Talking about Publicity

As the competition among the organizations increases, the need for promoting the products in an effective way is increasing. Consumers are already bombarded with loads of information and offers, but they want to choose the one that provides optimum utility to them. The paper would highlight promotional mix of an apparel company ‘Under Armour’, its integration of the marketing mix, and description of competitive advantage that it has.

Under Armour is an apparel company that offers a wide range of footwear, apparel, accessories, sports items, both for men and women. Promotional Mix Promotional mix for any product or service includes five fundamental marketing elements – advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, publicity, and public relations. When it comes to the application of these marketing tools over Under Armour, it adopts all of them except sales promotion.

Among all these 4 promotional tools, the most active one is advertising since the company believes it to be more effective and communicative. Under Armour promotes its products through advertising on television, magazines, and newspapers. It adopts Pull Strategy where spending is done on advertisements and making the customers of the products, their features, and benefits (Plank, 2005). Their main purpose of advertisement is to get the brand name in the minds of the consumers and introduce ‘new’ products to them.

Personal selling is also implemented by Under Armour where it visits schools, colleges, universities, and athlete programs where they sponsor certain events and promote their own products to the right target market. Talking about Publicity, several direct marketing techniques are used by the company where it promotes its products through e-mail marketing and SMS alerts to its users or potential customers. Moreover, social networking websites such as, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are also used to promote the products and new deals the company has to offer.

Related essay: Nike: Public relations

And finally, Public Relations are managed by Under Armour by issuing newsletters, press releases, annual reports, and brochures, which are delivered to the relevant organizations and other stakeholders. Therefore, all these promotional tools are in line with each other and their usage depends on the type of promotion the company wants to do. Also, seasonal variations also affect the selection of promotional tools along with the introduction of new products. Marketing Mix Marketing mix includes four fundamental elements – product, price, place, and promotion.

Under product category, the company sells its most popular and admired athletic apparel, sweat absorbent shirts, accessories, and footwear. Under Armour holds great customer value where the athletes mostly prefer its products to let them experience best gear when competing in sports. The company also provides warranties in terms of its guarantee logo and expects its products to be most appropriate in terms of quality and perfection. When it comes to pricing, it has adopted Price Skimming strategy and Prestige Pricing.

Prestige pricing strategy is directed to communicate a signal that the best quality products are sold in the market by Under Armour, which has resulted in quality perception about its products in the minds of the consumers even though the competitors sell the same quality products at lower prices. Talking about the placement, the company sells its products in retail settings that are mostly in the form of retail stores. Secondly, internet is also used to provide convenience to the customers by selling them the products online with the help of just one click.

This has also helped the company to save its costs that might incur in setting up separate physical locations or stores (BA, 2008). And finally, promotion is done through using four of the five promotional tools, where emphasis is laid more on advertisements. In short, the four Ps of marketing mix go hand in hand with each other for the company and make the overall marketing activities of the products effective. Competitive Advantage Although the company has competitive advantage in terms of its athlete clothing line, which also includes sweat absorbing shirts and those that ‘enhance performance in hot weather’ (Bylund, 2009).

Nevertheless, it does not have competitive advantage in pricing and promotion because the products are sold at higher price as compared to the competitors even though they are of the same quality. As far as the promotion is concerned, the company itself admits that its competitors such as, Nike and Adidas have greater resources in terms of finances, distribution systems, and marketing. Therefore, more advertisement and promotional campaigns are led by the competitors and Under Armour does not enjoy lavish expenditure on promotional campaigns.

Moreover, whatever deals or offers Under Armour offers, they are countered by the”Under Armour’s Distribution Strategy” competitors who then offer the same products at low prices, in bundles, and other attractive deals. Consequently, the major chunk of the market share is taken by these competitors, hence Under Armour would have to come up with new marketing and pricing strategies that entice the customers to purchase its products.

References

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Dueling Fools: Under Armour Bear. Retrieved on August 25, 2010.

From http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2006/11/09/dueling-fools-under-armour-bear.aspx

Chris. P. (2008). Principles of Marketing. Retrieved on August 25, 2010. From http://www.knowthis.com/tutorials/principles-of-marketing.htm

Plank. K. A. (2005). Under Armour: Annual Report. Retrieved on August 25, 2010. From http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/UARM/0x0x36606/5d75c7b3-0d4b-4f6b-b4e8-df2a1e5a1b4e/2005AR.pdf