Angela Qin's Blog

After reading Eli Chan’s post about Reaching for the Yellow Bag, I realized how much more “no name” brands I buy. Especially this year living on my own, grocery shopping expenses has sky rocketed. My cupboard and fridge contain many store brands as I try to cut costs by going without the premium brands. I wanted to take a bag of chips and analyze the four P’s and see it from a marketing professional’s point of view.

Product: At the most basic level the product addresses “What is the buyer really buying”? And the answer to that is a delicious low cost snack that’s ready to eat. Next, the core benefit is turned into an actual product which is chips, with package designs and advertising to go with it. It is a convenience product that customers buy with minimum comparison.

Price:  This is the element in the marketing mix that creates revenue. The low priced no name brand chips has really been embraced in the recent economic recession when consumer attitudes shifted in price and quality. This product uses good-value pricing at everyday low pricing.

Place:  There are many places where I can buy a bag of chips. The traditional super market, a convenience store, vending machines, and more. Since chips are a convenience product and consumers would like easy access to it, it makes sense to distrbute the product to many different retailers in hope of reach more customers.

Promotion: One reason why no name brand items are so cheap is that they don’t engage in advertising. However, there are various ways to promote the items. Frequently there will be in store coupons as the product takes part in sales promotion. They also need a strong public relations team to make sure the brand stays positive in the consumer’s mind.

It’s interesting to dissect something as simple as a bag of no name chips to see the marketing efforts that go into it.