ITFC were formed as an amateur club in 1878, but became professional in 1936. After winning the Southern League and finishing third the following season, they were elected to the Football League on May 30th 1938.

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Business Studies Coursework

Brief History

ITFC were formed as an amateur club in 1878, but became professional in 1936. After winning the Southern League and finishing third the following season, they were elected to the Football League on May 30th 1938. But have recently been relegated and now need a new marketing mix to help them maintain profits. ITFC have a good reputation as a Football Club both in playing skills and in a reputable club status.

Location

The stadium is situated on Portman Rd. and has been there since the club started and is constantly being done up to maintain quality.

A overhead map of the stadium located at Portman road.

Aim of this coursework

The aim of this coursework is to reinvent the marketing mix for Ipswich Town Football Club after they were relegated from Division One and they are now afraid of loosing profits. I will do this by using the 4P's of marketing which are the basis of all marketing plans, these are :

- Product - Reviewing the product in the past, in the present and what you intent to do with it

- Price - Reviewing the price of the same product

- Promotion - Any promotions you can do with the product in question

- Place - Can the product be moved geographically

I will also have to rely on research which exists in two types :

- Primary - Research conducted by you

- Secondary - Research conducted on someone else's research

Another thing you have to consider is people's social category which varies on your annual household income ranging from A, B, C1, C2, D and E depending on how much they earn A being the largest and E being the smallest.

Research Plan

We are not sure what they used in the past for their Marketing Mix as many companies do not like to release this information as this may be passed on to competitors.

Their current marketing mix needs to be updated as they have recently been relegated so are looking for ideas and are not willing to rely on their previous marketing mix.

I have also decided to rely on secondary data, which will help me also word my questionnaire. This will also help me to determine form previous data what they had for their previous marketing mix and to determine what happened before when other teams have been relegated, with this data in mind I should be able to decide what to do to help them retain their profits even after being relegated. I can also begin assessing the secondary data now to ensure that I can add to my questionnaire with some better questions to ask and some greater understanding of what will happen. I have found 6 different kinds of secondary research.

*All of these sources and secondary information come from The Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research.

.) I have received some data on the total spent by season tickets holder by team and have found that the top two teams are situated around London. As 70% of supporters support local clubs this means people in London are more likely to buy season tickets than people in the north-west as that is one of the poorer areas of the UK. With ITFC being in East Anglia we should be aiming for some from social group A, some from social group C1 and most form social group B.

2.) However despite this the best stadium to visit was voted Anfield in Liverpool whereas the worst were the ones positioned around London.

3.) The percentage of season ticket holder that earn more than £ 50,000 - the top five teams are locate around London and together hold more than 40% of the entire share.

4.) For a good game man 82% of people considered price to be a deciding factor, followed by comfort at 69%, loud crowd at 62%, shout and scream at 59% and good travel and parking at 45%

With this in mind I have decided to find out what people currently think of their new strategies after being relegated and comparing that to what they used before this in order to gain of feel of what the consumer wants from the club. To do this I will use questionnaires (Fig 1).

From this I can ascertain what they have done since being relegate to help them so far. I will get this information myself over the internet and various sources such as free handouts (Fig 2), as well as this I will also rely on the information from the questionnaires.
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I will also look at what other previously relegated teams have done in the past to help their profits stabilise and if they got back into division one that would also help team morale, supporters morale and would boost profits overall.

Before making my questionnaire I will have to consider what I want to be asking and how this information could actually help ITFC, so some of my questions will have top have qualitative data and some will need quantitative answers. The quantitative answers will be easy to add up and hopefully get an overall view for ...

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