Recap Of Session On 1st March

This is the recap of the session held on 1^st march.

The session started with the article presentation, after which we took up from where we had left in the last session i.e. values, the four types of values viz. functional, mind, economical and heart.

Then we discussed about perceived values and actual delivery of values. How there is a gap between both i.e. value perceived and value delivered. When the gap between perceived value and the value that is delivered is less the function of communicating the value to the target segment becomes easier, because we are actually delivering what they think we will.

Also that all the customers and the stakeholders perceive that the mission and the vision statement given by the organization will be followed and objectives will be achieved, so it is very important for the organization to work in order to achieve them so that the gap doesn’t arise.

After that we discussed about micro segmentation and how it is important especially in Indian context. India being such a diversified country it is really difficult to work on broad segments, so at most of the times it becomes almost necessary to sub dived a broad segment into various micro segments sharing same kind of a need.

We then went on to discuss how the final price is arrived at.

• Impact of other marketing activities
• Company pricing policies
• Gain and Risk sharing pricing
• Impact of price on other parties

We also discussed the importance of touch points. Touch points are where the final product starts talking to the customer more precisely to the target group.

Other things discussed during the lecture:

Churning: Product churning is the practice of selling more product than is beneficial to the consumer. An example is a stock broker who regularly buys and sells securities in your portfolio. You may or may not gain, but the broker certainly piles up commissions.

We discussed how brands are suffering due to social networking because people are taking out their frustration for brands on social networking sites which is hurting the brands badly.

Bundle pricing and loyalty cards were also discussed during the class whereby we discussed that how in India except for a few brands, follow up of customers is not done properly. Also customers on the other hand are also not interested in activities like filling up of the feedback forms and all.

We also discussed examples of big bazaar on micro segmentation also how Sony and Maggie are working to convince the end user about the value provided.

Micro segmentation is a strategy applied in marketing to narrow and refine a market into smaller segments on the basis of common characteristics — age, gender, income, possessions, expenditure and preferences. Micro segmentation is critical to focused direct marketing messages aimed at niche customer segments.

For example the mobile operators, micro-segmentation will especially be visible when launching different sub-brands targeted at different customer segments. This will be a direct consequence of the operators single brand strategy no longer being able to attract the many different types of mobile customers with many different needs.

Regards,

Shekher Asnani

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