Marketing mix and relationships

Marketing mix is a combination of marketing tools that are used to satisfy customers and company objectives. Consumers often call the marketing mix "the offering." Your offer is controlled by the following variables often referred to as the four Ps in marketing
However, sometimes people can be included as well. So we have

• Product: Adidas Superstar, outdoor sneakers for men
• Place: Any Adidas store/shop
• Price: 40euros not so much expensive
• Promotion: Advertising in the press, on TV,radio, using direct mailshots, via internet, through PR
• People: Producers, wholesalers, retailers, customers..

By using variations of these five components you have the ability to reach multiple consumers within your target market.
Creating a successful marketing mix that will increase results often takes experimenting and market research. There are many methods that can be used, both in person and the use of impersonal presentations. The key is to not always depend on "one" mix always explore other avenues. The combining and coordination of these elements will be more effective than depending on one.

CRM
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. According to Gartner Group, CRM is “a business strategy aimed at making intelligent use of customer data, to create, develop and maintain profitable relationships with customers.” Consequently, a CRM approach demands that all of an enterprise’s customer-facing departments – Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, etc. – work in concert towards a shared vision of the customer so as to increase sales and enhance customer loyalty. In short, raise the company’s competitiveness.
Whatever the economic cycle, the critical goals for your business are the same – increase sales revenues and turnover, improve productivity and profitability, gain greater insight into customer needs and market opportunities, and build a more controllable, transparent organisation. These objectives need to be pursued within a sustainable framework that does not require excessive investment and which will not disrupt the daily operation of your business.
While there is no “magic bullet” to achieve these goals, there is a proven, pragmatic and manageable solution you can adopt immediately – putting CRM at the centre of your organisation with Selligent as your chosen partner. Our experience with over 75,000 users of our application worldwide has demonstrated that CRM does improve business performance within tightly controlled budgetary and time constraints.
Higher customer satisfaction and loyalty
Competitor activity is constantly eroding your customer base, leading to a need to replace lost customers with new sales. If the customers you most want to keep are the ones you are most at risk of losing – ie, the most profitable and most growable – the future of your business is in jeopardy. But increasing the satisfaction of those key customer groups will improve their loyalty, meaning you keep valuable customers for longer. That gives your business a much brighter future.
Improved sales performance
Sales are the lifeblood of your company. But forecasting and managing the sales process can be difficult. Typically, there is a lack of information about the sales pipeline, it is hard to predict the potential of customers, and tracking leads through to sales is often difficult. CRM introduces processes and technologies that dramatically increase the productivity of your sales force, making their work easier and more rewarding and giving your company more control.
Better access to customer information
The heart of CRM is about recognising who has bought from you, what they have purchased, how they choose to do business with you (i.e. choice of channel), and how much they might buy from you in the future, then using this knowledge to support business performance improvements. Selligent provides heightened access to a consolidated view of your customers without the need for lengthy and expensive data conditioning. Business intelligence and analytical tools then give you the power to understand the dynamics of your customer base.
The result of adopting CRM is to become a high-performance company that is better equipped to meet the challenges of dynamic marketplaces. Through clearer processes and management controls, you can ensure that resources are deployed where they will have the maximum effect. That means retaining the right customers for longer, achieving the full range of potential sales and depth of profitability from customer relationships, and increasing the productivity of your sales, marketing and customer service staff.

Adidas has a good relationship with their customers, they have some kinds of insurance for their products, customers can have their shoes,sneakers or other stuff fixed in couple of months. They also have good customers' service. I have bought some Adidas sneakers at Sello or Stockman and they have kept some information about me, they try to understand my needs, receive my feedbacks. Through getting good relationships with customers, Adidas have been successively renew their designs,up the models to date to meet customers' demand and also compete with other competitors.

One competitive tool..customer!!!

How to have profit from doing business?..It is always a big question for entrepreneurs. Having profits it means that customers like you,like your way of doing business, they satisfy with your products or your services. That supposition leads to the issue about how important the customer service is.Finding new customers is much more expensive than retaining existing ones. Customer service is more than just keeping customers happy. It's about revenue, because a lost customer means lost revenue and an unhappy customer can damage your reputation.

Some aspects of effective customer service are:

Knowing your customers’ needs

Identifying your key service activities

Delivering superior service

Follow up

In a competitive marketplace it makes sense to aim to provide superior service. Customers base their purchasing decisions on the service they receive, not just price, quality and availability.

Build superior customer service into your business:

Incorporate customer service strategies into your business and marketing plan.

Develop a business vision that reflects your commitment to good customer service and let your customers know about it.

Make sure everyone involved in your business shares your commitment.

Customer service check:

Do you tend to over-promise and under-deliver?

Are there opportunities to improve your service?

Do you know if your customers value your customer service initiatives?

Do you have systems in place to deal with unhappy customers?

Good customer service is the lifeblood of any business. You can offer promotions and slash prices to bring in as many new customers as you want, but unless you can get some of those customers to come back, your business won’t be profitable for long.

Good customer service is all about bringing customers back. And about sending them away happy – happy enough to pass positive feedback about your business along to others, who may then try the product or service you offer for themselves and in their turn become repeat customers.

If you’re a good salesperson, you can sell anything to anyone once. But it will be your approach to customer service that determines whether or not you’ll ever be able to sell that person anything else. The essence of good customer service is forming a relationship with customers – a relationship that that individual customer feels that he would like to pursue.

Internal marketing

Internal marketing focuses on acquiring and retaining customer-oriented employees. The happiness of employees and the working environment is very essential.It is an important 'implementation' tool. It aids communication and helps us to overcome any resistance to change. It informs, ands involves all staff in new initiatives and strategies. It is simple to construct, especially if you are familiar with traditional principles of marketing. If employees work in good conditon,are treated well,they will feel happy and they will understand that they are the part of the company. They will be more motivated and will devote the best efforts to help the firm achieve the business goal. The manager of a firm should create some incentives to the worker by increasing salaries for long time workers, rewarding scholarships for workers’children..

Nicely available!!!!

Marketing channel:
group of individuals and organizations that direct the flow of products from producers to customers.
Direct selling: directly from the shop,store. Furthermore, selling by ordering on the phone,online shopping via internet.
Agents: Sells on behalf of the producer to wholesalers.
Wholsalers: Sells products to retailers.
Retailers: Sells products to the customers.

Direct selling is used so that people can buy products directly from the manufacturers by shopping online. Besides that, Adidas has numerous agents and retailers over many countries around the world. That enhances the availability of their product significantly. E-commerce, internet “stores”, are used but direct marketing, such as marketing via mail, email, phone is not.
When new arrivals are ready to be brought to customers, they go into the mass production. From there the distributors advertise the new products to whole countries around the world. A marketing campagin is made and people know about the new arrivals. And then the new ones are sold to the retailers or stores from where the we buy them.
Attaining market share is important to Adidas. In order to maximize their market share, Adidas has placed a great importance in developing their branding/ marketing strategies on the net through web appearance and user friendly functionalities. The analysis below represents the web site positioning map which identifies some of the key performance criterion in determining the web site positioning strategy for Adidas. The upper right quadrant indicates a high rating in both web site appearance and user friendly functionalities. While the lower left quadrant indicates both a low web site appearance and user friendly functionalities. Adidas web site is quite favourable in user friendly functionalities while lagging on overall in web site appearance.

Nike and Adidas have adopted a merchant model which encompassed three pillars of their e-commerce strategy: pure-play e-tailer, bricks and clicks, and their online store. The main purposes of acquiring relationships with pure-play e-tailers is to promote and market products; focus on the content to create new exposure and; gather, gain and transfer market knowledge to their business counterparts. Nike has landed a deal with Fogdog Sports which will sell their entire Nike product line on its web site. Adidas signed an agreement with SportsLine.com and Sports.com. The benefits of building relationships with these pure-play e-tailers are to provide global reach and coverage. Fogdog.com, Sports.com, and SportsLine.com have the initial coverage in the US, UK and eventually in Asia. Nike and Adidas will also operate their traditional bricks and mortar establishments, while selling their specialty products on their e-commerce web sites. This business model is referred to as "bricks and clicks." The primary goals of operating a bricks and click site is to increase sales, reduce cost, increase market reach, applying competitive pressure, promoting new products, improving customer service, and progress in addressing user concerns. Additionally, Nike and Adidas have included an affiliate link which allows consumers in varies regions to locate affiliated store locations such as Foot Locker and Champs.
Adidas's approach to e-commerce was that of a follower since Nike was first. As a result, Adidas relentlessly pursued innovation and refreshing content to differentiate itself from Nike. Adidas also realized that in order to be successful it has to be fully committed to this initiative. That's why it included adidas.com as part of its three pillar strategy along with pure play e-tailers, bricks and clicks. The final result is a web site that successfully portrays Adidas's product portfolio in an interactive and informational manner. The e-commerce presence required Adidas to adjust internally to be able to fully support and commit to this initiative. With Nike being first to the punch there was no room for mistakes and experiments. The final product had to be attractive and able to compete. Also, just like Nike, Adidas had to consider the channel conflicts adidas.com created.

External accessibility:
Whenever coming to the decision of setting new store, or branch, Adidas has to make a research about the surrounding area..to find the best place for opening. There are a variety of Adidas shops in many countries. We can easily meet one Adidas shop at shopping mall, shopping centre, entertainment area..living in Finland,. You can buy them in Citymarket,Stockman, Prisma, Anttila, Tarjoustalo, Verkkokauppa, Sello and many other stores. One special point which help you realise Adidas shop very quickly is that each of Adidas shops has the panel with three white lines and three stages as a symbol.Opening hours and parking facilities may depend on the specific place and authority there.
Internal accessibility:
Adidas has a wide range of products from ones for children,teens to adults,athletes or for various purpose like working, fashion,out going,hiking,running, playing soccer,tennis..Any Adidas shop is in good product displaying way. They have big image of famous athletes with Adidas stuffs, they also have a brochure, magazines delivered for the customers and well-trained staffs who are always willing to help customers if neccessary.

Cost factors

Whenever one entrepreneur does a business, his or her final goal is having benefit. No one wants his business go bankrupt. Because of various competitiors in the market, entrepreneurs should have put a competitive price to their products. So quite often, one pricing decision can be decided after many rigorous research and discussion. The best price is always the one that provides you with the most long-term profits. Price in terms of value rather than cost. Cost-plus pricing is worst choice. When you start pricing more intelligently, you will have a real advantage over most of your competitors. There are severals factors that has affected the pricing desicion of a company, for example Adidas. The primary concern they have to notice first is the cost of production. As you can know, nearly all lines of manufacturing of Adidas are automatic and for each month they have to pay for a fee for taking care of machines.
For each segment of customer, Adidas has their suitable products and price also. They have different level of product's price. With normal shoes , sneakers or shoes for working class, price is very acceptable. Contrary, sneakers for sport ålayers are much more expensive. You can not sell one pair of sneakers for a little child or adult for 1 or 200euros like the one for pro players.
Another aspect the producers have to take into concern is competition. Your competitors are smart and flexible enough to have some adjustment in their products.
In my character's situation, he wanted to buy an outdoor pair of sneakers. Due to his purpose, the sneakers should has nice appearance, up to date not so obsolete and acceptable price.

Shoes of Adidas are suitable for several different kinds of customers. There are snearkers with high price and also ones with lower price. They combine competition-based pricing with marketing-oriented pricing together. They know that Nike,Puma or other sneakers brand name would try to gain a benefit from lowering pirce fo suiting to customers' pockets.

Hit

Product adoption

1. Awareness stage: Due to a private demand of having a new pair of sneakers, he started to find out the information about shoes stores such as Adidas, Nike, Puma,..
2. Interest stage: He began to be interested in products of Adidas, he was impressed by the fashionable styles of Adidas sneakers. He not only went online and accessed Adidas's website but he also read sport magazine, newspaper for getting more info about Adidas sneakers. He got lots of pictures of sneakers, concerning the sneakers' features,its durability,comfort, its uses and also the price. The one he would like to buy must be the nice one with acceptable price.
3. Evaluation stage: He went to the nearest Adidas store and asked for the one he had selected on the website before. He assessed its features last time.
4. Trial stage: He tried the one he had chosen,tested it for the first time.
5. Adoption stage: Finally, he decided to buy that pair of sneakers and till now he has been using it for 4 months. He's quite satisfied with his decision.

Promotional mix
Adidas is considered to be very focused on advertising image of products through medias and publicity. They had their own marketing campaign,using images of various well-known sport players. People are so familiar with some sports players' face such as some soccers' players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Beckham, Kaka',..Adidas are also a sponsor of many events or particular organizations,sport clubs. Besides that, Adidas is successively opening several new branches or stores all over many countries. They widen their sales market and customer type as well. Not only do they keep their attention to teens or young adults, but they also focused on other markets.

Doing marketing communication efforts to get customers' attention. It is very sensitive because customers' decisions are easily affected by their satisfing view of products. Adidas usually update the pictures of shoes for their customers. They just try to be a persuasive brand of shoes. Furthermore, Adidas staff are also very friendly and helpfull. Adidas is very keen on training their staff. When he( the guy who want to buy new shoes) was on the process of choosing and buying new sneakers, he was very influenced by nice and cool pics on Adidas's website. He also got some good feeaback from previous customers of Adidas.