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Online ShopsThe Food Marketing Mix and the Four Ps of Marketing
The four components of food marketing are often called the “four Ps” of the marketing mix because they relate to product, price, promotion, and place. One reason food manufacturers receive the largest percentage of the retail food dollar is that they provide the most differentiating, value-added service. The money that manufacturers invest in developing, pricing, promotion, and placing their products helps differentiate a food product on the basis of both quality and brand-name recognition.


Product
In deciding what type of new food products a consumer would most prefer, a manufacturer can either try to develop a new food product or try to modify or extend an existing food. For example, a sweet, flavored yogurt drink would be a new product, but milk in a new flavor (such as chocolate strawberry) would be an extension of an existing product. There are three steps to both developing and extending: generate ideas, screen ideas for feasibility, and test ideas for appeal. Only after these steps will a food product make it to national market. Of one hundred new food product ideas that are considered, only six make it to a supermarket shelf.


Price
In profitably pricing the food, the manufacturer must keep in mind that the retailer takes approximately 50 percent of the price of a product. A frozen food sold in a retail store for $4.50 generates an income of $2.25 for the manufacturer. This money has to pay for the cost of producing, packaging, shipping, storing, and selling the product.


Promotion
Promoting a food to consumers is done out of store, in store, and on package. Advertisements on television and in magazines are attempts to persuade consumers to think favorably about a product, so that they go to the store to purchase the product. In addition to advertising, promotions can also include Sunday newspaper ads that offer coupons such as cents-off and buy-one-get-one-free offers.


Place
Place refers to the distribution and warehousing efforts necessary to move a food from the manufacturer to a location where a consumer can buy it. It can also relate to the place within a store that it is located in a place like Sobeys, IGA, Safeway, Walmart and many other gargantuious corporations that have yogurt in stock.




The food marketing system in the United States is an amazingly flexible one. Consumer focus helps marketers anticipate the demands of consumers, and production focus helps them respond to changes in the market. The result is a system that meets the ever-changing demands of consumers.