WEEK 2 MARK 3300-90L
Q1: Define strategic planning and briefly describe the four steps that lead managers and the firm through the strategic planning process. Discuss the role marketing plays in this process.
Strategic planning and marketing go hand in hand as they both help prepare a company or business in planning. The four steps in strategic planning include a mission statement, setting objectives and goals, a business portfolio, and developing functional plans. A mission statement is intended for the customers or market, it must satisfy and motivate customers. Setting objectives and goals sets up a chain of hierarchy, where each level of management is responsible for an objective. The business portfolio entails the businesses and the company's product, provides current and future plans. Developing function plans involve analyzing the company to figure a continued flow of profits either through growth or maintaining a steady rate. These four steps lead managers and the firm through the strategic planning process as managers must set their own goals or objectives which must be met. Marketing plays a role in this process as it is necessary for strategic planning and marketing to work together so a company can succeed.
Q6: Answer question 2-7 on page 63 in the text.
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Matrix helps portfolio planning in similar ways to the GE/McKinsey Matrix because of their very similar structure and how they're read. Both have a structure in which you want to be on the left side of the chart for current strategic business units (SBUs) to generate revenue and instead have only future investments on the top right of the chart while having little to no SBUs on the bottom left since these hardly generate enough to maintain themselves. The structure on both makes portfolio planning easier to read since you know how your SBUs are doing and how big each is, which brings us to a difference between the two, how each SBU in the two matrices is marked on the chart. The SBU is marked by circles who's area shows the SBUs dollar sales while the GE/McKinsey shows circles which are more specific than blank circles. The SBU circles in it show the SBU's market size as opposed to the dollar amount of sales, while also having a pie chart inside the circle showing the percentage of the SBUs market share and an arrow showing future expectations. Both seem like good portfolio analysis, with the GE one being more specific on the individual SBU
Q3: Define each of the four Ps. What insights might a firm gain by considering the four As rather than the four Ps?
The four P's of Marketing include: product, price, place and promotion. 1.First, product simply means "the goods-and-services combination the company offers to the target market". Another words what your selling for example, a car, a TV, a car detailing service. It's not just the item or services your selling but also the variety, design, quality, brand packaging. 2. Second, price "is the amount of money customers must pay to obtain the product". The price is not as simple as just the amount you charge customers for your product or service like most people think. Instead, it involves basically anything that involves money for example, retail, discounts, bonuses, even payment plans and credit terms. 3. Third, promotion "refers to activities that communicate the merits of the product and persuade target customers to buy it". Another words, anything that involves promoting your product or service which is what most people picture when they think about marketing. Some examples of promoting include advertising, sponsorships, Brochures and sales calls. 4. Fourth, place "includes company activities that make the product available to target consumers". Place can be looked at as distribution. Is your product going to be available at retail locations or maybe delivery only? It also takes into account the logistics. Some insights that a firm may gain by considering the four A's rather than the four P's may be that when focusing on the four A's a firm will be better able to organize around the values that matter the most to their customers. The four A's include: Acceptability, Affordability, Accessibility and Awareness. As is apparent, focusing on the four A's is defiantly a more customer centric approach rather than a seller's which allows companies to help create value for customers by focusing on what the customers want and need.
Q2: Name and define the four product/market growth strategies with your own examples.
The four product/market growth strategies are: Market Penetration Market Development Product Development Diversification 1. Market Penetration is marketing on exist markets and marketing existing products, to gain more sales without changing the product. An example of this would be sales/discounts at your local retail stores. They promote X amount percentage off to gain more sales or purchases without changing their product, or changing the market that it is already exists in. 2. Market Development is similar to market penetration, but instead of marketing to an existing market, you are marketing or creating a new market, while still using an exist product. Ex. Starbucks is a good example of market development, because their product never changed but they continued to expand their market. Over the years we began to see the rise of the Starbucks, you would have never seen this many coffee shops in the local cities but since they expanded and marketed so heavily we start to see them on corners of our streets, in malls, retails stores, universities and even in other countries. Starbucks even began to start selling their beans at grocery stores, expanding to new markets, new audiences, but using the same existing product. 3. Product Development is developing or creating a new product but to an existing market. Ex. My first thoughts that came up with product development is technology, specifically phones. It makes sense because as society advances so does technology. Companies have to keep up to date with the latest and fastest models of their product, but they don't necessarily need to expand to new markets or audiences. I feel Apple has product development down to the bone, they are aware of the audience that they have, and are really active with creating new products or modifications for their consumers. Apple is aware that when announce a new model or new product its going to massively generate revenue. 4. Lastly diversification, diversification is developing a new product and selling or expanding it to a new market. Ex. Medicine and research would be a good example of diversification, new medicines and antidotes are being created and invented consistently. When a more modern and up to date cure begins to show up on the market, it promotes a 'new' product and expands to outside countries and new markets.
Q4: How are marketing departments organized? Which organization is best?
The organization of marketing departments today consists of five different aspects. Those aspects are the following: Functional Organization, Geographic organization, Product management organization, Market or customer management organization, and Combination organization. 1. Functional organization is an organizational structure where it is divided into smaller groups that depend of specialized areas. 2. Geographic Organization gives each business unit/office to be able to act as its own separate entity depending on where the location of that unit is. 3. Product Management Organization has to do with advertising a product in all different stages of the product's process. 4. Customer Management Organization is becoming more well-known and more commonly used due to it stressing more focus on the customer. I believe that the Customer Management organization is the best option in today's world since the customer is what keeps your company running, giving the customer more focus rather than elevate profits is the better option.
Q5: Why must marketers practice marketing control, and how is it done?
The reason of why must marketers should practice marketing control is because there is no planning without control. When the company is implementing new marketing strategies, things out of the ordinary can happen for the new changes, that is why we need to have control of what is happening in the company. The process of marketing control is based in measuring and evaluating the plans and objectives that were proposed at the beginning, the marketers have to visualize if they are complying with the required expectations and their plans are progressing well, and if not, there is the moment when they have to correct certain strategies to meet their goals at the same time fulfilling the right performances. According to Gary Armstrong and Philip Kotler this process is performed by two different ways: 1) Operating Control and 2) Strategic Control. The first one is mainly involved in checking performance in sales, profits,etc and taking corrections if needed. The second one is about matching the company´s basic strategies with the opportunities.
