Marketing Essentials: A Comprehensive Guide to Marketing Principles and Strategies

Marketing Essentials

Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Task 1.........................................................................................................................................4
Task 2.........................................................................................................................................8
Task 3.......................................................................................................................................12
Conclusion................................................................................................................................17
Reference List..........................................................................................................................18
APPENDIX..............................................................................................................................20

Introduction
Marketing is indispensible for the contemporary business operating in the competitive
business environment. It contributes to the functionality of the business and enables the
business to earn profits while enhancing its market share. The diverse functional facets of
marketing and its aggressive tools develop the business internally and help in improving the
position externally. There are precise seven functions of marketing, which revolves around
merchandising, physical dissemination and auxiliary activities to be discussed in this report.
In this study, the concepts of marketing, roles and functions of a marketing manager in a
leading private company, John Lewis Partnership PLC operating in UK with its diverse range
of businesses including departmental stores, banking, financial services and other retail
clothing, furniture, computing, photography services, would be discussed. The major focus
would be on retail departmental sector though, which is comprised of its original
accomplishment, John Lewis and acquired business, Waitrose.

Task 1
John Lewis Partnership PLC (JLP) operates a wide range of businesses and the profits of
the limited company are held in the trust for the profit of the employees. A fraction of the
profits goes to the employees, termed as ‘partners’ by the business, which effectively boosts
their morale and results in improved performance (Storey and Salaman, 2017). Despite such
innovative opus by the leaders of the company, there are several external factors that require
attention of the managers to ensure the smooth functioning of the business and profit
maximization. The marketing managers are entrusted with the responsibility of improving
distribution channels, promotion, sales and service management at the retail stores held by
the company by the names, John Lewis or Waitrose.
P1: Explain the key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function.
Marketing involves a broad range of functions and thus, the roles of the managers include
successfully managing the sub-ordinate employees and leading the team along with the key
roles. The key job roles of a marketing manager along with managing the team include the
following at John Lewis:
Market research: Analysing the markets, demands, current position and rivals dominating
the market are intricate part of the roles and responsibilities vested in the marketing manager
(Armstrong et al., 2015). Marketing Managers at John Lewis PLC uses extensive techniques
like SWOT for the internal factors, PESTLE for the external macro factors and Porter’s five
forced for the external micro factors that affect the business.
Setting prices: The dynamic business environment requires constant analysis and research to
set the correct prices that creates the provision for the company to earn profits while setting
them reasonably lo to ensure customer retention (Baker, 2014). John Lewis Partnership
believes in ‘never knowingly undersold’ slogan of Spedan Lewis and thus strives to set the
best prices, unbeatable by rivals to ensure they remain true to their fundamentals. The
unbeatable prices and the company’s endeavours to never undersell any commodity to its
customers is a novel strategy for retention and the successive efforts of the marketing
managers ensures the vision is abided.
Brand management: The products and the services extended by the company needs to be
essentially managed and the values upheld. The brand name of “John Lewis” or “Waitrose”
has an impact on the consumer purchase behaviour and the positive brand image is instilled

by the functions of the marketing manager. The brands which are notable subsidiaries of the
bigger composite company, JLP has a notable market presence but to boost the sales further,
it is important to ensure positive impacts and steps are taken towards product and service
management (Tomczak et al, 2018).
Public relations: maintaining strong positive relationships with the consumers by engaging
them in interactive activities, consumer centric policies, providing loyalty benefits and so on.
It is important to main strong public relationships especially in the age of social media, digital
marketing where consumers communicate and converse everyday with companies through
website, and social media accounts that bridge the gap between them effectively (Chaffey and
Ellis-Chadwick, 2016). As a marketing manager at John Lewis, it is important to engage in
such interactive marketing exercises and create a positive impact on the world.
Sales support: The ultimate goal of any business is to enhance the sales and achieve the
leading position in the market by ensuring superfluity (Dabija and Grant, 2016). Delivering
value to the customers in terms of products and services that are required by them at
reasonable prices ensures customer retention and the primal goal of marketing is to ensure
this fundamental criteria. Thus, marketing manager at John Lewis enhances sales
performance through extensive deployment of marketing tools.
Distribution channels: Management of different channels and distribution of the goods and
services across the several departmental stores spanning Britain is the responsibility of the
marketing managers. The distribution to the target customers through retail outlets are
managed by them, with the aim of selling superfluous (Dall'Olmo et al, 2016). Thus,
marketing manager at John Lewis manages the diverse online and physical stores through
which their products are supplied to the consumers.
Creating promotional channels: Promotional techniques are important to be created for
informing the consumers how products are tailored to their preferences and are available at
the stores. Promotional channels are thus important to establish the link between customer
centric behaviour of the company and the potential customers (Davcik and Sharma, 2016).
Also existing customer base can be retained through advertisement using several media
channels, which showcases the new products launched by the company. Thus, it is ensured by
the marketing manager through effective communication and collaboration with their
respective teams.

P2: Explain how roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider
organisational context.
Marketing is a vast field that incorporates and successfully acts an interface for several
department including the Finance, HRM, Production and R&D. The Marketing department
is intricately connected to the logistics department through the suppliers and it affects the
formulation of marketing mix to a huge extent.
Figure 1: Interrelationship of Marketing Mix and Logistics
(Source: Goworek and McGoldrick, 2015)
The supply chain management forms a crucial bridge which determines the market research
and resultant prices. The bargain power exerted by the, the services, quality and rates are
variables which direct the profit margins for the company delivering the products to the
consumers (Dawes and Nenycz-Thiel, 2014).
The Finance department determines the available resources, allocates and determines the
expenses for promotion, advertisement, public relations and brand management.
The HRM department determines the internal competence to abide and follow the
organisational objectives as well as marketing strategies formulated by the manager.