Marketing Companies Must Identify, Anticipate, and Satisfy Consumers with Product, Placement, Promotion, and Price

In the marketing world, before releasing a product onto the market a company would carry out research in all spectrums to investigate the targeted audience. Once market research is completed, marketing or advertising is carried out so that the targeted consumers can purchase and the company receives an earned profit from sales. Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably (Chartered Institute of Marketing, 2009). Marketing strategies need to tick off consumer needs and demand. Companies follow a set of marketing strategies to be able to achieve their set mission goals. Strategies like segmentation, targeting and positioning of the market is used to analyse the company’s brand in order to satisfy and improve consumer needs. In order for Starbucks to remain stable, the company is utilizing effective marketing strategies (Larson, 2008). For example reliance on retail expansion as well as product and service innovation to enable long term growth (Willmott, 2010). In this essay, I shall make an attempt to analyse Starbucks’ segmentation, targeting and positioning strategy of their brand and products as well as how it follows the 4Ps; Product, Place, Promotion and Price.

Firstly, I shall look at Starbuck’s segmentation method. Segmentation is the process of discovering a group of people with similar characteristics and needs. Starbucks uses a demographic segmentation (markets by age, gender, income) as well as geographic segmentation (markets by region of a country, market size) and psychographic segmentation, which can link with demographics. Starbucks has tried to differentiate itself from its competitors in quality, price, time, and space (Peng-Cheng,...

... middle of paper ...

...advertising as a form of promotion because it is non effective due to the fact that public relations and brand recognition made enabled the company to reach its target (Kolter et al, 2004). Even though Starbucks prices are high, consumers are still willing to buy more coffee because Starbucks has created a glamorous image of the store. Provision of quality services and products is enough justification for the much higher prices compared to other competitors. Lastly, to live up to its brand reputation, Starbucks provides good quality and a variety of products to enable consumer satisfaction.

In conclusion, Starbucks has shown how to successfully apply their marketing strategies in the coffee market by introducing new flavours to their coffee products enables the company to attract new potential customers and continue successful growth in the retail/coffee market.