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

Thanks Trephena, I have sent a mail to that address.

By comparing your bank with competitors on the various aspects of the 7Ps. For example I have outlined above how to do this with People. With Place look at spread of locations, accessibility, facilities offered (ATMs foreign currency etc), and facilities within -space, environment (air conditioning, seating, overcrowding). Process requires examination and comparisons of intangibles – average queuing times, customer service and automation (including apps and the like)

I am choosing Starbucks for this topic. Can I know if 7p model Porter Analysis is enough for PART2? I read this thread and mentions of Boston Matrix, does it apply?

Is Starbucks a good choice for this topic? I can’t find their marketing costs in annual report, how do I go about the ratio analysis in this case?

You really need to apply the 4 / 7 Ps which is makes a good structural framework for the Analysis Evaluation and another model – it depends upon the actual company chosen what this additional model should be but Porter’s five forces is often appropriate but also the Boston Matrix or Ansoff may be appropriate depending upon the company. The important thing is that it is appropriate and therefore what may be right for one company may not be the best model for another company

Remember part of the topic brief is to evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing strategies – this normally means doing some market share analysis and possibly getting financial info to be able to assess how effective the marketing spend and other strategies have been – are you going to be able to do this for a single product, unless the company you choose only produces this one product?

Normally a smaller but established company [as opposed to a global company such as McDonalds, Starbucks and the like] can be a good choice as you can appraise its range of product offerings and possibly how it may differentiate products to suit specific market segments e.g. the luxury range for those with higher incomes and the basic product range for those on a budget, and how these are reflected in price differentials and how they are promoted.

I think you are going to have the same issues – how do you separate out the financial and market share info for a particular brand within LOreal ? My own Topic 18 students chose smaller but well known innovative companies – so there is lots to write about their products range, promotion of both products and brand name [as well as the other Marketing Ps] and have not encountered these issues as they are looking at the company’s total market share and its increased revenues and profits.

As for the effectiveness, i am making an assumption that the performance of loreal as a whole is affected by the cerave marketing strategy but it may not be accurate since loreal carries so many brands.
and the ratio analysis, explanations i am specifc to the brand and product
what do you think?

The RAP is an academic piece of work and should be written in a semi-formal style. You are right – this means writing in the 3rd person and also using what is grammatically called ‘the passive voice’.

In practice this means you do not write ‘I found’ but ‘ it was found’ or if you wish, ‘the author found’ (alternatively ‘the researcher found’ / ‘the writer found’).

Use of ‘we’ (we can see / we can conclude etc.) should be avoided and ‘it can be seen / it can be concluded’ should be used instead (though possibly you might be able to state ‘the author concluded’ depending upon the context)

PS I usually tell students not to worry about using ‘I’ in the early part of the RAP when discussing why you choose the topic but switch to the above more formal style when writing about the process and above all in the Analysis. Evaluation and Conclusions