Pepsi Marketing Mix

• While analysing a company's product, a common fallacy can be focusing on the final outlook of the product and that gives rise to a naÐ"Їve approach. Analysts should consider and analyse all major product decisions that the company may have carried out including quality, features, options, style, brand name, packaging, sizes, after-sales services, warranties, returns, etc. Moreover, the company's position, as well as marketing strategy in the market, can be judged on the basis of its product mix including width, length, depth and consistency (Proctor, 200). Width is the number of lines the firm carries, for example Sony has various lines including TV, video, cameras and laptops. Length is the number of items in the product mix, for example Toshibahas different types of TVs and laptops. Depth is the number of variants of each product offered in the line such as clock radios, car radios and pocket radios. Finally, consistency is how closely related the various product lines are in terms of the use to which they are put, more commonly including electrical and entertainment products. So, using these bases for product strategy classification will lead to easy and effective analysis. Finally, one should attempt to identify what the company is actually aiming at through its product. There can be three possible product strategies in a company's action (Proctor, 2000). Either it aims the product at the market such as Erickson with new mobile phones to cater for the business class; it can be given a "face lift" such as Marks & Spencer's attempt with more customer-specific products; and it can be withdrawn, discontinued or eliminated such as Marks & Spencer closing down its unprofitable units across the globe.

• To write a valuable pricing analysis of a company, the key is to correlate its pricing strategy with its product position in the market. The company may use various pricing strategies such as penetration, skimming, competition-based pricing, psychological pricing, price wars, etc (Proctor, 2000). A company uses penetration prices if its product is entirely new to the market so it may charge low prices to increase market share. It may be observed that Porsche and Ferrariuse skimming pricing where they may charge a higher price as they know their specific customers will buy their product at any price. Sometimes companies have more fluctuating prices so an analyst should consider that their might be competition going on or a price war has broken through between rivals. For instance, Pepsi and Coke often indulge in such price wars. Sometimes psychological dimensions can be considered as well. Customers easily find products in Tesco, Asda or Sainsbury'swith price tags of Ð'Ј2.99 or Ð'Ј4.99 rather than Ð'Ј3 or Ð'Ј5 as customers may perceive them as Ð'Ј2 or Ð'Ј4. So the writer must analyse which of these strategies a company is following and for what reason.

• Similarly, placement analysis requires the knowledge of a company's distribution channels, for instance analysis of the fact that a company is involving