Unit 41 Contemporary issue in marketing management – DD Retail

Programme	Diploma in Business
Unit Number and Title	Unit 41 Contemporary Issues in Marketing Management
QFC Level	Level 5
Credit value	15 credits
Unit Code	K/601/1037

 

Executive Summary

This Unit 41 Contemporary issue in marketing management – DD Retail is prepared basing on different types of issues in marketing Management of some of the branded company like D&D, concern worldwide, Environment Agencies, Apple and Apple ITunes etc. This report has been prepared on the marketing mix, stake holder’s analysis. Also here an insight has been given on the virtual organisations and the impacts of the Information Technology on the organisation. Here also the challenges have been discussed that the organisation faces during the marketing process. A detailed study has been given on the service mix and the different marketing strategies followed by public, private and voluntary sectors.

Introduction:

Marketing management is discipline of the organization which focuses on the practical application of marketing orientation, techniques and methods used inside enterprises. On the other hand the marketing management is considered as a method of managing the organization’s marketing resources and activities. As stated by Moutinho (2011), marketing experts advise about economic and competitive strategy to the company. Generally the marketing management experts implement porter’s 5 forces analysis of strategic group of competitors and value chain analysis to understand the competitive challenges of organization. In this case study, the learner has been appointed as a marketing consultant and specialist in a popular retail organization D&D Enterprise (Smitet al. 2011). D&D Enterprise has branch retail stores in different locations across London. It has been noticed that the firm is struggling to survive in the changing business environment. Hence, the newly appointed marketing management expert has to develop the report based on the relationship marketing, marketing mix, ethical and social responsibilities of the organization (Morgan, Pritchard & Pride, 2011).

Task 1:

Introduction:

Relationship marketing is a process which includes lead generation and customer data management, marketing automation tools, targeted information, multichannel strategy and customer experience management of the organization. D&D Enterprise has to develop the knowledge management process to establish the relationship marketing. Apart from that, D&D Enterprise will develop information communication system to improve the customer relationship management process (Boxall& Purcell, 2011).

1.1 Explain the concept of knowledge management and its role in relationship marketing:

As opined by Griffin and Moorhea (2011), knowledge management is a discipline of enabling individuals, teams or organizations collective and systematically create, share and apply knowledge.  Usually organizations take help of knowledge management to achieve their objectives in better manner. Knowledge management helps to reduce risk of the organizations because it always expresses the present condition of market.  However, the organization like D&D Enterprise will develop new product designing and commercialize the new product more quickly than thy will bring success in their business. It will help to increase revenue from the domestic and international market. On the other hand organizations will retain market share after gaining good profit. As stated by Jones and Jones (2015), the knowledge management process increases profit margin of organization. It has been found that popular organization like Chevron has reduced their operation cost structure by more than 2 million in 2014. Crowther (2011) opined that Texas instruments had generated 1.5 billion extra on their annual profit in 2012. On the other hand Scandia has reduced start-up time for new ventures to seven months.

Generally there are two types of knowledge in knowledge management process such as explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. The explicit information is written down or codified down by the marketing experts. Tacit information is stored inside a person’s mind. It has been found that the knowledge management process is conducted by the community of practice groups. The group of people along with shared resources and dynamic relationships are developing the shared knowledge and create a share value for the group (Harrington &Ottenbacher, 2011). Therefore the marketing management expert can understand the work-related function and process such as production, distribution, marketing, sales and customer service.

As argued by Layton (2011), the marketing management expert faces a recurring or nagging problem in the knowledge management process. Relatively the marketing management expert can understand the requirement of an organization such as technology implementation, knowledge development, employee retention and research for product innovation. According to Gordon (2011), relationship marketing is a particular aspect of customers relationship management which focuses on the customer loyalty, long-term customer engagement, customer acquisition and individual sales. On another hand, organizations usually take help of the knowledge management process to understand the types of customers, psychology of the customers and requirements of customers. Therefore the knowledge management process develops the information and documents which will help the retail organization such as D&D Enterprise for developing the proper relationship marketing. D&D Enterprise will gather knowledge about the market and develop good relationship with customers (Coviello,  McDougall&Oviatt, 2011).

1.2 Explain the ways that ICT can support the customer relationship management process in a particular organization:

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) refers to an umbrella which includes communication devices such as radio, cellular phones, television, computer networking system, software and satellite system. As stated by Ballantyneet al. (2011), organizations have implemented ICT system to collect and distribute services, products and contract related data. 

It has been noticed that the ICT in D&D Enterprise is categorized into two broad types of product such as traditional computer-based technologies and fast-growing range of digital communication technologies. It has been noticed that retail organization like D&D Enterprise has to take help of the ICT system. The ICT system will make a positive notoriety of the organization clients will imagine that the organization is advanced and implemented new innovation (Welch et al.  2011).

The marketing management specialist will store the important documents in the database of the organization which can be controlled by the organization as a form of perform inquiries. Apart from that the marketing management will develop the market research report based on the spread sheet and visual guide. After making the detail marketing report the marketing management experts has to recommend marketing strategy to retail organization like D&D Enterprise. The marketing strategy will include the types of products will be suitable for London. On the other hand the Marketing Consultant will recommend the marketing manager for implementing better customer relation. As opined by Lucarelli and Olof (2011), product development and customer satisfaction will be the key reason for customer retention and industry success.

Henceforth, D&D Enterprise will develop better customer relation based on some prospective such as fast information handling, increasing office productivity and e-business strategy. Therefore, the organization will develop good relationship with customers and launch products as per customers’ requirement.

1.3 Describe the benefits of customer relationship management in a selected organization.

The customer relationship management is a system which helps to improve the relationship between the customers and organization. If D&D Enterprise will maintain proper CRM strategy then the organization will be benefitted by following manner:

Customers have been motivated to come in the retail stores like ASDA again and again to purchase good products (Crowther&Donlan, 2011).
ASDA has developed CRM system to target their audience more precisely and gain customer retention.
The organization has got customers’ information through CRM. Therefore the organization has already build customer loyalty and decreases customer loss.
ASDA has applied CRM strategy to create detail profile of the customers so that the organization canunderstand the choice of the customers.
Retail organization has gained trust of the customers by fulfilling their requirements.

Popular retail chain business has identified the new selling opportunities after examining the report of CRM (Bonilla Priego,  Najera& Font, 2011).

1.4 make justified recommendations for the improvement in the customer relationship management for the selected organization:

It has been noticed that D&D Enterprise is struggling to survive in the high competitive market. The organization has maintained then traditional marketing strategy and their marketing strategy is not so attractive to attract the customers (Brodie, Saren&Pels, 2011). Therefore, Marketing Consultant will recommend suitable strategy to improve the relationship with customers.

Providing CRM training to all employees: D&D Enterprise has to focus on the training session of the employees for constantly using CRM effectively. The business consultant Lusch, (2011), every retail organization has to identify and teach eager employee system. The learning system includes CRM data, using internet for developing CRM strategy, CRM software and cost control techniques. It has been noticed in a popular news journals that US retail sales have increased by 1.3% on last month after implementing the CRM training to the employees (BBC.com, 2016).

Track the behaviour of the customers throughout the sales cycle: D&D Enterprise has to store all customers’ data in their server and examine those data after ending the sales cycle. The evaluation process will help the sales executives for understanding the trend of customer. Therefore the store operator will focus on those segments.  The organization has to follow Personal-variable model to improve the customer relationship (Hultén, 2011). According to the personal-variable model, the consumers make decision which is based on the internal factors. The internal factors are such as personal opinion, belief system, goals, tradition, values and specific choice.

                      Figure 1: Personal-variable model

Conclusion:

In this first section the learner has discussed about the concept of knowledge management process and its role in relationship marketing. The advantage of Information and Communication or Technology in the customer relationship management. The Lerner has discussed the advantage of the customer relationship management of ASDA. Finally the learner has recommended for improvement of customer relationship management for D&D Enterprise.

Task 2:

Introduction

There are many traditional forms of marketing that hail back to 1960’s and maximum of the marketer’s use the same approaches. Recently the effectiveness is slowly fading away. So the concept of non-traditional marketing is coming into use on daily basis. It gained the popularity because it relies on new and unauthorised marketing.  Non-traditional method is defined as any method used outside the traditional method is a non-traditional marketing approach (King, Funk & Wilkins, 2011). To be more descriptive it is referred as a more specific range of marketing tactics.  Few of the non-traditional methods are mentioned below such as

Figure 2: Non- Traditional Marketing

Here an analysis of the stakeholder of a voluntary organisation named concern worldwide and a public sector organisation such as the environment agency will be done. Before starting the analysis lets first understand who are the stake holders?

A stake holder is a person, group or organisation who shows or has an interest in your organisation. Now in the case of both the organisation the expectation graph of the stake holders is shown below:

Figure 3: stakeholder’s expectations

There are different stakeholder analysis tool that can be used for understanding the expectation and requirements of the people.

                                               

                     Figure 4: Stakeholder analysis tool

In this tool the stakeholders should be listed then they should be considered by their interest on the organisation, their influence and power on the organisation. After this, they should plot out from the power or interest matrix which helps to complete the stake holder chart

2.1 carry out a stakeholder analysis for a voluntary sector and a public sector organisation.

Stakeholder’s analysis of concern worldwide:

It has been analysed that in case of concern worldwide which is a voluntary organisation the stake holder’s major interest is in the kind of charitable services they are providing and are their service beneficial in any case (Barratt, Choi & Li, 2011). They will also measure the quality of their services and standards they are maintaining. Depending on this, few would show their interest in donating funds to the institution.

Below a matrix template is given which is used for analysis of the stakeholders

Parameters	Explanation	Volunteer Organisation (concern worldwide)	Public Sector organisation (Environment Agencies ) Examples
Promoters	Promoters are the group who has the maximum interest in the organisation as they have invested in the company. They have the power to take decision and managing the function of the organisation.	Here in the organisation the stakeholder are the donators, sponsors, trustees	Government of UK
Latent	These are the group of people who has less interest in company affairs but have great power and value in the organisation	Patients	Citizens of UK
Apathetic	They have very less interest with limited power in the organisation	Business organisations	Patients of privatised nursing home
Defender	They are always in a protesting mood. They have great interest with low power in the organisation	Employees or Staffs	Employees or Staffs.

                Table 1: Stakeholder analysis report

Stake holder’s analysis for Environment Agencies: In the same way the analysis for Environmental agency a public sector organisation has been done where government is the biggest stake holder who has a great influence on the organisations functioning. They will always check whether the set rules and regulations are strictly followed or not to avoid any consequences. Their functioning also depends on the society as their work should have a good effect on the environment (Pomering, Noble & Johnson, 2011).

2.2 describe the nature of the relationships with customer within two selected not-for-profit organisations

Relationship with customer with Concern Worldwide and Environment Agencies: As the study is related to analysing the stakeholders among which customer is one of the crucial stake holders of the organisations and influences greatly on the smooth functioning of the organisation. Their feedback creates a big impact about the organisation in the market. So the non-profit organisation motto is to serve the people so the value their customers more than their business. Their prime target is to serve the society and make some value addition to the environment (Wagner Mainardes, Alves&Raposo, 2011). They emphasise on relationship marketing to retain their clients and customers and satisfy them with better services.

This technique or approach stress on long term customer relationship and widens the communication efforts which beyond the standard advertising and promotions. It is the best way which gets compatible with the non-profit organisations as their business success depends on the goodwill which actually is created by the clients and customers.  Relationship marketing can easily be linked with social media, networking technologies, referrals and Rewards as they help to move and grow their organisation by achieving their goals.

2.3 compare methods used in marketing within the public, private and Voluntary sectors

• Marketing methods: Discussing about the marketing strategy of three different sector organisations such as public, private and voluntary sector, it is important to understand the importance of the marketing strategy in an organisation.  Marketing strategy is the frame work planned by the company to run the organisation (Yoo, Lee &Bai, 2011). It helps to streamline the product development, determines the optimal prices, establishes effective distribution, Assist with marketing communications and helps to determine the organisational impacts.
• Public sector: In case of public sector their motto is provide customer service with minimum percentage of profit. So they try to use the traditional marketing approach which consists of promotion, campaigning or advertising that has been in practice by the companies for many decades (Grönroos, 2011). The benefit of traditional marketing is that it has a high success rate which is already proven statistically.
• Voluntary sector: When considering the voluntary sectors their mission is to offer charitable services to the society. As they are non–profit organisation they hardly focus on increasing their profits rather their focus is to raise funds from the market for serving more people in the society so they follow the MSF marketing strategy which involves the sponsor, government etc. (Grönroos&Ravald, 2011).they are 90 % governed by the MSF .
• Private Sector: While researching it has been seen that private sector companies follows a mixed approach i.e. the follow traditional and non- traditional approach for marketing In this kind of approach they take the good points of both the approaches as traditional is statistically proven that  they yield high success rate and non-traditional helps in capturing major portion of the market (Cain &Policastri, 2011).

2.4 explain the key issues involved in marketing in a selected virtual organisation.

The term virtual organisation means that they use a network that is independent of firms that join together temporarily. Code burst is one of the virtual organisations which are based on the concept of virtual office, team and leadership (Verbeke, Dietz &Verwaal, 2011). The main motto of this Code Burst is to build an exceptional, high quality and innovative product or services on customer demands.  The problems or challenges of that they faces are they are complex and problematic. The chances of falling percentage are more just like the way they get a quick success. Among the other challenges of the virtual organisation are listed below such as

• Planning dilemma
• Boundary blurring
• A loss of control
• Need for new managerial skills

Conclusion

Hence, from the above research it can be stated that different sectors follow different marketing strategies which is best fit for their type of organisation. Here also the shortcomings of the virtual organisations has been discussed which might create a hindrance in the success of the mission.

Task 3

3.1 describe the use of the extended marketing mix in selected service sector businesses.

Use on extended marketing Mix:

Earlier marketing mix consisted of four P’s such as place, promotion, price and product but later there was extension done in the marketing mix plan and 3 more p’s were added to it and those were people, process and physical existence to have a better impact on the companies.

                           Figure 5: Extending marketing mix

In the report the 3 P’s has been analysed with the application of Apple organisation:

• People – The strongest element of apple is its employee who is the back bone of organisation and reason of taking the company to a new height making it the world’s no 1 innovative companies. They select the candidates from good colleges and institutes and hire them with high pay outs with other benefits and perks (Moyer, McGuigan, Rao&Kretlow, 2011). The employees working at the apple stores are very kind and supportive and greet the customer with smile and readily help the customers with their queries.
• Process -Apple is well known for its process and operations. Their factories are spread worldwide and use a very systematic process for all their products and services. They believe in maintain simplicity which further creates sophistication in the products (Boxall& Purcell, 2011). Their process architecture is available in their website.
• Physical Evidence- As it is known that apple has a world-class designed apple stores that gives the customer the ultimate delight (Griffin & Moorhead, 2011). They have designed their website in an appealing manner that attracts the premium customers with less enticing words and art.

Hence, this report states that on proper application of the extended marketing mix a company can easily retain their client’s customer for a longer period and generate profitability in the on-going process.

3.2 explain how the product/service mix can be used to enhance value for the customer and organisation

Impact of product and service mix on the customers and organisations:

Product mix is the various kinds of product that the company produces or sales to the customers but service mix is the mixture of services of the services sector that the organisation offers to their customers for increasing the value for them (Moutinho, 2011).

                          Figure 6: Service mix

 

The service mix is further segregated in three categories like core service, facilitating service and enhancing service.

In this report these services categories are analysed with Apple to understand the utilization of the service mix in their organization. Starting with the first category

• Core service: The core service of the apple iTunes is to produce advanced and innovative iTunes software for their customers. They target to achieve producing a high quality iTunes software with advanced technology (Layton, 2011).This helps them to maintain a long relation with their customer by capturing the major portion of the market. The core service that they have to provide to the customers is on a quick time so that they have faith in them.
• Facilitating services: This service is very much related with the core service. The facility services provided by the apple iTunes software‘s are the media player, broadcaster media library, online radio and iPhone device management applications. These services should be designed in such a way so that it supports the core service (Coviello, McDougall &Oviatt, 2011).

Enhancing service- In this segment the last or extra services are provided with iTunes software’s so that it enhances the service of the product. For example free updating of the software’s for 1 year, latest collection of iTunes etc (Lucarelli&Olof Berg, 2011).

3.3 explain how difficulties peculiar to the marketing of services can be overcome with reference to a particular organisation

Challenges in marketing the services: The main problem that the companies face while marketing the service are due to high competition, change in taste of the customer, changes in the preferences of the people depending on the demographic and geographical variables. In case of D & D a retail store is facing challenges like the quality of the fabrics are decorating with the time as the manufacture are using two much chemicals that is spoiling the fabric of the dresses (Bonilla,  Najera& Font, 2011). Moreover they are using low quality fabrics and are delaying in meeting up the production demand. It is also noticed that the employees are not following the proper work ethics for which the sales are declining. The other reason for sales decline is the traditional usage of marketing instead of adopting the advanced marketing strategy.

3.4 explain the role of IT (Information Technology) in services marketing management in a selected organisation

Importance of Information Technology: Information technology plays a vital role in an organisation to operate smoothly in the market. It is the technology that retrieves, collects and shares the information for particular requirement of the company If D&D is considered it helps the company to extract the information and the marketing strategy of their competitors which helps them to formulate a better strategy that can uphold their position in the market (Brodie, Saren&Pels, 2011). Moreover, they can do a better research which can help them to improve their quality of their products. Hence, IT can prove too beneficial to organisation if they utilise it skilfully.

Conclusion

From the above report it has been stated the IT has great role to play in the organisation which makes the research process more refined that further helps in quality production and framing good strategies in the future. Hence, this helps to catalyse the process of marketing and sales of the product in the market.

Conclusion

From the above report it can be concluded that a proper implementation of marketing mix and it can really change the scenario of the organisations current position. Each theory or strategy of marketing has their own implication and impact on the organisation which can further help to forecast the future scenario for which correct actions can be taken right from the starting.

Reference List:

Books:

Boxall, P., & Purcell, J. (2011). Strategy and human resource management. Palgrave Macmillan.
Griffin, R. W., & Moorhead, G. (2011). Organizational behavior.Nelson Education.
Jones, V., & Jones, L. (2015). Comprehensive classroom management: Creating communities of support and solving problems.
Morgan, N., Pritchard, A., & Pride, R. (2011). Destination brands: Managing place reputation. Routledge.
Moutinho, L. (Ed.). (2011). Strategic management in tourism.CABI.
Smit, P. J., Cronje, G. D. J., Brevis, T., &Vrba, M. J. (Eds.). (2011). Management principles: a contemporary edition for Africa. Juta and Company Ltd.

Journal:

Ballantyne, D., Frow, P., Varey, R. J., & Payne, A. (2011). Value propositions as communication practice: Taking a wider view. Industrial Marketing Management, 40(2), 202-210.
Barratt, M., Choi, T. Y., & Li, M. (2011). Qualitative case studies in operations management: Trends, research outcomes, and future research implications. Journal of Operations Management, 29(4), 329-342.
Bonilla Priego, M. J., Najera, J. J., & Font, X. (2011).Environmental management decision-making in certified hotels. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 19(3), 361-381.
Brodie, R. J., Saren, M., &Pels, J. (2011).Theorizing about theservice dominant logic: The bridging role of middle range theory. Marketing Theory, 11(1), 75-91.
Cain, J., &Policastri, A. (2011).Using Facebook as an informal learning environment. American journal of pharmaceutical education, 75(10), 207.
Cova, B., Dalli, D., &Zwick, D. (2011). Critical perspectives on consumers’ role as ‘producers’: Broadening the debate on value co-creation in marketing processes. Marketing Theory, 11(3), 231-241.
Coviello, N. E., McDougall, P. P., &Oviatt, B. M. (2011). The emergence,advance and future of international entrepreneurship research—An introduction to the special forum. Journal of Business Venturing, 26(6), 625-631.

Website:

BBC. Com (2016)US retail sales rise is biggest in year -. BBC News. Retrieved 17 November 2016, from http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36288442