Marketing Mix Elements & Retail Petrol Outlets

Australian retail petrol outlets all essentially provide the same products to the customer whether the service stations are privately owned and operated or managed under agreements with the supplying oil companies such as BP, Shell, Caltex, Mobil etc. The difference is in their ability to position themselves in the market as having an understanding of their target markets needs, wants and desires and delivering on these to create customer satisfaction and ultimately maximising their return. A useful tool to ensure successfully positioning of their offer is the use of the four marketing mix elements. The four marketing mix elements, collectively known as the four P’s include Product, Price, Promotion and Place. This report provides an overview of each element and how they are applied to retail petrol outlets; sending an overall message to the consumer about quality, cost, performance and the product’s position compared with a competing brand.

PRODUCT

A product is ‘anything tangible or intangible that satisfies the consumer or business customers’ needs as a result of an exchange process’. A product can be physical goods, services, ideas, people or places. A good is a tangible product that we can see, touch, smell, hear, taste or possess. Intangible products, such as services, ideas, people and places, are products we can not always see, touch, taste, smell or possess.

A product has three distinct layers; the core product, consisting of the benefits that the product provides for consumers (or business customers), the actual product which is the physical good or the delivered service that supplies the desired benefit and the augmented product which is the ‘actual product plus other supporting features’ such as warranty, credit purchase facilities, delivery, installation and after-sales service. (Solomon, et al. 2011, p. 181-185).

Petroleum encapsulates all three product layers being the core, the actual and the augmented product. The core benefit of...