Reading (перевод каждого текста 1 балл)

I

Product, Price, Promotion and Place: the four p’s of Marketing

The total marketing concept involves four steps, or, as they are often called, the four P’s of marketing – product, price, promotion and place.

Product The place to begin with is the product itself. A business must determine what kind of product potential customers want. Companies employ very complex market research techniques to find out. Surveys by phone, mail, or personal interview can reveal exactly what’s on consumer’s mind. The product warranty card that you return after a purchase provides marketing information too.

You might be wondering how asking a few people what their preferences are determines what others want to sell. Sophisticated research mathematics applied to a sample of consumers can typify the rest of the consumers. If we can find out what a few want, we can assume that the others in the group or population will want the same things. Decide who should be in the sample is a problem. Researchers have very detailed formulas for constructing marketing samples. The questions asked by researchers will depend on the particular purpose to be served.

Price Another major part of marketing is price. Companies have to decide on a product price that will cover all costs and also return a profit. Included in costs are such fixed expenses as rent and insurance. Variable expenses must be anticipated too. Those include the costs of material and commissions. These costs are used to compute a break-even point – the point at which income from sales equals fixed and variable expenses on one side of this point, the company will have a net loss and on the other side, a net profit.

Companies must be careful not overprice their product. If competitors prices are less than theirs, either the competition is on to something – they have special information allowing them to produce and market for less – or the company is inefficient.

II

Promotion So far we have talked about “product” and “price”. Promotion is a key part of marketing because it is the way businesses get their messages to consumers.

We said earlier that businesses would prefer to have a steady demand for their products. They would also like to see steady growth rather than sudden surges in business. One function of promotion is to maintain a steady and growing demand. Promotions through advertising in the media, direct mailings or through personal contact are a few of the ways producers make their products known to consumers. If consumers don’t know about a product, they won’t buy it.

Some critics of American advertising say that money used to inform and promote sales is wasted money that could be used for other purposes. Advertisers counter by saying that through market research businesses discover what American consumers want. Through advertising, businesses tell people what products are available. Advertising even gives them reasons to buy.

Place The final part of marketing, the fourth “P”, is place. For a product to be useful, it has to be in place when and where it is needed. To sell products, businesses must anticipate “when” and “where” consumers will buy them. A hot dog at a baseball game on a sunny afternoon is an example of excellent product placement. A lemonade stand in the winter is not. Hot dogs have less value after the game; the lemonade has more value in the summer.

What factors should the businesses take into account when they make decisions about the four “P” of marketing?