Okay, so we have all learned about the 4P’s of marketing in undergrad: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. If not, you can open up one of your old marketing text books, blow off the dust and read about it there. The 6 C’s, however, is a not a concept that replaces the 4’Ps; rather, it just expands on the promotion element and provides a more granular approach to consumer marketing.
CUSTOMER
In this day and age, a company’s marketing strategy needs to be customer focused. It’s about understanding the target consumer; their wants, needs and motivations. Not as demographics, psychographics or any other graphics, but as real people. It is understanding why customers do what they do (or don’t do), when they do it and why they do it. Such knowledge is critical in marketing since having a strong understanding of buyer behavior will help shed light on what is important to the customer. It’s about focusing on the target customer first and then working back to the brand. It’s imperative that companies have mind share before focusing on market share. (more…)
Brand equity must be carefully constructed. A firm foundation for brand equity requires that consumers have the proper depth and breadth of awareness and strong, favorable, and unique associations with the brand in their memory.
Managers of strong brands appreciate the totality of their brand’s image–that is, all the different perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors customers associate with their brand, whether created intentionally by the company or not. As a result, managers are able to make decisions regarding the brand with confidence.
At its most basic level, a brand is made up of all the marketing elements that can be trademarked– logos, symbols, slogans, packaging, signage, and so on. Strong brands mix and match these elements to perform a number of brand-related functions, such as enhancing or reinforcing consumer awareness of the brand or its image and helping to protect the brand both competitively and legally.
Brands that are well positioned occupy particular niches in consumers’ minds. They are similar to and different from competing brands in certain reliably identifiable ways.