A.

Two Consumer Product Companies- PricewaterhouseCoopers(PwC) Vs KPMG

PricewaterhouseCoopers (doing business as PwC) is a multinational professional
services network headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the second
largest professional services firm in the world, and is one of the Big Four
auditors, along with Deloitte, EYand KPMG. Vault Accounting 50 has ranked PwC
as the most prestigious accounting firm in the world for seven consecutive years,
as well as the top firm to work for in North America for three consecutive years.
PwC is a network of firms in 158 countries, 743 locations, with more than 236,000
people. PwC provides services to 422 out of 500 Fortune 500 companies.
The firm was formed in 1998 by a merger between Coopers & Lybrand and Price
Waterhouse. Both firms had histories dating back to the 19th century. The
trading name was shortened to PwC in September 2010 as part of a rebranding
effort.
A. Profile of these companies:-
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) offers auditing, accounting and assurance services. The
Company provides IFRS reporting, valuation, human resources, accounting advisory and forensic
services. It offers business compliance, internal audit, IT and project assurance, global tax, tax
accounting, economics, and statistics, as well as transfer pricing services. PricewaterhouseCoopers
also provides consulting services for analytics, finance, operations, risk management, benchmarking
and security. It caters to automotive, hospitality and leisure, entertainment and media, technology,
financial services, real estate, transportation, and logistics, as well as retail sectors.

Revenue(FY, 2017) $37.7 B Type Private

Key People/Management at PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) HQ London, GB

Robert Moritz, Chairman, PricewaterhouseCoopers International
Limited Founded 1998

Raymund Chao, Chairman, Asia Pacific and Greater China

Size (employees) 236,235 (est)+6%

Website pwc.com
 B. Marketing Mix- 4Ps & target Segments:

Marketing mix of PWC – Pricewaterhousecoopers Marketing mix

Marketing mix articles Pricewaterhousecoopers is
popularly known and traded as PWC. It is a
multinational corporation that provides professional
services and currently is the largest firm of service
providers in world. According to a report published by
Vault Accounting PwC has been acknowledged as the
most-prestigious company in global market for
consecutive seven years and in North America for
successive three years.
PricewaterhouseCoopers was founded in year 1998
after a merger between Price Waterhouse and Coopers Lybrand and in year 2010 its name was
shortened to its present name PwC for convenience and as rebranding strategy. In year 2015,
company was declared largest organisation at no. 6 position in privately owned sector of United
States. It is one of the auditors that belongs to Big Four and its other competitors who provide a stiff
competition are as follows

1. Product in the Marketing mix of PWC – Pricewaterhousecooper

PwC serves a global area and 40% of its work is limited to European companies. It has
numerous firms working for and with it as each has its own separate legal entity. PwC
provides services to both private and public clients although most of its relationship centres
on business-to-business organisations. It serves multiple sectors like mining and energy,
automotive, entertainment, communications and media. Its product folio is limited to
following-
Service Lines
 Assurance
 Advisory – It includes consulting activities covering performance improvement, strategy,
transaction services, corporate finance, business recovery-services, business valuation,
crisis management and sustainability in areas like actuarial advisory and accounting
 Tax – It includes international tax compliance and planning along with local tax customs,
laws, legal services, human resource-consulting and transfer pricing
Advisory
 PwC has been developing initiatives for broader advisory in relation to framework of
Enterprise Risk-Management. It assists companies with outsourcing and assessment of
political risk in global market. PwC also has two consultancy services for actuarial
departments named AIMS and HRS also called Actuarial and Insurance Management
Solutions and Human Resource Services respectively. Actuarial includes areas like life
insurance, pensions, investment and non-life insurance and HRS includes services
related to pensions. US Federal-Government is served by PwC through practises in
public sector by help of nearly 2000 professional employees.

2. Place in the Marketing mix of PWC – Pricewaterhousecooper

 PwC is an international company that serves globally with its headquarters based in London
in United Kingdom. Its firms are spread in one hundred and fifty seven countries and are
located in seven hundred and fifty six places like Melbourne, Riyadh, Warsaw, Poland,
Madrid, Auckland and Lima. It realises the importance of efficient and capable work force
and by the end of year 2015 had employed nearly 208,100 employees and amongst these
32% are working in Europe, 26% in Caribbean and North America and 22% in Asia. In order
to satisfy its clients it has created numerous teams like analysts and external coaches that
help in providing best possible services.

3. Price in the Marketing mix of PWC – Pricewaterhousecooper

Global revenues of PwC in financial year 2015 were estimated at 35.4 $ and out of these $
11.3 billion was generated by advisory practises, $ 8.9 billion by tax practices and 15.2 billion
dollar by assurance practices. PwC has a team that determines wants
and needs of target markets and also gathers detailed information of its competitor’s
policies. It then determines its own pricing policies according to available information and
after evaluating current financial conditions of market.
As the firm provides people-based-services it is necessary to maintain a balance between its
pricing policy and its client’s capability. Hence PwC has opted for reasonable policies for
certain places and clients and a premium pricing policy for its high-end clients. It has
undertaken value-based approach along with qualitative services to create pricing policies
that meets with customer approval.

4. Promotion in the Marketing mix of PWC – Pricewaterhousecooper

As the company offers intangible services it is necessary to promote its services through
high-end marketing strategies. To create brand awareness is easy but to maintain it
successfully over a longer time period is difficult and hence the company revaluates its
promotional activities periodically to maintain a fresh perspective in minds of consumers.
It provides information about its services and methods of handling along with their track
record to satisfy potential and previous customers. PwC is determined to create a
unique strategy and it involves positioning its brand as best through advertisements in print
media like business magazines and in social and online media. It collects vital information
about current trends and client mentality by gathering information through client-feedback
program.
Company’s liaison partners meet with various present and potential clients and gather
intelligence about what the client’s demands are. Company has also opened training
programs for their employees which helps them in dealing with customers. It has also its
personal brand logo to create a distinctive identity. Current PwC logo was designed by Wolff
Olins and was launched in year 2010 to demonstrate company’s name change to PwC.

We believe in walking the talk, and applying the same advice we give to our
clients to ourselves, wherever it’s applicable. One such area is integrated
reporting, where we’ve supported both the Integrated International Reporting
Council and clients to explore new ways of describing business performance.
So, as recommended by the International Integrated Reporting Framework we
set out our business model (see diagram below), with its inputs, strategic
processes, and outputs. It describes how we create value for our stakeholders
through our core processes, and delivering on our purpose. Our description also
recognises the interdependencies between our business and the wider context
i.e. we rely on a range of inputs including human, social and natural capital and
our business has a range of impacts on society that go beyond our financial
performance. The inputs are covered in more detail below, and our impacts are
explained in our total impact analysis.

Our inputs

We have a diversified business with a wide range of clients across a variety of

industries. As a people-based organisation, our primary external input is human
capital. We also draw on a bank of financial, intellectual and social capital that we
build up through our operations, and we require some, limited, environmental
resources and manufactured assets to run our operations.

Four strategic processes

At the heart of our business model are four strategic processes which create a
virtuous circle of responsible, profitable growth.
1. Attracting and developing diverse talent
We recruit, train, develop and motivate talent from diverse backgrounds, to create
an agile workforce that can offer solutions for our clients and other stakeholders,
focused on assurance, tax, deals and consulting services. Being a progressive
employer that offers exceptional career and development opportunities gives us
competitive advantage.
2. Creating exceptional insight and know-how
We anticipate market trends and identify areas where we can invest to ensure
our points of view, methodologies, technology, and technical know-how address
the risks and opportunities facing industries, our clients and society. Our structure
– a partnership - encourages a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation and
we make the capture and sharing of knowledge a priority for all our people. When
appropriate, we acquire companies with specific expertise that fills gaps in our
existing portfolio.

3. Understanding client needs and opportunities

We take time to really understand our clients, in the private, public and voluntary
sectors, listening to them closely. We differentiate ourselves by focusing on the
value they’re looking for, and having a strong, global network with deep roots and
local knowledge wherever they need it. Our focus on trusted, collaborative
partnerships extends to our stakeholders, including our suppliers and community
partners. It’s part of our culture and our common set of values, including personal
responsibility and doing the right thing.
4. Harnessing technology and delivering distinctive solutions
We assemble the right people and know-how to deliver a ‘One Firm’, distinctive
service (the ‘PwC Experience’) to help our clients comply with regulations,
manage and reduce risks, or seize new opportunities. Our solutions draw on
talent from any of our lines of service, anywhere in the UK or from our network
of territories around the world. Increasingly, we’re applying technology as a game
changer, to create new solutions, or significantly enhance existing ones.
This creates financial capital which is reinvested in the business, or distributed to
our partners, whilst additional value is created for our other stakeholders. The
outputs of our strategic processes are our business performance and the net
impact of our activities on society.

Our performance

We report extensively on our business and financial performance in our Annual

Report. This includes our accounts and a balanced set of non-financial
information in a dedicated sustainability scorecard which covers the issues on
our sustainability materiality matrix. You can find out more about these ‘outputs’
of our business in the ‘Focus areas’ section of our website.

Our impact

Over the past few years, we’ve also started to estimate our impacts, converting
them into monetary terms using our proprietary methodology – Total Impact
Measurement and Management (TIMM). It’s helped us measure the relative scale
of our economic, tax, social and environmental contributions – both positive and
negative, and better understand and manage the trade-offs. You can read more
in the Total impact section of our website.

Creating value for our stakeholders

Our business creates value for many different stakeholders, in different ways.
We provide our clients with professional skills and services that help them
achieve their goals. Our audit practice has an additional role in providing
confidence to both shareholders of our clients and to our regulators in the quality
of the corporate and financial information published by our clients. Of course, our
people benefit from the jobs we provide and through the development
opportunities we offer.
Beyond this narrow view of stakeholders, the Treasury receives taxes borne and
collected by our business, and our suppliers are supported by the procurement of
goods and services we require. Our communities benefit from the skills of our
people, whom we encourage to volunteer as part of our engagement and
leadership programmes.
At a more macro level, we make a significant contribution to the UK economy
through the gross value added (GVA) from our operations, and from the spending
in the economy by employees in our value chain.

Finally, our alumni provide talent for other businesses, and our thought capital
and know-how make a contribution to business and society more generally.

On the other hand, our operations do have some negative impacts – on the
environment - albeit small. Our programmes to reduce these are ongoing, and we
have already made considerable progress, as described in the environmental
section of this website, and in our sustainability scorecard. We remain
committed to minimising the natural capital depletion arising from our operations,
as quickly as practical.

4Ps of product company

IBM Marketing Mix (4Ps) Strategy

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

Let us start the IBM Marketing Mix:

Product:

IBM, a short form for International Business Machines Corporation, is a leading technological
organization serving worldwide. IBM has a huge portfolio of products and services in its
marketing mix befitting the enormous brand that it is. These offerings from IBM are classified in
the classes of distributed computing, security, psychological registering, business, portable,
information and examination, It Framework and Internet of Things. IBM’s inventions are
robotized teller machine (ATM), floppy plate, hard circle drive, stripe cards, social databases,
SQL programming dialect, UPC standardized tag and many others. IBM offers a unique service
called Cloud Data Encryption Services (ICDES), securing client data through advanced
technologies. IBM has its business widely distributed in computing and versatile innovations
meeting through InterConnect each year. Equipment for these classes incorporates IBM's
POWER microchips, utilized by many supporting gaming frameworks, including the Xbox 360,
the hugely popular PlayStation 3, and Nintendo's Wii U. IBM Secure Blue being an encryption
equipment can be incorporated with microprocessors. In 2014, IBM saw it was contributing $3
billion to the upcoming five years to plan a neural chip which copies the human cerebrum, with
its 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion neurotransmitters that utilize only 1 kilowatt of power. In
2016, the organization forwarded all-streak clusters intended for small and medium sized
organizations, incorporating programming for information pressure, previewing and provisioning
and crosswise across different systems. An innovation stage, IBM Watson that utilizes
characteristic dialect preparing as well as machine figuring to uncover experiences from
unstructured data. Watson has been connected to businesses, social insurance, designers, and also
colleges. IBM’s association with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in helping discover
treatment alternatives for patients of oncology.

Image: flickr-photos/-heinecke-/

ome of the important developments and

inventions which IBM has been a part of are as
follows-
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Marketing mix

 Floppy Disk
 Automated Teller Machine or ATM
 Universal Product Code or UPC
 Hard Disk-Drive
 Relational Database
 Magnetic Stripe-Card
 Financial Swap
 SABRE airline-reservation-system
 Programming Language titled Fortran
 DRAM or dynamic-random-access memory
 SOI or silicon-on-insulator
 Copper wiring found in semiconductors
 Watson artificial-intelligence
Some of the products in its current portfolio are
as follows-

 Unit record equipments like calculators, printers,

collators, verifiers, keypunches, tabulators and
accounting machines
 Time Equipment machines
 Duplicators
 Dictating equipments and typewriters
 Computers that were supported on vacuum tubes
 Solid-state computers supported on discrete
transistors like IBM 1400 series and 7090 series
 Solid-state-computer peripherals like punched
card, printer equipment and da5ta storage-units
 Embedded systems and application-specific
systems like document processing,
telecommunications, medical equipment and
manufacturing
 Computer software like middleware and operating
systems
 Services
 Data Centres

Price:

IBM, along with a few other companies, dominate the technology market worldwide. Choosing
strategies to implement the right decision making in terms of financial management and activities
that would offer incentives to clients and help in creating better value propositions is at the very
core of the IBM philosophy. IBM has caused disruptions by radical improvements in evaluating
strategies which are identified through centralized server programming and choosing the costs
that will rely on upon client number and not current framework where power and sizes are
measured on centralized server's MIPS. This strategy in its marketing mix allows estimation and
helping in giving a harmony between cost and utility. It has taken further the pay-as-you-go
estimating technique and executed on few programming items.

Customers are more intelligent, aware and

demanding. They need the best product at
minimum possible value and hence IBM has
tried to select right initiatives that would offer
maximised value to customers and would also
help in generating good revenues. Its various
business ventures have resulted in higher
margins and revenue streams. Its operating
margins have extended from 16.8% to 24.3% in
years 2004 to 2013 respectively and its profit
margin for same period has been from 9% to
16.5%.

IBM has made radical changes

in pricing policies related to mainframe software.
It has decided that prices will depend on user
number instead of current system where power
and size are measured on mainframe’s MIPS.
This innovative value added pricing policy will
be a landmark both for consumer and company
and will help in providing a balance between the
two. It has taken pay-as-you-go
pricing strategy and has decided to implement
on few software products.
IBM has shortlisted twenty popular products and
will let its customers decide to mix and match
them to meet monthly subscription plan that will
have a rental model with discount
schemes. Brand has offered 0% financing on
services, software and hardware for U.S citizens
and international customers who are spending $
500,000 and $ 300,000 respectively. In case of
large deployments brand has put up a provision
of deferring customer payment for nearly six
months.

Place:

IBM is a global brand name and its products & services are spread across the world. Banking on
globalization and spreading out to different branches and workplaces in the worldwide market
IBM is truly a global organization with presence in over 170 countries. Innovative work research
facilities are indeed needed by each IT organization. IBM has twelve such labs in IBM Research
in spots like Texas, Beijeing, Bangalore, California and Melbourne. Apart from these IBM has
international business subsidiaries in such countries as France, Germany, Norway, Japan, Italy,
Poland, Romania, Sweden, Vietnam, China, Belgium, Bulgaria and Austria. IBM has around 70
branches and subsidiaries spread worldwide and this massive presence allows it to penetrate,
expand and grow faster than rival technology companies.

Read more about IBM marketing strategy: IBM SWOT Analysis & Competitors

Promotion:

IBM has been a fore-runner when it comes to advertising the brand. With a specific goal to keep
up with its giant customer base IBM has invested reasonably in full scale advertising exercises.
Customers being exceptionally complex and demanding, IBM keeps them satisfied leveraging its
brand name and high top of the mind recall to have a higher business demand worldwide.
Advertisements are very appealing and educational so clients have a good idea of the services
they can expect. IBM’s promotions appear on TVs and Radio, Newspapers, magazines, online
including social media as well as word of mouth promotions. Having earned the moniker of Big
Blue for its efficient utilization, its shade in blue in the, logo, bundling and above par services
help it achieve a cult status which is popular throughout the globalized world of high technology
business demands.

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

Process:

IBM’s technical knowhow and Administration offerings use Redbooks, that are openly accessible
online books around accepted procedures with IBM systems, and developer Works, which is a
site for programming engineers as well as IT experts. These include how-to articles as well as
instructional exercises, code tests, programming downloads, discourse discussions, web journals,
podcasts and different asset tools for designers and specialized professionals. IBM is also a well
known research association, holding a record for most licenses produced by any business (starting
at 2017) for 2 decades in a row.

Physical Evidence:

IBM’s main physical evidence are its offices, hardware, software for computers etc, which are the
actual customer & client touchpoints. IT outsourcing likewise speaks to a noteworthy
administration offered by IBM, with more than 40 server farms worldwide. AlphaWorks is IBM's
hotspot for developing programming advancements, and SPSS is a product bundle utilized for
measurable examination. IBM's Kenexa suite gives business and maintenance arrangements, and
incorporates the BrassRing, a candidate following framework utilized by a great many
organizations for recruiting. IBM likewise claims The Weather Company, which gives climate
determining and incorporates weather.com and Weather Underground.
People:

IBM has evolved in this industry because of the high quality people it has been associated with.
Having most licenses for continuous 22 years and its workers being its pride as they recieved five
of Nobel Prizes and a National Medals of Science, 10 honors in the National Medals of
Technology and six in the Turing Awards for their outstanding accomplishments reflects on the
quality and dedication of employees. IBM standouts out amongst the most productive and one of
the biggest worldwide organizations with 400,000 people. IBM puts focus on open
correspondence among all its branches. With its conveyance system that is exceptionally efficient
and a store network of proficient providers it is a very organic and free organization to work for.
IBM business people include accomplices, clients and designers who accumulate important data
through its group contacts. AT&T and IBM have declared consolidation of cloud and Internet of
Things to give typical stageless devices to designers. IBM’s SoftLayer is a very devoted server,
facilitating and distributing computing supplies, which in 2011 facilitated more than 81,000
servers to more than 26,000 customers. Hence, this summarize the IBM marketing mix as an
overview of the IT brand is completed.

About IBM:

International Business Machines Corporation called IBM is a multinational organization based in

America and specializes in innovation technological solutions. Based in Armonk, New York,
United States, IBM is operating in more than 170 countries. Starting off in 1911 as the
Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) and renaming to "Worldwide Business
Machines" in 1924. IBM, a public company of USA is a technology and innovation giant
contributing to the IT industry. IBM was started in the year 1911 by Charles Ranlett Flint,
combining four distinct organizations and was later renamed as the International Business
Machines in 1924. According to Fortune in 2012 IBM as a firm of United States of America was
positioned 2nd biggest for workers, 4th biggest for total market capitalization,19th biggest for
income and 9th biggest for generally beneficial to society.