resell them. Retailers are shops who sell to consumers. Some of the examples of the retailers are ASDA, Argos, Tesco and many other shops and supermarkets.
There are different ways of how the products can be distributed to the consumer. Products can be delivered from manufacturer straight to the consumer, or to the whole seller and then to consumer.
Basically, there are five main distribution channels or the ways how the products can be distributed: Zero Level Channel, One level channel, two level channel and three level channel.
Types of distribution
