The Marketing Mix and Accounting Information Systems
ITEM 16: THE MARKETING MIX
Once the company has chosen its target market or segment, it must create a plan of action to stimulate demand for its products. This is known as defining the marketing mix plan.
This plan involves four key instruments, known as the 4Ps of the marketing mix: Product, Price, Place (Distribution), and Promotion.
1. Product
The first decision a company makes concerns the characteristics its product must have to attract potential customers. This includes design, quality, branding, packaging, guarantees, after-sales services, and more. It also involves decisions about modifying existing products or developing new ones.
2. Price
Pricing decisions are crucial to consumer response. Companies must carefully consider when to set or change prices. These decisions involve studying product costs, consumer price sensitivity, and competitor pricing strategies.
3. Place (Distribution)
Distribution refers to how companies get their products to consumers, ensuring they are available where and when needed. This involves deciding whether to distribute directly or through intermediaries, in large stores, specialty stores, e-commerce, or traditional channels.
4. Promotion (Communication)
Once the product is designed, priced, and distributed, the company must promote it and motivate consumers. This involves communicating the product’s characteristics and advantages over competitors. Promotional measures include advertising campaigns, public relations, and sales activities.
By combining these four components, companies create different marketing mixes. The optimal mix depends on the company’s resources and the characteristics of the chosen market.
Marketing mix decisions are integrated and interconnected. Companies must decide on product attributes, set prices, choose distribution channels, and develop communication strategies to ensure their products are known and appreciated by the market.
ITEM 17: ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEM: OBLIGATIONS AND ACCOUNTING BOOKS
To facilitate decision-making, an accounting information system selects, processes, and summarizes relevant economic and financial data.
Accounting is a system for recording, archiving, and reporting financial transactions involving a company’s assets.
The accounting information system is based on laws and principles (double-entry bookkeeping, valuation principles, true and fair view, etc.). It uses instruments such as accounts and balance sheets. The balance sheet represents assets and equity. Accounts track each element, and the set of economic accounts forms the balance sheet. There are also non-economic accounts, expense accounts, and revenue accounts, which together form the income statement.
To ensure consistency in accounting concepts, standardization is achieved through the general accounting plan. This plan establishes the accounts representing heritage elements, including their names, code numbers for computer processing, concepts they represent, and how their variations are recorded.
Commercial legislation requires companies to keep chronological records of their operations and prepare periodic reports or inventories. These documents include:
1. Journal
The journal is a mandatory book where daily operations related to the company’s activity are recorded. These entries are called seats. The journal provides a history of all transactions representing property variations.
2. Ledger
The ledger is a bound book used to track the balance of each account at any given time. It captures the movement of each account on the dates operations were performed, complementing the information in the journal.
3. Inventory and Annual Accounts Book
This is a mandatory book for all businesses. It collects inventories and different amounts and balances, including:
a) Inventory
A detailed list of all assets and liabilities (assets, rights, and obligations) belonging to the company at a specific time, properly valued.
b) Trial Balance or Balance of Evidence
This verifies that journal entries have been correctly transcribed to the ledger. If not, the results will be unstable.
4. Book of Minutes
Mandatory for companies with a corporate legal form, this book records decisions made by general meetings and other collective bodies of the company.
The law requires the legalization of binding books in the commercial register of the province where the company is headquartered. They must be kept clearly and in chronological order. Software now supports this process, which previously involved formalities. Generally, books must be preserved for six years.