When a client has a product in mind, its main purpose is to generate profit. After developing a product, the next step is selling it. Launching a product is just as important as designing it well, for few reasons. If one designs a kitsch product but advertises it well, it will not be successful. Similarly, if designers design the ideal product, but it is not publicised appropriately, then not enough consumers will know about its existence and as a result it won’t sell well. In order to introduce a product successfully and target the right market, several things have to be taken into consideration. In their book ‘Marketing strategy & competitive positioning’ Graham Hooley et al. state:

The critical issues concerning current customers are: (1)
Fig.7 Marketing Research Methods
The key questions that come up a lot during research phase are: who? what? when? why? where? and how? Marketing teams ask them in relation to the consumer, to gather insights into the details of people that buy the items, but designers use it for products (Fig.8). It is called a product scope and is another tool that can be used when designing a product.
After completing marketing research, marketing team will organise customer information. This further narrows down the spectrum of targeted people to specific group. Firstly, raw data is presented. It consists of information from variety of sources and is stored in various forms like paper, presentations, computers, images, etc. It then leads onto statistical techniques that are followed up by market models which specifies end users (Hooley, G. et al., 2012). Fig.8 Product Scope of a Honours Product Design
et al., 2012). Implementing these decisions and values is done by using the three basic elements- marketing mix, organisation and control. These are simple but important tools that are used; marketing mix being the most important one of them. But where are its origins and how it started? In a ‘Journal of Marketing Management’, E. Constantinides says:

Mix has its origins in the 60’s: Neil Borden (1964) identified twelve controllable marketing elements that, properly managed, would result to a “profitable business operation”. Jerome McCarthy (1964) reduced Borden’s factors to a simple four-element framework: Product, Price, Promotion and Place. (Constantinides, E., 2006).

These four elements create the marketing mix that many organizations use today. Brands use them to translate their strategy from a statement to effort in the market. If implemented properly, it can bring desired results and big profits, which is what brands are aiming for. Unfortunately, if organisation and/or control is overlooked in the process and something goes wrong, it has a knock on effect on the mix as they are all linked