refereed to as place or distribution.How and where will your products be sold? Companies chose to sell a product directly to customer or use a retailer/wholesaler to distribute their product. The best example of direct selling would be Gateway computers in their early years. Before there was a Gateway Country in every city, a person did not have the option of walking into their store and seeing the many options available. If a person wanted to purchase one of their computers, he or she had to call the company direct. Now, Gateway has expanded into storefronts but you are still purchasing the computer directly from Gateway. A retailer would be the average department store. These stores carry a wide-range of items from a plethora of manufacturers. When you walk into one of these stores you can usually see “like” items made by different companies. Jeans would be a good example to illustrate this point. Department stores usually carry jeans made by different companies like Levi’s and Guess. Now that a need has been identified, a price has been set, and a means for distribution has been established, the final step is to promote the product.All other factors considered; advertising is probably the most important aspect of the marketing mix. A product, which no one has heard about, is not making a company any money. Companies spend millions of dollars a year on advertising. Advertising is a very intricate process. Contrary to popular belief, ads are directed at a very specific audience, and have well defined goals. Some companies use advertising to promote their product while others may advertise their products as a public service....
