Tuesday, May 20, 2014

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

Doole, I and Lowe, R. (2005) Strategic Marketing Decisions in Global Markets. USA: Cengage Learning EMEA.
Drummond, G., Ensor, J. and Ashford, R. (2013) Strategic Marketing, 3rd ed. USA: Routledge.
Enis, B.M. and Roering, K.J. (2012) Review of Marketing 1981. USA: Marketing Classics Press.
Farris, P.W., Moore, M.J. and Buzzell, R.D. (2004) The Profit Impact of Marketing Strategy Project: Retrospect and Prospects. USA: Cambridge University Press.
Hillestad, S.G. and Berkowitz, E.N. (2012) Health Care Market Strategy. USA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Jenster, P.V., Hayes, H.M. and Smith, D. E. (2005) Managing Business Marketing & Sales: An International Perspective. USA: Copenhagen Business School Press DK.
Kotler, P., Shalowitz, J. and Stevens, R.J. (2011) Strategic Marketing For Health Care Organizations: Building A Customer-Driven Health System. USA: John Wiley & Sons.
Leadley, P. and Forsyth, P. (2004) Marketing: Essential Principles, New Realities Kogan Page Series. USA: Kogan Page Publishers.
Meek, H. and Meek, R. (2012) CIM Course book 03/04 Strategic Marketing Management. USA: Routledge.
Pride, W.M. and Ferrell, O.C. (2011) Marketing. USA: Cengage Learning.
Ranchhod, A. and Marandi, E. (2005) Strategic Marketing in Practice. USA: Routledge.
Tsiotsou, R.H and Goldsmith, R.E. (2012) Strategic Marketing in Tourism Services. USA: Emerald Group Publishing.

West, D.C., Ford, J. and Ibrahim, E. (2010) Strategic Marketing: Creating Competitive Advantage, 2nd ed. USA: Oxford University Press. 


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