Marketing and Sales Questions

a.Direct interaction with customers: The retailer acts as the final link between the organisation and its customer. The retailer knows his customer better than anyone. He even suggests the customer what to purchase and allows him credit facilities to encourage frequent buying behaviour in the customer.

b.Small purchases: The customer purchases goods in small lots from the retail stores. So there are frequent visits to the retail store by the customer.

c.Instrument of marketing communication: via which information about the product is disseminated to the needy customers

When you give your item to the USPS for delivery, it accepts your item and starts the process of delivery. Transit is a part of the shipment delivery process. When we say that the package is in the transit or in transit to the destination, it means that the package is on the way to the delivery.

It refers to the possibility for an investor to experience  losses due to  factors that affect the overall performance of the financial markets. Market risk cannot be eliminated through diversification, though it can be hedged against. The sources of market risk include natural disasters, recessions, political turmoil, changes in interest rates and terrorist attacks.

The annual plan control is one of the four types of marketing control system. Annual plan control is essential in order to determine whether all the marketing efforts undertaken by the organisation has been really worthwhile or not. It aims to achieve sales volume,profits and all those objectives which have been set up in the beginning of the year. In an organisation,the top management and middle level management are responsible for the annual plan control. They have to keep a check on the activities undertaken to implement the plans.

In the light of competition, it may be seen that competitors may initiate price changes. If the cutting off on prices does not affect the company, then the current pricing strategy itself can be continued to maintain the profitability of the company. However if the price change on one firm is affecting the other, then it can:

a.reduce the product price at par with competitors’ price or below competitors’ price

or

b. Provide added advantage to the existing product like better quality, or ‘a buy one get one free’ offer.

or

c.Provide better quality of the product at a higher price thereby not being at par with the competitors.

These days channel members are being accepted by companies as their partners. The intermediaries are even being asked to integrate their business with the companies which results in lesser costs, greater efficiency and improved customer service. Corporates like Airtel are adopting PRM (Partner relationship management) software to give that added advantage to their supply chain. They organise rewards and recognition programs for their channel partners and also organise proper channels though which partners can vent any of their grievances relating to payments, violation of codes etc.

Profitability control is a mechanism of monitoring the sales made, profits earned and expenditure incurred by a company. The relative profit earning capacity of a firm’s products and consumer groups can be determined via profitability control. Sometimes surpisingly, it may be found out by companies how a small proportion of their products and even customers actually account for a significant percentage of the company’s profits. This can be achieved through profitability control. At times when the companies earn surplus profits, then such profits may even be ploughed back or reinvested. This also forms part of profitability control.