Notes

P4   
Introduction 
I will be describing the benefits and opportunities of the business Puma using Internet marketing within their marketing mix. Internet marketing has many opportunities that will benefit a business for example it can help businesses to reach a wider audience, to reduce overhead cost of the business and to expand the company.  
Marketing mix 
The target market is basically the audience and the business that will do anything to attract their target market to the business. In the target market there are different types of customer that prefer different types of products for example: Demographic segmentation, Age, Gender, Price, Lifestyle and cultures.  
Puma’s main target market is the youth for example teenagers and early adults, this target market is spread all around the world, being satisfied with Puma’s products. Puma’s Target Market are both gender male and female and also they target to different cultured, sporty people and lifestyles people live around the world. 
 People 
Treating customers is highly important to many businesses however also reducing the employees is also important for example if Puma wants to provide excellent customers service, they should only employ people that have previous great work experience in customer service and not somebody who doesn’t provide the customer service that Puma recommends. Puma and many other companies need to adopt opportunities that will help them interact with their customers. Puma should use online features such as alternated personal shopper facility to inform their customers of their most recent clothing and trainer’s releases and new hi-tech online features, as this will create interaction with Puma and its customers, leading to customer retention.  
Puma has numerous opportunities they can commence for example a contact page where customer who need help can use this page for any of their criticisms or question’s to be solved/answered. This will benefit Puma in staying in communication with their customer showing they are willing to help customers and express their commitment/loyalty towards them. Overall Customer relationship management will maximise profit, sales, bring in new and existing customers for Puma. Without any of these features Puma will not be able to survive.   
Products & Physical Evidence:  
Having customers to personalise their products will create customers to buy the product they personalised with no hesitation, Puma must let customers view product reviews, which shows 5 star ratings from other existing customers who purchased that same product. This feature that other customers personalise will help Puma to read the reviews and change any product or service to the customer’s likings/satisfaction. This is the same with the personalisation of physical evidence delivery ordering online can be personalised to their door step in choosing first class or standard mail class, also Puma should provide customers a choice of the type of packaging they want. 
Physical evidence is what customers will see on Puma’s website so if they click on a category or a tab they will get transferred to that page.  So for example on the website www.puma.com when you are on the home page if you click on men and then footwear you will be directed to that page the customer wanted to go on. Puma has to allow customers to Personalise on the website ‘Pro Direct’ to create sales and build good relations with the customers. The benefit of personalisation for Puma will increase the customers for example, Puma allows their customers to personalise their products by adding or changing any of Puma’s products, simply by adding names or numbers to Puma trainers or clothing.  This is a cheaper and less time consuming way for Puma to do online rather than in store/offline. 
Promotion 
The benefits of branding for Puma is that it creates awareness to its customers on who they are, what they offer to the customers and how the business makes the customers feel. It’s about company trustworthiness and the capability to compete with main rivals such as Adidas and Nike. Puma needs to stand out to be the top company amongst its rivals Adidas and Nike who both battle to be in first and second place in the rankings. To be number one means for example more Trust, security and memorability from customer’s aspects, this has to be important as Puma reputation is the heart of the business. They will want to provide the best service as possible such as onetime deliveries, products well packaged, good communication, providing leaflets and posters on promotional offers such as discounts and BOGOF etc. so that the memory of great services is there and customers will know Puma cares. Customers will remember Puma for who they are, providing the process of physical evidence and promotion will benefit Puma as it will bring awareness to the customers and increase sales and profit.   
Price   
The benefit of price for Puma customers is that it can create ease and simplicity for their customers for example Puma should use a price comparison website such as www.pricerunner.co.uk that compares all off pumas products for customers to find a good budgeted price for them. Also Puma should personalise the prices on their website so that it is updated regularly. Puma needs to set a right price online, the role of internet marketing creates some competition with their rivals Adidas/Nike/Reebok. Puma should think about how their products should be priced online so for example they need to see how much their competitors are pricing a similar product as them and to match them. This is beneficial for Puma as it will compare its prices with their rivals.  
Without any of these online pricing techniques Puma will not be able to reach out more to their customer amongst their rival competitors which will result in losing profit. In offline Puma does sell clothing at a good price but it will be hard for customers to find a price comparison to a product they admire from the Puma store comparing to a rival store. Offline pricing will cause Puma many problems such as it can be time consuming and expensive, whereas it is much quicker and Puma can help customers find the right priced product, as it is much easier and quicker in doing this process online. Puma can use many technique to boost and draw more customers to them rather than to their rivals, this can be by using promotional offers such as price cuts, which will make the price stand out more.  
Place  
The key and most important benefit of Puma establishing and creating their business online and using also will reduce cost; it will be less time consuming and create simple access for online customers to search engines and social media. This role of communication is highly important as it makes it easy for businesses to communicate with their customers as they can treat many customers at once online.  Online internet can help Puma with “Marketing and Advertising, image building, communicational and interaction, information gathering remote research, remote services and transactions”. http://www.ehow.com/about_5460932_internet-important-business.html  
Social media is an essential today in the lives of many people and many businesses, in recent times it has become routine way of interaction amongst friends and family but also interaction between business to customers (B2C) and business to business (B2B). Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are one of the top in the rankings. Puma should think of using these suites by creating an account with one of them, this is a benefit to Puma as this will create interaction with customers and other businesses by responding to them with speed. Puma having these social networking sites will pay more attention to what customers want for example reviews of products and services etc. they provide, by doing this Puma will serve and provide the best and finest products and service to its customers.  I think this is a good place for Puma to promote and advertise as these social networking sites and websites have hundreds of people online. This means that Puma will gain hundreds of new targeted customers such as teenagers and young adults looking at their promotions and products ranges leading them to buy their products.  
Process 
The role of internet marketing for disintermediation is to cut out the middle sales channel and sell directly to its customers. Disintermediation should be done by Puma, as they are a German international clothing retailer; they need to do their job correctly by packing the products and then shipping them to different countries around the world so that time and money spent will be less. They do this online using the internet as this will save a lot of time and money doing it without internet marketing. Puma have eliminated the middleman through their website from customer procurement, updated and renewed stock which has increased and satisfied customers and has also increased sales. They sell directly to the customers which is Business to customer they also sell to other businesses such as JD, JJB, Sports Direct etc. so it is also a business to business. Puma would not exist without internet existence.  
Access  
Internet marketing can access new markets and new customers by more frequent individualized communications to build relationships. For Puma it is very important to keep contact with their customers so customers keep going back to their online store or to order more frequently, the way puma does this is very effective but really simple. If a customer were to order a product from puma online they would have to provide puma with their own personal information including their email address, ones they have provided them with this information this will be stored in pumas database and this will allow puma to send customers emails regarding new trends they might be interested in or their newest special offers, this will make customers go back to their web store more often. 
A benefit to this is that it could cost a lot of money to store all that personal information because of the pieces of hardware that would have to be bought meaning their customers information is always going to be safe, another thing is that a lot of rules are applied to doing this method because the personal information can never go public otherwise Domino’s will most likely be sued and will have to pay a lot of money, so this is a slight risk.  
Another way of accessing the internet marketing to benefit their business is the use of communications to promote special offers and product launches etc Going online allows Puma to create a bigger and a more accurate database, which includes their email address. Puma uses this email address to provide their customers with attractive special offers and their newest products which customers might be interested in, if this is done correctly it will definitely draw a lot of attention and will increase sales and in the end, this can be very profitable for puma, which of course is a huge pro. 
Also puma would make the use of purchase history to tailor offers to individuals, what puma and many other internet web shops have very cleverly done is setting up a database which will remember what a customer has previously bought from their store. This allows companies to highlight the products which are recommended to the customer, this will draw the attention of the customer visiting the website, this also allows customers to navigate themselves through a website with more efficiency.Puma themselves have taken this even further with recommending the exact same item but differently designed to that the customer has ordered previously. 
Available 24/7  
Being available 24/7 Increases the range of buyers resulting in more accurate responses to customer needs and wants 
This means that companies can customize their web-store to individual needs and wants of the customer, the way companies such as puma do this is by making people register at their web-store to be able to order a product, ones this has been done by the customers puma order is able to record the purchases a customer makes or has previously made, now puma knows what sort of products that particular individual customer likes or could like for the customer’s next purchase. People want their favorite stores to be open on high streets later than average time although when it comes to 6pm all stores normally close therefore people can't make their purchase. Although online shopping is available to the, 24/7 giving them a chance to browse puma and make decisions on what they may want to purchase, on pumas website customers are also given online exclusives that their stores doesn't have resulting in customers returning to seek more offers. 
The benefit of this is that puma now have a clear and accurate understanding of what that particular customer likes, and this prevents puma to have to hand out, for example, surveys and this can save the online business some money.  
Being available 24/7 relates to products of marketing mix as there are opportunities for immediate sales of products. Nowadays customers can check-out and pay straight away because of existing service such as IDEAL, this allows customers of puma to pay straight away and while they wait for their order they won’t have to worry about money anymore or have to search the entire house for a bit of cash to pay the delivery guy. This is beneficial to puma as this results in a more convenient and efficient service experience for the customers making them want to purchase more products as they know they will get their product immediately.  
Being available 24/7 also relates to promotion and place of the marketing mix as creating and publishing a website gives businesses the chance to expand their business into a wider geographical area, this means that a business can promote their business and open new markets in wider areas and places without having to do a lot of advertising. This is very much applicable to puma because of the internet they are able to provide their service to worldwide postal codes while beforehand only local civilians who lived close by the store were able to order and get collection because there was no delivery service available at first. This is beneficial to puma as this means that there are more clients available for puma. 
Immediate sales  
The benefits of immediate sales are customers are waiting around on their delivery. This attracts customers to their website knowing they wont be waiting long on their purchase to arrive, when going onto the puma website customers ordering their products go through a simple checkout making it a fast and easy process. Although it’s a quick way of purchasing products from puma's website customers may feel unsure as its such not that hard to complete but puma make sure that all information given is store in their database where no one could get access to their customers information.  
When purchasing online at puma their website is up to speed therefore there won't be no glimpses or technical difficulties with their customers orders making ti a fast and easy process to proceed with their immediate sale. Although if entering a store their could be a large que were customers could be waiting among hours to purchase their products, this causing customers a waste of travel when they could of just made their order online to have an immediate purchase making the customer happy and satisfied with their order.  
Online business can store their customers bank and information details in their database, puma secure their customers information meaning its safe and nothing could happen. Although puma give their customers the option of making an account where they can secure their details and information there meaning when the customer return to the website they don’t have to re-enter anything it makes it an even faster process as they just have to click proceed.  
This relates to products and price of the marketing mix as puma is making sure their products are getting immediately sold meaning they have to continue to make more products to continue to have immediate sales. Having all these immediate sales increases their profit as a business as the deals and offers they are promoting, customers seem to love purchasing more and more items. 
Record of Previous transactions  
When online business keep a record of transactions it easy to track sales, puma would recommend other products and items that are similar to what they have previously ordered. This create communication between puma and their customers as they are showing the customer individual attention sharing other styles that they may like and styles that are similar to what they already like. this is all can be done because puma track and keep recorded of what their customers are purchasing seeking what they are interested in.  
Puma use this method for target marketing as mentioned above they are showing the customer individual attention. This is done by adresses their customer by saying “hello hope your shopping well today” making them feel comfortable and welcomed when visiting the website. Then they follow on with “we think you would like....” and this is where they recommend products, this is giving the customers options and possible things they may possible purchase as puma as received their search history and seen what products they are liking today. 
This relates to physical evidence of the marketing mix as puma are recommending other products, they think their customer would like contrasting their search history. A picture of other items is shown to the customers giving them a physical vision of what they would be possibly purchasing giving them time to make sure their confident in wanting or not wanting the recommendation.  
Efficiency of staff and resources  
When shopping online customers want to make sure if it’s the best option to do rather than visiting the store. When shopping at puma there is a higher efficiency of staff and resources online, online at puma they have delivery service. Having delivery service means customers can do their shopping in the comfort of their own home giving them time to decide on what to purchase making sure their confident. Although if receiving the product and the customer isnt satisfied there are return services and refunds that puma make sure happens for the customer. If something goes wrong to the customer or they may not be possibly happy with what they have received puma have a customer helpline that a customer can talk to.  
The benefits of having all explained up above is that the customers are able to continue on with their day while continuing to place things in their online basket then being able to purchase. an advantage of customers being able to return their products and getting immediate refunds, they don’t have to be constantly waiting on their money. Puma having a customer helpline creates conversation between the business and customer, it lets them speak up and tell puma what they could possibly to better or what they want to improve.  
This relates to people of the marketing mix as puma Is making sure their customers are happy and satisfied with their order and also making sure their customers are comfortable on their website. puma provides customers their website in the comfort of their own home making sure they able to manage the website and continue to purchase and receive from them. 
Reduction of costs (no need for high street location)  
Online business always has a reduction of cost including puma, e-commerce transactions make online shopping cheap and easy for the customer. To store requires a customer to travel to a high street location, put gas in the car that gets them there and arrive only during the hours the store is open. This inconvenience and expense can keep customers at home. Particularly if the business such as puma offer free shipping for orders over a certain dollar amount, ordering from an online business reduces the cost of the shopping experience to the few minutes it takes to place items in the shopping cart and type in a credit card number. That encourages impulse purchases that increase pumas' revenues without a corresponding increase in expenses.  
This relates to price of the marketing mix, when puma take on sales and offers their customer deals it will make them more money. Customers want sales and offers therefore then will constantly return to the website and continue to purchase. 
Links with partner businesses – advertising complimentary products on each site  
The benefits of puma linking with other businesses is that they will be advertised which will automatically gains brand awareness, more customers will be intrigued in what pumas website it like also. Selling their brand on another business’ site gives puma the opportunity to expand their business, more people will discover the brand and want to know what more does puma produce.  
An online business that puma link with is office, office is a shoe website that sells all different makes of shoes puma being one of them. They are also able to sell some of puma bags, giving the brand an extra push to creating brand awareness through the website. This benefit puma as customers could search through office seeking a shoe and may come across puma, this could expand their customers.  
As puma is liked with office it is eligible for customers to use discounts and vouchers that may get money of their purchase although office is linked with an app that gives customers 15% if their students. Unidays is an app that allow customers to get their favorite shoes at a lower price saving them money, they could purchase a puma shoe and by showing their unidays id they are able to get 15% off to spend the money they saved on a possible other pair of shoes.  
This benefits the promotion of marketing mis because puma is promoting their brand on other businesses sites including office, having puma being sold on office creates brand awareness gaining more customers to their own website. Having new customers to their website will increase their sales offering more deals on both their website and their linked business sites.  
Usage trends  
Puma makes sure that they are up to date on their customers search history. Getting to know what their searching and how they are accessing their website is a good way to communicate with their customers. When seeking that information they will gain if its from a mobile of the pumas or on their website which cant help puma gain more customers onto both stations because puma will make sure to promote them. Finding out how log someone spends on one page benefits puma as they will see out their customers interest and what they may like, this gives them an advantage as it shows what is trending right now.  
Knowing what their customer is using to look at pumas website is important to know as the brand wants to update their lowing used accessed and make It more trending for users to visit. For example of customers are more prone to use the mobile app puma will amp up their website for customers to also not forget about it. It is important to puma to know that the website and the moiled app are both being equally used through the days.  
Puma constantly looking at what areas og their website is being used more is extremely important for the brand, it shows what's popular and what's trending. It also stereotypically gives statics on which gender shops more online at puma. This gives puma the opportunity to promote the less used pages more to customers giving them suggestions and offers that they cant resists.  
Its important that puma continue to use social media as a platform as it’s a huge social networking site that most humans use now, having the promotion of puma as a brand on Instagram makes their products trend and becoming more popular gaining more customers to the website. This would spared to other by puma loyal customers giving good reviews gaining new visit to the site every minute.  
Over all the benefits of this is puma will have ongoing brand awareness and this ramps up customer loyalty. Brand loyalty will create a certain level of security for puma. Brand awareness plays an important role in repeat customer activity and with having things like social media will continue  
This relates to promotion of marketing mix because puma will be constantly expanding with everything their promoting. Puma constantly staying on top of trends and giving out online exclusives will continue to gain more customers as they want to find new things to purchase.  
Geo-targeting  
Geo- targeting is a method of detecting a website visitor’s location to serve location-based content or advertisements.  
Geo-targeting aims to improve the cost-effectiveness of marketing programs. For example, if the product is a New shoes designed in America, then it will more likely sell to someone who is located in all cities. If a visitor is in a different city, then a different set of offers may be given.  
Email Marketing  
Email marketing is important for many reasons, it is important because it is highly adaptable. puma can make the emails that they send to promote their business so that they suit any need that their customers might have. puma can target many different social groups and adapt the content accordingly. Since the business world is constantly changing, puma have to be able to respond quickly to any changes that the marketing experts present.  
Internet is worldwide therefore it is clear that pumas email campaign can reach anyone in the world, if targeted correctly. as pumas business has tendencies to operate around the world, this is the perfect tool. This immediately helps puma expand their business worldwide, as puma are using platforms like other businesses websites such as office and asos, there are many Email marketing plugins out there, which will help puma to capture Emails from their customers quickly and smart ways.  
Although a disadvantage of puma using email marketing is Spam as commercial email or 'spam' irritates customers. If their messages aren’t targeted to the right people, the recipient may delete the email that was sent or unsubscribe. Puma need to make sure that their email marketing complies with privacy and data protection rules, and that it is properly targeted at people who want to receive it. The 'click through rate' for untargeted emails is likely to be very low.  
This relates to promotion of the marketing mix as every email that a customer receives is prompting puma as a business. No matter what kind of email that is sent out to the customer, it is drawing attention to pumas website where customers can seek new products gaining immediate sales.