The Four 'P's
The 'four Ps' consist of the following:
Product - A product is an item that satisfies the consumer needs or wants. It is a tangible good or an intangible service. Intangible products are service based like the tourism industry, the hotel industry and the financial industry. Tangible products are those that have an independent physical existence. Typical examples of mass-produced, tangible objects are the motor car and the books. A less obvious but ubiquitous mass produced service is a computer operating system or video game.
Every product is subject to a life-cycle including a growth phase followed by a maturity phase and finally an eventual period of decline where sales fall. Marketers must do careful research on how long the life cycle of the product they are marketing is likely to be and focus their attention on different challenges that arise as the product moves through each stage. The marketer must also consider the product mix. Marketers can expand the current product mix by increasing a certain product line's depth or by increasing the number of product lines. Marketers should consider how to position the product, how to exploit the brand, how to exploit the company's resources and how to configure the product mix so that each product complements the other. The marketer must also consider product development strategies.
Price – The price is the amount a customer pays for the product. The price is very important as it determines the company's profit and hence, survival. Adjusting the price has a profound impact on the marketing strategy, and depending on the price elasticity of the product, often; it will affect the demand and sales as well. The marketer should set a price that complements the other elements of the marketing mix.
When setting a price, the marketer must be aware of the customer perceived value for the product. Three basic pricing strategies are: market skimming pricing, marketing penetration pricing and neutral pricing. The 'reference value' (where the consumer refers to the prices of competing products) and the 'differential value' (the consumer's view of this product's attributes versus the attributes of other products) must be taken into account.
Promotion - represents all of the methods of communication that a marketer may use to provide information to different parties about the product. Promotion comprises elements such as: advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion.
Advertising covers any communication that is paid for, from cinema commercials, radio and Internet advertisements through print media and billboards. Public relations is where the communication is not directly paid for and includes press releases, sponsorship deals, exhibitions, conferences, seminars or trade fairs and events. Word-of-mouth is any apparently informal communication about the product by ordinary individuals, satisfied customers or people specifically engaged to create word of mouth momentum. Sales staff often plays an important role in word of mouth and public relations.
Place - refers to providing the product at a place which is convenient for consumers to access. Place is synonymous with distribution. Various strategies such as intensive distribution, selective distribution, exclusive distribution and franchising can be used by the marketer to complement the other aspects of the marketing mix.
Applying the four P’s to the new Call of Duty, Black Ops 2 game, made by Activision and Treyarch games.
The product is Intangible product as it is the experience of the game that Activision is selling to its consumers, of being in future war. They also add tangible to the product to be sold as it comes in a package case or can come with some tangible objects in collectors pack( such as cards, book, little toys, etc.) to add more of feeling that the consumer is receiving some of value and not just something they can’t hold.
Price there is no pricing on the advisement, by there is option to per order the product which would take you to a game order site, such as EB or Game to order the game and would follow the normal pricing stagey of new games, be priced at the high end as price doesn’t matter there is always massive demand for these games.
Promotion is being fully done online and video game show now as it is the lunch of new game tailer. The online presence is through the use of you tube. The game web site, other video game web sites, such as IGN, G4TV. It will move into other methods of advertisements being in print in magazines and billboards, TV and some radio as all previous Call of duty games have been promoted this way. But we can see I very large focus on creating hype and marketing the game online as many uses of video games are heavy uses of internet services such as, YouTube, Facebook, game sites etc. . . .
Place is used by linking the online advertisement to online stores to pre order the game. They will use other forms of order of in store where you can pick up the game on release date and that online orders can be sent out to you or picked up in store. There channel of distribution would be form the game creators to the factory to be made, to middle sales man, to store outlets or delivery to online orders, to the customers.
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