PPM: Gear4music plc's Marketing Mix, Strategies, and Effectiveness

This report provides a detailed analysis of Gear4music plc's marketing strategies, focusing on the marketing mix elements (product, price, promotion, and place) and strategic decisions based on Porter's Generic Strategies. It examines how Gear4music utilizes these elements to maintain its market position and expand its business. The report also evaluates the effectiveness of Gear4music's marketing efforts using key performance indicators (KPIs) and discusses the company's use of differentiation strategy to gain a competitive advantage. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of digital marketing and e-commerce in Gear4music's overall marketing approach, emphasizing how these initiatives contribute to the company's growth and customer satisfaction. The report concludes by assessing how strategic decisions and marketing efforts collectively impact Gear4music's revenue and market share. Desklib provides access to similar past papers and solved assignments for students.

Principles and practices of
marketing- PPM

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
1. Marketing mix elements used by company.............................................................................3
2.Reflective strategies decisions and relevant theory in its marketing efforts............................5
3. Evaluating the effectiveness of its marketing efforts. ............................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Marketing strategy means a business action and overall planning in order to reach
customers and also to earn profitability. The present report will give detailed information about
strategies used by Gear4music plc which is situated in UK. The company deals in online retail
marketing of various devices such as music equipments, accessories and musical gadgets. The
case study will discuss about marketing mix elements and strategic decisions which is utilized by
company for effectiveness. Furthermore, the report will evaluate the marketing efforts
effectiveness with the help of key performance indicators.
1. Marketing mix elements used by company
It is the method used by every business to focus on marketing plan of goods or service.
According to experts, it is noted that marketing mix elements interact with each other. It is useful
for every business to provide the best satisfaction to customers so that they can gain profits. In
addition, marketing mix fulfil the objective and goals of marketing management. With the helps
of marketing mix elements like place, promotion, product and price, the company can easily
attain the competitive advantages. The main purpose of using these strategies is to make
customers aware of services and goods. As the name recommends, these strategies is a mix of
many business action and tools. There are different factors determine the marketing mix method
they are company objective, nature of products, its life cycle, competition and purchasing
behaviour of the customers.
Product mix- All business activities begin with the company's product. It is important to
understand the element product mix in terms of marketing. There are many factors of products
like design, brand name, quality, packaging and services, etc. product mix strategy of gear4music
plc not only help it to protect its market share in existing markets but also help in penetrating
new business (what is marketing mix, 2021). The company is relatively successful at execution
of new launch projects so that they can generate good returns. The firm have provided variety of
music equipments such as guitars and other gadgets.
Price- Customer has to pay monetary value to acquire the product of the firm. If the
company's product is priced too high, it may release a feeling of high quality goods. So the
marketers need to manage the pricing strategy. The company launched musical equipments and
instruments customers ranging from beginners to musical professional. There are various types

of marketing variables such as discounts, payment period, coupons etc. The company pricing
strategy is based on price skimming method which is most commonly seen with innovative
goods such as music gadgets. The price of company's product set high in order to gain large
number of customers who will pay almost any cost to get their hands on the latest launched
equipments and accessories.
Promotion- The main purpose of using this strategy is to inform the customers about
product and services. The company uses this method to promote their brand product in order to
attract the customers and encourage them to purchase the goods. So, it mandatory to attain
effective promotion mix for good sales and revenue (Wróblewski and Lis, 2021). The elements
are public relations, social media, print media, advertisement, sales promotion and direct selling.
Gear4music plc maintains its position in the market very carefully by promoting its products
through online marketing. They have used the digital marketing platform to promote its brand
and build customer trust in order to improve productivity and efficiency. With the help of digital
marketing campaign the company has encouraged its digital promotions.
Place- Distribution is a channel which deals with the transfer of ownership of the goods
from the factory to the customer. With the help of this element company can increase brand
loyalty and customer satisfaction level. It includes factors like transport, coverage, warehouse
and various channels of distribution. The company has utilized technology and digital marketing
initiatives to expand business in order to reach existing and new territories by delivering online.
The company have developed its e-commerce platform and rapidly expanding its customer base
to build its presence internationally.
Physical evidence- Software development in-house and investment helps to respond to
customer buying behaviour and preferences or customer needs. The company has focused on
profit margins and leverage their international purchasing teams to widen options related to
procurement. They directly deal with manufactures and factories in order to gain competitive
advantages.
The company has used these marketing mix method to reinforce its positioning in such
way that it will be helpful to accelerate its development and growth strategies which will involve
strengthening its distribution network in European and also investing in its digital platform and
e-commerce. The firm has focused on advertising where they have created brand image in front
of customers and also target audience with the help of targeting and positioning strategy. The

firm have sponsor events and programme to promote its products through banners in order to
attract customers. Staff members of the company is provided by training in order to attain
activities such as direct selling with the help of marketing team. To boost the brand personality
company have arranged events such as personal interviews, surveys and feedback surveys offline
or online. They have also measured the market position and customer opinions with the help of
KPIs.
2.Reflective strategies decisions and relevant theory in its marketing efforts
Strategic decisions are the decisions of the company which helps to make the decision
taking the views of the environment. It makes the company to know about the resources and
helps to gain better profit by making good strategic decision. These decision of the Gear4music
can be made by taking the Porter's Generic Model factors which describes the ways of competing
in the competitive market (Porter's generic Strategies, 2021.). Porter's Generic competitive
strategies are as follows:
Cost Leadership strategy: In this cost leadership, organization decides to do the product
by lowering the cost in its industry. The types of cost advantage can be differed from industry to
industry and cost is also depends on the structure of the company. This strategy can be achieved
by having the lowest price in the competitive market (Manyeki, Ongeti, and Odiyo, 2018). Its
main focused is to do production at the lowest price and sell the products at low price in the
target market which increases the profitability of the company. This strategy can be achieved by
having three dimensions which are- first dimension is to achieve high utilization of the assets,
second dimension is that it helps to lower the operating cost of the company and third approach
is that it focuses on all other functional areas to make it sure that the cost applied must be low.
This strategy can only be used by large entities which helps them to enjoy the economies of scale
and to production in large quantity and have the big market share in its industry. This strategy
has some risk for the marketers as cost leadership requires the continuous capital investment in
order to maintain the cost advantage. By lowering the cost it reduces the brand loyalty of the
products which might decreases the customers which mostly prefers branded products.
Differentiation Strategy: This strategy helps the organization to differentiate its products
and services in some way which increases the profit of the entity. This strategy is useful where
the customers are not focused on the price. The organization should differentiate its products in
unique way that other entities can't copy that products. This strategy cannot be adopted by the

small entities in the market. Better differentiation makes the company to increase its profitability
in the market (Firoz Suleman, Rashidirad, and Firoz Suleman, 2019). The product should be
different having unique features which cannot be copied by its competitors as it becomes
ineffective when its differentiation is acquired by the competitors. The product should be so
unique which makes the customers to buy that product and make them sure about their brand
loyalty. Its focus is to differentiate its products from its competitors in order to increase the profit
of the organization. High brand having premium price basically use this strategy in order to
survive in the market. The successful differentiation of the products makes the company to make
its product successful in the target segments. This strategy has some risk as by differentiating the
products sometimes the customers don't prefer the products having differentiation as they might
think that the product is not good.
Focus Strategy: This strategy helps the marketers to be focused on which strategy the
organization must adopt in order to increase the profitability of the company. The company will
either choose the cost leadership strategy or the organization can choose the differentiation
strategy. Firstly the company will focus on those areas in which they have to make changes and
by that changes company will increase the profitability in the market. The organization will
focus on the target market, product segment and the geographical market where the buyers will
buy the more products. There are two types of focus strategies that are cost focus strategy and
differentiation focus strategy. These two strategies varies from differentiation and cost leadership
in the competitive market.
Stuck in the middle: If a company fails to achieve any of the above that it is considered
as the company stuck in the middle. This will creates the disadvantage for the company as other
cost leaders and differentiators will achieve profitability in the market. So the company must
adopt the best strategy which helps to compete from its competitors in the market.
Gear4music can use the differentiation strategy as it makes the company to make new
musical instruments or can add new and innovative feature in the instruments. As it is the largest
retail seller in the musical instruments the organization can adopt the differentiation strategy in
the competitive market. This makes the company to increase its market share and also to increase
its customers by differentiating its products.
Effectiveness of taking the differentiation strategy by the Gear4music

Differentiation strategy is the most useful strategy for increasing the profitability of the
company. By using this strategy it makes the customers attract towards the new and innovative
products in the market (Latkovikj, Drakulevski, and Popovska, 2020). It helps the organization
to target the more audience which increases the profits of the company. It is effective for the
company to use that strategy as makes reduction in price competition in the market. As by
differentiating the product it helps the Gear4music company to lower its price in the market.
Another benefit for the company by using this strategy is makes its product unique from its
competitors as selling something new increases the products quality. It increases the customer
loyalty by giving them unique and desired product in the competitive market. Gear4music
company will use this strategy because there will be less substitutes in the market of that
differentiated products. The price decided by the organization of the differentiation product
should be reasonable as competitors can produce that products and sell at the lower price.
3. Evaluating the effectiveness of its marketing efforts.
Marketing effectiveness means the process in which the company measures the
performance of business and how well a firm's marketing method and its efforts increase its
revenue. This helps company to measure, manage and communicate results which is known as
key performance it includes earning share, growth, sales and also quality of products and others.
Such as company KPI data/ social media comments, likes, shares. Marketing is one of the
important expenditure that any firm will make in order to gain customer satisfaction. It is
essential to accurately measure how the company's digital marketing campaign have gone.
This will provide detailed information about data that can be achieved through monitoring social
media in order to attain best practices. The organization can use various types of approaches in
their marketing practices they are website based contact, social media placement and email SMS
marketing campaign.
Gear4music measure effectiveness through likes and dislikes of customers. They use
sources like email marketing, online website and social media platform where customer share
their point of view and opinions related to products and services. Social platforms allow the
company to see the real time affect of marketing efforts through metrics such as KPI i.e. key
performance indicators. The company evaluates the effectiveness through shares, comments and
likes dislikes of the services and products. Firstly, the company needs to measure which KPIs is
suitable and most accurate to show the true impact of marketing size and records. The company

needs to measure through social reputation score which can give idea about overall performance
of business, growth, market share and employee performance.
According to experts, marketing effectiveness is measured by long term and short term
revenue generated by a campaign and how well the company perform in order to attract the
customers (Neri and et.al., 2021). For any business action the company take within overall
marketing strategy the firm should always determine how effective it is to apply. As it will
always help the firm to identify is strategy is working or not in proper way.
Sales- the company focuses on sales of music gadgets as the only revenue stream, thus, it
is the only indication of revenue success and growth. With this company can identify the revenue
and selling of its products. So, they can easily analyse the performance of the company. This
indicates that how many loyal customers the firm have who are willing to make an investment in
order to support and make profitability.
Revenue- The company can focus on short term return and also impact on marketing
activities. The firm can maintain charts and graphs through which it will analyse the market
share of gear4music plc. This is the most effective KPI to track productivity per client and
employees. When the company's annual revenue is divided by number of customer then revenue
per member can be determined.
Customer base/ satisfaction- The percentage of clients the company gain is profitable to
long term success. In other words, it is essential for company to understand the customer
experience about services. Here are some tips that the firm needs to take: focus on marketing
method, direct selling, sales promotion, so the company needs to focus on prospective clients. By
defining product or service from the customers opinions. According to experts, measuring
customer satisfaction is critical analysis (Ho, Lai and Chiu, 2021). It is suggested to measure
customer base and satisfaction though scorecard. The company can directly gain feedback from
customers to rate satisfaction level with services or goods.
Employee engagement- company's employee plays a vital role for business success. If
company employee aren't satisfied with job and services provided by company then it will affect
the performance of business activities or operations. Long term employment relationship is
beneficial to productivity and motivation level of staff members. KPI will be helpful to measure
the performance of each employees working the present company. Hence, it will ultimately boost
employee motivation level if positive response is achieved by them.

Profitability- As key performance indicators is way to measure company's growth and
performance, it needs to presented in several ways to gauge company's progress or success. By
evaluating the employees performance and their productivity, efforts and benefits occurs from
them, firm can identify its overall business position. It helps to mobilize staff members to work
effectively and efficiently towards the business achievement of core objectives or goals.
By collecting measures for all related business aspects of operations company can
evaluate its performance. For example- If a firm goal is to increase revenue from £10 million to
£20 million in the next two year, it can start focusing at the performance and achievement made
between the previous data and the current data.
With the help of key performance indicators, the firm can pay close attention to
professional network as it is a great indication of development and growth (Brint and et.al.,
2021). Many companies have taken step like sharing and promoting products or services through
social media such as Facebook, tweeter and Instagram. If the audience is talking about brand
name and products services then it is a great indication of growth. As it shows that the company
is earning successful market campaign and becoming highly relevant within competitive market.
Gear4music plc commercial KPIs support a very positive response of its abilities and capabilities
as an online business operator.
Furthermore, after identifying its key performance indicators, company should
communicate this information to the staff members and partners so that each person will
understand the metrics and benchmarks being used to evaluate the market position (Ghahremani-
Nahr and Nozari, 2021). It is noted that most of the company keep track about KPIs through
business reporting tools as they collect relevant data in order to present the detailed information
about performance levels. The firm can also presented in the form of scorecards and other
method for easy and understandable review of all areas of the business.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, the company needs to measure the ongoing activity in order to understand
the marketing position and its performance. By evaluating the report it is concluded that
company needs to define goals to measure success of a market campaign. To sum up, measuring
business campaign success is essential but needs to make sure about data driven decision on
expenditure for any advertising efforts. By examining the report, it is summarized that porter

generic strategies would be helpful to Gear4music plc. The company focuses on differentiation
strategy by providing unique and premium products to attract customer who likes music gadgets.
Furthermore, the firm has adopted KPIs in order to measure its marketing efforts, they have
focused on identifying market share, customer base, sales, revenue and employee motivation.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Brint, A. and et.al., 2021. Reducing data requirements when selecting key performance
indicators for supply chain management: The case of a multinational automotive
component manufacturer. International Journal of Production Economics. 233. p.107967.
Ghahremani-Nahr, J. and Nozari, H., 2021. A Survey for Investigating Key Performance
Indicators in Digital Marketing. International journal of Innovation in Marketing
Elements. 1(1). pp.1-6.

Ho, A. M., Lai, J. H. and Chiu, B. W., 2021. Key performance indicators for holistic evaluation
of building retrofits: Systematic literature review and focus group study. Journal of
Building Engineering, p.102926.