Au-4e1g0634 Revised 1.docx

2017

Marketing Essentials Marketing Plan for Year Destination [Writer] [Institute] [Date]

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Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 4 Task 1: Role of Marketing and Interrelations with Other Functional Units of Organisation ....................... 4 1.1. Key Roles and Responsibilities of Marketing Function for Marketing Officers and Their Relation With Other Functional Units of Organisation ............................................................................ 4 1.2.

Concept Of Marketing: Current and Prospective Trends and Elements of Marketing Process .... 6

1.2.1.

Production Concept ............................................................................................................... 7

1.2.2.

Product Concept .................................................................................................................... 7

1.2.3.

Selling Concept ..................................................................................................................... 7

1.2.4.

Marketing Concept ................................................................................................................ 7

1.2.5.

Societal Marketing Concept .................................................................................................. 8

1.3.

Marketing Roles and Responsibilities with respect to Marketing Environment ........................... 8

1.3.1.

Market Strategies .................................................................................................................. 8

1.3.2.

Marketing Information System (MIS) .................................................................................. 8

1.3.3.

Monitoring of Marketing Environment ................................................................................. 8

1.3.4.

Marketing Research .............................................................................................................. 9

1.3.5.

Market Segmentation ............................................................................................................ 9

1.3.6.

Brand Equity ......................................................................................................................... 9

1.4. Major Elements of Marketing Functions and Interrelations With the Organisation’s Other Functional Units ........................................................................................................................................ 9 1.4.1.

Research .............................................................................................................................. 10

1.4.2.

Strategy ............................................................................................................................... 10

1.4.3.

Planning .............................................................................................................................. 10

1.4.4.

Tactics ................................................................................................................................. 11

Task 2: Ways in which Organisations Use Marketing Mix (7Ps) Elements to Achieve Business Objectives .................................................................................................................................................................... 12 2.1. Comparison of Application of Marketing Mix in Marketing Planning Process in Different Organisations .......................................................................................................................................... 12 2.2. Comparison: Your Destination’s and National Express’s Approaches to Apply the Marking Mix 13 2.2.1. Product ...................................................................................................................................... 13 2.2.2. Price .......................................................................................................................................... 14 2.2.3. Place .......................................................................................................................................... 14 2.2.4. Promotion .................................................................................................................................. 15 2.2.5. Process ...................................................................................................................................... 15

Page | 3 2.2.6. People........................................................................................................................................ 15 2.2.7. Physical Evidence ..................................................................................................................... 16 2.3. Basic Marketing Plan for Nationwide Expansion ............................................................................ 16 2.3.1. Mission...................................................................................................................................... 16 2.3.2. Marketing and Financial Objectives ......................................................................................... 16 2.3.3. Target Market and Positioning .................................................................................................. 17 2.3.3. Marketing Mix Followed by the Marketing Officers ................................................................ 17 2.3.4. Marketing Research Carried Out by Marketing Officers .......................................................... 18 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 18 References ................................................................................................................................................... 19

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Marketing Essentials Marketing Plan for Year Destination

Introduction This report is based on a case study of ‘Your Destination’, a relatively new transportation company, which is situated at United Kingdom with operations in London and Essex. The focus of this report is on the marketing essentials in business organisations operating in the current globalisation era. In this report, the marketing role with the role of marketing functions and their interrelations with the other business functions are depicted. The report also compares the approaches how to apply marketing mix in an organisational context with the aim of achieving organisational and business goals. In addition, this also develops and evaluates the marketing plan for ‘Your Destination’ to expand its business nation-wide by establishing branches in Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow and Aberdeen. One of the main objectives of this company is to be capable of competing strongly with the market leader ‘National Express’.

Task 1: Explain the Role of Marketing and How It Interrelates With Other Functional Units of an Organisation

1.1. Explain the Key Duties and Responsibilities for the Marketing Officers and a Proposed Structure and Operations of the Marketing Department Marketing functions refer to the roles played by the business organisation’s Marketing Officers, which is helpful for organisation in identifying and sourcing potentially flourishing products for market and for its successful promotion (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2012). In business organisations, Marketing Officers have to carry out these common functional activities including in-depth marketing research, proper product plan, quality development process, successful promotion, sales, finance, customer service, and much more (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2012). A variety of responsibilities of the Marketing Officers are involved in the marketing functions, and such functional activities are used by them for the business growth. For Marketing Officers, the marketing functions are strategy management, comprehensive marketing research, best sales support system, product developments, an expert finance team, smooth

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distribution systems, active human resource (HR) department, and so on (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2012). Different roles of Marketing Officers are involved in these functions which are played with the aim of promoting organisation’s growth (Wilson and Bates, 2003). Thus, there is a crucial role of these marketing functions in Your Destination. Following image depicts a direct and close relationship between various marketing functions with other organisational functions.

The above-mentioned interrelationship can be described as: The marketing functions followed by the two Marketing Officers of Your Destination will be an integral part of the organisation and for this very reason other organisation’s departments and functional units are strongly linked with one another (Wilson and Bates, 2003). These marketing functions are very important for Marketing Officers and they need support by the other operational departments as well to perform in an efficient and effective manner. To devise and enact a marketing plan, Your Destination’s two prospective Marketing Officers will require proper assistance given by the departments of finance, HR, sales and production (Wilson and Bates, 2003). Moreover, if they

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and their marketing team wish to facilitate customers by offering a discount package, then the marketing department needs to contact and communicate with other departments including finance and production at the initial level. In a business organisation all the marketing functions work separately but with one common aim of increasing the business profitability level. Thus, the key function of marketing is profit increase and for this increasing the sales is necessary (Wilson and Bates, 2003). To make sure this, it is necessary for the marketing team of the company to encourage all the departments to participate simultaneously. In doing so, the responsibility of finance department is to provide sufficient budget to the marketing department so that marketing plan is devised and implemented properly (Wilson and Bates, 2003). On the other hand, production department needs to communicate with logistics department with the aim of meeting the customers’ needs by supplying product and services smoothly (Lewis and Varey, 2012). Policies relating to HR are generated as per the current market trends, sales and target market. Consequently, all the functional departments and units of Your Destination need to interrelate with one another, especially with marketing team, to produce an effective marketing plan (Lewis and Varey, 2012). 1.2. Concept Of Marketing: Current and Prospective Trends and Elements of Marketing Process There are major concepts of marketing through which the core of marketing at Your Destination is depicted. These marketing concepts include the current and prospective trends for a successful marketing planning. Such five integral concepts are production, product, selling, marketing and societal (see the following image) (Sandhusen, 2008).

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1.2.1. Production Concept The perception made by consumer is the base of this concept. Such perception reveals that the customers are tended towards the easily available products which are in sufficient quantity in the market and at cheap rates. Therefore, an organisation’s operational capacity needs to pay attention to increase the rate or speed of production. (Sandhusen, 2008) 1.2.2. Product Concept The consumers always relate and choose such organisations whose products have value for their hard-earned money, quality as well as innovative approach. Basically, it is derived by this concept that the customers can be retained by means of products and services which are helpful to them. (Sandhusen, 2008) 1.2.3. Selling Concept The modern consumers have a certain mind-set that can be attracted by means of promotions, and the consumers incline to pay attention to the products and services which are promoted in an aggressive manner in the market. (Sandhusen, 2008) 1.2.4. Marketing Concept This concept details the requirement of attention to target market for their product or service delivery. For facing and dealing successfully with the competitive market, business organisations, such as Your Destination, need to serve customers by delivering better value of

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products and services. It is depicted by the concept that an organisation’s brand value needs to be improved with the aim of connect with the target market successfully. Once the brand value has been improved, the target market will automatically prefer the brand over other tough market competition by ignoring the competitors. (Sandhusen, 2008) 1.2.5. Societal Marketing Concept This concept of marketing reveals the main focus on needs and demands made by customers, in order to convince them to prefer the brand over others’ competing in the marketplace (Sandhusen, 2008). 1.3. Marketing Roles and Responsibilities with respect to Marketing Environment The marketing management refers to a management process through which different marketing concepts are planned and implemented (Pizam and Oh, 2013). These different concepts are pricing, promotion, distribution, sales, etc., through which the target customers are complimented. What the roles of marketing are, explore in the following: 1.3.1. Market Strategies One of the key and initial roles of marketing is the development of effective marketing strategies and planning. The organisation’s managers have a pivotal role in this context and they need to realise the customers’ demands and needs and serve them by providing the products and services accordingly. When an organisation comes to develop its marketing strategies, such a development brings out equilibrium between objectives set by the organisation and market’s opportunities. (Pizam and Oh, 2013) 1.3.2. Marketing Information System (MIS) The MIS is very important because it provides the information about a variety of determinants, such as product, planning, execution, and monitoring and controlling of marketing strategies. As an instance, the information is depicted by MIS concerning the logistics on a real time basis, through which the distribution network is assisted and work in an efficient and effective manner. (Pizam and Oh, 2013) 1.3.3. Monitoring of Marketing Environment

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Very crucial role is involved in the marketing process which helps in identifying new developments and changes in the environment of marketing. Such developments provide an organisation with quite positive response and enable the company to develop products and services. These market developments may be changing market trends and characteristics, forces related to social and economic factors, changes of market at the internal and external levels, changes related to political and legal environments, etc. (Pizam and Oh, 2013) 1.3.4. Marketing Research The key role of marketing is always the in-depth marketing research, which involves certain knowledge about the product, price and target audience, through which an organisation is able to deliver and communicate its best products and services in the market. (Pizam and Oh, 2013) 1.3.5. Market Segmentation The modern-day business environment has been affected, both positively and negatively, by the factor of globalisation, thus this environment is volatile. Therefore, accurate market segmentation is the basic need of business organisations which can be provided by the marketing. An organisation’s marketing manager assists the business in identifying the target audience in the large diverse marketplaces and fosters the company’s brands. (Pizam and Oh, 2013) 1.3.6. Brand Equity The consumer always prefers those brands or the organisations which have the potential to provide value to their money by providing quality products and services. Therefore, effective and influential approach to marketing provides a strong reputation while building strong brand value among the target audience. This approach and process has the strong potential to directly assist Your Destination in increasing its sales volume. (Pizam and Oh, 2013) 1.4. Explain How the Roles and Responsibilities of Marketing will Contribute to the Wider Organisational Objectives Marketing functions are based on a variety of functional activities, such as promotion through advertising, effective financial support, proper and timely distribution system, etc., and

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all these activities come under the marketing process, which will be carried out by the Marketing Officers. Behold the following major elements of marketing functions: 1.4.1. Research For two Marketing Officers, the role of doing comprehensive market research is pivotal in the best interest of Your Destination and its expansion in other UK cities. Doing in-depth research has always been considered as the highly crucial function of marketing, because a business cannot be expanded nationwide and is impossible without a successful market research. Comprehensive research has the strong potential to assist Your Destination in accumulating the precious information relating to every single factor regarding business process. Besides getting market information, other areas including logistics, finance, resources and other prospects of business can be ensured by means of in-depth research. Therefore, research has always been considered as the most important function of marketing. (Pizam and Oh, 2013) 1.4.2. Strategy Along with comprehensive research, it is also very important for two Marketing Officers to measure and evaluate the potential strengths and weakness among the business operations. This approach will let Your Destination to reach to an idea for making strong and influential strategies which can be employed by the marketing team. Valuable support and guidance are provided by the strategies while enabling the transportation company to compete with its competitors and to make sure success in the tough market environment. One of the major aspects is that the strategies should be developed by marketing team over all the pragmatic and realistic possibilities and outcomes which are measured by means of comprehensive research. (Sandhusen, 2008) 1.4.3. Planning Once a successful research and strategy procedures are completed, the planning process is one of the next main marketing functions for Marketing Officers. The marketing department of Your Destination will need to involve comprehensive financial planning, realistic forecasting of sales statistics, proper and timely distribution, effective communication and other business factors. The company’s planning department needs to use a specific timeline when it comes to

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plan the key strategies through which organisation’s goals will be converted into success. (Lewis and Varey, 2012) 1.4.4. Tactics Tactics are another main role of marketing function for Marketing Officers. Tactics refer to the short-term plans which need to be enacted with the aim of appealing the target audience. For Your Destination, tactics may be limited period offers of discount packages through which the company would be provided with strong promotional boost in its marketing plan. This approach is helpful in avoiding the initial pressure posed by other market players and in improving the sales figures. (Lewis and Varey, 2012) Now, explore the interrelation of the major marketing functions with other functional units of the company: The relationship of marketing functions with other functional units of business organisations is very close and strong. For example, the close connection between the finance department and marketing department, in which economic resources are required by the marketing functions to plan, implement, research and evaluate marketing strategies and planning, and its core responsibility is on the shoulders of the company’s finance department (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2012). If there is improper communication and inexpert financial team, Marketing Officers would not be able to carry out marketing functions effectively (Wilson and Bates, 2003). In the similar manner, the marketing functions have close association with other departments as well (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2012). To make and provide a successful marketing plan, the marketing functions require precise and correct description of products and services given by the production department. Besides this, these functions also require expert human resources given by the company’s HR department, economic support from finance department, support in the logistic area from distribution network, etc (Wilson and Bates, 2003). It is necessary for Marketing Officers to communicate the operations of marketing and such operations should be supported by other departments as well. As an instance, the HR policies need to be developed with proper alignment with the marketing team because this approach helps in increasing the sales (Lewis and Varey, 2012). Along with this, the production department is responsible for conveying the information about the product and services, through which Marketing Officers will be able to develop a good marketing plan. Thus, it is clear that the

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marketing functions have strong and close relations with other functional units of a company (Lewis and Varey, 2012).

Task 2: Ways in which Organisations Use Marketing Mix (7Ps) Elements to Achieve Business Objectives 2.1. Comparison of Application of Marketing Mix in Marketing Planning Process in Different Organisations Seven elements (product, price, place, promotion, people, process and physical evidence) of the marketing mix approach are applied by the marketing team while planning marketing strategy with the aim of achieving overall organisational and business objectives (Yelkur, 2000). In the case of Your Destination, the company’s objectives are as follows: Your Destination, as a relatively new transportation company currently operating in London and Essex, and its senior management want to become a nationwide transportation company with more branches in different cities including Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow and Aberdeen. For this, the company’s key objective is to be fully capable of competing successfully with the market leader, National Express. In this regard, the company’s another objective is to recruit two Marketing Officers who can manage the expansion plan and fulfil their roles as mentioned earlier. Typically, the application of marketing mix elements are based on the market demographics, the company’s products and services, overall market size and company’s size as well. As a marketing tool the marketing mix will assist the Marketing Officers in understanding the product or service. Some organisations prefer the customer-focused approach because it assists them in evolving and making their impression in national market (Yelkur, 2000). This is because of applying the extended marketing mix and customer-focused approach. Other organisations spends considerable amount in their marketing process involving promotions through advertisement, research and development but they cannot succeed, because they misunderstand their target audience and market and do not apply the essential marketing tools when they set the objectives and strategies (Charoenset and Wu, 2014). The marketing mix elements can and should be applied with a strong focus on the product or service dimensions, selling place, price

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and promotional activities, and the extended elements are based on following the delivery processes, providing customers with physical evidence and most crucially focus on people (Charoenset and Wu, 2014). 2.2. Comparison: Your Destination’s and National Express’s Approaches to Apply the Marking Mix With their different organisational culture, the business organisations follow the tactics with the aim of achieving the business goals and objectives. A relatively new and small company, such as Your Destination, needs to apply 7P’s of marketing mix elements in its marketing planning process, through which the company can achieve its objectives. One of its competitors ‘National Express’ also follows this approach to achieve the goals.

2.2.1. Product There is a variety of products provided by National Express, which are coach, train service, regulate bus, etc (National Express, 2017). From the service point of view, there are tangible and intangible components of the service market of a transport company. As an instance, a company provides food and beverage on the long distance coach service that have major

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tangible characteristics, but attendant’s service is intangible. The amenities as the tangible elements provided by National Express are the seats, racks for baggage, and bathrooms, while the intangible elements are driver’s service and cleaners’ work (National Express, 2017). To achieve its goals and objectives by expanding business in different UK cities, Marketing Officers will need to make the products and services provided by Your Destination appropriate to fulfil the needs of customers. It means that the company and its products’ main objective will be to satisfy the people. 2.2.2. Price There is unique pricing policy of National Express because the company follows differentiation strategy in this area. The company do not charge heavy price from customers who booked early, but charge comparatively high from late comers. This approach lets the company to use the standby capacity in utmost extent and make sure minimum proportion of vacant seats. (National Express, 2017) It means that the Marketing Officers of Your Destination will need to make strategies that help in providing value for money to customers or travellers. This strategy is crucial which means that the company will have to value customers by charging economical to compete strongly with competitors. The company needs also to introduce online booking system by applying a ‘flotation’ pricing strategy. For this, Marketing Officers can make strategies through which the price would be changed over time, usually every 30 minutes. This approach will help in encouraging customers to revisit the website to get the best possible price. This approach will also generate unanticipated marketing effect with comparatively low expense for advertising. Moreover, the company can charge high when demand is high, such as when there is a weekend or in holiday periods. 2.2.3. Place A place means a sale point of a product or service. National Express has the large number of destinations where the company operates. This mix element is one of the highly crucial factors to ascertain an organisation’s competitiveness. As the company has vast network of destination within UK, National Express has been successfully operating with strong market performance. (National Express, 2017)

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For Your Destination, it is necessary to make availability of the product and services much easier for people. In doing so, the Marketing Officers will need to make strategic plans to establish a large network which must be located at easy and accessible location for customers. There should be prompt delivery in the e-commerce context. 2.2.4. Promotion The focus of National Express is on promotion by paying attention to the effective communication between the company and the market. Promotion activities include sales promotion, advertising, public relations and personal selling. The technological development lets the company to facilitate up-to-the-minute information system and communications technology, including responsive website, user-friendly online system for booking, popular search engine results, and customer knowledge management. (Feeley, 2016) As Your Destination is a B2C transportation firm, it needs to work by focusing on personal selling, along with sales promotion and advertising approaches. To increase expose to the market the company can also use traditional mass media advertising. Moreover, the company also needs to adopt cost-effective e-marketing approach by using email and website to target more specific customers. 2.2.5. Process For target audience of National Express, actual procedure, mechanisms and flows of activities are frequently exposed to more business processes compared to other traditional manufacturers, where a customer can only reach the end product. The reason behind this is the unique inseparability of services. As an instance, when customers are on the journey, they can experience the transport’s service quality, being the outcome of service performance given by the driver. (National Express, 2017) Your Destination needs to deliver its products and services to people with a smile through they can create a better buying experience for them. The important aspect is getting the process right in the first place. Monitoring mechanism is also important to make sure the efficiency of the process. Afterwards, it will satisfy customers and branding. 2.2.6. People

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Staff members working at National Express are the key resource, as they directly contact the customer because of the inseparability of service market. Thus, it requires the staff to possess certain degree of interpersonal techniques to directly deal with customer. It is also important to implement effective quality control process, which may be forms for customer feedback, to make sure these contacts are satisfactorily monitored and performed. (National Express, 2017) Marketing Officers of Your Destination will also need to assign operational duties and marketing responsibilities to marketing team. One of the highly crucial things here is that the company’ HR department will need to recruit and train staff members and drivers, through which the Marketing Officers will be able to enable the company to compete well with competitors by making operation and marketing competent. 2.2.7. Physical Evidence The focus of physical evidence is on the importance of the tangible components. It refers to the environment where the interaction is made between the service organisation and the customer. This mix element of National Express only focuses on the ticket office and drivers, where employees interact with people. However, if a service firm is more modernised, the physical evidence works through website where employees interact with customers. The company is operating with a user-friendly website that makes online booking easier, which makes customers’ experience well. Similarly, Your Destination’s Marketing Officers will have to focus on the comfort and user interface, thus the company’s website’s design, layout, and functionality will be important to make sure success. 2.3. Basic Marketing Plan for Nationwide Expansion 2.3.1. Mission The mission of Your Destination is to serve target market by providing the finest transportation service at quite competitive price. 2.3.2. Marketing and Financial Objectives 

Compete with Competitors

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

Gradually and steadily gain in market share.



Increase the network of repeat clients by 3% each quarter.



Minimise costs of customer acquisition, measured by a decline in marketing costs divided by the number of fresh customers.



Enhance the profit margin by up to 5% each quarter.



Minimise employee training costs every two quarters while enhancing service quality at the same time.

2.3.3. Target Market and Positioning The marketing/sales strategy of Your Destination will target two segmented targeted groups, including individuals/families and business travellers. To attract individuals and families, the company will use advertisements to increase the brand’s visibility. For this, local newspaper with highest readership will be used to advertise on weekly basis. The company will need to work with various transportation associations, such as Community Transport Association (Kotecha et al., 2017) and other community groups to develop a vast network of customers. To attract business travellers, Your Destination will need to contact the travel department of different firms in the target cities that have employees travelling and inform them about its service while offering them an introductory discount. This approach would be best as companies frequently have employees travelling throughout the year. Further, advertising approach will be followed and ads will appear in the business related newspapers and magazines. The company will position itself as an expert, trustworthy, transportation service with affordable prices. The company will attain this positioning by leveraging its strong competitive advantage, which will be an effective incentive system through which the drivers are economically rewarded on their good performance, and when they help in developing repeat customers. 2.3.3. Marketing Mix Followed by the Marketing Officers The pricing model of Your Destination will be based on the rate of per-trip with a trivial discount offered for round trip service.

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Distribution, by virtue of the service nature, will occur where ever the customer needs this service to be. For promotion, the company will employ a variety of activities to meet positioning and visibility through appealing advertisements and by making strategic relationships. An outstanding customer service as the business model is required so as to develop a sustainable business on the basis of repeat and new customer referrals. 2.3.4. Marketing Research Carried Out by Marketing Officers The two Marketing Officers of Your Destination will conduct a survey with the aim of gaining knowledge about potential customers’ demands and needs. The surveys will be sent out to travellers at the service location. The number of survey questions will be kept low through which people would be encouraged to complete it easily. Moreover, the surveys will facilitate the company by providing much valuable information about customers’ needs and wants. Owing to the copious amount of information, the company will need to plan to perform more primary research i the near future.

Conclusion This report of marketing plan for Your Destination successfully reveals the crucial role of two prospective Marketing Officers with regards to marketing function and its significant interrelationship with other organisational functions and units. The seven elements of marketing mix have been compared with the competitor’s that will help Marketing Officers in enabling the company to achieve the business goals and objectives. By following the basic marketing plan, Your Destination will be successful to ensure success by competing with National Express and other market competitors.

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References Charoenset, S. and Wu, C., 2014. Thai Consumer's Expectations and Satisfaction of Services Obtained from Domestic Low-cost Airlines. Journal of Applied Sciences, 14(1), pp.1-9. Feeley, M., 2016. National Express launches TV campaign encouraging travelers to take ‘a different view’ of a changing UK. [online] The Drum. Available at: http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/03/07/national-express-launches-tv-campaignencouraging-travelers-take-different-view [Accessed 4 Oct. 2017]. Kotecha, M., Davies, M., Miscampbell, G., Barnard, M. and Hughes, S., 2017. What works: Successful community transport - Power to Change. [online] The Power to Change Trust, pp.4-32. Available at: http://www.powertochange.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2017/06/Research-Report-7-Transport-DIGITAL.pdf [Accessed 4 Oct. 2017]. Lamb, C., Hair, J. and McDaniel, C., 2012. Essentials of marketing. Mason, Ohio: SouthWestern Cengage Learning. Lewis, B. and Varey, R., 2012. Internal Marketing: Directions for Management. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. National Express., 2017. Group market overview - National Express Group PLC. [online] Nationalexpressgroup.com. Available at: http://www.nationalexpressgroup.com/investors/understanding-national-express-group/groupmarket-overview/ [Accessed 4 Oct. 2017]. Pizam, A. and Oh, H., 2013. Handbook of hospitality marketing management. New York: Routledge. Sandhusen, R., 2008. Marketing. Hauppauge, NY: Barron's Educational Series. Wilson, P. and Bates, S., 2003. The essential guide to managing small business growth. Chichester: Wiley. Yelkur, R., 2000. Customer Satisfaction and the Services Marketing Mix. Journal of Professional Services Marketing, 21(1), pp.105-115.