ASSIGNMENT

INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT

Submitted To:
Sir Nabi Ahmad

Submitted By:
Syed Mujahid Abbas
UW-15-ME-BSC-037

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Wah Engineering College
Marketing Management
Marketing management is the process of developing strategies and planning for product or
services, advertising, promotions, sales to reach desired customer segment. Marketing
management employs tools from economics and competitive strategy to analyze the industry
context in which the firm operates. These include Porter's five forces, analysis of strategic groups
of competitors, value chain analysis and others. In competitor analysis, marketers build detailed
profiles of each competitor in the market, focusing on their relative competitive strengths and
weaknesses using SWOT analysis. Marketing managers will examine each competitor's cost
structure, sources of profits, resources and competencies, competitive positioning and product
differentiation, degree of vertical integration, historical responses to industry developments, and
other factors.
Explanation
The application, tracking and review of a company's marketing resources and activities.
The scope of a business' marketing management depends on the size of the business and the
industry in which the business operates. Effective marketing management will use a company's
resources to increase its customer base, improve customer opinions of the company's products and
services, and increase the company's perceived value.
Marketing Planning
A marketing plan is a comprehensive document or blueprint that outlines the advertising and
marketing efforts for the coming year. It describes business activities involved in accomplishing
specific marketing objectives within a set time frame. A marketing plan also includes a description
of the current marketing position of a business, a discussion of the target market and a description
of the marketing mix that a business will use to achieve their marketing goals. A marketing plan
has a formal structure, but can be used as a formal or informal document which makes it very
flexible. It contains some historical data, future predictions, and methods or strategies to achieve
the marketing objectives. Marketing plans start with the identification of customer needs through
a market research and how the business can satisfy these needs while generating an acceptable
return. This includes processes such as market situation analysis, action programs, budgets, sales
forecasts, strategies and projected financial statements. A marketing plan can also be described as
a technique that helps a business to decide on the best use of its resources to achieve corporate
objectives. It can also contain a full analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of a company, its
organization and its products.
The marketing plan shows the step or actions that will be utilized in order to achieve the plan goals.
For example, a marketing plan may include a strategy to increase the business's market share by
fifteen percent. The marketing plan would then outline the objectives that need to be achieved in
order to reach the fifteen percent increase in the business market share. The marketing plan can be
used to describe the methods of applying a company's marketing resources to fulfill marketing
objectives. Marketing planning segments the markets, identifies the market position, forecast the
market size, and plans a viable market share within each market segment. Marketing planning can
also be used to prepare a detailed case for introducing a new product, revamping current marketing
strategies for an existing product or put together a company marketing plan to be included in the
company corporate or business plan.
Marketing Research and its Applications
Research can be categorized either on the basis of technique (surveys, experiments, observation
studies, etc) or on the basis of purpose. We will look at the techniques in the subsequent chapters.
Now let us focus on the 3 methods of doing Marketing Research based on purpose:
1. Exploratory
As the name implies, exploratory research is the initial exploration done to get an idea and insights
into the problem. Research is a relatively expensive process; exploratory research ensures that this
process is not initiated without a thorough understanding of the problem. This study is qualitative
(understanding the concept) rather than quantitative (providing precise measurement). Also, this
type of research does not give conclusive evidence and subsequent research needs to be done.
Further, the following purposes justify the use of exploratory research:
Diagnosing a Situation: Sometimes, companies have a situation at hand, but do not know how to
define it clearly. This prohibits action to be taken. One reason for using it is to identify the exact
nature of the business problem, but exploratory research is limited only to this. Successive
descriptive or experimental research needs to be carried out to craft the action plan.
Screening Alternatives: Consider a situation where there are several options, but budget
restrictions do not allow implementation of all of them. Exploratory research helps choose the best
alternatives in this case.
Uncovering New Ideas: Many a times, consumers do not know what they need which is especially
true in case of technology. Prior to the invention of the first smart phone in the early nineties, an
average person did not feel the need for it or understand how pervasive the device would become.
Exploratory research is used in cases like this to induce new ideas. A widely used method for
executing exploratory research for this purpose is Concept Testing. Here, target consumers are
introduced to an idea and asked how they feel about it, whether they are likely to use it, etc. It tests
the likeability or acceptability of the new product before investing in its research and development.
2. Descriptive
This type of research is used when there is some comprehension of the problem, objectives are
defined and the research questions are clearly formulated. Contrary to exploratory research, the
proof descriptive research provides is used for formulating action plans. It helps answer the
questions ‘when’, ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘where’, but not ‘why’. Descriptive research typically
gives a detailed account of the characteristics or behaviour of a population. Hence the research
work usually involves some element of consumer profiling and market segmentation.
3. Experimental
Experimental studies demonstrate cause and effect relationships. They try to decipher the outcome
marketing actions might have. For example, it is used when the purpose is to determine the impact
of increase in price on usage. This research is used in succession to exploratory and descriptive
research and hence sufficient knowledge is gained on the topic by then. Experimental research is
also popularly known as causal research. The extent of uncertainty also affects what type of method
should be chosen. The more well defined the situation is, the more the research agency will move
from exploratory to descriptive to experimental research.
Advertising and Publicity
Advertising is marketing as well as a promotional tool in the hands of the company which conveys
a message about the company or a product to the viewers, listeners or readers. It is aimed at
persuading customers, to choose the company’s product over the product offered by the
competitors. Publicity is another promotional tool, but it is not same as advertising. It is based on
reality as t is neither sponsored nor it is under the control of any company or its representatives.
While advertising is an expensive technique to demonstrate company’s products and services,
publicity is always free of cost. These two terms are commonly understood as one and the same
thing, but there is fine line of differences between advertising and publicity, which is explained
here in tabular form
Comparison B/w Advertising and Publicity
Definition of advertising
Advertising is a one-way public communication that conveys a message regarding a product,
service or company to the viewers, readers, and listeners. It is the biggest marketing tool used for
non-personal promotion of goods and services to the potential customers, however, the most
expensive one. Advertising is a sort of monolog activity done with an aim to induce customers i.e.
to grab the attention of the target audience in such a manner that they are ready to buy the
advertised product. The basic objective of advertising is to increase the consumption of the product
of the sender company. Most of the company’s use this sales promotional tool because of its reach,
a single message can reach millions of people in nanoseconds. It is a paid announcement by
sponsors, which can be done with various mediums like radio, television, websites, newspapers,
hoardings, magazines, social media like Facebook, etc.
Definition of Publicity
The term publicity is a combination of two words public and visibility. It refers to the flow of
information or fact, regarding general awareness about a subject or hot topic or any burning issue.
Here the subject may include a person, product, service, business entity and so on. It is used to
draw the attention of the people, for any subject with the help of broadcast media, print media or
social media. It is not a promotional technique and thus free of cost. Publicity can be printed or
just aired. It is either be positive or negative, but it is true and real as well. It is an entirely unbiased
opinion as it comes from an independent source like it can be given by an expert or a common
man or mass media. As the third party has nothing to do with the company, their responses and
reviews are given high weight.
Factors driving marketing effectiveness
1. Corporate
2. Exogenous Factors
3. Marketing Strategy
4. Marketing Creative
5. Marketing Execution
6. Marketing Infrastructure
Corporate: Each company operates within different bounds. These are determined by their size,
their budget and their ability to make organizes act in similar ways leading to the need to segment
them. Based on these segments, they make choices based on how they value the attributes of a
product and the brand, in return for price paid for the product. Consumers build brand value
through information. Information is received through many sources, such as, advertising, word-
of-mouth and in the (distribution) channel often characterized with the purchase funnel, a
McKinsey & Company concept. Lastly, consumers consume and make purchase decisions in
certain ways.
Exogenous Factors: External factors such as weather, interest rates, government regulations, etc.
that lie outside of marketers' immediate control and may impact marketing effectiveness.
Understanding the impact these factors have on consumers can help in designing programs that
take advantage or mitigate the risk of these factors and the impact they may have on a marketing
campaigns. Therefore, exogenous factors often influence how marketers strive to improve their
results such as leveraging the factors noted above (i.e. seasonality, interest rates, regulatory
environment) in an effort to improve marketing effectiveness.
Marketing Strategy: Improving marketing effectiveness can be achieved by employing a superior
marketing strategy. By positioning the product or brand correctly, the product/brand will be more
successful in the market than competitors’ products/brands. The match-up between the product,
the consumer lifestyle, and the endorser is important for effectiveness of brand communication.
Even with the best strategy, marketers must execute their programs properly to achieve
extraordinary results.
Marketing Creative: Even without a change in strategy, better creatives can improve results.
Without a change in strategy, AFLAC was able to achieve stunning results with its introduction of
the Duck (AFLAC) campaign. With the introduction of this new creative concept, the company
growth rate soared from 12% prior to the campaign to 28% following it. (See references below,
Bang). Creatives are an integral part of any marketing campaign, as it establishes the corporate
identity and plays a significant role in brand recollection. These may include designing point of
purchase displays, brochures or even product packaging. Apart from communicating the brand,
consistency in design across various mediums helps reinforce a specific offering in the minds of
the audience. Using typography, imagery and color, marketing creatives evoke emotion related to
a brand.
Marketing Execution: By improving how marketers go to market, they can achieve significantly
greater results without changing their strategy or their creative execution. At the marketing mix
level, marketers can improve their execution by making small changes in any or all of the 4-Ps
(Product, Price, Place and Promotion) (Marketing) without making changes to the strategic
position or the creative execution marketers can improve their effectiveness and deliver increased
revenue. At the program level marketers can improve their effectiveness by managing and
executing each of their marketing campaigns better. It's commonly known that consistency of a
Marketing Creative strategy across various media (e.g. TV, Radio, Print and Online), not just
within each individual media message, can amplify and enhance impact of the overall marketing
campaign effort.
Additional examples would be improving direct mail through a better call-to-action or editing web
site content to improve its organic search results, marketers can improve their marketing
effectiveness for each type of program. A growing area of interest within (Marketing Strategy) and
Execution are the more recent interaction dynamics of traditional marketing (e.g. TV or Events)
with online consumer activity (e.g. Social Media). (See references below, Brand Ecosystems) Not
only direct product experience, but also any stimulus provided by traditional marketing, can
become a catalyst for a consumer brand "groundswell" online as outlined in the book Groundswell.
Marketing Infrastructure (also known as Marketing Management): Improving the business
of marketing can lead to significant gains for the company. Management of agencies, budgeting,
motivation and coordination of marketing activities can lead to improved competitiveness and
improved results. The overall accountability for brand leadership and business results is often
reflected in an organization under a title within a (Brand management) department.