Bharat Petroleum Marketing Mix (4Ps) & Marketing Strategy

Bharat Petroleum Product Strategy:

Bharat Petroleum (BPCL) is one of the leading oil and gas companies based out of India. Bharat Petroleum has the following business verticals:

• Refinery

• Retail

• Upstream

• Gas

• Industrial/Commercial

• Lubricants

• LPG

• Aviation

Bharat Petroleum alone has 13% of the India’s refining capacity. Under retail Bharat Petroleum has 27.3% market share, 7000 industrial customers, and approximately 23% market share in lubricants, LPG and aviation. The brands sold by Bharat Petroleum are Speed, Bharat Gas, Mak Lubricants (for two, three and four wheelers, heavy vehicles, industrial and railway lubricants), etc. Bharat Petroleum also offers a ‘green’ version of Speed oil for eco-friendliness.

Image: company website

This concludes the product strategy in Bharat Petroleum marketing mix & strategy.

Bharat Petroleum Price/Pricing Strategy:

Below is the pricing strategy in Bharat Petroleum marketing mix strategy:

Bharat Petroleum follows a low pricing strategy based on competition and external factors in its marketing mix as it a government owned corporation it is socially responsible. Bharat Petroleum makes sure that its retail products like Bharat Gas, LPG, etc.

are affordable for the masses of the country. BPCL also is striving for boosting e-payments on gas stations, card payments. It employed ERP to make ordering gas cylinder easy for households. Payment for the same can be done by cards and cash as well. This is lone with the efforts of the government to digitise the country and for more financial inclusion.

Bharat Petroleum Place & Distribution Strategy:

Following is the distribution strategy in the Bharat Petroleum marketing mix:

Bharat Petroleum follows the following process in the channel of distribution for Bharat Gas:

Crude Oil Purchase -> Refinery -> Warehouse -> Wholesaler -> Retailer -> Customer.

SAP system is used for taking orders. Once the order is placed by the end customer, the retailer takes care of the logistics of making the gas cylinder available to the customer. For petroleum, the petrol is dispensed directly from Bharat Petroleum owned petrol pumps. For industrial and railways lubricants, LPG, etc. the channel distribution is shorter, with less number middle men.

Bar codes are used to track and identify barrels.

Bharat Petroleum Promotion & Advertising Strategy:

The promotional and advertising strategy in the Bharat Petroleum marketing mix is as follows:

As Bharat Petroleum is a company with diverse types pf business segments which are B2B and business to customer, it requires different types of promotions for both. B2B generally involves more specific advertisements which are targeted at a small number of prospective customers or existing customers. Bharat Petroleum tends to promote its brands individually than an umbrella advisement for Bharat Petroleum. For offering dealerships it advertises in newspaper with the invitation to tender. Bharat Petroleum also occasionally uses print media and billboards to promote its B2C products.

Since this is a service marketing brand, here are the other three Ps to make it the 7Ps marketing mix of Bharat Petroleum (BPCL).

Process:

Bharat Petroleum used SAP software extensively. On consulting front, ERP application front, business intelligence, etc. SAP implementation has helped Bharat Petroleum achieve spot-on decision making, efficiency, more sales and reduced wastages. The processes for BPCL also includes a framework form refinery extraction to filtration to distribution through pipelines and reaching the end users.

People:

Bharat Petroleum has more than 14,000 employees. Bharat Petroleum is known to employ the best management as its Chief Financial Officer (CMO) won the Most Influential CFOs of India award. On the responsibility side of human resources, the new pension scheme and the seventh pay commission is bound to affect salary structures of employees of Bharat Petroleum. The employees enjoy a lot of perks like reimbursements for expenses made on food, education of children, retirement benefit, job security, medical coverage, and much more.

Physical Evidence:

Bharat Petroleum’s biggest physical evidence are petrol pumps and gas cylinders for households. The various awards and accolades collected by Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited are a physical evidence of the work done by them. Starting by the recent awards, like Silver Award at Association of Business Communication 2016. This award celebrates exceptional performance in the field of business communication. Moving on, Bharat Petroleum also bagged the first prize in SCOPE awards which is the head organization of PSU in India. This completes the Bharat Petroleum marketing mix.

About Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL):

Bharat Petroleum was formed when government took over Bumrah Shell in 1976. It is a government owned company which deals in oil and gas. It is situated in Mumbai and Kochi. It was the third largest company by turnover in the financial year 2015. Bharat Petroleum has a majority shareholding of the government at 54.93%. Bharat Petroleum has four subsidiaries: Bharat PetroResources, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd., Petronet CCK Ltd. And BPC-KIAL Furl Farm Facility Ltd. Bharat Petroleum has entered into thirteen joint ventures based of refining activities like city gas distribution, KNG, Trading activities, Aviation Services and Pipeline.

Globally the oil and gas industry saw a deep slump in 2015 when per barrel price fell below $40, which slightly recovered during the last year. This also impacted BPCL.

This article has been researched & authored by the Content & Research Team which comprises of MBA students, management professionals, and industry experts. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

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