INTRODUCTION
This study practically involves the investigation of marketing mix (product, price, promotion and place) in the accomplishment of organization objectives. The marketing mix is a business tool used in determining the effectiveness and efficiency of a firm. The marketing mix is often crucial when determining a product or brand’s unique selling point (the unique quality that differentiates a product from its competitors and is often synonymous with the four Ps price, product, promotion and place.
However, in recent times, the four Ps have been expanded to the seven PS with the addition of process, physical evidence and people.
The term marketing mix was first propound by Mccarthy (1950). It was coined in 1953 by Neil Borden in his American association presidential address. However, thus was actually it reformulation of an earlier idea by his associate, James collation, who is in 1948 described the role of the marketing manager as a mixer of ingredients, who sometimes follows recipes prepared by other, sometimes adapts a recipe from immediately available ingredients and at other time invents new ingredients no else has tried.
The term became popular in the article written by Neil Borden called the concept of the marketing mix. He started teaching the term after he learned about it with an associate.
In the classification of marketing mix, McCarthy (1960) proposed four Ps classifications which has since been widely used by marketer throughout the world. Since consumerism appeared later in the 1960’s four “Cs” (Commodity, cost, channel and communication) theory has been proposed in Japan (1973) and the United Stated (1993).
The four ‘Ps’ consist of the following:
Every product is subject to a life-cycle including introduction phase, growth phase followed by maturity phase and finally an eventually period of decline as sales falls. The marketers must also consider the product mix. Marketers can expand the current product mix by increasing a certain product lines depth or by increase the number of product lines. They should consider how to position the product, how to exploit the brand, how to exploit the company’s resources and how to configure the product mix so that each product complements the other. They must also consider product development strategies.
Advertising covers any communication that is paid for, from cinema commercials, radio and internet advertisements through print media and billboards. Public relations is where the communication is not directly paid for and includes press releases, sponsorship deals, exhibitions, conferences, seminars or trade fairs and events. Word of mouth is any apparently informal communication about the product by ordinary individuals satisfied customers or people specifically engaged to create word of mouth momentum. Sales staff often plays an important role in word of mouth and public relations.
The marketing mix is actually a sub –system of the organizational system, which in turn is a sub-system of a country’s marketing system from the myriad of the variable in the mix, management must select the combination mix which will best adapt it to the environment and help it achieve its objectives. Here management is seeking the mix which will help it achieve optimum synergistic results. The extents to which the organizations achieves success in mix combination will determine its degree of success in the marketing environment.
A question that needs answering is: how does the company choose the appropriate marketing mix for the target market? The answer is that the company must first study the needs and wants of the market, the position of competitors and decide on what it wants to competitively offer to the market. This presuppose that the company had studies its internal strengths and weakness, properly and carefully, so that it can properly relate to external opportunities and threats.
Recent trends show that marketing organization have through a good combination of the elements of the marketing mix achieved success for goods and services, set market and marketing objectives in socio-economic environment.
Though producer and end users (consumer) have posed considerable obstacles in the combination of these key marketing mix or elements.
The problems associated with the subject of the study are what I am poised to the explore during this work:
1.3 Objectives of the Study
These research work is design to express certain point concerning marketing mix in the accomplishment of organization objectives. Below are the objectives sought by the research.
Based in the research objectives, we are faced with the following questions which will guide my search for material for this research work. In that case the following questions necessary.
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It is hopes that this study when successful completed and supervised has a lot of roles to play. The study will basically fill a wide vacuum which is greatly essential practitioners experts and scholar in marketing communication and promotion who have been lacking the needed guiding information for their promotion mix decisions, promotional budgeting as well as research studies on promotion.
Furthermore, thus studies by its objectives will not only assess the relative effectiveness for sales but also in communication generally. By this the study will be essential useful to the government agents and also serve as a source of resonant information to government agents on the communication tools to be used in communication creating awareness to masses about government progammes and actives. Politicians and charitable organizations will also or equally make use of this study in their choice of which tools to employed promotion themselves and their programme, manifestatoes and achievements.
A part from those groups marketing executive in various companies in Nigeria have problem in selecting the right promotional tools and in designing their promotional budgets and strategies for their companies. Most of these managers often rely heavily on the guess worker or they simply follow their competitors foolishly without due consideration to their promotion objectives, their product life cycle, position in the industry or the target market which they are aiming at. The study will provide insights to these managers who are having these problems and serve as rich reference point.
Finally, researcher consultants and individuals have been deprived of excellent performance in communication research because of insufficient and scanty data and inadequate liberations available in thus area of study it is hoped that this study when successful completed will be an addition to the essential literatures needs in this vital area of marketing and entrepreneurship. Researches will therefore uses it extensively as a source of their secondary data, based on all these invaluable solutions expected to derived from this study it become indispensable that the need for this study is worthwhile.
This study was carried out in Enugu metropolis on the impact of marketing mix in the accomplishment of organization objectives in Unilever Plc. Some staff of the company was interviewed and relevant information was gathered to build the work. The study covers the impact of marketing mix in the accomplishment of organizational objectives with specific reference to Unilever Plc in Enugu metropolis. There was a critical examination of how Unilever Plc increased the usage of marketing mix as a strategy and platform in accomplishing their organizational objectives.
The study was restricted to the management and staff of Unilever plce and their customers in Enugu metropolis. It will also be extended to marketers of Unilever products.
Therefore, for easy and quick comprehension of this report, the following terms are used: