Watch the video in the LEARN section this week. Imagine that you are a manager at a brick-and-mortar

• Watch the video in the LEARN section this week.
• Imagine that you are a manager at a brick-and-mortar store that also has an ecommerce site. The company has tasked you with creating ideas to improve profitability and encourage shoppers to return to the store even as the coronavirus restrictions are continuing to evolve. Discuss at least two ideas using PRICING and PLACEMENT (distribution) to help build your business. 
• Provide a rationale for your response.
• Search the Internet for an article that supports your discussion on pricing and placement and post the reference/source in your discussion, using APA or SWS formatting, for everyone to read. Please make sure you format your reference/source correctly to avoid plagiarism.

here are some thoughts from the instructor: 

This week we are talking about two of the four P’s of marketing, the P of placement and the P of pricing.

As we have talked throughout this course, the P of placement is a marketing strategy which is designed to choose a specific location which is convenient and accessible to your target audience. If your target audience can't get to you, it is difficult for them to buy something from you.  This should be a particularly relevant conversation right now given our current environment.

This brings me to one of the more interesting brick and mortar locations that I have seen in a very long time. And this is a tire store in the mall. You are probably all familiar with Goodyear tires. And you are probably all familiar with the service centers where you would traditionally purchase Goodyear tires.

What you may not be familiar with is their newest tire store in your neighborhood mall, Roll by Goodyear. Goodyear began a test of using a different type of location strategy for their tire stores. And yes, I am not kidding – these are stores in the mall and other traditional retail shopping locations. This was probably a very interesting strategy when we could leave home and go to the mall or shop.

And these stores do not look anything like a tire store. That was the point.

The objective of implementing these retail focused stores was to create a shopping experience designed for a different type of customer. Brennan (2018) explained that, according to Goodyear, that different type of customer is a female or millennial consumer. The traditional male audience is not growing, so Roll by Goodyear was developed to tap into growth opportunities with a different target audience.

Once we are able to comfortable leave our homes again, would you be willing to go to the mall, or other traditional retail shopping area, to do your traditional shopping and buy your tires while you are there? It is certainly an interesting thought.

transcript to video ;  

Linking marketing and pricing strategy

Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in the video– Your marketing strategy must be tightly linked with marketing tactics. The classic four Ps of marketing, product, price, promotion, and place. Your strategy won't succeed unless you execute it properly. Let's look at how you make this linkage in pricing. Before I do that, let's make sure you understand what a marketing strategy is. In its most simple form, strategy involves two choices. Which part of the overall market do you want to compete in? And, how you'll compete, meaning how will you position your offering in a way that beats the competition? Every market has four parts that you can focus on. First, is your current, 100% loyal customers. They buy exclusively from you. Second, are those customers who buy only from your competitors. Third, are customers who buy from you and your competitors, I call them multi-brand customers. And finally, are potential customers who don't buy anything from you or your competition. I call them non-category customers. They have a potential to become a customer if you give them a good reason. Take a look at this matrix, a good marketing strategist focuses most of their resources on one group at a time, based on which choice yields the best financial return. If you try to focus on more than one, you dilute your resources, and that becomes risky. As the old saying goes, fish where the fish are. Your pricing approach changes depending on what group you're going after. So here's how to make that link. If you're going after non-category users, you set price based on the sum of all the sources of value, economic, emotional, and functional, minus any costs the customer has to bear to use your product. And then, you offer a temporary discount off this price to motivate the customer to try your product. To set price for your loyal customers, you take the same approach, value-based pricing. But then you offer them occasional discounts or other rewards to recognize their loyalty. When going after these two groups, you must avoid making comparisons between your products or services and your competitors. Only focus their attention on the value delivered for the price they pay. When you set prices for customers who use your competitor's products, the approach is much different. In this case, you have to set your price relative to the competitor's price. Now, here's an important tip. Remember, price is a signal of value, and customers use that price to make comparisons between products and the value they bring. So, if your product is better than the competition, set your price higher. If it's not as good as the competition, set your price lower. And if your products are identical to the competition's, set your price exactly equal to their price. If you follow these guidelines, price now becomes a very useful piece of information for the customer. They'll understand exactly what you're trying to tell them. And most importantly, you've made that critical link between your marketing strategy and pricing strategy.