The principles of marketing

Omobolanle Salami 06/10/2009

Assignment No.1 Unit 3

BTEC National Diploma in Business

Introduction to marketing

Introduction:

In this assignment I want to describe the concept and principles of marketing and the application in the business environment.

Task 1

Marketing is defined as an with communication based process through which individuals are informed that existing and new needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others. Which means marketing is used to try to get new customers and keep new and existing customers and also to satisfy them this process of identifying, anticipating and then meeting customer requirement profitably is called marketing.

The principles of marketing:

Marketing has four common principles to undertake, these principles are:

Understanding customer needs
Keep ahead of competition
Communicate with customers
Using technology

Understanding customer needs

The purpose of marketing understands the customer needs and what the market wants. They can establish this through analyzing the marketing mix which has 4 elements that consists of price, promotion, place and the product itself. Conducting in-depth research will allow you to identify what your customer needs are and whether a product or service you’re looking to release, will increase profit as well as market share and will also be ahead of competition.

Price – Promotion – Place – Product

Price

Price is a particularly potent element of the marketing mix because of its direct impact on the customer, the company and the economy. To the consumer, price is an indication of quality and an important factor in the decision-making process. For the company, the price at which a product or service is sold represents the costs and making a profit.

Promotion

The promotion of a product is also one of the important element of the marketing mix that is most subject to variation according to the type of product or service on offer. No product can be sold if the target market does not know of its existence. It is also clear that no amount of promotion will help to sell a product that is not acceptable to the consumer. The promotion of a product is perhaps the element of the marketing mix that is most subject to variation according to the type of product or service on offer. For some products, promotion may only play a minimal role in the marketing effort; for others,

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Promotion usually covers four basic activities: advertising, personal selling, public relations and specialised sales promotion techniques.

Advertising is concerned with communicating messages to the public in order to inform and influence them in order to lead them to buy those items that the advertising for.
Whilst advertising is for the whole public, personal selling tends to be towards individuals. The seller may have the same basic messages that are included in advertising, but the presentation can be modified where necessary to suit specific situations and potential customers.
Public relations is a group set up for ...

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Promotion usually covers four basic activities: advertising, personal selling, public relations and specialised sales promotion techniques.

Advertising is concerned with communicating messages to the public in order to inform and influence them in order to lead them to buy those items that the advertising for.
Whilst advertising is for the whole public, personal selling tends to be towards individuals. The seller may have the same basic messages that are included in advertising, but the presentation can be modified where necessary to suit specific situations and potential customers.
Public relations is a group set up for communicational activities through which an organisation creates or maintains his image with their publics. These publics range from customers, company employees, shareholders and even the Government.
Sales promotion involves: temporary price reductions, displays, coupons and free sample distributions are only a few of the many sales promotional techniques available.

Place

This function is concerned with all those activities needed to move the product or service from the seller to the buyer. To understand place as a function in itself and as part of the marketing mix you must divide the function into two categories:

A structure through which transactions can be made so that the product is made available and accessible to the customers or consumers. This structure is referred to as a distribution channel.

Once that have been established, the company must turn its attention to the problem of how its products are to be physically moved through the system.

Product or Service

The product (or service) is the important of the marketing mix and it should be considered as the starting point for marketing strategy, because without the product there is nothing to promote, or to price, or to distribute.

Keeping ahead of competition

After conducting the marketing research and establishing the company needs, they need to ensure that the unique selling point (USP) of your product can stay ahead of competition and can increase awareness to your target market. Initially most companies sell the same similar product because they have established the customer needs and the demand for certain or similar products. Therefore a company needs to make sure that they have a USP and can find ways of keeping ahead of competition, by perhaps adding methods of promotion to their products and perhaps pricing the product at a price the target consumers can afford.

Communicate with customers

Communicating with customers will allow recognition and awareness of your product and USP. Companies initially will use certain methods to communicate with customers such as advertising on bill boards, TV, newspapers, the internet and more. Communicating with customers is very important due to the fact that you have to communicate at a certain extent to fulfil your customers enquires and feelings and therefore to provide enough information for customers to come to you instead of your competitors. They will need to look back at their feedback from research conducted to see if they have met every aspect of what their customers want and require in a product. It is also important if the customers can communicate with the company itself, by providing methods of contact information of the company on their adverts for example, so customers can require information or even make purchases.

Utilising new Technology

Technology plays a very big aspect in businesses nowadays, this is because nowadays companies would use technology to benefit, save time and money and have more security. Companies may broadcast a website to allow customers to get more information at their own convenience and perhaps even buy products. The advantages the company can have can benefit from less expenditure of wages for example; as you would need less staff because you won’t required to always use telephones all the time as everything is done online and also more revenue from making sales online every day and every time. Technology will also allow greater security of the company and can protect information, security details, customer details and more for data protection purposes. Technology is normally IT related and this can improve speed and accurately and gives you the chance to communicate with customers without voice or face to face communication and they can also use IT to design your products, create certain fonts and more.

The Marketing function.

Basically, marketing is finding out what the needs of the customers are and then provide it. For example Tesco do not class marketing as a function of its own. Businesses describe it as ‘A fundamental to the way the business operates’. This means that all separate functions in the business think of the customer first.

Marketing staff try seeing what customers may want in the future. Businesses do lots of different things so that they are able to help meet the needs of customers. Some of the things they may do are:

Market research – identifies customer’s opinions on products and services that are available and on ones that are proposed.
Promotional activities – advertising to customer’s products or service that is available.
Sales – this is usually done by trained sales staff. They advertise customers on their best product or service.

Marketing has a huge effect on businesses as there is no point in them producing goods and services if nobody is going to buy them.

Smart marketing objectives

When determining the marketing objectives the business should know that their marketing objectives should be S.M.A.R.T.

S – Specific. Be specific in your marketing intentions.

M – Measurable. They have to ensure that the objectives that they set out to achieve are measurable. They should ask them self “What method will I use to determine whether the objectives set out have been achieved?”

A – Achievable. The objectives must be achievable. Which means that everyone have to have the aim to achieve the objectives they set them self.

R – Realistic. They have to ensure that the objectives are realistic.

T – Time tabled. They have to make sure they are specific as to when they anticipate achieving the objectives that have been set up in the business plan. The objectives should be outlined as though they are scheduled appointments that if they make it, it will promote continued business success.

How marketing objectives are linked to organisational objectives

This is how marketing objectives and plans are linked or supports the organisations objectives for example a marketing objective of being the market leader may be linked to the organisations corporate mission statement which might say something like being number one in the country or world wide.

How public, private and voluntary organisations use the marketing principles

Why Marketing Plan needs to be Used, Controlled and Monitored

Marketing plan needs to be controlled for various reasons. Some of these reasons are:

In order to make sure customers are satisfied with the quality of goods and services provided. Organisations use market research like survey forms, questionnaires, blogs etc. to know where they are lacking behind and use that to improve the quality of their goods and services offered to customers.
Organisations controls and monitors their marketing plan in order to access the quality of their marketing. They need to know if they are reaching their intended targets, if they need to market in other locations, if they need to withdraw from an area because of economic or religious reasons etc.
It’s very important to control and monitor your marketing plan in order to make sure it doesn’t result in a bad publicity. For example showing drunk people been happy in an organisation’s advert might result in parents complaining that young pupils are been given wrong ideas, using certain animals in adverts could result in racial issues etc.