Marketing Plan Template

Following is a template that will help you outline and prepare your marketing plan. The
descriptions explain the content that should be included. See the sample marketing plan for an
example of what this content looks like.

NEW! In addition, click here to download an MS Word Marketing Plan template with headings,
explanations, and formating. Also, click here to download the instructions. Right click and select,
“Save As” if it does not download immediately.

I would also highly recommend marketing and business plan software like the application
featured above. It walks you through the entire process.

I. Executive Summary
1. The executive summary should encapsulate the entire plan within a few pages.

II. Situational Analysis

A. Product Overview

1. Review the product and the category.

B. Market Segmentation

1. Identify the various target market segments and how the product is currently
situated. This section might include a price/performance chart.

C. Product Offering

1. Explain each of the company's products and how they address the needs of
their specific target audience.

D. Market Size

1. You may elect to compile information from PC Data, IDC, and other analyst
sources to determine the number of current and potential buyers in your
respective target markets.

E. Market Share
 1. PC Data and trade magazines often contain the sales figures from each of the
competitive products. From this type of information you can approximate the
percentage of the market that you own. You may wish to include visual pie charts
showing the market percentage of each player.

F. Growth Potential

1. Analyst information from primary research is often required to determine the

market trends which indicate areas of potential growth. There are several
organizations that produces well-documented reports on specific upcoming
markets. Check the links section for possible sources.

G. Competitive Environment

1. List the specific known competitors and their respective positions and current
plans. You may check a competitor's collateral pieces, Web site, Adscope,
distributors, analyst, friends inside the company, tracking sources and clipping
services to discover the plans of your competitors.

H. Gaining Market Share

1. A 10,000 foot preview of the proceeding tactical plan to increase market

share--either by developing new products, new markets, or recruiting your
competitions customer base.

I. Positioning

1. Once you have analyzed all of the previous information, you are ready to
determine your position. This is your finale that contains your "why to buy" for
each product. This section should also contain a chart showing your product's
positioning in regards to the target market segments and the competition.

III. Tactical Marketing Plan

1. The tactics further refine the overall strategies and show precisely how to meet
the overall strategic objectives.

A. Organizational Strategies

1. Consolidation Strategies - each of the existing products should be evaluated

for possible consolidation or growth according to the following approaches.

i. Harvesting (gradual decrease in company support for a product)

ii. Pruning (eliminate support for certain market segments)

iii. Retrenchment (continue to offer the same product but retreat to the
strongest line)
 iv. Divestment (sell off weak fit products)

2. Growth Strategies

i. Market Penetration (better ingress of existing markets)

ii. Product Development (either changing the product or its perception)

iii. Market Development (finding growth in new markets)

iv. Diversification (introducing new products)

B. Marketing Mix

1. Product

i. Includes development features, positioning, packaging, and format

2. Price

i. Price Matching

ii. Price Making

iii. Introductory Penetration Pricing

iv. Upgrade Pricing

v. Pricing Perceptions

vi. Special Pricing (NFR, educational, etc.)

3. Placement

i. Placement is selling and distribution portion of the Marketing Mix. This

discussion should cover both push and pull campaigns, sell-in and sell-through
suggestions and support materials. Resources should also be discussed.

4. Promotions (every mechanism designed to stimulate demand)

i. Public Relations

ii. On-line Marketing (Web site)

iii. Advertising

a. Mass Media (Display, TV and Radio)

b. Card Decks
 c. Direct Response (Mail, Fax, E-mail, Bundle offers)

d. Event Marketing (trade shows, seminars, training)

iv. Business Development

a. Alliances via technology (integration of products, ole links, etc.)

b. Marketing alliances (share leads, trade show space, joint advertising,

bundles, cross-rep recommendation, etc.)

IV. Summary
1. A final summary of the strategies and tactics to achieve financial success while
meeting the needs of the target market segment.

V. Appendix
A. Media Schedule

1. This plan forecast one of the most expensive portions of demand creation, the
advertising plan. It outlines a well-designed method to influence the target
market segments. It includes a tracking mechanism with trip wire contingencies
that correspond to profitability.

B. Budget

1. This should be as detailed as possible and should allow some flexibility for
unseen positive opportunities. The main purpose is to forecast capability to
execute with a remaining profit.

C. Gantt Chart or Similar Process Plan

1. The entire document is designed to accurately create this one document

timeline that demonstrates how every strategy and tactic is implemented. This is
where the rubber meets the road.

C. Sales Projections

1. Based on the marketing mechanisms, with projected returns for each event, a
projected sales history is created.

Selling Your Own Perfume:

The Quest For Buyers
By M.K Lester
 To have a perfume business you must have buyers — retail, wholesale, walk-in, Internet, it doesn't matter. But
you must have buyers. You must make sales. Sales are the key to business success. No sales, no business. Good,
profitable sales make a good, no matter how odd that business may appear to others.

Profitable businesses come in all different shapes and varieties. You only need one business "model",
"strategy", or "idea" to sell your perfume successfully but it must be a strategy that is practical for you. Different
strategies work for different people. Even among the giants of perfume marketing great efforts are taken to find
profitable niches. The difference between the niches of the giants and the niches for you or me is that they need very big
niches. We can do quite nicely selling perfume in niches far too small to appeal to multi-million dollar companies.

If you don't believe that even multi-million dollar corporations struggle to find profitable niches, make the
rounds of a number of venues where big corporations make their perfume sales.

If you go to a department store at a shopping mall, you'll typically find brands such as Estee Lauder plus Ralph
Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and a few designers. — the same brands whose clothing is sold in the store. But it is likely that
you won't find Elizabeth Taylor, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton or Celine Dion. Depending on what store it is, you might or
might not find Chanel or Elizabeth Arden. Unless you're in a particular department store, you won't find Donald Trump
(the fragrance) or Flower Bomb (by Viktor & Rolf).

Now go to WalMart. Here you are likely find Halston, Elizabeth Taylor, Paris Hilton, Elizabeth Arden, Hugo Boss,
Britney Spears — and a host of brands you've never heard of unless you are a regularly buy your perfume at WalMart.

You won't find Chanel at WalMart (or at least Chanel hopes you won't find it there!) You won't find Viktor &
Rolf, or Donald Trump, or Hummer.

Now go to a drug store that's part of a chain. Here you may or may not find Hummer and Elizabeth Taylor but
it's almost certain that you'll find lots of products from Coty.

Now try your local supermarket. In some areas they too offer perfume (I'm thinking of one particular one in
Texas as I write this.) If you do find perfume at your supermarket you may find a brand name fragrance that has been
given new, promotional packaging by a third party, probably under license from the brand owner. Read all of the text on
the package. Buy it and look at the inside packaging. See if you learn a few lessons.

Among the largest sellers of perfume there is a great deal of maneuvering and jockeying for position. Riviera
Concepts, the small Canadian perfume business that launched Hummer (under license from General Motors), has now
sold its brands to Elizabeth Arden, which already markets the Britney Spears fragrance line.

At the top of the food chain the market is fluid, relationships and alignments are in flux, the giants are
struggling to find the best niches (huge niches!) for their brands. They really don't care very much what goes on with
companies making less than $100 million in annual sales. But would you turn you back on a business that could gross
$500,000 annually and, perhaps, net $350,000?

So where and how, as an individual entrepreneur, can you sell your perfume profitably? The answer is you can
sell it profitably in dozens of ways and in dozens of places.

The book "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" suggests seven different strategic
categories none of which require more than a few hundred dollars in capital to get started — assuming that you have (or
can make) the perfume you'll need to fill orders.

Among the categories highlighted are certain techniques of direct-to-the-consumer selling, getting your
fragrance into smaller, local or regional stores, developing perfume profitably for local or regional promotions (this can be
more profitable than you might imagine!) and doing "private label" promotions for local businesses that have multiple
outlets.

What you start to discover when reading a book like "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own
Perfume!" — or any other book based on authentic experience of individuals marketing their own perfume — is that far
from there being too few opportunities, the real task is in selecting the right opportunity — matching up your skills and
resources with the perfume marketing opportunity that is the most right for you, the opportunity that is likely to make
you the most money.

And why, you may ask, perfume? The answer is simple. Even with very limited means you can create a
commercially marketable perfume which can be sold for ten times or more what you paid to make it or have it made for
you (which will probably be from about $1.50 to $3.85 per bottle.)
 It's not a business for everyone but it is a business that offers a dynamic opportunity to those who are willing
to take the trouble first to understand what perfume is all about and then to select out of many business strategies for
selling perfume the one that makes a light go off in your head and you say "this opportunity was custom made for me!"

"61 Ways To Sell Your Own Perfume!"

Regardless whether you are a home perfumer, an independent
perfumery, or a small corporation marketing your own perfume,
the marketing strategies and selling tips found in this 55 page
book could help you double your sales — and profits!

In 2001 I published the first edition of my book "Creating Your Own

Perfume With A 1700 Percent Markup!" which was a factual account of how
a company which had never sold a fragrance before created and sold a men's
cologne and earned back their $2,000 investment many times over.
In 2004 I developed our i84 cologne on an even smaller budget and then
wrote about it in "Developing A Profitable New Perfume On A Budget Of
Less Than $200!".
The purpose of these books was to demonstrate to small companies such as my
own — and even to individuals — that they too could "create" their own unique
fragrance product that could be sold at a very substantial markup.
But the question I was asked repeatedly was, "Do these books tell me how to
sell the perfume or cologne I make?" My answer was always "No," because these
two books did not include any information on marketing a fragrance. These books
were written for people who had an idea how they might sell perfume. They just
needed some information on how to acquire it.
But clearly selling was an important issue. Unless you are just making perfume
or cologne for a hobby, you want to be able to sell it and make some money from
it, just as I had. But the selling methods I used were not necessarily suitable for
others.
When I finally decided to write "THE BOOK" about selling your own
perfume, I knew I would have to go beyond my personal experience in marketing
my own fragrances and delve into ways I might have sold perfume if I hadn't have
had such an obvious and profitable way to do it.

Selling with a high markup

Before becoming involved with fragrance I sold vitamin pills — lots of them
— under brand names I developed. The company was small, the markups were
good, money was made. Sales were made through direct mail ("junk mail"), mail
order ads in magazines, and our own catalog. It was a classic, pre-internet, mail
order business.
Besides running the show, my role was to develop our products and create
advertising that would sell them. "Developing" a new vitamin pill meant giving it
a "look" and a "personality" while keeping manufacturing costs minimal relative
to the anticipated retail price. This was the same strategy I followed when first
turning to perfume.
As anyone can tell you, a successful marketing company not only has its "Plan
A" but it also has a string of alternate "Plan B"s. As it happened, I was able to sell
my first two fragrances quite easily to our existing customers through our catalog,
but I did have other plans waiting in the wings. The questions I have received
since offering my first two books have prompted me to take a look at a lot more
"Plan B"s. These thoughts and strategies evolved into "61 Basic Strategies For
Selling Your Own Perfume!".

Tested marketing strategies yield profitable results

What do the world's best sales organizations have in common? Without

exception, they have the discipline to develop a strategic plan, set benchmarks to
evaluate the plan's success, and then follow the plan from benchmark to
benchmark, adjusting their plan only when carefully tracked results show an
unexpected weakness on one area of an especially bright opportunity in another.
Their eyes are always on the established goal.
Regardless of how small your perfume business may be, if you want to make
money with it — steady, season after season money — you need a plan and a goal.
"61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" was written to help you
formulate a valid master plan and practical "fall back" plans that will work in a
practical way, for you in your individual circumstances.

The many approaches to selling perfume

Major fragrance marketers are "major" because they have carved out major
channels of distribution. When they launch a new fragrance, they can count on it
being stocked by a large number of stores, nationwide, where tester bottles will
give consumers a chance to try it. They will also blitz the fashion magazines with
scratch 'n sniff samples. They will spend heavily on magazine and TV advertising.
They want you to be aware of their new fragrance, to discover its aroma, and
hopefully like it enough so that you will buy it.
The costs of doing all this will involve millions of dollars and, if the fragrance
is a success, the company may recoup its investment in about a year. This is the
standard marketing cycle for a large fragrance marketer.
 But the marketing methods used by major perfume marketers will not work for
you. Why? Because your name is not known, you don't have access to the
fragrance counters at thousands of stores, and all the money in the world will not
allow you to do, overnight, what major marketers have spent years doing —
building relationships and learning their trade.
If you don't believe me, let me cite the example of a company which had
somehow acquired a huge amount of capital and planned to use it to go head to
head with Sears. They disappeared as quickly as they arrived on the scene. It was
back in the 1980's. I can't recall their name.
The fact is that for you to sell perfume successfully you need a plan that starts
with your resources and capabilities. You have to understand that you cannot
succeed by copying the techniques of the major perfume marketers but, instead,
need an affordable plan that will quickly generate profits (not losses!) for you
because you can't afford to wait a year to get your money back.
There are many ways to sell perfume. "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your
Own Perfume!" explores a wide range of possibilities.

The starting point: your present, personal or company situation

For most individuals and new businesses, selling perfume requires personal
selling. You have to get out and establish your points of contact with buyers and
you have to have a strategy that will make these contacts productive. "61 Basic
Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" gives you a range of ways in which
you can accomplish this.
If you already have a business and are simply planning to add perfume to it,
you are in the same situation I was in when I first started to sell a fragrance
successfully. "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" gives you
some useful suggestions that can help make perfume a very profitable part of your
business.

"How much money does it take realistically to launch my own

perfume?"

Not having money to work with is a handicap. But it can also be the "obstacle"
that guarantees your success. When you are watching every dollar, you think twice
before you spend your money — and you use your money to only backup a
strategy that is proving successful. You think twice before making frivolous
purchases.
In "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" I deal with the
marketing possibilities that are available to you, even when you only have your
perfume but no money for marketing. (You do have to have your perfume!)
 Is it easy to go out and sell when you don't have any money for expenses? Of
course not! Can it be done successfully? Yes! "61 Basic Strategies For Selling
Your Own Perfume!" helps shows how you, with a half-decent fragrance, can go
out and make money selling it. But "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own
Perfume!" also shows you how to step up to the next level of selling once you've
made some money.
If you have a marketing budget already, "61 Basic Strategies For Selling
Your Own Perfume!" will help you allocate your money prudently so that, when
you make a profitable connection with buyers, you'll have adequate funds
available to market to them.

"What are my chances of success?"

There is no magic formula for launching a new perfume profitably or even

adding a new perfume to your existing merchandise line. But it is absolute
madness to think of launching yourself in the perfume business without exploring
as many perfume selling strategies as you can find.
Many years ago I shared an office with a gentleman who spent hundreds of
dollars each year on subscriptions to costly trade publications. I'll never forget the
answer he gave me when I asked if he really needed them — "If I get one good
idea from just one of these publications it will be worth more than the cost of all of
them." "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your Own Perfume!" gives you a way
to get many good ideas for selling your own perfume and I am sure that you will
profit tremendously from the strategies "61 Basic Strategies For Selling Your
Own Perfume!" offers.
— Phil Goutell

Now You Can Make Your Own Perfume For

Fun, Money, Or A Lifetime Career!
Let's talk about perfume — a perfume you can make for yourself for fun or to
sell. Either way there is no reason why your perfume cannot be a high quality, fine
fragrance as good or better than some fragrances sold in national stores — if you
do it right.
And, if you do it right and create a pleasing fragrance, you may also discover
that you have a gift and truly enjoy the creativity — or money — or both, and that
having produced your first perfume successfully, you are well on your way to
developing a profitable part-time business ... or entering the perfume world for a
lifetime career.
 Perfume today lies at the economic center of a highly creative, multi-billion
dollar world wide industry that constantly seeks qualified new talent.

Would You Life To Create A Successful Perfume?

Certain steps and methods are involved in the creation of ALL perfumes,
whether your workbench is a kitchen table or a high tech perfumery lab at a major
fragrance company. The methods are the same, only the surroundings are
different. So what does it take to create a successful perfume, and just what
constitutes a successful perfume?
For a perfume company, the measure of a perfume's success is obvious. A
successful perfume is one that makes money. A "failure" is one that does not.
But, for the individual creative perfumer — even when his or her career rises
or falls depending on the commercial success of his or her creations — judging the
success of a fragrance has other dimensions and every great perfumer can point to
a personal favorite that, while for one reason or another it failed in the market
place, was an absolutely sublime fragrance.
So what would be a successful perfume for you? Would you like to make a
perfume that you could use to make money? Would you like to create a fragrance
that pleased you and was admired by your friends? Do you know that you can
create a successful perfume, even if making perfume is completely new to you?

Step Into The Room Where Perfume Is Being Made And Learn How
You Can Make Perfume Yourself!
One of the most practical ways of learning a new skill is by working alongside
someone who can guide you each step of the way and teach you the correct steps
you must follow to achieve success.
With perfume it is very difficult to get this one-on-one guidance from a
professional. Yet the steps you would be taught are so simple that they can easily
be explained in writing, step by step, clearly and completely, in under 100 pages
of text which could easily be collected into a book. In fact, this book already
exists. It is called "Developing A Profitable New Perfume On A Budget Of Less
Than $200!" and it acts as your one-on-one professional helper to guide you
through the process of making a genuine commercial perfume to sell.

Are You Ready To Make Your Own Perfume?

With a copy of "Developing A Profitable New Perfume On A Budget Of Less
Than $200!" in your hands, you can make your own perfume, a competitive
perfume you can sell with pride or just give to friends. You can do it because, with
the help of "Developing A Profitable New Perfume On A Budget Of Less Than
$200!" you will be doing exactly what major companies do to produce their
perfumes — only for this, your first perfume — you will be working with a budget
of just $200. If the results please you (they will!), your second perfume can be a
more ambitious project, with a larger budget, but you want to learn how to do it
first.
Incidentally, the book not only tells you what materials you will need to make
your first (or any!) perfume, it directs you to professional sources that take orders
online.
Of course words can be just words and you are looking for proof of the results.
That "proof" will be sent to you along with the book. What is it? The most certain
proof you could ask for — a bottle of fragrance that was made by us, step by step,
as we wrote out the steps for you to follow.
While you will receive this fragrance in a rather simple 1-ounce glass bottle, I
believe you will agree that the quality is on the level you would like to achieve
with your own fragrance — and you will, by following each carefully documented
step.

The Directions Are All Laid Out For You!

The starting point is your aroma — the fragrance you like in someone else's
perfume or, better yet, the fragrance you imagine. From this remembered or
imagined fragrance, which exists only in your head, you proceed to a real
fragrance, the "juice", which you will then prepare for bottling by adding the
mysterious ingredients you see listed on the labels of commercial perfume bottles.
Then it's a matter of filling and labeling your bottles. From there, the "packaging"
is up to you.
Yes, it's simple, so simple that you might wonder why the book is even
necessary. I can give you two very important reasons why you don't want to start
making perfume without it. First, there are several seemingly small points that, if
you are ignorant of them, all the materials you purchased might be wasted and
your project will become a big mess. The second reason only applies if you are
planning to sell your perfume. If you don't understand one single fact of life, you
will not be able to sell your perfume legally. But, you and every professional
perfume maker can easily get around this problem without spending an extra
penny. It's simply a matter of understanding the rules of the game.
Enough said. If you want to make perfume to sell, buy the book, read it,
examine the sample and then do it yourself. It could be the start of some steady
extra income for you. It could be the start of a new career. Either way, if you have
a good feeling about perfume, "Developing A Profitable New Perfume On A
Budget Of Less Than $200!" will inspire you, enrich you, and possibly start you
on a whole new career!
Order The Book!

PROBLEM:
"I Don't Know How to Get Started on a
Marketing Plan"
HELPFUL IDEAS TO CONSIDER:
Also look at "What Are Your REALLY Selling?" and "Meeting
Customer Needs Is Not Enough"
Home

Solve My Problem Aim for the Bullseye

Free Reports Any successful marketing plan aims for the bullseye. The
trick is in locating it, then finding an arrow which can reach
Products & Services
it. The bullseye is the mind of your customer. Aim for that,
and your other goals, like greater profits and more
About Us
customers, will naturally follow. To aim at this illusive
Index
bullseye, you first must understand what you are up
against.
Rewards
Recently a client said to me, "We thought it would be a
Free Newsletter good idea to run an image ad in a business journal, but we
didn't get anything out of it." The amazing part of the
Contact Us statement was their belief that they would get anything out
of it.
Other Resources
Every day we are bombarded with over 3,000 separate
advertisements seeking our attention. Most we don't even
pay attention to, like the billboard we drive by, or the
newspaper ad we don't even glance at. The competition to
gain consumer attention has never been greater, but the
techniques often used are straight out of the 1950's. No
wonder companies like my client's are throwing their money
away -- they are using jet plane thinking to tackle a moon
rocket problem.

Whether the activity is called sales, marketing, advertising,

or public relations, it seeks to achieve one primary goal --
planting a positive idea about your product or service in the
consumer's mind. But all too often the designer thinks it is
as simple to put a message inside the consumer's head as it
is to pitch a golfball onto a green. Instead, the problem
more closely resembles trying to reach the green through a
thicket of trees.

In that situation, the two most critical things to have are a

good aim and the proper club.

How do you achieve a good aim? By knowing exactly what

you are aiming at. Good golfers shoot for the pin, while
average golfers shoot for the green. Sound marketing
strategy requires a sound understanding of the target
audience. You may say, "I know my target." But what you
may know is their demographic description -- age, sex,
income, location, and so on. That doesn't tell you what you
really need to know about your audience in order to
educate, persuade, and motivate them.

People are not motivated by being female or young or rich.

They are motivated by the possibility of satisfying their
needs, wants, fears, and desires. Do women buy a
particular brand of perfume because they fall in the upper-
middle income bracket? No, perfume sales are driven by
desires, not demographics. Women primarily buy a brand
because its message (including its image) has persuaded
them of its potential to answer their desires -- love,
romance, security, adventure, admiration, etc. Most
perfumes are pulled after a year because they failed to
deliver on their advertising promises. But there is always
hope in the heart for this next, new fragrance.

If you do not know the needs, wants, fears, and

desires of your target audience, you don't know
enough to create the best marketing plan for your
product or service. As changes in media costs and
availability allows more niche marketing, the requirements
for knowing the specific psychological motivations of the
people in that niche becomes paramount -- you could be
aiming for one niche, but hitting another.

When Tylenol was first introduced, Bayer aspirin controlled

over 80% of the non-prescription pain relief market. Tylenol
was like a platoon of soldiers facing a mighty army inside a
huge castle. Others had tried to take the castle before, but
the frontal attack had never worked. Instead, Tylenol
looked for a small back door that was unlocked -- and they
found it. Their consumer psychological research showed
that aspirin was vulnerable with a significant group of
consumers who worried about stomach irritation.

Tylenol positioned themselves by first stimulating that fear

-- "Scientific research proves that aspirin can cause
stomach irritation and hidden stomach bleeding" (what a
wonderful phrase -- its like the monster that might be
behind the door, but you can't be sure.) After positioning
aspirin in this way specifically for their niche of consumers,
Tylenol then said, "Oh, by the way, Tylenol also relieves
pain like aspirin, but it is proven not to cause stomach
irritation or hidden stomach bleeding!"	Had Tylenol
tried the old frontal attack method by designing advertising
 by demographics, their bones would also have been
bleaching in front of Bayer's castle walls. Instead, Tylenol
now owns over 35% of that market.

Success often depends on correctly identifying the very

strongest needs, wants, fears, or desires of your potential
customers which your product can satisfy.	Too often we
do only part of this exercise, and do it poorly. We ask
ourselves, "What do these folks need?" Then we think a
little, ask a few of our colleagues their ideas, and decide
that consumers really needs -- what we think we would
need in that situation! 	Not only does this "seat of the
pants" research result in unreliable, and even dangerous,
strategies, it completely overlooks three other critical areas
of marketing psychology analysis -- wants, fears, and
desires -- which also determine the attraction and
satisfaction of prospective customers.

To begin your marketing plan, first analyze what

motivations your customers have for buying. Always
remember that your product or service is just a means to
an end for them. Identify that "end" and shoot all your
arrows toward that bullseye.

Marketing Strategy for Madonna Brand

Perfume
This is an excerpt from the paper...

MARKETING STRATEGY: "MADONNA" BRAND PERFUME

This research presents a marketing strategy for "Madonna" brand perfume. "Madonna" brand
perfume is one of a number of cosmetic fragrances developed and marketed for celebrities--in
this instance, rock video star Madonna Ciccone (Cocks, 1990, pp. 74-75).

Marketing strategy, in the context of this research, includes consideration of market segmentation
and target marketing, product positioning, product life cycle, and marketing mix. Further,
marketing strategy is considered in the context of two separate national markets--Canada and
Italy.

"Madonna" brand perfume is produced in the United States. A single marketing strategy,
however, is followed for North America --Canada and the United States.

The history of the cosmetics industry can likely be traced to some of the very earliest days of
civilization. It was in the last-half of the nineteenth century, however, when toiletries and
cosmetics began to be produced and marketed on a mass scale, as opposed to being concocted
in essentially local establishments. In 1880, North America's largest cosmetic firm, Avon, was
founded.

Industry sales in 1990 were $11.4 billion, which represented a 9.6 percent increase over the
$10.4 billion of 1989 (Royce, 1991, p. 815). From 1987 through 1990, industry sales grew by 34.1
percent, and by 1993 should near $15 billion, a gain of 31.6 percent over 1990 levels (Royce,
1991, p. 815).

...
of the four Ps of marketing-- product, price, place, and promotion. The Canadian marketing mix is
as follows: Product A product is defined as anything offered for exchange to another person
including physical objects, services, places, organizations, and ideas. Consumers typically
recognize five distinctive product characteristics--quality level, features, styling, brand name, and
packaging. Depending upon the type of product involved--physical, service, and so forth, not all of
these characteristics will be applicable in each instance. Brand name is the major product
strategy employed in the marketing of "Madonna" brand perfume. Brand name is essential to the
marketing of celebrity fragrances. Another factor involved in the development of product strategy
is the product life cycle. Four stages of the product life cycle are recognized by most marketing
analysts-- introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. The stage of its life cycle in which a product
is situated affects to a great extent the type of product strategy adopted. Perfumes as a group are
in the mature stage of the product life cycle. Celebrity fragrances as a group are in the growth
stage of the product life cycle. "Madonna" brand perfume is in the int
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