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

Hi Lindatsai,

We occasionally chip into the forum here and will be glad to share what we know. Trephena has a lot of experience in this and she may add on further later.

Regarding Apple, general brand advertising will be used when you analyse the 4Ps of Apple (i.e. Promotion)

We have had many students who did Apple for the RAP. Usually, they select a product that can represent Apple. The product choice can be further justified by looking at the % of revenue derived from that product.
E.g. Choosing iPhone is fine. Choosing iPod is not so good.

Thereafter the 4Ps will be mainly focused on the product itself, with occasional analysis on the general marketing etc

We hope this helps!

Best wishes,
Irwin
The Learning Luminarium

Lauzzio – well done to you for getting this far by this stage. No matter how much students are encouraged to start their work early most of them end up attempting to do it all in a rush!

The report file should just contain the report and any additional information should go in appendices or separate files. This even extends to the Reference list. When you go to upload your files on submission for a first submission there should be at least 5 mandatory separate files: report, SLS Statement, Prsentation file, Excel spreadsheet and Ref list + any appendices. This is apparently because with online marking it is more convenient for markers to have the key elements in different files. However with the appendices try to organise these so you do not have too many different appendix files -again for expediency – so collate the information appropriately and label them with titles to try to give a clue about what they contain.

In the Parts 1 and 2 (Introduction to the RAP and Information gathering) you may refer to yourself personally in the 1st Person (I, myself, mine , my) or as the Author. However in Part 3 there is normally both little scope for personal detail and it is the more formal part of your work and this should be written in the 3rd person (the author or the researcher). Obviously if you want to be consistent use the 3rd person throughout.

The SLS should be written in the 1st person as it is your own personal experience you are writing about.

Thank you Trephena. I still don’t feel anywhere near finished though! So the financial statements of the company that I’m using, do these go in the appendices? And do I need to reference which appendix number within the RAP where I have used the figures from the accounts?
I just feel like I’ve (hopefully) got my head around the project, but it’s all the presentation and referencing that I’m unsure of. I’ve sussed the Harvard Referencing System and anything cited is in my reference list.

Bibliography of books/resources that I haven’t cited but used for background reading – do these go in a separate list in the reference list, or within part 1 of the RAP stating what books I have read?

Thank you so much for your help, I would be rather lost without Open Tuition and your guidance!

Thank you Trephena. Where I have used charts to show results, should these go in the main body of the RAP, or in the appendices?

Is there a rough guide of how many references we should enter? I’m worried that I may not have cited enough resources and perhaps need to read more! (I could just be having a last minute panic! I’ll be so glad when this is all done!)

The spreadsheet can be called an Appendix as it contains ancillary information

There is no hard and fast rule on the actual number of references required however as stated in the OT Ultimate Guide to Referencing your RAP every fact, opinion and the work of others should be appropriately referenced. Quality references are preferred over anonymous sources sosee if you can incorporate something from Philip Kotler as he is the guru of marketing.

For a start what do you mean by ‘revenue margin’ ? Secondly marketing efforts, and results showing its effectiveness are not always instantaneous and the effect can spread over different year ends (Remember that decisions are not taken on the first day of a financial year and stop on the last day). Also one financial ratio taken in isolation is not going to give you an answer. Do you have any market share information as this KPI would be useful? However I suspect there is not a simple answer that the marketing strategies have or have not been successful so you need to put it all in a bigger picture.

A lot depends on the product and industry sector -a company might be having to ‘re-invent itself’ and will want to keep itself in the public mind while it undergoes a major change e.g. Dell computers having to go from PCs to laptops and then face the challenge of tablets and smart phones. The effectiveness of its marketing strategies might therefore not be assessible for sometime and as the world has moved on, the company may possibly never regain its former position (look what happened to goth Nokia and BlackBerry)

Occasionally there maybe a general decline in share of brand leaders if new competitors enter the market, the former then turn to more promotion and advertising to slow down the rate of loss of market share. Such promotion costs will impact on the operating margin, however might still be considered effective if the overall performance was better than a major rival with the latter suffering a greater decrease in market share. For example both Tesco and Sainsbury’s have seen Lidl and Aldi take customers away from them but are still locked in inter-rivalry battle with each other and some of their marketing efforts are aimed at maintaining their pecking order.

You need to research a bit into what is going on in the company and its general strategies and those of the industry sector to complete the picture. Declining revenues for both companies might indicate general pressure on that sector e.g. New car sales in Europe are down for many manufacturers because of both the uncertainty of the future of diesel cars and the emissions scandal plus the inroads made by electric cars and hybrids and no amount of marketing can change these factors in the short term and in the longer term the car manufacturers have to become more innovative.

There is no simple answer however evidence of research around it will demonstrate understanding of the topic allowing you to discuss the ratios in a better context.

Your ideas sound reasonable about GST as this probably has depressed sales (and possibly increased them artificially before it’s introduction as people rushed to buy to beat the tax)

Ooverseas expansion would more than likely be a strategy that runs over several years -initial trial and if signs looked good, being gradually expanded. It does take quite a lot of new investment in both money and effort and often slower to show big results in the early years.

Monopoly often means high prices to the consumer and can produce complacency by the producer (depending on the demand for the product)

Yes you need to reference in Part 2. Possibly going right back to the originators is not necessary and you could reference to the actual source you used (which I doubt was Humphrey and Aquilar?)

[If you are doing Topic 18 I trust you are using other appropriate models in addition to the SWOT and PESTEL? Although the latter are strategic, as models they are not specific to marketing (although the marketing strategies might be affected by them) – you are also expected to demonstrate in Part 3 how the company uses market segmentation and target marketing to achieve its marketing objectives]

The research objectives are very much tied to the topic title and are overarching. So something like the aims of this report are to identity the marketing strategies of company XYZ and to assess their overall effectiveness.

You then have to think what information you would need to be able to achieve those aims/objectives. These form the basis of your questions – specific areas that need to be looked into. There would normally be more than just 2 questions you need to answer to arrive at that position. The following are merely examples but you need to think about what is special about the company’s products and how it gets them out in the market place and the effect of this:

e.g. What is the target market of XYZ?; How has XYZ becoming the leading brand of ……… in [country]?; Who are its main rivals? What specific factors have led to the success of its product[s]?; What is its current market share?; How is its success reflected in sales and profit?

Why would you want more than 2 models? The models need to be relevant to the context and discussions on the effectiveness of the marketing strategies and it is better to use 2 models well than 3 or 4 thinly applied. Depending on the organisation you might be able to analyse the product portfolio using the BCG matrix or possibly the Ansoff Matrix when examining strategies and you should consider aspects of market segmentation and target marketing.

An assessment of the effectiveness of such strategies is critical to answering the second part of the topic title and this requires some financial analysis. My advice therefore is to ensure you cover all of these elements and not overly rely on models if you want to get a decent grade and remember