Marketing Mix for Food Products (The 4 P’s)
A marketing mix is a fairly straightforward yet effective concept. It is helpful for developing a marketing strategy for any kind of product or service but is especially useful in the food industry, known as the marketing mix for food products.
In this post, we’re going to explore exactly what a marketing mix is, how it applies to the food industry, make our own example marketing mix and look at a real-world case study.
What is a marketing mix?
The concept of the marketing mix was popularised by Professor Neil Borden in the 1950s and has remained relevant ever since.
A marketing mix is the combination of strategies or ‘ingredients’ a company uses to promote its products or services. It consists of for ‘Ps’: product, place, price and promotion.
Product: The products or services offered by a business.
Place: Where the products or services are available to consumers.
Price: How much consumers pay for the products or services.
Promotion: Activities used by the business to advertise the products’ or services’ features and benefits in order to convince consumers to make a purchase.
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What Is the Marketing Mix for Food Products in the Food Industry (The 4 Ps of Marketing)?
Let’s take a look at how the marketing mix works in the food industry.
Product
In the food industry, your primary product is of course the food you sell. However, depending on what type of business you are in, your product may also include additional service elements.
If you are a restaurant, for example, your product is not just your food, it is the experience customers have when dining with you. It is the quality of service and atmosphere of your establishment, as well as the food itself.
If you are primarily a food producer, however, your job is both easier and harder.
Whilst you have fewer service elements to consider in your marketing mix, you really need to have a unique, high-quality food product, as you can’t fall back on atmosphere or service like a restaurant can!
You need to know your product inside and out and quantify exactly what makes your food unique and distinct from the competition.
Place
This is how you distribute your food product.
- Do customers come to you, or do you deliver?
- Do you sell your product directly to customers, or do you only sell to retail stores?
Consider whether you are doing all you can to make it easy for customers to buy your food product.
Convenience and immediacy is a big deal in the food marketing industry, so you want to ensure your product is available quickly and easily to reach as many customers as you can.
Price
This is how much you charge for your food product or service. You can either have a fixed price or offer occasional sales.
For example, if you are a restaurant, you could have special offers on slow mid-week nights to entice more customers.
When determining your base price, conduct thorough market research of competitors to ensure you are not overcharging or undercharging for your food product or service.
If you are a new, less established food business, you may need to undercut your competitors’ prices slightly to begin growing your customer base.
However, don’t go too low beyond average market value, as you may be selling yourself short and will risk being seen as a low-quality brand.
Promotion
Once you’ve determined all of the above, it’s time to start promoting your food product. How do you this? Well, the possibilities are endless.
You can opt for digital marketing such as Facebook or Google Ads or traditional offline marketing such as posters, radio or television adverts.
Which strategy you go for depends on your target audience, but a combination of both often works well in the food industry.
What’s the Best Way to Use the Marketing Mix to Promote a Food Product?
Let’s take an example food product and use the marketing mix to develop a strategy. Let’s say we are a food producer and our product is a vegan milkshake.
Here are some questions we would ask ourselves to develop our marketing mix.
Product
Have we done all we can to perfect our vegan milkshake? We should have thoroughly researched all possible ingredients and tried different recipes.
Have we conducted market research and offered samples of our milkshake to gather feedback? Feedback on your product is invaluable and should be acted upon if feasible. Are there any gaps in the market our vegan milkshake fills?
The product is the foundation of any marketing mix – there’s no use trying to market a product that can’t live up to promotional claims and can’t stand up to competitors.
Place
Where will our vegan milkshake be available? Have we tried to get it stocked in stores our target market shops at? If we sell direct, do we also deliver?
Consider any opportunities that you might be missing that could make purchasing your product quicker and easier for your potential customers.
Price
What is the price point for our vegan milkshake? Is there an average price for vegan milkshakes, or does it vary depending on the ingredients used? What is the disposable income of our target market – will a high price point exclude potential customers?
Like so many things in marketing, determining the price of your product comes down to both competitor and audience research.
Promotion
When it comes to promotion, the first thing to do is to determine the benefits and features of our product. What is unique about our vegan milkshake?
Whilst a vegan milkshake is a relatively new product in the food industry, there are still lots of competitors out there, so we need to figure out what makes our product stand out.
Does our milkshake have any special health benefits? Do we offer interesting flavours? Make sure to highlight these features clearly on the packaging and in promotional materials.
Beyond the packaging, promotion can involve offline marketing (such as in-store posters) or digital marketing (social media platforms such as Instagram would be useful for our vegan milkshake example).
What Is a Good Food Marketing Mix Example?
A good example of an effective marketing mix is McCain Foods. So effective, in fact, that The Times carried out an analysis of McCain’s marketing mix as part of their Business Case Studies series.
Here’s a summary of the case study, and how McCain puts the four Ps to use:
Product: Though known for their oven chips, McCain also offer a wide range of potato-based snacks. They adapt their range according to market demand, such as offering more microwavable foods to account for busy modern lifestyles.
They also prioritise high-quality, healthy ingredients to cater for a more health-conscious market, in line with their ‘It’s All Good’ motto. In this sense, McCain is constantly adapting their product range to suit the market and stand out from competitors.
Price: McCain employs offers that give the customer increased value for money, such as 30% extra-free products. This pricing strategy is ideal for retaining customer loyalty, as it gives consumers more of the product for the same price.
Place: McCain does not sell its food products directly to consumers, instead, it sells them to retail stores such as supermarkets.
However, McCain is able to control where its products appear within stores, and can pay for prime shelf spots where customers are more likely to see and purchase items.
Promotion: McCain engages in a wide range of promotional activities. They are active in many forms of offline marketing, such as television and radio. Wide-reaching platforms such as these are great for brand awareness, but their impact is hard to measure and they lack targeting.
McCain also adopts more direct, targeted approaches such as special displays in supermarkets, a consumer newsletter and door-to-door leaflet drops.
McCain illustrates the need for a multi-pronged approach to the promotional aspect of the marketing mix.
Summary
A marketing mix is a very handy tool for either developing a new marketing strategy or assessing your current one.
If you are in the food industry, whether that be as a food manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer or restaurant, it’s definitely a good idea to take a look at your marketing mix and consider how it can be improved.
Consider how the four Ps apply to your food business and if any of them – product, price, place, promotion – are currently falling short.
- Is your product as good as it can be?
- Is your pricing strategy giving you the best return?
- Are you stocking your product in all relevant places?
- Is your promotional strategy reaching the right customers?
These are all crucial questions to ask to get the best marketing mix for your food product!
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References: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435918300162