Guide to AT2 Introduction to Marketing Semester 1, 2017 Dr. Rowan Kennedy
Target &
Marketing Mix
% of overall assessment
35%
Word count
(approx.)
2,500 Learning outcomes
addressed K 3, 4
S1, 2, 3, 4 A1, 2
Due date
Monday Wk 10
15 May
Guide to Assessment Task 2: Marketing Plan…cont’d
This task is a continuation of Assessment Task 1 and represents the outcome of your Situation Analysis. The two linked tasks examine your organisation’s current situation and subsequently lead to the creation of a marketing plan.
Your Task
Your task is to prepare a Marketing Plan for the completed Situation Analysis. As mentioned in the last Guide, the SA is typically the first substantive section of a marketing plan in which the marketing manager usually details their assessment of the current situation.
You’ll now consider the current situation in relation to your market offer. Start thinking about how a small change could be made to your product/service that optimises or leverages current environmental circumstances – or that could protect it from the current situation. This may be a small product line extension designed to attract an emerging target segment, or that will take advantage of a change in culture or some other part of the macroenvironment.
Every business needs a current marketing plan that represents an
organised, strategic way of approaching the market for the plan period: typically
12 months Through your SWOT analysis you have identified the core problem or opportunity currently facing your company. You’ll now take this problem/opportunity and design a marketing plan that leverages your company’s situation.
As always, the first part of your plan will be an Introduction.
Approx. 150 words
(your point 1, page 1)
As this is a continuation of your SA (of which we still have a copy), we don’t need
This Introduction will be a small paragraph basically introducing what the plan will
Remember to assume the persona of your organisation’s marketing manager (or marketing consultant) who is required to prepare a marketing plan for your new
Covering these points should take up about 100-150 words. Manage your writing carefully. Don’t waffle or provide unnecessary information.
Before leaving the topic of introductions: frequently we see students writing their introduction on a separate page. There is no reason for this.
1
Introduction
you to introduce the company again.
contain in general terms.
product/line extension or new target.
Executive Summary, yes, Introduction – NO. It should not be on a separate page, but should be the first paragraph on page 1. In a large report where your introduction may cover two or three pages and each major heading that follows is placed on a separate page this practice is understandable, but not when you are writing a small 100 word introduction to a minor report such as this.
When you have a product line extension in mind, start thinking about your target, but first you’ll need to segment your market.
Segmenting and targeting the market
As you’ve read elsewhere, you can’t design a product without knowing who the customer is (remember Week 3?), so this is where you start to break up the market into meaningful groups of consumers who share the characteristics your product will be designed for.
There are many sources you can easily access through the library to research segmentation and targeting: some you’ll probably already be familiar with and some you may not.
Approx. 200 words
Segmenting the Market (your point 2)
And as you also know from your study in Week 5, in defining a market you must recognise that you can’t be all things to all people. If you are an Apple, K-Mart, or a Target you may have a large enough budget to target several segments simultaneously, but small and medium sized organisations typically identify one or two markets at a time.
Of course other segments that aren’t being specifically targeted will also hear about or buy from you, but they won’t necessarily be your target. Identifying a gap in the market, and targeting that void with your product/services is how organisations address their markets.
Your task in this section:
Using a concentrated marketing coverage strategy, segment the market three ways and, using all four bases of segmentation,
Briefly describe the three potential segments for your product
Try and limit your description to approximately 25 words each
This is a very simple section and most of the suggested word count will be taken up in your explanation of segmentation and how it works. As with other theoretical sections, you’ll access the literature to acquaint yourself with what current thinking about segmentation is and what researchers are saying/finding. Don’t spend too much of your word space here.
THEN (and here’s the easy part), just come up with the three potential segments. Think about your (tweaked) product and identify three distinct groups it may be attractive to. We’re not looking for anything tricky here, just three bullet points will do.
To summarise:
discuss the theory
describe briefly in geographic, demographic, psychographic and
behavioural detail *exactly who is in three potential segments*
You DO NOT need to access any marketing company data. Describe the segments your own imagination suggests would be most responsive to the marketing mix for your product. What do you think they would look like for the product?
The next step in the STP model (p. 168) involves evaluating segment attractiveness:
? Factors to consider:
You won’t do this step: it would take too long and use too much of your word limit.
-You’re welcome ?
Segment size and growth
• Sales, growth rates, profits
Segment structural attractiveness
• Competitors, substitutes, power of buyers, power of suppliers
Company objectives and resources
• Objectives, resources, strengths, skills, superior value
For the sake of your sanity and ours’, let’s assume you’ve conducted this step and your MIS has led you to identify one clear potential target guaranteed to respond to your marketing activities. Your next step is to draw a detailed description of your target for the product. Remember to make this very, very detailed.
Approx. 350 words
Target Market (your point 3)
This section begins with your next opportunity for some research/theory. This time you’ll put ‘market targeting’ into the search engine for your literature search. You’ll find a plethora of information to begin the section with a theoretical discussion. Just a paragraph is all this should take before you go on to describe your target.
Select one of the three segments as your target. You’ll need to justify it as the most attractive to your organisation/brand. You don’t have to justify it in any depth for this exercise (although you would IRL as a result of the factors above).
Again, you DO NOT need to access any marketing company data. Describe the segments you consider would be most responsive to the marketing mix for your product. What would consumers for this product look like in terms of the four variables? Draw a very focused image of who they are, where they are and how they live their lives. When you have an almost photographic image of your target, when you know them as well as you do a family member, then you have adequately described them and are ready to target them with your offer and messages.
Hint: see Appendix 1.
To summarise:
discuss the theory (explain market targeting)
choose which segment you consider to be the most attractive to your company
(explain why) and describe the target in fine detail using the same four bases of segmentation.
Positioning the offer (or, your value proposition)
Approx. 200 words
Again, begin with some research into positioning to show you understand the concept and how it works. Remember to use the referencing guide to cite your sources of information.
Refresh your memory by going over your notes from Week 5 and/or reading Chapter 6 again, and then work through the four steps.
Step 1: decide what competitive advantage your product has from other products in the same product category.
Step 2: Construct a small perceptual map/positioning grid showing the position of your product in relation to competing products (remember, you’ve already identified competitors in your SA).
Step 3: Decide what your positioning strategy is to be; or, alternatively, decide which differences you think would be more appropriate to promote (value proposition, attributes, symbols, competition).
See p. 186 for Gatorade and 7-Up positioning statement examples
Step 4: Develop your positioning statement.
At this point you’re ready to go with the marketing mix so, with all of this information in mind, start thinking about your product. Does it need another tweak now that you have a firm direction and consumer in mind?
Approx. 1800 words
Marketing Mix (your point 5)
You’ve completed the preliminaries to a marketing strategy (the Situation Analysis, Segmentation & Targeting and Positioning), so now you are going to design a very basic marketing mix that allows you to think about some of the major aspects of marketing, such as product, price, place and promotion (or McCarthy’s 4Ps).
The marketing mix is an integral part of a Marketing Plan. Marketing Planning is one of the most important business activities undertaken by any company.
All businesses must make decisions about what type of product or
service they will offer to consumers/patients/clients/students. The price those people will be willing to pay (while still allowing for a profit to be made), where and how the product or service will be made available to consumers and how to communicate information about the product or service is what designing a plan is all about.
Having now identified your target market and the position you plan to occupy in their minds with your product, you’ll now devise a marketing mix. You have tweaked your company’s offer to meet the needs of your target, so use the 4P framework for this next section. Dedicate approximately 1500 words here.
As general criteria, each marketing mix element should;
Specifically take into account the characteristics of the target market
Be consistent with the other elements of the mix (e.g. a higher price should be used when the product strategy emphasises high quality)
Make occasional use of macro-environmental trends to justify the strategy (e.g. the social trend towards environmental concern would support a product strategy for cosmetics whereby the product does not contain excessive levels of chemicals, is not tested on animals, uses re-cycled packaging, and promotes these important attributes on the label).
Your first marketing mix element is, of course, Product.
Approx. 450 words
Product strategy (your point 5.1)
You’ll begin this section by covering the theory of product levels, possibly using the textbook and expanding from there into the extant literature. You’ll probably reference the textbook at first mention of the theory, but after that, I’d like to see you doing some secondary research elsewhere.
Firstly –this is a product. Tangible. Pick it up. Touch it, smell it. Taste it. It could be a service, but that’s a little trickier to (and lengthier) to design a mix for). If you can see it in the retail store or in your home, you’re on the right track.
The beginning of this section is merely a description of your product. It doesn’t require any research. Just describe what your product is (could even include how it’s used if it’s a new, unique product). You may like to describe the product using the three product levels (see p. 241).
Use your discussion of the product levels to lead you into a description of each of the three levels of your products. So your theory paragraph will be followed by, for example:
5.1.1 Core product
You should already have explained in brief what a core benefit is, so now go on to describe the core benefit of your product. Write about the core benefit that’s being satisfied when your consumers buy your offering.
– the problem-solving services or core benefits that consumers are really buying when they obtain a product
– may be multiple core benefits
– think of the core benefit as the primary element of the consumer’s motivation to consume the offer
– competitors are defined by the benefit they offer, not by the product they offer
Once you’ve described the core benefit being addressed (and in reality that’s only about a sentence or so), then go on to describe your actual/tangible product.
5.1.2 Actual product
Describe your product in terms of the product decisions.
If you prefer, you can present this in a table something like this:
Product attributes
(Product Name)
• Quality
• Features
• Style & Design
Branding
Packaging
Labelling
You may also want to cover the type of product it is in this section.
5.1.3 Augmented Product/Associated Services
Describe the product’s augmented benefits. Remember, this can deliver your organisation’s competitive advantage. It’s the:
– additional consumer services and benefits built around the core and actual products
– In some cases, is the basis of differentiation
Try to be creative with this section. Don’t rely on the old and tired after sales service (unless you can do something creative with it) and warrantees and guarantees. Put some thought into this and really look for things that would make your target purchase your product over whomever else is in the perceptual map.
Now that you’ve got a good handle on your offering and why consumers will want to buy it, you’ll start thinking about your target market in more detail (again) and this may lead you to go back and tweak your target description a little. I always think target and product relationship is a little ‘chicken and egg’ – one informs the other, so as one changes, so does the other.
To summarise:
Identify the product’s core benefit, its actual attributes (e.g. quality, packaging, labelling, branding, features, design, style) and the augmented product (something different that your competitors haven’t thought of)
Describe the product type, i.e. whether the product is a convenience, shopping or specialty item and its impact upon the mix
Approx. 450 words
Price strategy (your point 5.2)
Again, do some reading about price and perhaps its impact on the mix. Take the opportunity to do some research to lead into this paragraph.
Some of the things you may wish to consider under this element of the mix are:
• Which of the major pricing strategies will you use?
• What other internal and external considerations will affect your pricing decisions?
• Is it a new product? If so, what new product pricing strategy will you use?
• Will you need to use a price adjustment strategy? If so, which one? When?
• Do you anticipate price changes? If so, under what circumstances?
• Will your organisation be competing on price or non-price Factors
I’ll give you a small example just to give you the idea of how this could be approached using a breakfast cereal –
3.0 PRICE STRATEGY
There are four general pricing approaches – cost-based pricing, value-based pricing, competition-based pricing and relationship pricing (Kotler et al. 2012). Of these, value-based pricing is often recommended due its consistency with the marketing concept (Assael et al., 2009). The value-based pricing method implies that ‘Better Breakfasts’ should charge a higher price for its cereals. However, because this method is inconsistent with the characteristics of ‘Better Breakfasts’ target market (e.g. low-income ‘basic needs’), and its marketing objective of rapid market growth, it is not appropriate. Instead, ‘Better Breakfasts’ will adopt a market penetration strategy. This strategy refers to the process of setting a low initial price in order to quickly penetrate a market (Stanton, 2013). By charging a lower price it will encourage consumers to trial the cereal (Kotler et al., 2012), which is important because it is in the introductory stage of its life cycle. Lower prices also offer ‘Better Breakfasts’ the potential benefit of brand loyalty (McColl-Kennedy et al., 2010). This strategy is also consistent with the key trend identified from the economic environment – the emergence of a value-oriented consumer who uses price as a key purchase criterion (Ballack, 2009).
BTW – this section above accounts for almost 200 words, so don’t forget we don’t expect you to cover all the questions that have been posed above, but to select those which are more applicable to your product/target/positioning statement.
Approx. 450 words
Place (your Distribution strategy, point 5.3)
Conduct some research into distribution to introduce the concept.
Some of the aspects of distribution you may wish to consider for your product are:
• What is a marketing/distribution channel?
• How many channel levels will you need?
• What type of channel behaviour will you need to be aware of?
• How will you organise your channel of distribution?
• What types of retailers will you use to distribute your product?
Other (e.g. if a store is being used, describe the décor, atmospherics, staff etc.).
You’ll
need more probably than 450 words here
Promotion (your Marketing Communication strategy, point 5.4)
Think back to the target you described in such great detail earlier. Think of how you want them to perceive your product, and design a strategy for communicating with them about it (now is when you realise how important it is to have such a clear picture of who they are and how they live their lives. Without this you cannot possibly expect to reach them with your messages).
We’ll make this easy and only ask for some of the
major decisions to be made. Check out the model on p. 433 of your text. The six basic communication tools used to communicate with consumers are shown in Fig. 13.3. Choose the three most appropriate for your target. As your product is a consumer good, then advertising will be one of the three.
Describe how you will use each of the three to reach your target.
We’re not asking for anything complicated here, but try and be creative and as detailed as you can within the word limit and the level of your knowledge.
You’ll have to move up in the textbook for this section to Weeks 10 & 11 and do some independent study because we won’t have reached this point in the semester by the time you need to be thinking about it and planning this part of your mix. If you have any problems with this section, feel free to ask and we’ll help you with anything you may be unclear about. Feel free to use the Discussion Forum for any questions.
We’re not asking for any media decisions. That would be a bit complicated for this plan. We really just want to see you using the basic MC tools appropriately.
Approx. 200 words
Strategic Fit (your point 6.0)
This is not unlike an Impact Statement. In this final section you’re looking for the strategic fit between your proposed marketing plan and your organisation’s plans for responsible management in terms of: Sustainability
Ethics
CSR
In other words, how does this plan fit with the organisation’s policies on the above?
For example, say you’re are creating a marketing plan for the world’s largest beverage company (Coca-Cola) – a quick glance at the 2017 Sustainability Report discloses that there is a strong focus on environmentally friendly products, sustainable packaging, improving water efficiency, human and workplace rights, renewable energy investments, sustainable agriculture, stakeholder engagement and many other commitments to sustainable marketing. The Coca-Cola marketing plan would need to dovetail with and contribute to these commitments – just as yours will do for the organisation you are designing this plan for. Any deviation from the corporate plan would render the marketing plan inoperable.
Read it here:
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/water-stewardship-replenish-report
Strategic Fit acts as the conclusion of your plan. You won’t have the word count to reiterate any points within the plan, so we’d prefer you to use this
section in lieu of the traditional conclusion where you usually summarise your main points and otherwise chew up word count!
This is pretty much the end of your assignment. The Strategic Fit is followed by the Reference List – which is always on a separate page even if the last line of your Strategic Fit is on a new page (if this happened to me I would just edit the problem away ?).
Referencing
You all have access to the APA referencing guide on Moodle to help you with formatting your citations for those who remain unclear about how to use the APA style (although feedback from your first assessment task will guide you here).
Don’t forget that if you do happen to reference a website then we need to be able to access it as well. The Reference List is a guide for others to show how you accessed the information contained in the body of your work. It shows them where to go to find the same information you did. The last thing you should do before
printing out your paper for submission is to check any websites and make sure they are still live. If they are not working, you cannot use them in your work and need to either eliminate reference to them, or replace them with live references.
This shouldn’t be too much of a problem. As websites are not academic sources we prefer you to keep any websites that you feel you must include to an absolute minimum – no more than one or two, if at all.
You must use the instructions if you are not familiar or experienced with this style. If you’re stuck at all, just ask for help. Do not underestimate how pedantic we are about this.
A couple of hours of a preliminary literature search disclosed that there are more than enough articles for your needs, and actually there are many, many for you to select from. So, get stuck into the research! We are expecting a list of at least 10-15 journal articles (somewhere around 15 is about right) to have been consulted for this paper. We don’t expect to see a Reference List padded out with introductory marketing texts and websites.
BTW, here’s how to reference your prescribed textbook in your Reference List:
Grewal, D., Levy, M., Mathews, S., Harrigan, P. & Bucic, T. (2015). Marketing. McGrawHill, North Ryde, NSW, Australia.
Just as it’s showing in the Course Description (p. 2). You shouldn’t need to use page numbers anywhere in the paper because we’re not expecting to see any quotes (you only use page numbers when you’re quoting).
Executive Summary
Once you’ve finished the plan and created your Reference List, create a summary for stakeholders. Until you’ve completed all the work relating to your target and the marketing mix, you won’t have a good overview of all that’s been covered which is what’s necessary for the Exec. Summ.
Despite admonishments not to do so, some students still wrote their Executive Summaries like a pseudo Introduction in their first assignment – or, worse – they cut and pasted from the
Introduction! Please do not do this. The Exec. Summ. is just what the title suggests – a summary of the contents of the paper for the consideration of the executive (or other interested person).
This is a one-pager (MAXIMUM!) that the company CEO can read for an overview of the plan. We’re just looking for the main
highlights. In your case, this is going to be really simple. All you need is seven paragraphs.
Hint: if you’re having trouble fitting it all in to one page, drop down to Times New Roman size
11 and use single spacing…
Para 1: Basic introductory remarks Para 2: Your STP strategy
Para 3: Product strategy
Para 4: Pricing strategy
Para 5: Distribution strategy
Para 6: Marketing Communications strategy Para 7: Strategic fit
No need to include any references in an Executive Summary.
The Exec Summ. is placed after the Table of Contents and before the Introduction.
We want to see very specific details of your target and your marketing mix and, after reading your Executive Summary, we should have a clear idea of what is to follow in the plan.
Remember: a marketing plan is a blueprint for the company to follow. Be clear. Be specific. Use directive language.
Presentation
Supporting information you may want to include (this may be integrated within text or included as appendices): mock-ups of packaging/product, advertising, promotions, any helpful tables, charts, graphs, etc. You do not have to include all of these things – only what you feel is important to your marketing plan. Don’t forget, they’ll be included on any list of figures and tables in your ToC.
Make sure that any examples you provide are clearly connected to theory, and confined to your own product. Please don’t refer to any
unrelated products such as McDonalds, Apple, Coke and so on.
There is plenty of room for creativity in this paper – particularly in the product and promotion sections. Especially in the product section, so interpret/develop this any way you wish.
Don’t forget to use Times New Roman 12, 1.5 spacing.
What’s next?
This signals the end of your second assessment task. Now all that’s left is to submit it for marking (we aim for the usual 3 week turnaround).
It’s a challenge!
Finally: why don’t you give yourselves a challenge?
Please try and use your textbook just once (or even not at all!), and then jump off into other academic sources which you will find on the library database. It’s the best way to become experienced in academic research and writing.
Submission of the paper
Here’s where the marks are:
Marketing Plan
Introduction 5% Segmentation 10% Targeting 10% Positioning 10%
Marketing Mix 40%
• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion
Strategic Fit 10%
Referencing/ Presentation 15%
TOTAL 100%
All papers must be submitted accompanied by a Turnitin report with a text-matching of 22% by Monday May 15th, COB.
Please do not miss this deadline. Just as you must meet deadlines in the business world, so the due date for this paper must be met by the time set.
Please don’t email asking where to submit the paper, or advising you’ve submitted it through Turnitin. As noted in the Course Description, you must submit this task via Moodle.
Please – just follow instructions… I promise you, it’s easy
?
Appendix 1: Segmentation and Targeting Example
Example of Segmentation and Targeting
Here’s an example for a totally different product from yours, (let’s say it’s lip gloss brand name “Lip Glass”) but just to give you the idea...
4.0 Segmentation
Do some research here into what segmentation is, why and how it’s used by marketers: just a paragraph or so to set up the section. Then as a result of your thinking about lip gloss consumers you will be able to identify some potential segments for your campaign like this:
4.1 Potential segments
Potential targets for this campaign are:
• 16-24 year old females, living in Melbourne inner suburbs with their parents, students earning under $10,000 per annum. Working part-time in hospitality, involved in weekend sports, watch little TV other than Big Brother and Gossip Girl.
• 24-35 year old females, living in apartments in inner city Melbourne areas, university educated career women, middle-level management earning $50,000 - $80,000 per annum. Into the social scene, bars, clubs. Reads magazines: Allure, InStyle, Vogue.
• 35-50 year old females, living in Melbourne’s suburbs, housewives with children, stay-at-home mothers who meet regularly with other mothers to share experiences. Any spare time is spent on children so little time for make-up other than mascara and lip gloss. Watch day-time TV (Dr. Oz, The Bold and the Beautiful) and evening programs such as Master Chef and The Biggest Loser.
5.0 Target for Pure Skin’s 2017 marketing campaign
Do some research here into what targeting is, why and how it’s used by marketers: just a paragraph or so to set up the section and to show us you understand the concept.
5.1 The most profitable target for Pure Skin’s Lip Glass would be the 24-35 year old women for the following reasons:
• They earn a comfortable income and therefore can afford to purchase cosmetic products frequently
• Segment contains 388,000 consumers so is a substantial cohort
• The target consumer has a full time job and needs to maintain a professional and well-groomed image
• They are image and fashion conscious, therefore they like to keep up with social trends
• Target has a busy and active social life that is conducive to Lip Glass being used frequently
(Then you go into a full description of the target audience...hint: this is the most interesting part of the assignment)...
5.2 Geographic/Demographic
The target woman is young, aged 24-35, single without children. She is planning to have children someday however career development is her main focus. She works full time in a professional role, having graduated from one of Australia’s most prestigious universities with a business degree. Current income is $50,000-$80,000.
This target woman lives in a shared apartment in an inner city Australian suburb (such as Carlton, Melbourne) close to facilities and entertainment, which occupy a large part of her time outside of work. She does not have a significant other, but a committed relationship is in her future. For now it’s about getting ahead at work, staying fit, looking good, (she’d like to travel around Australia before heading off on the OS trip and, eventually, meeting someone to settle with).
5.3 Psychographic
Confident, ambitious and successful, she works to maintain her busy and social lifestyle. Although her job is mentally tiring, she is happy with her position and career path. She works out before work three days a week and on Saturday mornings. She meets her friends for coffee after the gym on Saturdays and they shop as a group in the large local mall, mostly for clothes, cosmetics and accessories. She has a confident outlook about her future, believing she has the potential to get ahead, and achieving that success is important to her. She is independent and ambitious. She can afford what she wants, does her own thinking and makes her own decisions. When shopping for new products she generally looks for – you get the picture, I’m sure.
5.4 Behavioural
Lip gloss is a regular cosmetic purchase and the benefits she will be looking for from Lip Glass are shimmer and shine for her lips at work and in social situations. Lip Glass will enhance her lip colour and overcome dryness from long-lasting lipsticks. She will be a heavy user, refreshing her lip gloss after food and drink and throughout evenings out with friends. She will be completely loyal to Lip Glass as a result of the texture and flavour of the product and the consumer sales promotions encouraging on-going purchase. Kotler et al. pose an argument for Behavioural segmentation to be marketers’ first consideration and I concur with this, so you may like to consider placing this segmentation variable first.
This word count is 350, but is just off the top of my head, so you may be able to be more succinct given more time to play. Having said that, it’s about what I’d like to see – so try and save some word space up from other sections if you can to use here.