Analyse The Major Marketing Activities

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

With `ATHE

Course Title: Diploma Level 7 in Strategic Management

Unit: 7.3: Strategic Resource Management

Level: Level 7

Tutor Name: Tunde Adunola

Assignment No: 4

Student Name: Irina Pintilie

a] Analyse the major marketing activities of a business organization and explain how they contribute to the achievement of the overall objectives.

Marketing could be defined as the process of creating, pricing, distributing and promoting goods, services and ideas to build satisfying exchange relationships with customers and to improve and maintain favourable relationships with stakeholders in a dynamic environment. (Pride & Ferrell, 2011).

The variables-product , price, distribution and promoting are well known as the marketing mix because marketing managers order what type of each element to use and in what quantity. (Pride & Ferrell, 2011).

Individuals and organization enrol on marketing to make easier exchanges the provision or transfer of goals, services and ideas in return for something of value. Four conditions must be for exchange to take place. First one, two or more individuals, groups, or organization must participate and each must have something of value that the other party wants. Second one refers to the exchange, which should give a benefit to both parties implicated in the transaction. The third one, each party must trust in the promise of the "something of value" held by the other; to build it, the parties to the exchange must meet up expectation. Marketing activities should try to develop and maintain satisfying exchange relationships with all stakeholders-those contributors who have a "stake" or claim, in some aspect of company's products, operations, markets, industry and results. (Pride & Ferrell, 2011).

The marketing environment, which contains competitive, political, legal, economic and regulatory, technological and socio-cultural forces, surrounds the customers and the marketing mix. These forces can be a threat to marketers, but at the same time they create opportunities for new products and new methods of finding new customers.

According to the marketing concept, a company should try to supply goods that satisfy customer's necessities through a coordinated set of activities that also permit the company to achieve its purposes. Customers’ satisfaction is the marketing biggest objective. Organizations that improve different kinds of activities consistent with the marketing concept become marketing oriented organization. (Pride & Ferrell, 2011).

Relationships marketing imply establishing long term, mutually satisfying buyer-customer relationships. Customer relationship management concentrates on using data about customers to develop marketing strategies that create and keep wanted customer relationships. Managing customer relationships asked for identification of patterns of buying behaviour and for using that data to concentrate on the most promising and profitable customers.

Value represents a customer's subjective assignment of benefits relative to costs in finding the worth of a product. Benefits mean anything a buyer gets in exchanges, whereas costs mean anything a customer must give up getting the benefits the product services. Proper functioning of marketing plan relates on coordinating marketing activities, motivating marketing personnel and communicating effectively within the unit. (Pride & Ferrell, 2011).

Marketing activities take placed in both business and non-profit companies. Marketing activities represents the fuel to increase global economy. Knowledge of marketing enhances buyer awareness. And, finally, marketing creates many exciting career opportunities.

The structure and relationships of a marketing unit, which includes lines of authority and responsibility that tie and lead individuals, strongly influence marketing activities. Organisations that truly adopt the marketing concept improve a distinct organizational culture: a culture relied on shared set of benefits that makes the customer's necessities the significant point of the firm's decisions about strategy and operations. Firms focus on customer's needs and desires. (Pride & Ferrell, 2011).

If the marketing notion plays a role as a guiding philosophy, the marketing unit will be nearly directed with other functional fields, such as production, finance and human resources. Marketing must socialise with other departments in a number of pivot areas.

Now effectively a firm's marketing management can design and integrate marketing strategies also it is linked on how the marketing unit is organized. Organizing marketing activities in ways that fits with a firm's strategic marketing perspective increase performance. In this way efficient organizational planning can provide the company a competitive advantage. The organizational structure of a marketing department determines the authority relationships among marketing personnel and indicates who is responsible for making certain decisions and performing certain activities, this internal structure helping directly marketing activities. The marketing department's competence to improve ties with customers increases the marketing orientation of the company and in positively linked to the firm's performance. (Pride & Ferrell, 2011).

The result of marketing planning is the improvement of a marketing plan, which emphasise all the activities needed to incorporate marketing strategies. The plan foster communication among workers, states responsibilities and deadlines, indicates how resources are splitted to reach purposes and helps marketing managers monitor and assess the performance of marketing strategy.

Economic forces in the marketing area affect at the same time marketer's and customer's decisions and activities.

The determination of a person's buying power is linked with the economic condition and the size of the resources-money, goods and services that can be traded in an exchange that permit the individual to buy. The major financial sources of buying power represent income, credit and wealth. (Pride & Ferrell, 2011).

A few modifications in demographics and diversity have a negative impact on marketing activities. For example, one demographic change that affects the marketplace is the growth proportion of older customers. The number of single ones is also increased, so that means that people’s needs and desires products have changed.

Marketers should be careful at ethical standards for acceptable conduct from several viewpoints: company, government, industry, customers, special-interest groups and society at large. When marketing activities deflects from reasonable standards, the exchange activity can breakdown, leading in customers’ dissatisfaction, lawsuits and lack of trust (Pride & Ferrell, 2011).

b] Systematically appraise the following processes help an organization to develop its markets;

1] Segmentation

The term market relates to different things for different people. We all know about supermarket, labour market stock market, flea market and fish market. All of them have a common base. Briefly, a market represents people or organization with necessities or wants and with the capacity the willingness to purchase. (Lamb et al, 2010)

Therefore market represents a subgroup of people or firm sharing one or more features that produce them to have similar product needs. At one hand, we can establish every single person and every company in the word as a market segment because each of them is particular. At the other hand, we can establish the whole consumer market as one large market segment and the business market as another massive segment. All people have some similar features and necessities, as well as all companies. (Lamb et al, 2010)

From a marketing viewpoint, market segment can be seen between the two extremes. The process of separating a market into meaningful, relatively closely and identifiable segments or groups is named market segmentation. The aim of market segmentation is to allow the marketer to tailor marketing mixes to reach the needs of one or more certain segments.

Market segmentation is very important in the marketing strategy of almost all companies that reach success and is a powerful marketing tool for a couple of reasons. Almost all markets contain groups of people or organizations with different product necessities and preferences. Market segmentation helps marketers to determine customer needs and desires more accurate. Because market segments is different in terms of size and potential, segmentation helps decision makers to become more precisely, to determine marketing purposes and to make a better evaluation when goals are more precise. (Lamb et al, 2010)

Marketers segment markets for three significant causes. First one refers to segmentation which allows marketers to find groups of customers with similar desires and to examine the features and buying behaviour of these groups. Second one emphasise the idea that segmentation supply marketers with information that help them design marketing mixes specifically fitted with the features and wishes of one or more segments. Third one point out that segmentation is consistent with the marketing notion of satisfying buyer’s desires and needs while meeting the organization's purposes. (Lamb et al, 2010)

Marketers use a lot of terms to various age group such as: newborn, infants, young children, twins, teens a young adults, adults, baby boomers and seniors. Age segmentation could be considered an important instrument, as a brief research of the market possibility of several age segments.

Through allowances, earnings and gifts, children represent a great deal of consumption. Teens and young adults have extraordinary buying power because they want to try whatever is new and trendy, and tend to switch their minds quickly about different items. In addition, they have knowledge about brands and also marketing strategies. As a general statement, could be argued that adults tend to believe less in brands and they are sceptical of big business. All these happened because many of them are becoming parents and they make buying decisions with thought for and input from their families.

Regarding older consumers, they percept retirement not as passive time, but on the contrary, as an active time they use to explore new knowledge, travel, even volunteer and try to spend time with family and friends as much as possible. (Lamb et al, 2010).

Income represents a significant popular demographic variable for segmenting markets because income level influences buyers’ desires and establish their buying power. Many markets are sectioned by income, containing the markets for clothing, automobiles and even food. (Lamb et al, 2010).

At the same time the demographic factors such as gender, age and income do not sufficiently explain why consumer purchasing behaviour varies over time. Usually, buying patterns among people of the same age and gender vary due to different stages of the family life cycle. The family life cycle represents a succession of phase conditioned by a combination of age, marital status and presence or absence of children. Consumers are receptive to marketing struggles at certain points in the life cycle. Dating and engaged couples are one of the biggest spenders. (Lamb et al, 2010).

Organisation characteristic are also important segmentation variables, such as geographic location, type of it, its size and product use. Some markets are inclined to be only regional because of consumers’ preference to buy from local suppliers and distant suppliers may face different inconvenience competing in terms of price and service. Hence, companies that sell to geographically concentrated industries benefit by locating close to their markets.

Segmenting by customer type allows business marketers to tailor their marketing mixes to the unique needs of particular types of organizations or industries. Many companies are finding this form of segmentation to be quite effective. (Lamb et al, 2010).

Many products, especially raw materials such as steel, wood and petroleum, have different applications. How customers utilise an item may influence the quantity they purchase their buying criteria.

Lots of business marketers consider useful to segment buyers and prospective customers on the way of how they buy. For example, organisations can segment some business markets by taking into consideration key purchasing criteria, such as price, quality, technical support and service. (Lamb et al, 2010).

The buyers strategies of consumers may supply useful segments. The personal features of themselves affect their buying behaviour and thus give a viable base for segmenting some business markets.

The aim of market segmentation, in consumer and business markets, is to find marketing opportunities. Markets are dynamic; therefore it is important that organisation proactively have under observation their segmentation strategies over time (Lamb et al, 2010).

2] Targeting

First of all it should be mentioned that market segments represents groups of high-potential prospective buyers with common features and needs that distinguish them from other high-potential market segments. Therefore identifying, defining and targeting these groups’ helps marketers to develop all aspects of the strategic marketing planning process, comprising devising attractive marketing mix offering, product positioning strategies and formulating segmentation for efficiently reaching target markets and also controlling whole plan effectiveness (Pride & Ferrell, 2012).

Three segmentation strategies can be considered: undifferentiated (mass marketing), differentiated (target marketing) and concentrated (product differentiated or niche marketing.

First one, undifferentiated refers to situation where all prospective customers have the same MAD-R features, the product is new with no competition and resources are enough to undertake the mass production and marketing initiatives required to serve this mass market. In this way all segments comprising its market as a single market and promote its item to this market with the same marketing mix. As it could be noticed, it will save the company production and promotion costs, but would make its offerings vulnerable to offerings of competitive firms targeting specific segments of this market.

This strategy type of targeting could be very effective under two conditions. One of them relates to a large number of buyers in a total market must have similar necessities for the product, a situation called homogeneous market. A marketer who uses a single marketing mix for a total market of buyers with a variety of needs would discover that the marketing mix satisfies very few people. According to the second condition, the company must be able to develop and maintain, at the same time, a single marketing mix that satisfies buyer’s necessities. In this way the organisation must be able to find a set of needs common to the most buyers in a total market and have resources and managerial skills to gain a sizable portion of that market (Sandhusen, 2000).

The second one concentrated targeting strategy through market segmentation. For example, when an organisation leads its marketing efforts toward a single market segment using one marketing mix, it is using a concentrated targeting strategy. The big advantage is that permit a firm to specialize. The company analyse the patters and necessities of a certain customer group and then concentrates on satisfying that group’s needs. In this way a company could generate a large sales volume by reaching a single segment. Moreover, focusing on a single segment directs an organisation with limited resources to compete with bigger companies that may have overlooked segments. At the same time, if firm sales rely on a single segment and the segment’s demand for the item declines, it means that the whole company’s financial strength deteriorates. In addition, when a firm enter into one segment and becomes well entrenched, its popularity may keep it from moving into other segments (Pride & Ferrell, 2012).

The last one, differentiated targeting strategy refers to a company whose efforts were at two or more segments by developing a marketing mix for each segment. There are cases where a company, which uses a concentrated strategy successfully in one market, decides to expand its efforts to include additional segments. Marketing mixes for a differentiated strategy may vary as to distribution ways, product characteristics, promotion methods and prices. In this way a company may increase sales in the aggregate market through a differentiated strategy because its marketing mixes are aimed at more people. For some firms this type of strategy could be considered advantageous because the sale of products to additional segments may absorb excess capacity. But, as the same time, it demands more production processes, material and people. It could be possible that production costs may be higher than with a concentrated strategy (Pride & Ferrell, 2012).

3] Positioning

Positioning represents the process of designing a brand so that it can hold a distinct and valued place in the target consumer's mind relative to other brands and then this distinctiveness is transmit it through advertising. Positioning relates on a perceived frame of tangible or intangible characteristics. The importance of positioning can be acknowledged by admitting that buyers make a perceptual space in their minds for all the brands they might consider buying. A perceptual space means how one brand in terms of as quality, taste, price or social display value-in relation to those same dimensions in other brands (O’Guinn, 2009).

The dominant business company has many possible advantages over its less dominant competitors in the pursuit of internal economies. Its dominant product-market position allow workers to have more credibility in promises that the company can and will give them employment stability, work satisfaction and socioeconomic mobility-inducements that are crucial to the development of value and the generation of internal economies. The dominant company has a better incentive than its competitors to invest in in-house research and improvement because, even apart from patent protection, it has the organizational capacity to converts new concepts into profitable innovations and to supervise the utilization of the productive resources.

With its reliable market position in its existing product lines and geographical regions, the dominant company can also think about the future and devotee resources to the increase of new product lines and access new regions. As the markets for already existing product lines become saturated, product substitutes appear, or consumer tastes alter, the company will have the organizational capacity to change the geographic range and product diversity of its activities-changes in the aim of the enterprise that over the long run are crucial for keeping competitive advantage. When it does use the market to guarantee supplies of vertically related inputs, the dominant firm can utilize its important buying power to reach better service and lower prices from suppliers than are available to other buyers who depict only small shares of the relevant claim.

The appearance of dominant companies also pursuits the separation of asset ownership from managerial control, which in fact develop conditions conducive to enduring competitive advantage. The existence of a dominant company that, as manifested by its sustained its organizational capability cuts the incertitude for investors who know little or maybe nothing about important strategic managers or enterprise strategies (Lazonick, 1994).

Once a target market is chosen, a company must take into account how to position its products. Product positioning is related to the decisions and activities followed to develop and keep a certain notion of the firm's in buyer’s minds. When marketers come up with product, they try to position it so that it seems to have the features that the goal market must desires, this projected image being significant important.

A products position is the effect of buyers’ perception of the product's features relative to those of competitive brands. Consumers make lots of purchase decisions on a regular basis. To avoid a keeping re-evaluation of many products, buyers send to group, products in their minds to simplify purchasing decisions. What the marketers try to do is to influence and shape consumers concepts or perceptions of products through advertising. (Pride & Ferrell, 2012)

Marketers can use a couple of bases for product positioning. For example a common basis for positioning products is to use competitors. In this way a firm can position a product to compete head-on with another brand, as PepsiCo has done against Coca-Cola, or to avoid competition, as 7UP has done relative to other soft-drink producers. Head-to-head competition may be a marketer's positioning objective only if the product's performance features are at least equal to those of competitive brands and if the products have a lower price. Head-to-head positioning could be appropriate when the price is higher, but only when the product's performance characteristics are superior.

On the other hand, positioning to sidestep competition may be best when the product's performance features do not significantly vary from competing brand (Pride & Ferrell, 2012)

A well-built market space, precisely identifying the product characteristics which are relevant to consumers and consider the differences between clusters of consumers, might be used by an organization to intensify consumer's evaluation of the companies' product. The market space will show the place of the brands in relation to one another and in relation to the ideal products. The firm goal to enhance consumption of its item would want in a way to locate its product close to the ideal product and far from others rivals products.

A strategy that help an organization optimally position its brand within the market space would be to alter the product in such a way to become the product in closer approximation to the consumers' ideal products. Another strategy would be educating the public about the product, giving information to consumers that the product is close to the ideal products, even though the public may not currently accomplish this. A third one, even though it is not a fair one, would be to communicate the public that the product is near the ideal products; even this is not really the true. Efforts to alter buyers believes about a though in a way that runs opposite to objective facts about the product is known as repositioning ( Ries &Trout, 1981, cited in Mullen & Johnson, 1990).

For grounded reasons, many consumer psychologists have been concerned with consumers believes in terms of product price. This research can be split into three topic areas: differences in price, the price-quality relationships, and changes in price.

Frequently, buyers suppose a relationship between the price of an item and the quality of it. If they will have to choose between two apparently similar products, the cheaper one won't always be chosen. From time to time buyers will select to buy the best or the most expensive product in exchange for prestige and social recognition. With reference to prices, the way in which a price will be seen is based on the relation between the actual price and the adaptation level for that product category.

Economic value analysis claims the most labour and resources of the market and rival assignments, but it pays off quantifying both the value of the product in the already existing market and its entire competing place (Mullen & Johnson, 1990).