SUNSILK

MKT 501

Marketing Practice Necessary in Business : SUNSILK

IZYAN LYANA BINTI MOHD MOKHTAR

2010418134

MOHD SHAFIE BIN ANSAR

2009931927

AS 227/4

PROF. HAMDAN HJ HASSAN

21ST FEB 2011

Table Of Content

No.	Contents	Page No.
1.	Marketing	3
2.	Business Marketing	4
3.	Marketing Strategies	5
4.	Conclusion	7

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Marketing

Marketing is the process of performing market research, selling products and/or services to customers and promoting them via advertising to further enhance sales. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves.

Marketing is used to identify the customer, to satisfy the customer, and to keep the customer. With the customer as the focus of its activities, it can be concluded that marketing management is one of the major components of business management. Marketing evolved to meet the stasis in developing new markets caused by mature markets and overcapacities in the last 2-3 centuries. The adoption of marketing strategies requires businesses to shift their focus from production to the perceived needs and wants of their customers as the means of staying profitable.

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Business Marketing

Business marketing is the practice of individuals, or organizations, including commercial businesses, governments and institutions, facilitating the sale of their products or services to other companies or organizations that in turn resell them, use them as components in products or services they offer, or use them to support their operations. Also known as industrial marketing, business marketing is also called business-to-business marketing, or B2B marketing, for short.

Although on the surface the differences between business and consumer marketing may seem obvious, there are more subtle distinctions between the two with substantial ramifications. Dwyer and Tanner (2006) note that business marketing generally entails shorter and more direct channels of distribution.

While consumer marketing is aimed at large groups through mass media and retailers, the negotiation process between the buyer and seller is more personal in business marketing. According to Hutt and Speh (2004), most business marketers commit only a small part of their promotional budgets to advertising, and that is usually through direct mail efforts and trade journals. While that advertising is limited, it often helps the business marketer set up successful sales calls.

Marketing to a business trying to make a profit (business-to-business marketing) as opposed to an individual for personal use is similar in terms of the fundamental principles of marketing. In marketing situations, the marketer must always:

  Successfully match the product or service strengths with the needs of a definable target market;

  Position and price to align the product or service with its market, often an intricate balance; and

  Communicate and sell it in the fashion that demonstrates its value effectively to the target market.

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Sunsilk History

Originally launched in the Netherlands in 1956, Sunsilk provides hair care solutions in 80 countries around the globe. No matter the hair type or problem, we have the products and the know how to make your hair feel and look beautiful. Our passion in life is to help women celebrate looking beautiful every day, anywhere. The product is number 1 in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and sales of more than €1 billion a year Sells in 80 countries and also sold as Elidor, Hazeline, Seda and Sedal. Recent awards: Holds the Guinness world record for the most heads of hair washed and styled in one day

Marketing Strategies

Product (or Service)

Because business customers are focused on creating shareholder value for themselves, the cost-saving or revenue-producing benefits of products and services are important to factor in throughout the product development and marketing cycles.

Sunsilk (shampoo) is one of the example of a product that giving marketing value to connecting with people. They have make R&D on their product so it will fit to the customer needs.

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People (Target Market)

Quite often, the target market for a business product or service is smaller and has more specialized needs reflective of a specific industry or niche. A B2B niche, a segment of the market, can be described in terms of firmographics which requires marketers to have good business intelligence in order to increase response rates.

Regardless of the size of the target market, the business customer is making an organizational purchase decision and the dynamics of this, both procedurally and in terms of how they value what they are buying from you; differ dramatically from the consumer market. There may be multiple influencers on the purchase decision, which may also have to be marketed to, though they may not be members of the decision making unit.

Base on the Sunsilk product, their target market are more to any society level and ages. The product are suitable to be use by all generation and today they have combine with expert to made their product base on the critical hair condition like Hair Fall Control, Dandruff Control, Silky Hair and Sunsilk Damaged Reconstruction. This show that the company have their own strategy to capture customer need and demand.

Pricing

The business market can be convinced to pay premium prices more often than the consumer market if you know how to structure your pricing and payment terms well. This price premium is particularly achievable if you support it with a strong brand.

The prices for Sunsilk product are necessary and it can be bought by any economic status. For regular shampoo it only cost about RM10 to RM12 and for the conditioner it only cost about RM12 to RM15. So this low pricing surely can fit on customer level and status.

Promotion

Promotion planning is relatively easy when you know the media, information seeking and decision making habits of your customer base, not to mention the vocabulary unique to their segment. Specific trade shows, analysts, publications, blogs and retail/wholesale outlets tend to be fairly common to each industry/product area. What this means is that once you figure it out for your industry/product, the promotion plan almost writes itself (depending on your budget) but figuring it out can be a special skill and it takes time to build up experience in your specific field. Promotion techniques rely heavily on marketing communications strategies.

Shampoo and Conditioner is mostly synonym to women because they care more for their hair as a beauty asset. Actress is one of the medium that used by Sunsilk to promote the product. Malaysian arties like Heliza, Maya Karin and many more are becoming their icon to promote the product.

Place (Sales and Distribution)

The importance of a knowledgeable, experienced and effective direct (inside or outside) sales force is often critical in the business market. If you sell through distribution channels also, the number and type of sales forces can vary tremendously and your success as a marketer is highly dependent on their success.

Sunsilk product can be get in any stores and market. The company have distributed the product into entire Malaysia including Sabah and Sarawak.

Conclusion

Marketing is perhaps the most important activity in a business because it has a direct effect on profitability and sales. Larger businesses will dedicate specific staff and departments for the purpose of marketing.

It is important to realise that marketing cannot be carried out in isolation from the rest of the business. For example:

The marketing section of a business needs to work closely with operations, research and development, finance and human resources to check their plans are possible.

Operations will need to use sales forecasts produced by the marketing department to plan their production schedules.

Sales forecasts will also be an important part of the budgets produced by the finance department, as well as the deployment of labour for the human resources department.

A research and development department will need to work very closely with the marketing department to understand the needs of the customers and to test outputs of the R&D section.

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References

www.sunsilk.com.my/

http://www.unilever.com.my/

Principle of Marketing, Thirteenth Edition, Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong

Marketing notes