McCormick Marketing Mix

Case 1

Questions

1. The marketing mix is made up of the 4Ps, product, place (distribution), promotion and price. For which of the 4Ps did McCormick not develop innovative tactics and practices?

Cyrus McCormick’s invention, the reaper- machine to harvest wheat, was very significant to the United States Agricultural development. He developed innovative tactics to distribute his product, to promote it and to price it against the competition. However he did not do this for his product itself. In order to reduce freights costs, his product was shipped partially assembled. The farmer had it to finish up the assembling by attaching the wheels and other parts to then adjust the settings and work their machine. Cyrus knew that key for the reaper to effectively perform was in the assembling of the machine itself. He learned after that many farmers were not properly maintaining their machines and this was leading to the damage of their crops. This finding leads him to providing the detailed assembling instructions with the sale of each machine, and the urge to sale more protective equipment.

2. Was it product innovation or innovation in the diffusion (the marketing) of product innovation that was at the root of McCormick’s success?

The root for McCormick’s success was definitely the innovation in the diffusion of the product innovation. When he created his first machine, he was not satisfied by just writing a patent of his invention. His main efforts were to mass market his machine and manufacture it to different places. McCormick knew that buy mass selling his product he was going to be able to reduce cost in creating the machine, he will earn more profits which he could then invest back in the product and market development. The final result would be greater sales. When his invention began to expand he started