UNIT CODE M-506-9074 Strategic Marketing Assignment Sample

UNIT CODE: M/506/9074 Strategic Marketing

Scenario

Assume you are a marketing consultant hired by Scepta Food products, a startup company specializing dairy products. The company is looking to expand its market presence and increase sales. Your task is to investigate underlying models, techniques and theories that underpin marketing and that can contribute to strategic objectives and develop a marketing plan for the company. To meet each task, you would have to answer assessment criteria.

Task 1- Case study

You should be able to understand the relationship between the marketing plan and strategic objectives. For this you must prepare a case study that will: • Critically evaluate how marketing techniques and tools can support the strategy of an organisation and how this impacts on the marketing plan

• Determine marketing methodologies and approaches that contribute to a marketing plan within complex organisations

• Address risk associated with the marketing plan

Task 2

You should be able to produce a strategic marketing plan. For this purpose you should: • Critically analyze the components of a marketing plan and the levels of importance of each component to the achievement of strategic objectives

• Address mitigation strategies for high risk components of the plan

• Develop a marketing plan that will achieve strategic objectives for a complex organisation

Task 3

As part of your job role, you need to promote the marketing plan in support of strategic objectives. You are asked to: • Discuss how the plan supports strategic objectives

• Develop an approach to gain agreement for the marketing plan that will change organisation actions and methods to achieve
strategic objectives

• Critically evaluate and provide review measures for the agreed plan.

Solution

Brief Background

Almarai is a multinational dairy company is Saudi Arabia, which offers dairy products, poultry and infant foods (Almarai 2023). The assessment will work on a marketing plan for Almarai, where they will be looking for expanding into new product segment, which is fish product.

Task 1

Critically evaluation of marketing techniques and tools

Marketing tools and techniques are used as equipment for the marketing specialist of an organization towards promoting products and services and set strategies. According to Shukla (2019), branding is one of the best tools and techniques to promote products and services. According to the MBA Assignment Expert overview, It conveys the intrinsic value of the products and services to the customers. On the other hand, Levkina and Petrenko (2019) opined that marketing research through survey among the potential customers can help identifying their core needs and wants from products. Hence, such technique helps in setting strategies and marketing plan as per unique needs of the customers. Hence, the tools and techniques like branding and survey can be an effective option for setting the marketing plan for the new product.

Dumitriu et al. (2019) stated that social media is a power marketing tool in contemporary business world, which helps in referral marketing. People favouring one particular product and service can share the same with their friends, which increase the popularity of the same. Organizations can also get feedback about their products and services through such media, which helps organization to revise and recorrect their strategies and marketing plan accordingly for best result. On the other hand, Tariq et al. (2022) said digital media analytics allow organizations to assess consumer behaviour pattern and identify the best effecting digital channels, where most users are visiting products. Hence, Almarai can use such techniques to identify the trends and patterns of consumer towards the new product and set marketing plans accordingly.

Determine marketing methodologies and approaches

Marketing method and approaches determines long term plan about the way of promoting and selling products and services to customers. According to Katsikeas, Leonidou and Zeriti (2020), influencer marketing is an effective marketing method, where organizations work with an individual having huge fans and followings on social media for any complex organization. The influencer with established credibility and audience can influence customers towards that particular product and services. Hence, it can be effective marketing method to be used in an organization to prepare marketing plan. On the other hand, Baker (2003) stated that event marketing is a strategic approach, which helps in creating and executing even plan towards promoting products and service. Such marketing approach helps in developing an engaging relation with potential customers increasing the sales growth opportunity. Hence, Almarai can use such marketing methods and approach to build customer relation and influence them for promoting sales. Blythe (2005) opined that search engine optimization is another marketing method, where organizations optimize their website’s technical configuration to get popularity on their website link in search engine. Such method helps in attracting more customer awareness and improve sales opportunity with better promotion. Hence, Almarai can also use such method to get entry in fish market and gain popularity among the customers.

Address risk associated with the marketing plan

Risk in marketing plan represents the risk of potential failure in any marketing activity. The most common risks in marketing plan are putting wrong message to target audience, setting price of product incorrectly, minimal marketing strategies and many more (Burnett 2010). Hence, while entering to new product segment, Almarai might face some risk in their marketing plan. Hence, they have to prepared with their strategies to address risks in plan.

The first and foremost strategy would be setting KPI (key performance indicator) for all the outcome of marketing objectives and actions. Organization must perform frequent measurement on the marketing operations to check the effectiveness of the same and revise it in case of any deviation. Moreover, the organization should set tolerance level for each risk and use technologies like google analytics track the tolerance level of the risks. It will help organization to set preventive controlling measures for effectively revising marketing plan and get correct outcome. Moreover, the organization can also use Automatic reporting system, where the technologies like google analytics, SaaS and other technologies will automatically generate reports for the organization on different parameters of marketing activities. Such system can help identify the inactive target segment, ineffective use of discount codes, Pay per Clicks and many more (Zhu and Mishra 2023). Hence, any deviation can be easily identified to take corrective measures.

Task 2

Critically analyse the components of a marketing plan

Effective marketing plan includes several components towards a successful marketing of products and services. As stated by Doole, Lowe and Kenyon (2019), marketing research is the first component of any marketing plan, which helps in assessing market environment of an organization and its associated threads and opportunities. It can be considered as high-risk component, as wrong assumption of market risk and opportunities might lead to complete failure of marketing plan. On the other hand, Morgan et al. (2019), stated that launching new product is an important component of marketing plan, which is having high level importance to marketing plan. In case of Almarai, entering fishing market without having an identified track record might ruin the success of marketing plan. Setting target audience is a critical component in marketing plan, where organizations have to focus on right customers having demand for a particular product service for its sales effectiveness. In case of Almarai choosing right customer segment in Middle East countries for fish market in a high important component for marketing plan. Furthermore, setting marketing strategies, budget and controlling plan also come under important marketing components in marketing plan (Fuertes et al. 2020). While, arranging them as per importance level they will come as budget, marketing strategy and controlling plan.

Address mitigation strategies for high-risk components of the plan

Among the marketing components, market research, marketing strategy, budget and target customers are having high risk associated with them. In case of marketing research, there should be a through and up-do-date market analysis by market analysts to avoid any kind of miss in assessing marketing trends as well as customer trends (Varadarajan 2020). Almarai should involve continuous monitoring system for market analysis to identify in change in market, consumer demand and competitive landscape. Pilot testing on new product and customer feedback system are the most useful mitigation strategies for high-risk components like marketing strategies. Almarai should conduct pilot testing for identing the potential demand of fish in the market for its success launch. Moreover, the feedback system from customers can also mitigate the risk of price and promotional effectiveness (Katsikeas, Leonidou and Zeriti 2020). In case of budget allocation, the organization should set all marketing activities based on their expected return on investment (ROI) and keep a constant check on the same to identify any deviation.
Marketing Plan for Almarai (new product diversification in Fish Products)

Strategic Objectives

- Increasing profit by 10% by diversifying product category

- Reaching new customer segment with new product development

- Increasing market share by 5% with new customer segment

Environment Scanning

PESTLE

Table 1: PESTLE of Almarai
(Source: Created by Author)

SWOT

Table 2: SWOT of Almarai
(Source: Created by Author)

Strong brand image established by Almarai is dairy industry will be favourable for its new product diversification (Almarai 2023). Customers will easily trust on the fish product of the organization leading to successful diversification. Moreover, the strong distribution network of the organization will help in reaching customers in an effective manner. The organization used high end technologies like google analytics, cloud platform, robotics and many more. Hence, such technology will help organization to track the performance of new business in a timely manner. However, Almarai faces risk of financial fluctuation due to several marketing factors like competition and changing consumer demand (Mohamad and Asfour 2020). Such risk can negatively affect organization to sufficiently invest in the progress of new business. The recent increase in the consumption of fish products has been seen in Saudi Arabia. Hence, such market trends will be an opportunity for Almarai to grow in fish product market. However, the organization has to be highly dependant on the suppliers of raw fishes for the growth. Hence, this can be a threat for the organization towards getting success.

Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

Table 3: STP of Almarai
(Source: Created by Author)

In case of new product diversification in fish product market, Almarai use segment people having age range between 15-60 age group. The organization will use undifferentiated marketing as their targeting strategy, where they will target all kind of consumer within this age range. People like corporate officials and college students will be segmented as they are having high tendency of having snacks foods. Moreover, the organization is already aware of their popularity of their brand among the consumers, they will target people having high brand preference. While talking about the positing of the product, the organization will focus on high quality of fish and unique taste in the fish snacks. Moreover, the healthy ingredients used in the product will attract the consumers, who are conscious about their health. Apart from that, the organization will attract customers by offering attractive discounts on the fish snacks.

Marketing Strategies Product

Almarai will launch new fish products like fish snacks for the consumers to reach new customer segment. In fish snacks, the organization will offer different kinds of backed fishes, pan fried fishes, ready-to-cook fish products. Such ready-to-cook fish products can be used for fish biriyani, fish fry, fish tikka, fish curry and lot more. Moreover, along with the dishes of fishes, the organization will add healthy vegetable ingredients for the consumers, which will give a fresh flavour.

Price

In pricing strategy, the organization will use price penetration strategy. In such pricing strategy, price of products will initially be kept as low to attract new consumers and be stable in market and later increase price upon getting growth (CIM 2015). Hence, the organization will initially keep price low for the customers to get entry in new fish product market. Moreover, for increasing the volume of sales, the product will be available in three sizes, 100g, 400g and 600g respectively, where price would be determined accordingly.

Place

The products will be distributed primarily in retail market. This would focus business-to-customer (B2C) target market. Therefore, superstores, supermarkets, supermalls and in standalone stores will be the main areas of sales. Also, the products will be available in ecommerce platform as well as on its own online platform from where consumers can directly avail through home delivery. Foodboy and ToYou will be the main distributers for home delivery service of the products.

Promotion

Promotion is a key communicating tool for organization to persuade customers towards purchasing products and services (Rutz and Watson 2019). Celebrity endorsement will be in place for promotion where Ashleigh Cummings will be contracted for 3 years for brand endorsement. Next users who purchase from online platform will be given flat 25% discount on first three purchases and customers from offline market will get the products at 15% discount for first three months from the date of product launch. Moreover, social media platforms such as YouTube will be tremendously used for showing the advertisements and marketing campaigns.

Task 3

Discuss how the plan supports strategic objectives

Supporting Objective 1- Increasing profit by 10% by diversifying product category

Considering the target market, it is evident that the potential customers will definitely be attracted in such a healthy fish snacks item. Almarai has been predominantly dependant on dairy products in Saudi Arabia, however these new fish items, it is expected to increase the overall sales volume leading to increased profit

Supporting Objective 2- Reaching new customer segment with new product development

With this new fish product, the organization can reach to a complexly new customer segment along with its existing segments. Eventually this new product development will help in increasing customer base and thereby increasing the overall sales.

Supporting Objective 3- Increasing market share by 5% with new customer segment

Since the price is quite affordable with three product sizes, it is expected that sales volume will be quite high to satisfy huge target market in daily usage. Moreover, discounts and ease of availability will contribute towards high sales and customer reach. Therefore, finally market share will increase.

Develop an approach to gain agreement for the marketing plan

It is necessary set an approach through which marketing consultant can gain agreement on marketing plan from the concerned organization (Paul 2020). The approach would be to showcase the increase in net income from fish snacks category at every month for first 2 years and achieve break even point within 2 years of launch, later which Almarai would be able to gain profit for this new category. Therefore, the key performance indicator would be dependent on sales volume number, customer interest through social media platform and customer retention. Once a positive outcome is showcased, from the marketing plan, it will help in gaining the agreement.

Moreover, organization’s action would be to create a separate marketing team, operations team, data analytics and quality checking team, logistics team, accounts team and distribution team to carry out the new product line. The actions and method will be quite similar to its dairy products but the maximum costs will be acquiring new machinery, production lines and operations.

Critically evaluate and provide review measures for the agreed plan

Key performance indicators will be highly necessary in reviewing the measures taken for agreed plan.

Table 4: Key Performance Indicators
(Source: Created by Author) 

Reference List

Almarai., 2023. Almarai. [online] www.almarai.com. Available at: https://www.almarai.com/en.

Baker, M.J., 2003. The Marketing Book. 5th ed. Butterworth-Heinemann.

Blythe, J., 2005. Essentials of Marketing. 3rd ed. England: Pearson Education Limited, pp.1–308.

Burnett, J., 2010. Introducing Marketing. 1st ed. Global Text Project, pp.5–313.

CIM., 2015. A Brief Summary of Marketing and How It Works. [online] p.2. Available at: https://www.cim.co.uk/media/4772/7ps.pdf.

Doole, I., Lowe, R. and Kenyon, A., 2019. International marketing strategy: analysis, development and implementation. Cengage Learning.

Dumitriu, D., Militaru, G., Deselnicu, D.C., Niculescu, A. and Popescu, M.A.M., 2019. A perspective over modern SMEs: Managing brand equity, growth and sustainability through digital marketing tools and techniques. Sustainability, 11(7), p.2111.

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Levkina, R. and Petrenko, A., 2019. Management of innovative marketing techniques as an effective business tool. Agricultural and Resource Economics: International Scientific E-Journal, 5(1868-2019-790), pp.37-47.

Mohamad, K.A. and Asfour, A.M., 2020. Is the business in Saudi market sustainable? Case study of Almarai. IIUM Journal of Case Studies in Management, 11(2), pp.7-14.
Mordorintelligence.com., 2022. Saudi Arabia Seafood Market Size & Share Analysis - Industry Research Report - Growth Trends. [online] www.mordorintelligence.com. Available at: https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/saudi-arabia-seafood-market [Accessed 31 Oct. 2023].

Morgan, N.A., Whitler, K.A., Feng, H. and Chari, S., 2019. Research in marketing strategy. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 47, pp.4-29.

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Tariq, E., Alshurideh, M., Akour, I. and Al-Hawary, S., 2022. The effect of digital marketing capabilities on organizational ambidexterity of the information technology sector. International Journal of Data and Network Science, 6(2), pp.401-408.

Varadarajan, R., 2020. Customer information resources advantage, marketing strategy and business performance: A market resources based view. Industrial Marketing Management, 89, pp.89-97.

Zhu, D., Li, Z. and Mishra, A.R., 2023. Evaluation of the critical success factors of dynamic enterprise risk management in manufacturing SMEs using an integrated fuzzy decision-making model. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 186, p.122137.