Strategy Formulation and Implementation

 5. Strategy Formulation and Implementation

5.1 Marketing Strategy

The marketing strategy of our company is based on providing cosmetic and personal care products for beauty-conscious persons located in Kuala Lumpur. We are currently targeting the urban class who are looking for the best quality available at competitive prices in the cosmetic and personal care category (Garusing Arachchige, J.J., 2002). Like other companies, we consider marketing as our one of the most successful factor because it serves as an intermediary between the customers and organizations. Many marketing strategies are having one and unique goal to promote our company’s products and services with greater customer satisfaction. Amongst all other marketing strategies, marketing mix is one of the most vibrant and significant strategies through which we will decide our company’s products, prices, placement, and promotion (Thabit, T. and Raewf, M., 2018). We are taking the marketing mix as a controllable group of variables that will affect our customer’s response towards our products and services (Kotler, 2000; CIM, 2009). We will be defining our list of products, prices, promotions, and placement under our marketing mix strategy.

 

5.1.1 Product

Our company will be targeting a wide range of segments through its most innovative and unique marketing strategy in the local market of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Our basic aim is to offer the most competitive products to our new customers with consumer affordable prices that can satisfy our target market. This is why we will be introducing a product differentiation strategy to cater to the unmet needs of our customers in cosmetic and personal care products. Our company’s products (goods and services) will be offering many advantages to our wide range of customers at the most affordable prices. Thus, our list of products will be the main element of our company’s marketing mix (Singh, 2012). We will be making sure that all of our products will be offering superior quality, innovative features, and greater performance that our customers will favor these products services. Our product concept will hold on offering the best quality products and keep improving according to the preferences and choices of our target market (Garusing Arachchige, J.J., 2002). Currently, our company will be offering the following products.

1.      Skin Care - Mask, Cleanser, Moisturizer, Sunblock (Kiehl's)

2.      Cosmetic - lipstick, eyeliner, eyebrow pencil, brush (Innisfree)

3.      Hair Care - Shampoo, conditioner (Pantene), Hair Treatment Pill (Ellips)

4.      Body Care - Body Lotion (Vaseline), Body Wash (Dettol), Body scrub (Sephora)

We will be currently offering four main Cosmetic products, Skin, Hair, and Body care and there is a list of product categories under the main product segment. Since all these are consumer goods that have to be introduced in the form of shopping, unsought, convenience, and specialty goods based on consuming frequency and patterns (Lancaster Geoff and Reynolds Paul 1995). Our all products come under convenience goods that are available on a frequent and regular basis with the minimum effort of our customers to select any of the products of their daily need and choice.

5.1.2 Promotion

As we are planning to start a new business in the cosmetic and personal care products following both traditional and digital ways in comparison with our local and international competitors. Therefore, at the start, we need to follow the aggressive marketing and promotional strategy for products and services. We also need to adopt a combination of several promotion and communication strategies for the selling and promotion of our products and services (Grönroos, 1994). For this, our strongest element of the promotions will be public relations, publicity, sales promotions, and various fairs and demonstrations (Culliton, 1948). We will be spending a sufficient amount within our budget framework on advertising (Singh, 2012), personal selling, and publicity of our products and services (Burnett, 2008). Furthermore, we will also be utilizing our website and other official social media pages for the promotion of our products and services. The rising need for digitalization made it possible to reach a wider range of customers all over the world through digital marketing of your company’s products and services. Hence, through our promotional mix strategies, we will create awareness, communicate with our buyers and persuade them towards our products and services. In this way, we can easily attract our new and potential customers towards our cosmetic and personal care products. This will also be done through our other communication tools like suppliers, retailers, and wholesalers, etc (Garusing Arachchige, J.J., 2002). Thus, we came to know that promotional mix strategies have a positive impact on the sales of our company’s products and services.

5.1.3 Price

As we are devoted to providing quality products and services in the cosmetic and personal product category to the urban and some other part of rural areas in the local market. Therefore we will adopt mainly two pricing strategies at an initial level that are price skimming and penetration pricing strategy. Our main focus is to charge our customers reasonable and affordable prices for any of our products and services (Borden & Marshall, 1959). In price skimming strategy, we will be offering competitive pricing at the initial level and that will be lower in time to cover the cost of expenditures for our survival and growth. On the other hand, for our specific products, we will be offering a penetration pricing strategy that will hold to offer our customers the most affordable prices, especially for the middle and lower class. These pricing strategies are very critical decisions because they will directly affect the need for our products and the profitability of our business (Singh, 2012). We will be introducing the following pricing strategies for our new start business.

·         Penetration pricing

·         Skimming pricing

·         Premium pricing

·         Economy pricing

·         Bundle pricing

5.1.4 Place

For our newly start cosmetic and personal care product business, we will be following various distribution strategies for the placement and distribution of our products and services. We will make sure that our products will be readily available on all our placement centers through our distributors, retailers, and wholesalers (Thabit & Younus, 2015). Our placement strategies include direct selling to our customers (Burnett, 2008), digital placement, special outlets, and exclusive distribution. Our products will be digitally placed on all of our social media platforms and our website where our customers will be making online orders to have any of our products. We will build special outlets for easy access to our customers where they will be coming to test the quality of our products before buying them. Furthermore, we have decided to develop an exclusive distribution network on our various distributions where the products will be placed on the market through our marketing and selling team (Weingand Darlene, 1984). Last but not the least, we will also be offering customization offerings where we will allow our potential customers for customization orders. This is the way we can get higher customer satisfaction through our effective distribution strategy (Singh, 2012).

 References

Borden, N.H. and Marshall, M.V., 1959. Advertising management: text and cases. RD Irwin.

 

Burnett, J., 2008. Core concepts of marketing. In the global text project, funded by the Jacobs Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland.

 

CIM. (2009). How to achieve an effective marketing mix, 10 minute guide, the charted institute of marketing, UK.

 

Culliton, J.W., 1948. Management of marketing costs.

 

Grönroos, C. (1994). From marketing mix to relationship marketing: towards a paradigm shift in marketing. Management decision, 32(2), 4-20.

 

Garusing Arachchige, J.J., 2002. Application of Marketing mix elements (4Ps) in the Library sector. Jula, 7(1), pp.12-36.

 

 

Kotler, P., 2000. Marketing Management. Millenium Custom Edition, for University of Phoenix by Prentice-Hall.

 

Lancaster G. and Reynolds P., (1995), Marketing, Butterworth, Heinemann.

 

Singh, M., 2012. Marketing mix of 4P’s for competitive advantage. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 3(6), pp.40-45.

 

Thabit, T. and Younus, S., 2015. The relationship between added-value of organization and QMA. International Journal of Engineering Research & Management Technology, 2(2).

 

Thabit, T. and Raewf, M., 2018. The evaluation of marketing mix elements: A case study. International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies, 4(4).

 

Weingand, Darlene (1984), 'Distribution of the library's products: the need for information',

Marketing and the Library, Gray, J. Ford (ed.), New York, Harworth. pp.49-57.