MARKETING PORTFOLIOTable of contents TOC h u z Market research and its use in a marketing plan PAGEREF _2hfy2u7nuow5 h 3Competitors for the favourite product PAGEREF _snzczccdjlzr h 3PESTLE and its effects on the introduction of new product and service PAGEREF _i0ju1pj2vdu2 h 4SWOT analysis and its use in marketing plan PAGEREF _1ers41jbwycc h 5Segmentation, targeting and positioning in marketing PAGEREF _hb5pn8ymodlu h 6Marketing ethics PAGEREF _6plfw0pmeagi h 6References PAGEREF _2woz5xjdmdp0 h 8Market research and its use in a marketing planWhile every advertising holds the potential to develop your brand, optimized and targeted marketing is sure to improve results. A significant component of adequately marketing your brand is forming a complete marketing strategy.Market research is the overall task of building issues about your proposed market and discerning solutions for the same. When it gets to marketing, it is solely about Return on Investments (ROI).
Without market research to support your policy, your brand could be wasting money off. Concerning your business, this could be the disparity between success and failure. Market research enables you to enhance the advantage of every dollar spent on your marketing.Market research needs to be the primary driver of modifications to your company’s marketing mix – the combination of product, price, place, and promotion. This is generally referred to as ‘the 4 Ps’. With these elements, you can set your business in the best likely place to enter your target market.
The marketing strategy of Mercedes Benz attests what a phenomenal brand Mercedes is, and why, it is the top most recognized global automobile brands. This great success is not merely an occurrence, but an exemplary use of effective marketing strategy all spun into one.Mercedes Benz is recognized as the world’s oldest producer of luxury carmaker and the status is doubtful to go away in the imminent future. This marketing mix peers at the company’s marketing and advertising strategies it has executed over the years to set itself as a lead in the strongly competing automobile industry.Mercedes divides its luxury ; state of art wheels on a combination of demographics, Psychographics ; Behavioural determinants. It focuses on buyers from the upper-class social group, Specialists ; Businesspeople who are inclined towards the latest technology adorned vehicles, extended safety, enhanced styling ; higher efficiency. Differentiation targeting strategy is employed by Mercedes to draw the patrons and meet their demands.It focuses on simple buyers who are passionate to drive and cars describe them and, what their style statement ; vogue is Putting itself by emotional allure and building top of mind awareness has eased the brand in growing as the most celebrated luxury car creators in the world.
Growing desire for luxury cars in Asian markets, improving lifestyle ; growth rate of 33% in the leisure division in emerging country like India is something because of which increased number of members are foraying into this division. Significant numbers of people are now striving to consume each other’s market share. In emerging countries, Mercedes is operating aggressively whereas a label like BMW is not able to survive in such markets.Competitors for the favourite productEvery product in the market similar to, or a substitute for the product in the same geographic environment is a competitor for the product. A competitive analysis is completed to identify and analyse the strength and weakness of the current competition and potential future competition of a product. It does not only help in identifying the major effects that the companies face but also provides the detailed description regarding the legislative contribution of rules and regulations that are accompanied with the marketing process. For example, PlayStation (PS), a product by Sony, directly competes in the market with Xbox, a product by Microsoft.
PlayStation 4 accompanies 30% slimmer and 16% lighter than the past variations. It accompanies fantastic HDR visuals, Video storing abilities of 500GB or 1TB. Sony launched PSP which is handy, portable and can be played anywhere. PlayStation’s price is slightly higher than its rivals. In any case, by utilizing the idea of differential pricing strategy, PlayStation can increase its benefits by making clients pay for its items according to their spending abilities. Being a Sony product, it is accessible over the world. Its items are sold basically in the Sony stores which are the physical ones, which likewise fills in as client support and service center.
Whereas, in 2002 Xbox live was enabled to play video games with or without broadband connection. Xbox One offers a 4K Blu-ray option, better media apps and Dolby Atmos support. Microsoft shadows a competitive based strategy for Xbox in its marketing mix pricing strategy and uses its huge distribution channels to sell this product and attract customers.In conjecture, the effects of competition are not only processed but leads to building of a new innovative product to increase the profit margins of the company.
PESTLE and its effects on the introduction of new product and serviceThere are many companies who does PESTLE analysis to have an idea for their future strategies and market before launching their product. PESTLE analysis tells about the condition the business might be in and work as a bird eye to sight the circumstances that surrounds your trade or business. PESTLE is a term in which each letter donates an aspect for the study. Like:P: political factorE: economic effectS: social factorT: technology factorL: legal factorE: environmental factorThe chosen product is Apple iPad, as a relevant article related to this criterion of analysing the PESTLE (High, L. V. Analysis of Apple Inc. p.6-8).
Here the detailed description of the political and legal drives, economic factors, social and cultural factors, technological factors, legal factors and environmental issues that i-pad faced at the initial stage of launching services into the market. The political issues are identically identified within the sections of the report as it basically operates upon the influential factors, to create a conducive business environment. At the same time, it also contributed to the attachment of uprising the economical values for the trading associations and marketing cost accompanied by the products. This ensures the products’ launching circumstances in the local market, to obtain the highest rate of profit, of the company. The basic cultural descriptions accompanied by this report are based on the UK, where the population is extensively attached with the influencing attributions of the technological appliances in marketing.
In this report, the researcher identified the implementation of customized business services for the marketing of iPad in the local market of UK. The perception towards attracting the customers are mostly accompanied by the technical aspects that the current market is experiencing and relevant supplementary aspects with the product that is going to be launched into the current market. That will not cause impacts upon the environment that is already accompanied by the country. SWOT analysis and its use in the marketing planSWOT analysis helps in determining the strength, weakness, opportunities and threats (SWOT) that the company is contributing towards the marketing plans in the environment.
(Crowder & Wills, 2016, p.3-13),initiated the use of Importance-Performance analysis when performing a SWOT analysis criteria on a product or a business., It is critical to complete an analysis of the SWOT in a marketing plan, as it provides the user to determine whether there are factors to accomplish the targeted specific objectives (due to an existing strength or opportunity) or if there are issues that must be resolved before the desired result can be attained (due to weaknesses or threats). It depends upon finding the gaps or identify the most contributed demands that is associated within the overall processing of the market attraction of the components. Additionally, the opportunities are led with the identification of the number of threats that the product is going to face in the future, when introduced into the market. Basically, the threats are accompanied by the number of competitors, costs associated with the product and economic status of the country where the products are going to be introduced.
An example of a use of SWOT analysis in a marketing plan for one of the low budget airlines; Scoot Airlines has been explained below. Strengths:Scoot has a tie up with the Singapore airlines which has great reputation in the airline market and it has got a strong financial backing from SIA.Scoot is the only airline which provide premium cabin option to its customers.Scoot got together with Tigerair in 2012. So that the costumer should not get into immigration if the customer has got the transit flight between these two airlines.Weakness:At this time scoot has got only couple of aircrafts which limits this airline to choose the limited no. of destination.
Scoot was launched in year 2011 hence it’s not that much established brand compare to the major companies like AirAsia and Jetstar.Opportunities:Social media is being a very good opportunity to promote their self.Changi airport is also been a great opportunity which is providing scoot the fourth terminal to increase the potential of flight frequencies.Threats:The biggest threats for the scoot is increase in the price of fuel Which could lead to higher flight cost.
Second threat is from the marketing trend heading to the lower priced flights where the other airlines are also reducing the flight price to recall customers.Segmentation, targeting and positioning in marketing Customer targeting and segmentation allow marketers to expand their influence beyond the confines of advertising, sales and promotions. Linking segmentation and targeting effectively leads to positioning in a market driven growth. It comes down to being clear about which specific customer groups might buy the product, what their needs and purchase behaviours are, and adapting the offer to them accordingly.
Targeting helps marketers identify the most profitable opportunity for future growth and expansion. Targeting focuses on segmentation and measures brand perceptions for positioning. Segmentation is the process of subdividing the market into specific groups of customers that may share the needs, attitudes or the way they use or buy a product. This process allows marketers to select the most attractive customer segment to focus on. Uber uses two segmentations, demographic and geographic segmentation to set its price accordingly. Which help them finding the type of people who are ready to go “on order transportation service” rather than taking other means of transportation. Whereas geographic segmentation helps in finding the area in which they could get more business and can replace over taxis.Differentiating target strategy is used by Uber to upscale their profit margins by offering a budget-friendly cost to the customers for their transport.
If we want to define the type of differentiation used by Uber, then we can use the terminology “cost based differentiation”. Based on the structure of structure of Uber as a company, there is a huge price advantage on the customer end when compared between Uber taxis v/s public transportation services.Uber’s positioning is most relevant to the networking services industry.
This is based on the knowledge of benefits and price. This strategy will help in attracting customers from different regions and markets and that acts as a bonus. Since transportation costs in general are on the higher verge, positioning of low budget travel costs can change the attitude of customers’ mindset. However, the influences upon the contributions of networking services should be strong enough so that the impacts upon the company can be dissolved and make speedy recovery of the downfalls (Camilleri, 2018. p.
2-16). Marketing ethics Ethic means moral values and when it comes to marketing ethics the variables considered are – Social, personal, environmental and corporate behaviour. Sometimes price discrimination, price war, negative advertising techniques, issues over trust and honesty etc may lead to unethical marketing. Marketing ethics must include: effectiveness, research, segmentation, strategy and management.
A brilliant marketing strategy would always be beneficial in short term as well as long term for the society. There are many areas in which marketing ethics plays role like product quality, pricing, promotions, product safety, sales, decision making and marketing research etc. If we take an example of Toms company. The case study conducted on ‘Tom shoes’ – a product of Toms company clearly showcased the ethical values of the company in providing shoes to the Argentina children.
After a visit to Argentina, the founder of Toms company Blake Mycoskie observed that most of the population was barefoot and he decided to provide the population with shoes. His ethical marketing strategy was to donate a pair of shoes on the purchase of one pair, revealing the generous social contribution towards the country which increased the interests of population for the Toms company. To spread the awareness and maintain good relations with population he even organised a campaign – ODWS (one day without shoes) which again shows his ethical marketing strategy.
And the best ethical value showcased by Toms company is that they strongly discourage child labour. Secondly, they gave more than 400,000 pairs of glasses to the people who could not afford the expensive eye care. So, we come to a conclusion that a company needs marketing ethics for maintaining their good image, to create values and trust and customers positive attitude towards their product and its service.
In order for a company to be ethical in market, they must follow the 4P’s of marketing.ReferencesAtasu, A. (Ed.). (2016). Environmentally responsible supply chains (Vol. 3).
Springer.Babin, B. J., & Zikmund, W. G. (2015).
Exploring marketing research. Cengage Learning.Camilleri, M. A.
(2018). Market Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. In Travel Marketing, Tourism Economics and the Airline Product (pp. 69-83). Springer, Cham.
High, L. V. Analysis of Apple Inc. business Strategic Unit (iPad unit).Murphy, P. E.
, Laczniak, G. R., & Harris, F.
(2016). Ethics in marketing: International cases and perspectives. Taylor & Francis.Phadermrod, B., Crowder, R. M., & Wills, G. B.
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