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• This is a Diploma Level Qualification. You must show that you have undertaken

ID: 340062 • Letter: #

Question

• This is a Diploma Level Qualification. You must show that you have undertaken independent research in order to answer the project questions. When completing this theory assessment please make sure that you properly cite and reference the materials that you have used. Scenario: You work in the marketing department of a new company. The company intends to sell European made kitchen appliances online. These include dishwashers, stoves/ stove tops, ovens, exhaust fans/ canopies/ range hoods, refrigerators, freezers, garbage disposals, sinks and taps, microwaves. They have organised an efficient and effective import procedure for the products they are offering. They now need to develop an appropriate marketing mix for the company. This is a new business and it is important to make the market aware, not only of the products being offered, but of the service associated with the products and of the business itself. 1. Explain: a. What you, as part of the marketing team, will need to know about your market. b. How you will acquire this information. c. How you can make the buying public aware of the company. d. How you could promote the products. e. What the appropriate marketing mix for the products will be. f. How service will come into the marketing mix, what its importance is and what service should be applied. 2. Justify the marketing mix in terms of the four Ps and write a report that can be submitted to senior management outlining the procedures followed to determine the best marketing mix and the reasons for selecting the different components. 3. Explain how you should monitor the marketing mix and what metrics you could use. Explain why these procedures have been selected.

Initial market take-up has not been as good as you expected. What will you do? Senior management have asked for a report. What information will you need to collect, analyse and document? What actions will you take? Provide reasons for your answer. How will you present this information to senior management?

An answer of approximately 3,000 words will be necessary. You will need to present two written reports for management -Question 2 asks for a report on the marketing mix and Question 4 requires a presentation for senior management.

Explanation / Answer

1. Explain:

a. What you, as part of the marketing team, will need to know about your market.

Marketing planning helps you develop products and services in your business that meet the needs of your target market. Good marketing helps your customers understand why your product or service is better than, or different from, the competition.

A good marketing plan can help you reach your target audience, boost your customer base, and ultimately, increase your bottom line. It's often required when seeking funding and helps you set clear, realistic and measurable objectives for your business.

Developing a marketing plan requires research, time and commitment, but is a very valuable process that can greatly contribute to your business success.

b. How you will acquire this information.

All the elements of the marketing mix influence each other. They make up the business plan for a company and handled right, can give it great success. But handled wrong and the business could take years to recover. The marketing mix needs a lot of understanding, market research and consultation with several people, from users to trade to manufacturing and several others.

c. How you can make the buying public aware of the company.

Promoting your product offline is as important as any online marketing strategy. There are a lot of potential customers who are not reached by your online advertisement or don’t know how to use the Internet effectively – others are simply more the casual users. In order to also reach these valuable customers you can make recourse to offline marketing.

Offline Marketing is the use of media channels that are not connected to the World Wide Web in order to create awareness of a company’s product and/or service. Since it is almost impossible to imagine, for any business today, to not have its own website, offline marketing strategies are now often tied to company’s online efforts even though the arrival of the Internet appeared to be the end for print-based and other “dated” mediums. One of the downsides of offline marketing programs is that they can be hard to track to conversion, and also hard to identify the number of users that visit websites after getting to know about them offline.

d. How you could promote the products.

1. Offer Customers an Exclusive Preview

Your loyal customers are a key part of how to promote your product, because they are most likely the first ones who will buy it. Offer customers an exclusive preview of your new product. This can take the form of a private, pre-launch party, an online preview, or a special invitation to test out your latest service. These exclusive offers to loyal customers will make them feel good and keep them coming back.

2. Social Media Contests

Contests, giveaways, and sweepstakes are a very popular tool among top quality marketers. Why? Marketers know that social media contests work!

Social media contests are a fun, easy way of connecting with customers and bringing in more fans for your social media platforms. A simple Facebook contest for example, garners 34% new fans on average per campaign. That’s huge considering that organic reach is low on Facebook!

3. Email Marketing

Did you know that 82% of consumers open emails from businesses, and that 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email? Email marketing via newsletters is a fantastic vehicle for advertisement, and is one of the best ways to promote a new service or product.

4. Facebook Ads

With 1.44 billion monthly active users, Facebook is a window to a huge market. That’s why Facebook ads are an incredibly effective marketing tool. Facebook is particularly useful in concisely targeting your audience, as Facebook’s impressive data collection allows businesses to target by gender, age, location, interest, and more. You also have an array of options for the type of ad you want, and you can easily stick to your budget by creating a cap on how much you want to spend daily or monthly.

5. In-Store Promotions

Businesses with brick and mortar locations have the added opportunity to promote a new product or service in-store. If you want to know how to promote your product in your studio or store, the #1 thing you need to do is to give people a reason to go to your store.

e. What the appropriate marketing mix for the products will be.

The marketing mix is a tool that is made up of four unique but interconnected and interdependent variables. These are called the 4P’s and are product, price, promotion, and place. These four components help determine a clear and effective strategy to bring a product to market. Each element is crucial in its own right and needs to be given due focus.

f. How service will come into the marketing mix, what its importance is and what service should be applied.

More and more organizations are competing one another strategically to distinguish themselves in the area of service and quality within a market. Successful organizations strongly focus on the service paradigm with investment in people, technology, personnel policy and remuneration systems for their employees. This is very important as the behaviour of the employees can have a direct influence on the quality of the service. Employees represent the face and the voice of their organization to the customers. They translate the services provision into services for the customer across all sectors.

In 1981, using the above mentioned information, Bernard H. Booms and Mary J. Bitner further developed the traditional marketing mix developed by the American Professor of Marketing Jerome McCarthy into the extended marketing mix or services marketing mix. This Service Marketing Mix is also called the 7P model or the 7 Ps of Booms and Bitner. This Service Marketing Mix strategy extends the original marketing mix model from four to seven elements. While Jerome McCarthy has only defined four verifiable marketing elements, the 7Ps are an extension as a result of which this services marketing mix can also be applied in service companies and knowledge intensive environments.

2. Justify the marketing mix in terms of the four Ps and write a report that can be submitted to senior management outlining the procedures followed to determine the best marketing mix and the reasons for selecting the different components.

The four basic elements from the concept marketing mixthat have been devised by the American marketing professor Jerome McCarthy are:

Product

This element is an object or service an organization produces on a large scale in a specific volume of units. An example of a material product is the disposable razor.

Price

This is the price the customer pays for a service or product. The price is the most important factor for marketing. The price of a product or service is determined by all factors that an organization invests during the preparation of the product. For instance material costs, market share, product identity etc. The price of a product may go up or go down depending on time and the price of a certain product may vary because of market developments.

Place

This element represents the location where the product is available for the customers. It is possible that the product is not available in all locations but only in a certain selection of locations.

Promotion

This element comprises all the efforts the company or organization makes to stimulate the popularity of their product in the market, for instance by advertising, promotional programmes, etc. Jerome McCarthy’s 4Ps marketing model is the world’s most famous product marketing model. It gives a picture of a product/price mix of an organization, in combination with a promotion plan so it can approach and serve customers on the basis of well-considered distribution and customer contact channels. Jerome McCarthy’s 4Ps marketing model offer marketing managers focus areas with respect to objectives and the resources to achieve those objectives.

3. Explain how you should monitor the marketing mix and what metrics you could use. Explain why these procedures have been selected.

CRM technology can deliver benefit in lots of different ways,” explains Richard Boardman, founder of Mareeba Consulting. “You might use it for lead management purposes to help you increase the number of leads you get and the percentage that you convert to end business. It can be used to help you manage your existing customers more effectively and sell more to them. It can be used to help you with your marketing communications or improving the quality and speed of fulfilment of your products and services or streamlining your support operation. It really can be used in lots and lots of different ways.”

Indeed, it may even be used to do all of these things simultaneously. With so many moving parts involved in a CRM project, it’s enough to make your head spin. But struggling with CRM metrics may be symptomatic of a much wider problem.

"A lot of CRM initiatives historically have gone awry or are perceived not to be successful, but when you dig into them you find out that there is really no way to tell if they were successful or not, because you find that the projects didn’t have any metrics to find to be able to determine success," notes Bill Band, author and noted CRM thought leader, as well as a former VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research.

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