Marketing and product assignment

To increase customers’ usage by adjusting the Sales Promotion based on our unit budget that we obtain from previous sales-that is to increase/decrease Promotion Allowance, Co-op Ads, Point of Purchase, Trial Size, and Coupons so that they would become incentives for customers to try and buy our products. Dealing with Product Mix would extend our line of products and eventually would increase our sales due to the new launched products or reformulated products. With controlling the Price, it would increase our revenues when the price goes up.

With Distribution areas, it would help us to allocate all of our products around the country. This would help us build up customers and the brand awareness. With controlling the Advertising section, it is the most important part of Marketing since it helps us to get our message across the nation as well as through customers. Most of our sales are based on advertising because the more we advertise, the more people will notice our products and eventually they will try our products. This increases our sales as well as the stock price.

Because Allround’s price was lower than it should have been relative to its effectiveness, Allround led in Brand Purchases but a steady decrease in purchases was noticed as prices were raised to where they should be. (Fig. 3 & 4) Symptom Relief/Satisfacation: Allround remained fairly superior in symptoms relief when compared to its competitors (Fig. 5) Allround also led in customer satisfaction by a large margin through the majority of the periods. Reaching its all time high in Period 10 at 62. 9%. (Fig. 6 and 7) Market Share:

Regardless of Allround’s competitors’ strive to gain a higher market share for Cold medications, Allround has been the leader from the beginning. Although its market share has been on a steady decline from Period 0, it began a steady rise after Period 7 as we increased our advertising and promotion activities. (Fig. 8 and 9) WEAKNESS: Sales Force: According to the Market Research: Consumer Shopping Habits (Fig. 10 and 11), a large percentage of consumers who shop for cold medicines did so in Grocery Stores. When compared to other retailers (Fig. 2 and 13), Grocery Stores attracted about 47% of total consumers with Chain Drug Stores being the next highest at about 24%. Allstar did not take full advantage of this and fell behind the top two companies, Ethik and B & B, in spending for sales support for these key retailers and also under spending in total Sales Force. Figures 12 and 13 , Sales Force Estimates, shows B and Ethik consistently providing close to about 200 or more sales people while Allstar remained below at or below 150 for most the Periods because of declining income. Fig. 15) Pricing: Allround’s biggest issue was maintaining the price at or above the median line of the Tradeoffs Plot and adjusting to the rate of inflation. Although Allround led in Symptom Relief, our product was heavily under priced most of the periods. Both Allround and Allround + consistently fell below this median line of price/Symptom Relief, causing the company to lose major income and in consequence, the company’s allocated budget decreased and spending in vital areas were also decreased. (Fig. 5) Promotion/Advertising:

Most of our customers when surveyed were very familiar with our products: Allround and Allround+. Our conversion ratio was the highest among all the competitors. This indicated consumers’ strong awareness of our product. Allstar’s retention ratio showed that consumers purchased and repurchases our product, because of its effectiveness in curing allergies and cold symptoms. As we progressed through the simulation, the need to decrease primary ad messages came about, since the product had been on the market for quite some time. As we decreased this, we increased benefit and comparison, to show what we offered consumers.

Allround+, a newer product, funds were distributed between primary and benefit ad messages. Launching new products requires putting a lot of money in primary ads to make consumers aware of all the options out there. Allstar must continue there methods for success and remain conscious about brand awareness, as it is a vital element of advertising. As for our ad agency, Sully and Rodgers, effectively use a lesser percentage of Allstar’s budget to advertise. This has been successful so far, but in the future, if sales should decrease, then immediate re-evaluation of the decision is necessary.

In order to achieve the marketing objective of increasing our market shares, we recommend implementing a pricing strategy. During the beginning, we only increased our price by a few cents. We did this because we thought that a dramatic increase would turn consumers away from our product. This was a bad move for our company, while we wanted to maintain a reasonable price for our consumers; we needed to make sure we were not losing money by charging a below the market price. After realizing our mistake, we started to increase our price by dollar amounts. This helped our market shares increase a good amount.

Allstar needs to keep in mind for the future that sometimes increasing is the price is the only option in order to make sure you do not operate at a loss. This increase in price helped improve our market shares, which enabled us to better compete with other brands. Then, we were able to introduce a new product, Allround+. We diversified Allstar by introducing a relief for allergies, this augmented our market shares. Pricing is the key to boosting market shares. If you are operating at a loss, it is hard to make all the crucial changes needed to start to take over competitors’ shares’ of the market. pic] Lessons Learned As a team, the lessons that we learned from this simulation was about the proper use of direct sales force, the use of advertising, and of inflation rates, concerning the proper techniques of running a company. The simulation dealt with each of the four P’s (Product, Price, Promotion, and Place) and showed the product life cycle. Throughout the first 6 periods our price percentage increases was below the increase of inflation. With this came a loss of revenue, this in turn brought a loss of budget. This then in turn affect the advertising budget greatly.

By doing this our product, Allround, was able to hold the highest percentage of growth throughout all channels of sales. From the graph of our stock price, it can be seen that it was in period 7 and 8 that it turned around and began to rise again. It was then when our team rearranged completely the focus of channel of sales and largely increased the price. We also decided that the company was losing too much money from the discount schedule. In period 6, we dropped the percentage of discounts of all 4 categories. The largest decrease was in the