Business

• What is a marketing objective

  A specific goal or target relating to the marketing activities and performance of a business
• What are the main types of marketing objectives

  Sales volume

  Sales value (revenue)

  Sales growth %

  Market share %

  Brand loyalty
• The value of setting marketing objectives


  Aligned with corporate objectives

  Provide focus and allocate resources

  Can measure performance
• What are potential problems with marketing objectives

  Fast changing external environment

  Potential conflict between market objectives

  Easy to be too ambitious with marketing objectives
• What are some internal influences on marketing objectives

  Corporate objectives

  Finance

  Human Resources

  Operational issues

  Organisational culture
• Corporate objectives


  The most important internal influence

  Marketing objective should not conflict with a corporate objective
• Finance


  Includes profitability, cash flow and liquidity, which directly affects the scope and scale of marketing objectives
• Human Resources


  The quality and capacity of the workforce is a key factor in affecting marketing objectives

  Motivated and well trained workforce can deliver market leading customer service and productivity to create a competitive market advantage
• Operational issues


  Plays a key role in enabling the business to compete on costs (efficiency and productivity) and quality

  Effective c alacrity management plays a part in determining whether a business can achieve its revenue
• Organisational culture


  Marketing orientation culture is looking for ways to meet customer needs

  A production orientates culture may result in management setting unrealistic or irrelevant marketing objectives
• What are the external influenced on marketing objectives

  Economic environment

  Competitor actions

  Market size, growth and segmentation
• Economic environment


  Key factor determining demand

  (Rate of economic growth will impact)

  Exchange rates would also impact objectives with international marketing
• Competitor actions


  Marketing objectives Jane to take account of the possible competitor response

  An objective of increasing market share would mean that the competitor response will not be effective
• Market size, growth and segmentation

  A market whose growth slows is less likely to support an objective of significant revenue growth or new product development
• Technological change


  Many markets are affected by rapid technological change, shortening product life cycles and creating great opportunities for innovation
• Social and political change

  Changes to legislation may create or prevent marketing opportunities

  Change in the structure and attitudes of society also have major implications for many markets
• Primary market research


  Santa collected first hand for a specific purpose
• Secondary market research


  Data that already existed and which has been collected for a specific purpose
• Examples of primary research

  Focus groups

  Interviews

  Surveys

  Mystery shoppers

  Product testing and trial
• Advantages of primary market research

  Directly focuses on research objectives (fit for purpose)

  Tends to be up to date

  More detailed insights- particularly into customers views
• Drawbacks of primary market research

  Time consuming and often costly to obtain

  Risk of survey bias

  Research samples may not be representative of the population
• Examples of secondary market research


  Market reports

  Trade and industry associations

  Sale transactions

  Big data

  Analytics
• Advantages of secondary market research

  Often free and easy to obtain

  Good source of market insights

  Quick to access and use
• Drawbacks of secondary market research

  Can quickly become out of date

  Not always tailored to specific research needs

  Specialist reports Oder quite expensive
• Quantitive market research


  Concerned with data

  Larger samples so it is more statistically valid

  Surveys: telephone, postal, face to face and online
• Qualitative market research


  Bases on opinions, attitudes, beliefs and attitudes

  Aims to understand why customers behave in a certain way or how they any respond to a new product or service

  Focus groups and interviews are common methods used to collect
• Focus groups


  A form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes toward a product, series, concept, advertisement, idea or packaging
• Benefits of quantitative research

  Data relatively easy to analyse

  Numerical data provides insights to relevant trends

  Can be compared with data from other sources
• Drawbacks of quantitative research

  Focuses on data rather than explaining why things happen

  Doesn't explain the reasons behind numerical trends

  May lack reliability if sample size and method is not valid
• Benefits of qualitative research

  Essential for important new product development and launches

  Focused on understanding customer needs, wants and expectations (which is insightful for the business)

  Can highlight issues that need addressing

  Effective way of testing elements of the marketing mix
• Drawbacks of qualitative research


  Expensive to collect and analyse and requires specialist research skills

  Based around opinions- always a risk that the sample is not representative
• Market mapping


  Illustrates the positions that a product can take in a market based in two dimensions that are important to customers
• Common dimensions of market mapping

  Low price - high price

  Basic quality - high quality

  Low volume - high volume

  Necessity - luxury

  Light - heavy

  Simple- complex

  Unhealthy - healthy

  Low tech - hi tech
• Advantages of market mapping

  Helps spot gaps in the market

  Useful for analysing competitors

  Encourages the use of market research
• Disadvantages of market mapping

  Just because of gap doesn't mean there is a demand

  Not a guarantee of success

  How reliable is the market research?
• Sampling


  The gathering of data from a sample of respondents

  The results of which should be representative of the target population/ market
• Benefits of sampling


  Small sample size if representative can provide useful research insights

  Use sampling before making marketing decisions can reduce risk and cots

  It is flexible and relatively quick
• Drawbacks of sampling


  Biggest risk if the sample is unrepresentative of the population which would lead to incorrect conclusions

  Risk of bias in research questions

  Less useful in market segments where customer tastes and preferences are changing frequently
• Correlation


  The strength of a relationship between two variables
• What are the correlational variables

  Independent variable (the thing that you change)

  Dependent variable (the thing that you measure)