Question

3.Yahoo said people who subscribe to the download service on a monthly basis will see their memberships increase from $6.99 per month to $11.99 per month. Portal company Yahoo Inc. ( Nasdaq: YHOO - news) informed customers of its subscription music download service that it will increase pricing for users who transfer their tunes onto portable devices or CDs. Explain yahoo’s pricing strategy

Answer 1

Marketing Mix of Yahoo analyses the brand/company which covers 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) and explains the Yahoo marketing strategy. The article elaborates the pricing, advertising & distribution strategies used by the company.

Let us start the Yahoo Marketing Mix:

Product:

The product strategy and mix in Yahoo marketing strategy can be explained as follows:

Yahoo provides a number of products and services. These are easily available on their web portal. The portal provides news, sports, finance and weather information on the go. Besides these users also get access to Yahoo Search, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Maps and Yahoo Messenger.

Price:

Below is the pricing strategy in Yahoo marketing strategy:

Yahoo has varying pricing strategy based on the type of product or service they provide. Yahoo BOSS is a service which allows developers to build applications based on Yahoo’s technology. This is a cost-per-query model which has prices ranging from $0.4 to $0.75 Cost per 1000 BOSS queries. This price is based on the type of query. Yahoo Merchant Solution has a fair price of $ 39.95/month for their starter package for their e commerce solutions and thereafter a 1.5% of gross sales additional monthly fee. Yahoo Web Hosting provides prices ranging from $3.75/month for basic plan, $5.99/month for advanced plan and $8.99/month for premium plan. Yahoo DomainKeys provides domain names for approximately $10 for a period of 5 years post which there is a renewal fee of $35 annually. This gives an insight on Yahoo marketing mix pricing strategy.

Place:

Following is the distribution strategy of Yahoo:

Yahoo Affiliate program is one platform where users get access to all of Yahoo’s products and services. This helps them create a great visibility for their brand attracting more customers and also aids online marketers to promote its Hosting Services, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Games and Yahoo Merchant Solutions. Through this program Yahoo earns commissions when users sign up for their business services i.e. Yahoo Merchant Solutions and Yahoo Web Hosting Plan.

Promotion:

The promotional and advertising strategy in the Yahoo marketing strategy is as follows:

Yahoo has various ways and means of attracting companies towards its brand. Being a website, its promotional activities in its marketing mix are quite unique. Yahoo has developed various mobile apps so customers can view their email, news, sports or any other piece of information by just downloading the yahoo app on their mobile. Yahoo studios streams live videos and ads across the web every month. Yahoo forms a platform for native advertising helping brands attract millions of customers. They also provide custom branded content for viewers at their homes to view live streaming of sports, market or news. Tumblr and Polyvore are two platform for their young to connect which are powered by Yahoo. They also have their search engine which is still number 1 top priority search engine for internet users worldwide. The Yahoo logo and slogan have also not changed that much over the years creating a greater brand recall. Through all these mediums Yahoo has managed to maintain its brand inspite of other competing brands like Google.

Since this is a service marketing brand, here are the other three Ps to make it the 7Ps marketing mix of Yahoo.

People:

More than 10,000+ people are employed with Yahoo. People strategy in the marketing mix of Yahoo is an important component as it is a service brand. David Filo is the Chief and Co-Founder of Yahoo alongwith Jerry Yang. Maynard Webb is the Chairman, Marissa Mayer is the CEO and Ken Goldman is the Chief Financial Officer as of 2016. Enrique Muñoz Torres is the Senior Vice President mainly involved with Yahoo Search and many aspects of their Advertising. Jeff Bonforte is involved with communication products of Yahoo. Besides these top people involved with advertising and marketing, there are people involved with recruitment as well as customer care centers to engage with customers all over the world.

Process:

Yahoo has developed products with involve a lot of customer engagement like Flickr, Social networking and communication services. Such sites also provide a platform for users to connect all over the world. They offer mobile services as well. Yahoo often hires young intellectuals to provide valuable insights to new product developments. They also come up with new products or enhance the old ones to engage customers in their various target segments. Being a media model company offering various internet services, majority of the operations of the company are simply online i.e online content, mail services etc

Physical Evidence:

Yahoo has a huge presence online for their various services. They have individual websites for each of their services like Real Estate, News, etc. Yahoo provides a unique experience to their users by allowing them to connect to Facebook to share information or content from Yahoo services. Yahoo has many subsidiaries and localized versions like Tumblr, Inc, Yahoo! Japan, Yahoo! Hong Kong Ltd, Yahoo! France SAS, Yahoo! Canada Co, Yahoo! Vietnam Co. Ltd and various others for Netherlands, India, Mexico, etc. This covers the summary of Yahoo marketing mix.