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Marketing Principles

New strategies are formed that can be presented to the Senior Management Team (SMT) so that business development can be made possible. For this reason, being in the business development department of “Yummy Cupcake Company”, I have been tasked with conducting three activities and presenting it to the SMT for their approval. The following report sheds light on each activity.

Activity 1

Marketing

Kotler and Armstrong defined marketing as a social process through which organisations and people attain what they want and need by exchanging and creating value with others (Armstrong et al., 2015). The business might be able to offer the best services or products in the industry, and its sales might crash resulting in the closure of the firm. It further helps in maintaining and raising the living standard of community and provides employment to many individuals (Malcom, and Wilson, 2011).

It is also a source of revenue and income and acts as a foundation for decision-making (Hollensen, 2015). Marketing leads to the generation of new ideas and it keeps economy revolving (Menon et al., 2015).

Marketing helps in the achievement of business objectives

The concept of marketing puts forward that for satisfying the objectives of the firm, the company needs to anticipate the wants and needs of consumers and satisfying them more efficiently as compared to the competitors (Wood, 2007).

Where marketing is about implementing and forecasting the distribution, promotion, pricing, and conception of services, goods, and ideas and exchanging them in a manner for satisfying people. It is also about attaining the organisational objectives.

Best marketing strategies of a firm add to the attainment of business objectives. A marketing strategy displays a generic direction that can be followed for accomplishing certain business objectives. It provides a roadmap for attaining greater results like higher market penetration, global brand recognition, and sales growth.

The business first sets its objectives and then the marketing department established strategies for making it all happen. The routes it selects will be based on the market for products.

A business that opts for growth will have marketing objectives that encompass raised sales and profits in terms of revenue and volume (Wales and Reaich, 2004). The marketing unit of the firm will devise such techniques for attaining such objectives. A business needs to keep monitoring its marketing strategy on a regular basis (Rackley, 2015).

External factors influencing marketing

The external factors impacting marketing encompass uncontrollable forces outside the firm including technology, demographic factors, socio-cultural factors, natural forces, government policies, and competition (Stevens et al., 2013).

Technology poses many challenges for the marketers (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2011). It impacts the type of product the marketer may offer. Markets and consumers are impacted by the rapid change in technology, reducing product lifecycles and developing opportunities for the innovation. Therefore, marketers need to consider those while setting marketing objectives.

Demographic factors relate to the factors like family size, occupation, marital status, age, and sex. Although, this is an uncontrollable factor as no one can control the marital status, age, and sex in the external environment, however forecasting as a marketer for any future trends in the consumption patterns.

Socio-cultural forces refer to structure and dynamics of groups and people and their lifestyles, behaviours, beliefs, and thought patterns. These even have an influence on the marketing decisions. It even means those social force that tries to make marketing socially accountable. It further accounts for taking a lead in eradicating socially harmful goods and produce only those that are useful to society (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2011).

Natural forces are the forces present in the physical environment (Gerber and Du Plessis, 2009). It composes the lack of natural resources and the available resources that may hinder or vacillated production output.

Government policies refer to the legality, laws, and regulations on a particular industry that may impact how a business performs (Gerber and Du Plessis, 2009). They have a major impact on the operations of the business as they influence promotion, pricing, product design, capability, and production capacity. In order to make sound marketing decisions, the regulations and laws need to be taken into account.Marketing Principles.

Competition is the factor that refers to firms that sell services/goods of similar and same description within the same marketing. It is important for a marketer to monitor their activities and design efficient strategies by using controllable measures (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2011).

But, it should be considered that although external environment can impact the business, it can create opportunities for other businesses. Hence Marketing Principles, the marketer has to watch out for predicting probable changes in the external environment and design efficient strategies on how they can be adopted into business (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2011).

Role of marketing in a not for profit business

Marketing Principles is also crucial for the non-profit firms as they require manners through which they can market their cause to the volunteers who want to assist and to the donors who will provide for their cause (Andreasen and Kotler, 2008). As marketing is important for the for-profit firms, similarly,

it is also crucial for the non-profit firms (Nalepka and Ujwary-Gil, 2012). A non-profit firm markets the cause it supports or the work it performs rather than a service or product. Its purpose of marketing is to build awareness of a problem and for gaining financial help from the public (Wymer, Knowles and Gomes, 2006).

Elements of the Marketing Process

Marketing Principles: There are different kinds of elements under the marketing process to explore unfulfilled needs of customers (See Figure 1).

The situational analysis encompasses numerous factors influencing a business like a stakeholder analysis, Porter’s five forces, pestle analysis, and SWOT analysis. SWOT (stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) identifies internal and external threats, opportunities, weaknesses, and strengths to advising on the decisions regarding strategic planning (Doole and Lowe, 2008).

PESTLE is about analysing the political, economic, social, technological, and legal and environment to identify external factors that may influence the business. This analysis helps in understanding the factors that impact its future.

Marketing objectives are goals for the firm that aims at becoming successful when motivating its services/products to the customers. They must always be aligned with the firm’s goals and mission.Marketing Principles: There must be some SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timetable) criteria for goal setting (Lancaster and Massingham, 2010).

Marketing strategy is a long-term plan for attaining some objectives (Doole and Lowe, 2008). STP is a marketing strategy that stands for segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Segmentation focuses on behaviour, lifestyle, psychographic factors, demographics, geography, life stages, beliefs and values of individuals.

Targeting focuses on classifying market segments that match with their products.

And positioning is about developing a product that the chosen target market views unique when compared with similar goods in the industry.Marketing Principles.

The marketing mix is the amalgamation of seven variable…..