Topic 18 – An Organisation's Marketing Strategy & its Effectiveness

@Abi – thanks for asking (you could give Open Tuition an acknowledgement in your SLS along the lines of “as well as advice from my mentor I discovered that Open Tuition also tries to support students by answering queries, so was a useful additional source of guidance”… and then in answer to Q3 on communication you could also cite the forum as an example of how you demonstrated effective communication).

Yes you can more or less use my suggested questions but you probably also need a couple more. Whatever your research questions are you need to ensure that you do answer them (a statement of the obvious I know, but some students don’t!) and in your conclusion section you should summarise the main points you found in relation to the research questions.

@Abi – As long as that is just part of your project it will be fine – you have to comply with the RAP title and that is “A review of the marketing strategy of an organisation and its effectiveness”. The marketing strategy has a number of facets and you would probably be hard pressed to get anywhere near 7,500 words with just one focus Certainly you can look at your suggested approach in more depth than other aspects.

I don’t know how you will be able to comply with the second part of the project i.e. an assessment of ‘its effectiveness’ without ratios and figures of some kind.

@Abi – The whole point of charts and graphs is that they can often show a situation or relationship far more effectively than text. Never throw figures at the marker in a written paragraph where they could be presented graphically (and if you present something graphically you DON’T need to tell someone what the graph is showing as if the graph is clear and correctly labelled – a requirement anyway – it should be obvious). So graphs and charts will actually save words as you only need to explain the most significant findings and their implication. You only put graphs as an appendix if does not really relate directly to what you are discussing. The marker will not appreciate being given one whole document full of text and another containing charts as it will not be presenting the findings effectively and appropriately. You need to insert graphs etc in the page where they clarify something and to break up long passages of uninterrupted text.

Normally Parts 1 and 2 can be edited and words removed from these sections. Note: the Guideline word counts for sections are merely suggestions (see the FAQs on our OT OBU homepage) but you must not exceed the overall word count of 7,500 as markers stop marking once this limit is met.

@Abi – I cannot tell you exactly what you should do as I don’t know what information you have or is available but with this topic there are links between business objectives and marketing objectives and the marketing strategy and marketing mix/marketing plans so you need to ensure that you cover these. Additionally you should try to do some form of an assessment of the firm’s approach to market segmentation if possible, targeting and positioning (does it have special large stores like Tesco Extra? and Locals or Centrals like some other supermarkets?) and do these seem to influence decisions on the marketing mix (what types of store stock which product for example)? Ansoff may be difficult to apply to a supermarket itself as it has such a broad portfolio of products and services. (If you were doing Tesco you could apply it to the type of store and what the aims of those types are but you already have some models so that should be fine).
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Here are few links that may help (note you would not be able to do an internal marketing audit but the external audit mentioned may help you consider some key factors relevant to Asda and how it counters those of its rivals)

https://www.marketingteacher.com/marketing-audit/

https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Retail_Operations_-_Six_success_factors_for_a_tough_market/$FILE/EY_Retail_Operations_-_Six_success_factors_for_a_tough_market.pdf

With the ratios you need to show that they are relevant to your study rather than just presenting figures that in themselves do not necessarily mean anything (liquidity may be fairly meaningless for example and it is pointless calculating the quick ratio for a large retailer as they need to carry a lot of stock). You seem to have picked out the main ones.

Remember if marketing strategies are successful then an increase in revenue would be expected and the proportion of marketing costs to sales should be stable or show a slight downward trend (if they are constantly rising then it tends to indicate that the company is having to increase promotional costs just to maintain its current level of sales or maintain market share). Increasing market share or maintaing market share if main competitors’ shares are decreasing is another indicator of success. The EY publication suggests a few measures, do take a look. (And yes put the calculations in an appendix but not the graphs themselves unless they are copies of what you already have in the report)

If you have already included a lot of this then so much the better

@Abi – the idea of any ratios in T18 is they indicate that whether the marketing strategies have been successful or not so you should attempt to use those that best demonstrate this. As I have mentioned previously, you must focus on Asda and any comparisons with Tesco should be selective to illustrate definite differences or common approaches. Do not divert from the title for T18 as a comparison of Asda’s marketing strategies with another company is not the title.

Help me guys.

@trephena — Nop i am asking about kotter change managament (8 steps).
I selected virgin trains and using 7ps and change managment base on this article.
https://businesscasestudies.co.uk/virgin-trains/implementing-a-new-vision-at-virgin-trains/introduction.html#axzz3ZqH8vxGf

I love this post. I’ve been looking to do something around marketing.

marketing cost is very important in this topic?

Hi All

Please could you help –

Are these questions specific enough?

What are the SWOT of Clicks Group marketing mix?

How does the Clicks Group’s marketing mix meet its customer expectations?

Is Clicks Group getting ROI on therir marketing plan?

Hi,
does the obu rap topic based on marketing campaign evaluation require the candidate to gain information directly from the company .
can we use a public opinion research as suitable evaluation method.