Australian Health Care System Sample Assignment www.sampleassignment.com

Australian Heath Care Systems Primary Heath Care Principles

Impact of the ageing population on the health care system

The ageing population has of Australia is indeed a potential threat to the community as a whole. Firstly, there would be lack of specialized medical practitioners who are young, dynamic and possess the up to date knowledge of medical science industry. It is also assumed and predicted that the older generation is not much of a technology follower and thus the use of technology in the health care systems is possibly hindered by the ageing population. The ageing population requires curing of fatal and severe health related issues in comparison to the complaints of the younger generation. This in itself is a given increase to the costs of the health care systems for the end users and for the governing officials Sylva (1997).

Medicare System

A Medicare system is an initiative by the government to aid the citizens of the Australia to get medical cover and the same can be used to get subsidized rates of medical expenses via the help of the government. There are many private players which give the same medical benefits and the role of insurance for medical problems plays a crucial role in this regard Wadsworth (1997).

National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission

Key Themes of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission focuses on taking responsibility, this account for responsibility not only for the immediate family members but also for the society as a whole. There are other key themes associated like connecting care, facing inequities etc. these set of values can be achieved only if the governing officials adopt a proactive approach for the fulfillment of the required actions and steps. The government should make aware the citizens by actively running campaigns for managing stress, eating nutritional food etc. they should bring into practice an ethical and comprehensive Medicare system which also serves the need of the needful rather than serving to only the well of part of the society. The culture of the Medicare industry should be highly reflective in nature and should focus on constant improvement. The pitfalls and the short comings should be well identified and this should be well backed up with the responses and measures which cater to improvements in the field of technology. It is also the responsibility of the Federal government to provide non partisan and clear leadership measure with appropriate scope of transparency at the operational levels for the common man to be aware of. This also calls for raising public voice and their opinion should be well considered and regarded on the related issues of health management and promotion Wadsworth (1997).

Other influences on the Australian heath system

Private Health Insurance

Many major players exist in the corporate arena these days, thus the margin and scope for providing incorrect services is very less. Moreover, the private health sector is assumed to have a good reputation amongst end customer as the same is viewed as with better capabilities, personnel and infrastructure in comparison to the public sector health care facilities. The rate of response is also very high and the dependency of the common man on the government affairs is highly reduced. On the other hand, the cost of using private health care system is really huge compared to public sector. One has to understand the various tradeoffs that are inherent in the two alternate approaches of getting medical help Mathers (1994).

Work Cover

Work Cover is the right of the employees that they are covered under medical benefits. Some corporate organizations offer extensive meical plans which not only cover the medical expenses of the employees, but also that of the immediate family members of the employee. The benefits increases of the employee faces a threat to his medical condition while working for the organization such as in the case of an engineer facing injury while unlading a heavy consignment Mathers (1994).

TAC

Accidents can occur at any point of time. A rational person is not expected to be involved in any accidents; it is caused by some mis-happenings while travelling or anything else. Thus, the government should appropriately consider the record of the past to put in place a system which follows stringent rules and regulations for taking care such of such intense issues.

PBS

There at instances when a particular individual or family requires regular use of a particular prescribed medicine at a great frequency and regularly. That is when the role of Pharmaceutical Benefit scheme comes in handy as then the specific medicines can be purchased at a lower and subsidized rate Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (1998).

Scenario

Both the options have associated pros and cons. The benefits of covering up for public health care system are certainly offering support for the community as it not only caters to the needs of oneself but also for the community. The conventional and traditional values have approached the public health care systems right from the very beginning in Australia. The government spends immensely on the research for the refinement of this industry so that it becomes a better means to serve the needs of the citizens of Australia.

On the other hand, the private sector, in this globalised world offers state of the art technology and prompts responses sometimes as quickly as getting responses on sending a text. The quality of the offering cannot be matched at by any stretch of imagination. Health cover is important for an individual and for a family. Due to various specialized offerings and huge range of incredible service, the private sector is indeed a costlier affair OECD (1999).

Thus, it boils down to a cost benefit analysis. It is based heavily upon the financial status of an individual as to what options can be analyzed. In the given scenario, with part time working job and still a student, it would be better to stick in and continue with the public health care system. Once, the age assumes more responsibility and there would be family to look after, then the options of private insurance must be considered and given serious thought. This would also be backed with strong financial back up like the sister in the given scenario. Thus, it is not recommended to select the private health care system as there are no serious health problems given and also the cost of signing up for private insurance is very high as compared to public sector Sylva (1997).

References

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) (1998), Australia’s Health, 1998,

AIHW Cat. No. AUS10, Canberra.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (1999), OECD

Economic Surveys, 1998-1999 , Australia, Paris.

Mathers, C., 1994, ‘Health differentials among adult Australians aged 25-64 years’,

Health Monitoring Series No. 1, AGPS, Canberra.

Sylva, K (1997), ‘Critical periods in childhood learning’, British Medical Bulletin, 53,

pp.185-97

Wadsworth, M (1997), ‘Changing social factors and their long term implications for

health’, British Medical Bulletin, 53, pp.198-209.

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Operations Management Sample Assignment www.sampleassignment.com

Introduction

The objective of this report is to identify a key operations management issue in not for profit organisation in Melbourne Victoria by the name ‘Eastern Volunteers’. The report identifies the current issues which the not for profit organisation is facing and provides recommendations to bring upon a change in the same by the virtue of recommendations that are included in the report.

The report begins with a brief background information of the not for profit organisation and then moves on to discuss the internal environment of the not for profit organisation. Further, the concepts of the operations management has been applied to gain a deeper understanding of the specific issues which the not for profit organisation is facing in the contemporary times. The last parts of the report provide a set of recommendations which can be used by the organisation to overcome the identified shortcoming. The report ends with a brief conclusion that ties the contents of the report together (Berry 1992).

Background Information of the Company

Eastern Volunteers was originally incorporate in the year 1976 under the name Volunteers unlimited. There primary objective is to provide transportation services to the old aged, needy and disabled people especially in those areas where public transport is relatively weaker. These parts include the outer suburbs of Melbourne and other areas.

Specific Operational Issue

The main operations issue that the not for profit organisation “Eastern Volunteers” is facing relates to creation of a schedule that allows them to ferry more service users per trip. This is more significant because the organisation is limited by funds and also the number of volunteers, drivers and vehicles are fixed and hence a judicious use of the resources is desirable. Although, the organisation deals in providing a number of other activities as well, this report only discusses the transport service and the related issues for the purpose of simplicity (Whitford 1998).

Flow Chart of the Operations of the Organisation

 

Situation Analysis of the Operations in the organisation.The main issue that concerns the organisation relates to the fact that they are limited by the number of vehicles, the number of drivers and also the number of volunteers that make up the staff. As an example, if a service transport request is made from Burwood to Hawthorn on 7th Dec 2013 at 11:30 am and another request is made from Box Hill to West Richmond at 1:00pm, then the management can potentially plan a common vehicle to address both the needs at the same trip. It might involve requesting one of the clients to adjust their timing slightly, but can offer and result in savings for Eastern Volunteers as a whole. Another added advantage of this implementation is the fact that service users build up their own network by meeting different people which one may assume that they would appreciate. Also, there is a greater possibility of increasing the word of mouth publicity for Eastern Volunteers.

Opportunities to change the current operations in the organisation

The opportunity for eastern volunteers lies in ensuring that there is a better mechanism of fulfilling the service request. One of the possible measures is to use dedicated software which would automatically detect the best possible route and timings given the service request of a particular day. On the contrary, an organisation like Eastern Volunteers will have to carefully work out the cost structure to use dedicated software like that. The current situation demands a manual schedule which provides them almost the same benefit which the expensive dedicated software would provide (Grönroos 2001).

Resources to be utilised for improving the current operations

Eastern Volunteers need a dedicated volunteer who would be carefully planning the service requests for transportation for the users on a daily basis. As stated above, the organisation would ultimately like to move to use a state of the art technological tool to serve this purpose. However, given the financial constraints, the company would not be able to afford such a tool, but they would certainly like to make use of that in the future.

Technology and Human Resource Issues

The section above denotes the need of the human resource and the technology. Both the types of resources are desirable for the not for profit organisation. However, the plan of action would to start with the manual system first to overcome the identified shortcoming and then move on to the technology phase at a later stage (Varey 1995).

Application of the Operations Management Issue

The above identified issue is applied to the five main performance objectives of operations management:

Performance objective of operations management

Speed:	The resolution to the above identified issue would increase the level of efficiency of Eastern Volunteer services and will also reduce the time per request. Hence, performance is likely to be improved by a proper resolution is achieved.
Flexibility:	The issue discussed above involves a great degree of flexibility as the plans of the service users can never be anticipated or planned. The management would always have to be pro active to be able to manage adequately.
Dependability:	The trust of the service users is directly contingent upon the quality of the service they receive. Hence, the service users are depending upon Eastern Volunteers in order to avail their respective services.
Quality:	It has to be ensured that in order to save on two trips, the quality of the service experience is not affected. The volunteer drivers must not show assigns of panic that they are in a hurry to take the other service user as well from another location. Thus, everything should be planned in a comprehensive manner and in the case of a service user not agreeing to share the vehicle; it should not be forced upon him or her.
Costs:	The primary objective of providing a resolution to this issue is the fact that it will result in saving extra costs involved for the organisation. Hence, it is directly related to improving the performance of the organisation (Eastern Volunteers 2013)

 

Changes to performance and outcome

The changes would be to make aware the service that they are encouraged to book a service request at least two to three days in advance so that the management and operations team are in a much better position to plan the trip and the visit properly. Also, the change would include ensuring that no close service requests are left unattended by the management and the operations team. Also, as ‘Eastern Volunteers’ grow, there would be a required change to increase the number of volunteers, volunteer drivers and the number of vehicles as that would be the need of the hour (McQuire 1999).

Recommended improvements

The number of service requests made in the last six months would be analysed to judge the number of service requests in the coming days. Although, the accurate number of service requests cannot be known, the analysis of the last six months can provide a fair idea. Also, a dedicated professional is desired by ‘Eastern Volunteers’ who would essentially look after managing the service requests of the upcoming latest requests of the new service users.

Cost Structure

The current costs involved for ‘Eastern Volunteers’ pertaining only to the transport services accumulates to monthly expenditure of 2000 AUD. This structure does not have any provision for adjusting for two service request at the same time as is proposed in the current report. Although, it would difficult to estimate by how much the same can be reduced. The organisation would like to target spending 1400 AUD monthly. That would result in savings of 7200 AUD annually which the organisation can use in other marketing endeavours and promotion of the organisation (Eastern Volunteers 2013).

Recommendations

A number of changes are recommended in this report which can be utilised by the management and operations team both to improve the service quality offering of the organisation and also to address the specific issue at hand which is highlighted in the report.

Ø  Covering two service requests at the cost of one, especially those request which lie in close proximities.

Ø  Hiring or using the service of a dedicated professional who would only be responsible for managing the service requests by using a dedicated city map on a daily basis (Greene 1994).

Ø  Using the manual system initially and then using a modernised technological method to address the issue at hand.

Conclusion

This report highlights the importance of effectively addressing and dealing with a operations management issue confronting an organisation. The concepts that has been applied are specifically related to the not for profit organisation ‘Eastern Volunteers’. It has been learnt by the virtue of this report that an organisation needs to be highly proactive while anticipating the concerns which the company might face. There is also a need to assess carefully the identified shortcoming so that the efficiency of the organisation can be improved in an overall manner.

References

Berry, LL & Parasuraman, A 1992, ‘Services marketing starts from within’, Marketing Management, Winter, pp. 25–34.

Eastern Volunteers 2013 , ‘Welcome to Eastern Volunteers’, About Us, Eastern volunteers retrieved from http://www.easternvolunteers.org.au/about/ Accessed 10^th Dec 2013.

Greene, WE, Walls, GD & Schrest, LJ 1994, ‘Internal marketing: The key to external marketing success’, Journal of Services Marketing, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 5–13.

Grönroos, C 2001, ‘Managing internal marketing: A prerequisite for successfully managing customer relationships’, in Service Management and Marketing: A Customer Relationship Management Approach, 2nd edn, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, pp. 330–55.

McQuire, L 1999, Australian services marketing and management, Macmillan Education Australia, Melbourne.

Varey, RJ 1995, ‘Internal marketing: A review and some interdisciplinary research challenges’, International Journal of Service Industry Management, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 40–63.

Whitford, B 1998, Customer Service Excellence: How Organisations in Australia Are Exceeding Customer Expectations, Beaumont Publishing House, Subiaco, WA.

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Case Costing Sample Assignment www.sampleassignment.com

Overview

The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the general steps that are taken to cost a given case in general and apply the knowledge to the case of Ontario Case Costing in particular. Case Costing is defined as an accounting procedure that involves all types of direct and indirect costs that are involved in a particular care unit for providing service to a patient (Gray et al, 2004). It is also referred to as cost accounting, activity based costing and patent-level costing. Case Costing is used at different levels in health care system in Canada which includes individual, regional, provincial and national level among others (Gray et al, 2004).

Breakup of the total cost involved

There are many factors that work together when a service is provided at a hospital. Some of the most basic examples include the actual treatment, specialised equipments used for diagnosing the problem and addressing it, the things utilised by the patient, meals taken, involved cost of the hospitality staff, cost of the drugs that are used, building costs, laboratory costs to name a few (Frolich, 1998). Hence, the actual cost involves a number of smaller units and factors which are to be considered while providing the actual cost to the service user and which make up the actual cost (Yong et al, 2009).

Estimating the cost per user

            The service provider provides costs to the individual service users by defining the costs involved of their staff members, estimating their own costs involved in the services. They also specific formulas using which they can get close to determine the per head cost of an individual service user (Genest, 2009). This also means that more number of augmented services a service provider offers, more would be the per cost unit for the individual user. The objective of using these specialised tools in estimating the costs is to ensure that there is a higher degree of transparency in the operations, there is a stringent control over the expenditure involved and also for improving the overall health care industry services (Yong et al, 2009).

How are costs determined? : Types of Costs involved

            Costing systems differ in different organisations; the most common method is to use micro costing (specific items used by a service user) and allocating methods (allocation of general expenditures). The costing also involved direct and indirect variables, direct costs from the part of micro costing whereas indirect costs are a part of allocated costs (Frolich, 1998). Overhead expenses are generally the recurring expenses of a business organisation and are a typical example of an indirect cost. Apart from this, the costs can be distinguished as fixed and variable, fixed costs do not change with the volume whereas variable costs changes as volume changes (Yong et al, 2009).

The next section of this paper describes the Ontario Case Costing Initiative (OCCI). OCCI are standards that are followed by all the hospitals and health care service providers to ensure that the costs that they are charging to the end users are fair, justified and transparent. The standards also offer dedicated and specialised software which eases the computation of different kinds of costs involved and bring in a greater degree of efficiency at the operational level. It further helps in improved decision making for the senior management and helps tremendously in the planning processes as well (Gray et al, 2004).

The standard is also utilised as a database for research purposes as huge amount of data is stored in the system. It followed a set standard of methodologies and procedures to help in exactly determining the actual costs for the organisation as a whole and for the service user as an individual. OCCI has also faced several challenges owing to different kinds of organisational culture which utilises the generalised form of systems in their respective organisations (Genest, 2009).

References

Frolich, J. (1998). Rationale for and Outline of the Recommendations of the Working Group

                on Hypercholesterolemia and Other Dyslipidemias: Interim Reprto. Dyslipidemia

            Working Group of Health Canada. Canadian Journal Cardiology , 17 A- 21 A.

Genest, J. (2009). 2009 Canadian Cardiovascular Society/Canadian Guidelines for the

                Diagnosis and Treatment of Dyslipidemia and Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease i

            n the Adult—2009 Recommendations. Canadia Journal of Cardiology , 567-579.

Gray, M. S. (2004). A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Age and Time to Death on

                Hospital Costs. Journal of Health Economics , 23 (2), 217-235.

Yong, A. P. (2009). Population Aging and Its Implications on Aggregate Health Care

                Demand: Empirical Evidence from 22 OECD Countries. International Joiurnal of

            Health Care Finance & Economics , 9 (4), 391-402.

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Strategic Management Sample Assignment www.sampleassignment.com

Abstract

Strategic marketing is the process which is useful to focus on the organizational resources to obtain the optimum opportunities from the market. These strategies are used with the long term goals and objectives of the company to increase its profitability. Strategic marketing also applies the principles of the marketing to determine its importance in the organization. In addition, it is also helpful to conduct a strategic analysis by considering internal and external factors that affect the decisions of marketing (Pride and Ferrell, 2011). The impact of these factors can be reduced through the top level decisions and choice to obtain competitive advantages. The strategic marketing can be made effective through using the appropriate communication channel to interact with the consumers.    

1. Principles of Marketing

1.1: Role of Strategic Marketing in an Organization:

The marketing strategies play an efficient role to make a successful organization. Marketing strategies identify and evaluate the opportunities for the organization. These opportunities can be identified through several sources such as customers and business associates, distribution system members and technical persons. All these people are helpful to evaluate the business opportunities to be a successful organization (Ranchhod and Marandi, 2005). In addition, marketing strategies are also significant in the establishment of new business formulation by focusing on some ideas. These ideas are useful to make an appropriate business plan which can be sustained in the current competitive market. This plan must also be convenient to the customers’ needs and demands to that the customer satisfaction can be achieved.

At the same time, marketing strategies also determine some specific resources that are required to run the business. These resources include finance, human resource, capital and infrastructure. These resources can be obtained effectively through the marketing strategies. Additionally, the organization can also manage its results with the help of the marketing strategies (Kotler, Shalowitz and Stevens, 2011). These strategies help to clarify the potential challenges and their alternative solutions to improve the business situations. The cost and risks are also evaluated before implanting business plan, so the possible solution of these risks can also be evaluated.

1.2: Relationship between Corporate Strategy and Marketing Strategy:

Corporate and marketing strategy has a strong relationship within an organization, because both as essential for the organizational success and growth. The main purpose of organizational marketing strategy is to enhance the profits, sales and competitive advantages of the market. The marketing strategy also permits to the enterprise to lead its resources towards the significant opportunities (Jenster, Hayes and Smith, 2005). This strategy is also related to the corporate strategy, because it is also dealing with the expectations of the stakeholders. If, the expectations of the stakeholders are met, then automatically profit, sales and competitive advantage would be obtained by the organization. So, it can be said that corporate strategy and marketing strategy work for organizational growth.

Apart from this, marketing and corporate strategy are affected by the business decisions taken by the various stakeholders and investors. Both of these kinds of decisions are based on the organizational mission and vision. For example, the marketing strategy concentrates on the stability, atmosphere and comfort of the organized products. The company also focuses on the current trends and preferences of the customers to sell its products. In addition, corporate strategy is also important to take decisions for effective strategies that can help to determine the current trends available in the market (Leadley and Forsyth, 2004).

1.3: Development of Marketing Strategy:

The enterprise develops a marketing strategy to meet with the organizational objectives and goals. Generally, there are five aspects to develop a marketing strategy to promote its products in the market. First, customer analysis is an important aspect which helps with the organization in collecting the information related to the needs, demands and preferences of the customers. The marketing strategy is developed on the basis of this information (Hillestad and Berkowitz, 2012). Product development is another aspect of marketing strategy formulation, because the company needs to change its due to changes in technologies, product life cycle, innovation and advancement.

Along with this, pricing is another element of the marketing mix which develops the need of marketing strategy. The marketing decisions are made on the basis of quality and price of the products to attract more customers. Fourth, the development of marketing strategy is also needed to ensure about the brand. For example, the marketing strategy of new entrant and existing companies would be different, because it depends on the brand value (Farris, Moore and Buzzell, 2004). Finally, a marketing strategy can also be developed on the basis of sales and distribution. It developed a strong network to distribute and sell the product. The marketing strategy improves all these elements through providing better services and products to the consumers.

2. How to Carry Out Strategic Analysis

2.1: Approaches to Internal Environmental Analysis:

In the internal analysis, some approaches are useful to evaluate the specific features of the organization such as its resources, core-competition, capabilities, organization mission, financial structure and strategies which are helpful in corporate success. The internal environment is analyzed by these five approaches in an organization. The first approach is value chain analysis which is useful to identify separate activities and dealing with the process to design, produces, deliver and support to product or services for creating well customer value. The next approach is a competitive strength assessment or SWOT analysis which shows the capability of the firms in the industry and provides knowledge about its competitive advantage or disadvantage (Ranchhod and Marandi, 2005).

A third approach is internal audit that is useful to the designer makers in various internal areas of the organization. Internal audit determines the knowledge about the organizational resources and capabilities of its different areas. The next approach is an internal environmental analysis process which is useful to assess the strength and weakness, to investigate the potential strength, and categories competitive resources (Farris, Moore and Buzzell, 2004). The last approach is capabilities assessment profile that is helpful to review the present product market profile, recognize sources of competitive advantage or disadvantage in the main product-market segments and classifying a past performance and future goals of the organization.

2.2: Approaches to External Environmental Analysis:

The external environmental analysis identifies the market and its environmental factors which have an impact on the business. In this analysis, all approaches provide information about general environment, competitive environment, strategic groups, successes key factors and national competitive advantage. It is because; managers always need information to identify and understand about the external environment. Basically, three approaches are useful to collect information related to scanning, monitoring and competitive intelligence, but the company can also use these approaches for its long term benefits. First, PESTLE analysis identifies political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors that provide information to create better strategies and to survive in the competition to get long term profits (Leadley and Forsyth, 2004).

The second approach is porter’s five forces model that describes the performance of the organization through five kinds of forces. This model accesses five forces that directly influence the firm and its competitive actions. These forces are related to threats of new entrants, the power of suppliers, power of buyers, threats of substitutes and intensity of rivalry among competitors.  The 6-W model is another external analysis approach which evaluates about the needs and demand of the customers (Kotler, Shalowitz and Stevens, 2011). It is a helpful approach to determine existing and potential customers, suitable place and time to sell products to the customers and to find out the reasons behinds dislike about the product.

2.3: Integration of Internal and External Analysis:

The integration of internal and external analysis can be done though input and output from the both environments. The investigation of company can be useful to understand its internal and external environments. This method combined with two constitutes which analyzes the environment in which the company operates. The Internal and external environmental analyze to develop a strategic plan for the company. For this, combined goals and objectives must be made to make appropriate strategies. The strategic and competitive analysis gives opportunities and threats to the company in the market. Internal analysis accesses to the structure of the company that enables the firm to make good strategic decision and information to provide the basis for developing strategic substitute (Jenster, Hayes and Smith, 2005). On the other hand, external environment analysis provides information about the opportunities that can lead to higher profits and reduce the threats in the near future of the organization.

3: Strategic Marketing Decisions and Choices

3.1: Decisions and Choices at the Corporate Level:

The managers take several decisions on each level of the organization to meet the final objectives. These decisions and choices are made at function, business and corporate level to deal with the whole strategic scope of the company. At the corporate level, the managers made decisions related to arrangement of capital, allocation of staffing and resources. All these decisions are made for a long term planning with the big picture of the business (Meek and Meek, 2012). The whole organization is controlled and overseen through corporate level decisions. They made the decisions to make strategic planning, corporate policies and to direct the company.

In addition, corporate level choices are also taken by the top employees of the company such as presidents, boards of directors, CEOs, vice-presidents etc. These people have to choose the right choice from the top level difficulties. For example, they have to make choice related to business closure, business disposal, business acquisition, business reorganization and diversification of the business in another area. All these choices are quite difficult to choose, because these choices need proper knowledge, analysis and information to move further (Enis and Roering, 2012). These choices have huge risks, because a wrong choice may lead towards the failure of the business.

3.2: Influence of Corporate Level Decisions in Marketing at Business Unit and Functional Level:

The corporate level decisions have a great impact not only in top level, but also on the marketing of business unit and functional level. It is because; the organization starts with the top level decisions. The marketing at business level would be affected, if the top corporate level does not provide proper support. The corporate level decisions are concerned with the issues that are facing the organization. The business level strategies are based on the top level decisions, so the change in top level decisions would impact on the business level decisions (Drummond, Ensor and Ashford, 2013). The business level strategies include corporate portfolio to achieve the targets of the company.

In addition, function level units are also affected through the process and decisions of corporate level. These decisions indirectly affect to the marketing at a functional level, because they have contact with the customers and suppliers. If, the decisions are not related to the quality of the products, then function level employees cannot make appropriate marketing strategy. In addition, the centralized decisions of top management would have an adverse impact on the marketing decisions (Tsiotsou and Goldsmith, 2012).

3.3: Approaches to Competitive Positioning of Organizations:

There are several approaches of competitive positing that can be used by the organization. These approaches are quite significant to gain the competitive position within the industry. First, the organization can evaluate the market to determine the competitors and how they have obtained a position. This approach is quite significant to identify the life cycle stage of the market from introduction, growth, maturity and decline. In addition, it can also segment to the market to recognize the potential problems (Doole and Lowe, 2005). These problems can also be solved though reaching to the customers and to know their wants and needs.

At the same time, evaluation of competition is another competitive positioning approach that can be helpful to obtain a position. In this approach, all the competitors are determined to find out the level of competition that they are increase and how they are fighting with the competition. The competitors are also ranked on the basis of their operational competence, leadership in the products and customer familiarity. After competitive positioning, the company should also build up a brand strategy to interact with the customers (Pride and Ferrell, 2011). All these approaches are quite significant in maintaining competitive petitioning in the industry.

4: Implementation of Marketing Strategies to Contribute to Competitive Advantage

4.1: Range of Strategies Contributes to Competitive Advantage:

An organization with a sustainable competitive advantage has a compelling and winning strategy that sets them apart from the other competitors in the market. From the traditional times, there has a set of generic strategies that have used by a number of organization which set them apart as far as competing in the market is concerned. The examples of such strategies include low cost strategy, differentiation strategy among other generic strategies. As an example, Walmart (a famous retail chain in the United States of America) consistently follows a low cost strategy to attract a large number of customer base.

It is also a recognized fact that having and possessing a broad range of strategies also helps in defining the success of an organization. The competitor in such a case is never able to anticipate the moves of the organization. The organization is also successful in offering a wow effect to the end customers as they continue to offer a large number of services which are highly innovative in nature and scope.

A competitive advantage in relatively simple terms can be defined as a differentiating point of an organization which the other counterparts in the market do not possess. Hence, a focused strategy is imperative to be followed in order to build upon the competitive advantage in a successful and viable manner. It is also evident from the above discussion that a range of different strategies is much more promising in nature than a generalized following of a fixed strategy.

4.2: Marketing Communication Strategies

The organizations and the marketers in the contemporary times are making effective use of all the possible channels to reach out in a customized manner to the end customers. Some of the examples of the recent and contemporary channels that the marketers utilize include state of the art technologies like mobile marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, e-mail marketing etc.

Some of the more innovative organizations have gone a step ahead and use a blend of the traditional and the modern marketing channels to make the most of marketing communication as far as offering to the end customer is concerned. Some of the key essential strategies that are followed includes delivering a consistent message across different multiple channels with an objective of communicating the benefits to the end customer. Also, the marketers stress on the point that the communication must add some kind of value to the end customer without which it becomes very difficult to persuade the customer about the benefit of the involved product.

Thus, marketing communication is a tremendous opportunity for an organization to showcase their product or service to the end customer in the most subtle and innovative manner as they would like. Considering a few examples, the organization producing and manufacturing energy drinks by the name ‘Red Bulls’ are very good at showcasing their online presence. This creates a good rapport with the end customer and they have huge online following which ultimately brings the results to their actual physical sales as well.

4.3: Application and Implementation of Marketing Strategies:

The designing and planning of an effective marketing strategy is completely different from what the actual implementation of the strategy is. While the strategy might promise a lot on papers, the actual challenges that are faced are only understood in their complete nature once the actual implementation of the marketing strategies takes place. The senior management often face the problem of change management when the work force or the human resource might show while adapting to a new strategy and there can be issues related to legal and political aspects affecting the promotional aspect of a particular offering (services and goods).

Thus, it is often recommended to keep ample scope for flexibilities when the actual implementation process of a marketing strategy is taking place. It is also a good practice to make all the employees, stakeholders and concerned official well aware of the objectives that are intended to be achieved by the virtue of following a fully fledged marketing strategy.

Senior management of marketing organization often resolves to break the actual implementation of a marketing strategy into smaller and a number of achievable stages so that they are able to constantly monitor and control the activities of their marketing plan.

Overall, it is rare that everything goes as smooth as how it was planned in the initial stages and the actual shortcomings are identified once the actual process is implemented and carried out in real time. The management is often expected to foresee and anticipate the future so that they happen to act in a viable manner which results in the best of results for the concerned organization.

Conclusion

In the conclusion, it can be expressed that strategic marketing is important for growth and development of the company. It is learned by the virtue of this report that Strategic marketing is the process which is useful to focus on the organizational resources to obtain the optimum opportunities from the market. These strategies are used with the long term goals and objectives of the company to increase its profitability. The corporate and marketing strategy plays a significant role to develop the consumer base. The strategic analysis provides the better understanding of the market through internal and external analysis of the company and to integrate them. Strategic marketing decisions and choices of the organization affects to the competitive positioning, business level and functional unit marketing. Finally, this paper can also be concluded that the organization should use different kind of marketing strategies to take competitive advantages such as communication strategies.

References

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