Boook™ Asia

Introduction

bookstore is a multilingual bookstore, situated at the most

well-known street in Malaysia, the Petaling Street in Kuala Lumpur, selling a wide variety of

fiction, non- fiction, and general interest books in Malay, English, and Chinese languages, as

well as school textbooks and revision books for preparation of major government

examinations. Besides, we also offer a wide selection of magazines and stationeries. We’re

aiming to create a one-stop bookstore for book-lovers from all walks of life at all ages and a

station for all schooling needs.

Basically, our target market is towards teenage book-lovers and students at all ages. As we’re

hoping to build up a passion in book reading within the soul of teenagers so that Malaysian

will be more educated in the future world, bringing our country towards greater future.

Other than that, we’ve planned to strive for books donated by authors such as McGraw Hill, a

very well-known education books author, to be put in our bookstore for free reference to all

students in order to help students in their assignments and revision for examinations as not

much students manage to own one of these expensive reference books. We aim to help those

who need our help, aim to give them assistance in everything they need that is related to

books.

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Introduction of Marketing Mixes

The term marketing mix refers to the four major areas of decision making in the marketing

process to obtain the results desired by the organization. The four elements of the marketing

mix are the 4 Ps of marketing. The four elements consist of product, price, promotion, and

place.

Product

The first element of the marketing mix is product. A product is any combination of goods and

services offered to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers. It includes physical stuff,

services, places, organizations, and ideas.

Pricing

The second element in marketing mix is price. Price is the amount consumers are willing to

pay for products or services. It does not always take the form of money paid, in fact, trading

of products, or barter trade, is the oldest form of exchange. It is one of the key elements of the

marketing mix because it relates directly to the generation of total revenue.

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Place

The fourth element of the marketing mix is place. It refers to having the right product, in the

right location, at the right time to be purchased by consumers. These proper placements of

products are completed through middle medium called the channel of distribution. The

channel of distribution comprised of interdependent manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers.

These groups are involved with producing a product or service available for use or

consumption.

Promotion

Promotion is the third element in the marketing mix. Promotion is a communication process

that occurs between a business and its different variety of publics. The publics are those

individuals and organizations which have an interest in what the businesses produce and offer

for sale.

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Target Marke

Product

Place

Price

Promotion

Target Market

Introduction

Market specialization, another way of saying target market, is a business term which defines

the market segment of a particular good or service, which is either a new or existing good or

service, is marketed in. It is usually defined by gender, age, geography, socioeconomic

grouping, or any other combinations of demographics.

In defining target market, it requires the understanding in market segmentation, a process

which divides the market into distinct subgroup of consumers sharing one or more

characteristics that causing them to have similar demand on specific goods or services.

Besides, market segmentation can be carried out in several levels- mass marketing, niche

marketing, segment marketing and micromarketing.

Our Targeted Consumers,

Book-lovers

School students

University & college students

Teachers and lecturers

Teenagers

Parents and children

Reasons for the targeted consumers,

Secondary school students will have reference books and examination trial papers for

their major government examinations.

University & college students will have a wide variety of reference books donated by

authors for their reference in completing their assignments and preparation for

examinations without the need of paying for any of those.

Encourage close relationship between parents and children through reading.

Encourage teenagers toward reading to improve their quality of life in order to have

the ability in driving a smooth life towards victorious.

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Marketing Mixes

Product

There are many concepts in marketing, but the 4P concept is playing a main role in business,

especially is the Product. Product is anything that can be used to satisfy the need and wants.

It might include physical objects, services, persons, places, organizations.

The three levels of production- The core product, actual product, and the augmented product.

Core product is the things that the consumer really buying. For example: if you buy a car, it

will bring convenience for consumers.

Actual Product- Tangible product, we can use it. Eg: Car

Augmented product- Intangible product. Eg: after sales service and warranty.

The marketer should know that the product life cycle is very important, all products got 4

stages, which are introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Firstly the product just step in

market, the costs for selling the product will be higher, and the sales volume will be lower,

as a marketer , you should promote and introduce the product to all the consumers, persuade

consumers to try the new product, there are a little competition in this stage.

After first stage, then the product will step in growth stage. For growth stage , the sales

volume will start to rise, and the public awareness to the product will be increased, all the

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competitor will be started to join the market to compete each other in this stage, so that the

price for product will be decreased.

For the maturity stage, the sales will reach the limited saturation level, so all the producer

and competitors will try to differentiate their products, make themselves become more

competitive. Once the saturation level clicked the limited, and those producer which are

facing financial problems will be knocked out.

For the last stage- Decline stage, the sales of product will be declined, so that the

profitability will be diminished.

As a marketing manager, you should have capability of creating different types of strategy to

help your firm to sell your own product. For Boook Asia, we did a research about the

preferences of consumers for books, we obtained the information about preferences of

consumers, and then we will know what are the really needs for consumers.

The Variety of product is very important, because the needs for different people will be

different too, so that you have to know what are the really needs for consumers, you have to

stock up variety of books to satisfy the needs of consumers. BoookAsia did it very well, we

obtained the information about the needs of consumers, and stocked in different types of

book to satisfy different level of consumers, it will increase the sales of the bookstore

indirectly. For examples, we provide different types of reference book for students, and some

tourism guide for tourist, of course still got the others book, because all the levels of people

need book to improve themselves. BoookAsia is telling all the peoples that “EVERYONE

CAN READ”.

The quality of the books is very important for bookstore, keep tracking on the quality of the

books that purchased from supplier is an important job for marketer, because books are the

things that can be kept and used for a long time, if the quality of the books that selling in your

bookstore is low, then it will affect the loyalty of customer to your book shop. For

BoookAsia, we keep tracking on the quality of books, we chose a good supplier to supply

books for BoookAsia, once the books that supplied by the supplier is under a low quality,

then we will consider to change a supplier to keep our stocks in warehouse are under a good

condition, it will make a good voice for BoookAsia.

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Design for the products is very important too, because the needs for human are unlimited,

everyone is pursuing perfect, the quality is not the only thing that the consumers want; they

also need fashionable and some beautiful designing for the product to make them feel better

to the products. For BoookAsia, we have stocked up some special designing books, and make

some beautiful packaging for some products that selling in BoookAsia, so that it will be a

strong power to attract customer to purchase books from us.

As I said, the quality is very important, but nothing is perfect in this world, if the consumer

realized that the books that purchased from your books are under a low quality or not in good

condition, then providing a after service is a good way to keep the loyalty of customers. For

BoookAsia, BoookAsia will keep tracking on the quality of books that the stocked up, but if

the customers feel that the books are inferior goods, and wanted to change the books,

BoookAsia will try their best to satisfy all the customers’ need.

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Pricing

Pricing is one of the four Ps of the marketing mix. Pricing is an important strategic issue as it

is related to the positioning of the product. Furthermore, pricing influences other marketing

mix elements such as product features, decisions making, and promotion. It is a key variable

in microeconomic price allocation theory because it relates directly to the generation of total

revenue. Price is the value exchanged for products in a marketing exchange. It does not

always take the form of money paid, in fact, trading of products, or barter, is the oldest form

of exchange.

The factors that can affect the pricing decisions are the organizational and marketing

objectives which marketers should set prices that are consistent with the organization’s goals

and mission and the types of pricing objectives which are to increase its market share,

temporary price reductions to raise cash quickly.

As the marketing manager of the Boook Asia bookstore, you must be capable to perform and

develop the marketing mix that can achieve maximum customer satisfaction by using

different types of marketing and pricing strategy to help and maintain the bookstore. Boook

Asia bookstore is using three main pricing methods which are competition-based pricing,

cost-based pricing and value-based pricing.

For competition-based pricing, market analysis is an essential for the marketing manager to

make decision about the pricing strategies of the bookstore. Having a clear vision of what the

target market needs and expectation for prices are very important for the business. As the

Boook Asia bookstore is set up in Petaling Street which is highly populated, the marketing

manager has to research about the competitors around, such as Popular Bookstore, about how

they set the prices, in order to compete with them. As there are full of secondary and primary

schools, the target market are book-lovers and mainly students. The marketing manager of

Boook Asia have to conduct a research about prices of books of other competitors to set a

price to attract more students in buying textbooks, various exercises book, or even

examination trial exercises book which is highly demanded for the students who are facing

examinations such as SPM, PMR and many more.

Other than competition based pricing, the marketing manager should also have a value

analysis of the products in the marketplace to set the prices. What is your book worth to those

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who will buy it? How badly do they need or want it? Students will pay well over $100 for

some textbooks. Why? The student expects that buying and using the textbooks will

eventually help him get a degree and a good paying job. While the student enjoys paying high

prices for their information, the information products they buy have a high maximum

perceived value to them.

After all, the bookstore should not forgone the cost of buying and producing the books and

products. The cost-plus pricing method is explained by adding a standard markup to the cost

of the products. The books are not only produce for achieving the customer satisfaction level,

but also produce for making profits. The bookstore can earn profits by setting price of the

books to break-even on the costs of making and marketing a product. Beside all of the pricing

methods above, there are still many strategies can be occupy to make a good pricing, such as

promotional pricing, demand based pricing, multidimensional pricing and many more.

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Place

Distribution (or place) is one of the four elements of marketing mix. An organization or set of

organizations (go-betweens) involved in the process of making a product or service available

for use or consumption by a consumer or business user.

An important decision when trying to determine the overall competitive marketing strategy is

place. Place includes company activities that make the product available to target consumers.

Place' is concerned with various methods of transporting and storing goods, and then making

them available for the customer. Getting the right product to the right place at the right time

involves the distribution system. The choice of distribution method will depend on a variety

of circumstances. It will be more convenient for some manufacturers to sell to wholesalers

who then sell to retailers, while others will prefer to sell directly to retailers or customers.

Book Asia bookstore is located in Petaling Street, Kuala Lumpur, Selangor. Petaling

Street or Jalan Petaling in Malay, is a Chinatown located in the center of Malaysia’s capital

city, Kuala Lumpur. The street is called by Malaysian Chinese as “Chi-Cheong-Kai”

in Cantonese since 19th century.

There are many way of transportation for people go to Petaling Street. For example, KTM,

Rapid Bus, Taxi and LRT. Petaling Street is the most well known street in Malaysia. Petaling

Street is the most populated and everyone of the Tourists will go for there for buying thing or

visit. Nearby Petaling Street there are many school, college, university, there are SMK

Confucian, Methodist Boys' School Kuala Lumpur, SEGi College KL, SJK (c) Jalan

Davidson , Smk Victoria Inst , Olympia College KL Campus , SJI KL , St John’s Primary

School 

Advantages of the place ( Petaling Street )

Convenience of Transportation

Customer from around the world

Populated

Well known

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The Distribution Channel

Book Asia Bookstore’s distribution channel is indirect distribution. It is because Book Asia

Bookstore is a retailer so that we are direct to the customer and get the stock with supplier.

Channel Members

Our Bookstore is under channel membership of Intensive distribution which is used

commonly to distribute low priced or impulse purchase products. Our mission is let everyone

can read, so that our bookstore is selling low price book and need to hold several other

categories of book because consumers will expect to be exposed to many products.

Competitors

Our bookstore’s competitor is Popular Bookstore. Popular Bookstore provides a computer

system that for customer to search they needs and selling many type of book. This 2 service

in our bookstore also provided. Beside these 2 services, our bookstore provides a place to

student to gather them references through our free-of-charged reference books donated by

authors.

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Promotion

Strategic decision in the area of promotion concerns the allocation of effort among the three

different methods of promotion. Advertising refers to non-personal communication

transmitted through the mass media (radio, television, print, outdoors, and mail). The

communication is identified with a sponsor who compensates the media for the transmission.

Personal selling refers to face-to face interaction with the customer. Unlike advertising,

personal selling involves communication in both directions, from the source to the destination

and back. All other forms of communication with the customer other than those included in

advertising and personal selling constitute sales promotion.

Boook Asia is considered a quite new company in the market. We aim to provide the most

excellent products and services to our book-lovers and students. The first step we should take

for the moment is to advertise our bookstore in order to gain a reputation and concept in our

target consumers’ mind so that they’ll pay more attention to our store’s future promotion and

get to know more about our bookstore’s specialties.

Furthermore, due to our market strategy, it is targeting on student and book-lovers, so we can

just put a signboard outside the schools and at the ways of the street to build a clearly

company image and changing the customer’s perception of product attributes. Other than

that, workers provide good services and conduct attractive promotion such as free gifts to

maintain customer relationship, building goodwill and keeping the image in customer’s

minds during off-seasons in order to have a steady sales volume and population throughout

the whole year.

Besides launching advertisement for our bookstore, we do provide loyalty card to our loyal

customers which enhance our services towards our customers by giving the right product or

service to the right customer at the right time. In the other hand, the loyalty card also act as a

device to let us keep track to our customers’ details and their spending in our bookstore,

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giving them special discounts on all items purchased from our bookstore. Other than that,

during special occasions such as Christmas Day and birthday, we can give out free gifts

following every purchase by our loyalty card holders or send out lovely cards to our loyal

customers during their birthday or anniversaries in order to increase customer satisfaction.

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Competitors and Market Research

Competitor is a very important essence for a company challenge. Let us think in this way,

when our competitor did better job than our company, we will lose many customers, and we

are losing our comparative advantage than the competitors.

Bookstore, lets say we are reseller, we purchase goods from others then selling it in the

bookstore and we are in a perfect competition market. It means that other firms can entry

easily to this market or withdraws easily from the market. So if company cannot gain any

comparative advantages, the company will close down as a consequence.

Due to our bookstore’s target market - students and book-lovers; we concentrate on selling

suitable product such as stationary and preference books. In our area – Petaling Street, we are

having three challenging competitors, POPULAR SDN BHD (Thirty Six Bookshops) ,

SHANHAI Book-CNPIEC(K.L.), K.L. Commercial Book Co.(M) . Furthermore, in our

business area, we have three secondary schools and 2 large learning centre’s (Tuition centre)

which are Confucian private secondary school, SMK Confucian and Methodist Boy’s School

(Primary & Secondary) (MBS). Tuition centre are Kasturi (K.L.) and “Tan Clan” tuition

centre.

In facts, our bookstore size is smaller than The Popular bookstore and is almost same size

with the two other bookstores in our business area. Furthermore, large firms with dominant

positions are able to use certain strategies that smaller firms cannot afford. For example, they

can sell the product in lower price due to their large purchasing amount of inventories.

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Oppositely, large firms are still having some defects which mean small firms can easily

develop strategies that give them better rates of return than large firms.

Conclusion

The first step we have to take into consideration is to bring in excellent product into our

bookstore in order to be the best bookstore ever known. Besides, we do have to seek for

donation from authors for their priceless books so that we can give a hand to students in their

preparation for examinations and writing excellent assignments that they might not be able to

afford one of those reference books. The pricing and location we set will also help us in

expanding the reputation of our bookstore in every segment as the prices are to be worthy and

reasonable, and the location of our bookstore is so nice that it is the most well-known street in

Malaysia. This will bring in local customers and also tourist from all around the world to

come and visit our outrageous bookstore and to exchange knowledge with our local book-

lovers so that they can get to know more about Malaysia.

Beside our outrageous products and services, reasonable prices, and excellent location, all we

need is attractive advertisement and promotion to keep us deep and unforgettable in our

customer’s heart so that everyone will think of our Boook Asia bookstore whenever they

think about books and stationeries. Our loyalty card program will also greatly help us in our

customer services so that we can bring a sweet and meaningful memory into our customers’

heart after every time they step into our bookstore.

By taking the above plans into consideration, we’ll have the ability to meet our slogan, “Now

Everyone Can Read”.

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References

1. “Marketing Mix: Place” (online)(cited 25 March 2009). Available from http://www.learnmarketing.net/place.htm

2. “Pricing Strategies” (online)(cited 25 March 2009). Available from http://www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_pricing.htm

3. “Marketing Mix” (online)(cited 25 March 2009). Available from http://www.answers.com/topic/marketing-mix

4. “Marketing Lessonstore” (online)(cited 25 March 2009). Available from http://www.marketingteacher.com/Lessonstore.htm#marketing_planning

5. “Marketing mix (Price, Place, Promotion, Product)” (online)(cited 25 March 2009). Available from http://www.thetimes100.co.uk/theory/theory--marketing-mix-(price-place-promotion-product)--243.php

6. “Marketing Mix Place” The Four P's of Google (online)(cited 25 March 2009). Available from http://articles.castelarhost.com/google_four_ps_marketing_mix_place.htm

Examples of Competitors

1) wikimapia.org/6220403/上海书局Additional remark: the map of our business area from GOOGLE.COM

2) www.popular.com.my Additional remark: our strong competitor in that business area.

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