Marketing Plan Analysis and Development

The assignment requires you to analyze an existing marketing plan for a specific tourist destination. You'll need to compare and contrast this plan with a marketing plan for your own chosen destination, highlighting the key differences between the two approaches. Finally, you will develop a new marketing plan for your chosen destination based on the insights gained from your analysis.

Marketing Essentials

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1. Roles and responsibilities of marketing function..................................................................1
P2 Roles and responsibilities of marketing related to wider organisational context .................3
P3 Concept of marketing mix.....................................................................................................4
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................8
P4 Marketing plan for Your destination......................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Marketing essentials is an important concept specially in the business environment where
there is close competition among the various organisations dealing in the same industry. In order
to achieve success or receive the competitive advantage, it is crucial that marketing function
performs its duties and responsibilities in an effective manner (Campbell and Martin, 2015). It is
considered as the most important section of organisation as it has great impact on company’s
performance. Following report is prepared on Your Destination which is a courier company
operating from a long time. Its aim is to become the best in its field for which the marketing
manager of same needs to perform different roles and responsibilities which will be discussed in
the given report. Apart from that, concept of marketing mix is also discussed which will further
help in analysing the importance of each element of this concept. Thereafter, it will be discussed
that how Your destination can develop in future by following a marketing plan for it.
TASK 1
P1. Roles and responsibilities of marketing function
In order to carry out the functions of organisation in an appropriate manner, it is
important that each of its department works with high efficiency. Since the referred commercial
unit is a huge, it has different divisions among which the marketing department is one of the
most crucial one. It is only section of “Your destination” which is in direct contact with
customers and helps in sales of the organisation. For this, it is necessary that skilled employees
are appointed for the post of marketing manager so that he/she can perform the work as accepted.
Marketing function is important from the view point of business (Dibb and Simkin, 2013). Thus,
it plays a vital role in promoting and achieving organization’s mission and the vision. This
function is also responsible to attract the new prospects, investors and customers. The roles and
responsibilities of marketing function are as follows:-
 Market Research: “Your destination” courier service believes in doing study of the
industry, as to be successful in the market, organization must have a complete idea about
the current trends of the business. Marketing team is responsible to collect the data on
consumers, competitors and market place so that company can work accordingly. Market
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research helps an organisation to know the needs and preferences of customers which
they are looking for. The customers always look for service from a company which can
provide them maximum satisfaction (Fader, 2012). The referred organisation provides the
best services to its customers. It works with complete logistics packages and ensures that
the courier service which they are providing in the market are having reliability and
flexibility too.
 Pricing - This is another function which helps company to become successful in the
market. Organisation always set prices according to their competitors. Having lower
prices than the challengers always help to have a win-win situation. To know the prices in
market area, marketing department helps courier services. If company wants to attract
customers towards their services then organization has to provide them with the best
services with lower prices than competitors (Garrigos-Simon, F Lapiedra Alcamí and
Barberá Ribera, 2012). The referred organisation also does the same. They provide better
services at reduced prices to the customers. Setting prices according to the market gives
hope to companies to get success in the long run. Courier companies has started keeping
lower prices to make themselves stable in market. Once they get established they increase
prices but Your Destination is one of those courier service which maintains stability in
their price.
 Promotion: It is another function that helps companies to be recognized with name.
Organisations promote themselves with many different criteria such as advertisement,
personal relation, direct advertisement, etc. These different criteria helps enterprises to
get recognized by customers. This function is effectively performed by the marketing
manager as it helps company to reach its target audience that further assist the consumers
with various after sale services. It is an important department for those too who are
looking for the best services in courier segment. Through advertisement, consumers get
to know the whole vision of organisation.
Roles and Duties performed by marketing function
Assessing the requirements of clients – In order to provide the required services to the
customers it is important that this is identified that what actually is demanded by the customers.
For this marketing manager use various tools and techniques such as using the appropriate
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communication channel to interact with the clients which further helps in giving satisfaction to
them as the same service is than delivered to them (Gordon, 2012).
Recognising the latest trends in the market – This is another major responsibility of
marketing manager in which he has to identify the current trends in the industry so that effective
services are provided to the customers.
Above text shows that for Your destination to succeed in the industry it is importance that
marketing manager performs his duty with great efficiency. It is important that the structure
which is being followed in the organisation is flexible so that it can adopt to the changes that
keep on taking place in the industry.
MEMO
Date - 1st November, 2017
In order to increase the scale of current operations it is important that the duties and
responsibility are performed with higher efficiency as during expansion the requirement of
being effective further increases. Employee’s contribution is must which can be for which they
need to be developed with providing benefits to the work force.
P2 Roles and responsibilities of marketing related to wider organisational context
As there are various functions that are performed in an organisation it is important to
have separate department for each so that more better results are achieved. Though each division
is responsible for their own functions but it has high interdependency as results of one section
has its influence on the other too. In the refereed organisation marketing department has relation
to other department too which is being descried in the following matter;
Marketing and finance – Both of these departments has an important role to perform in
the organisation. Each unit has significant role during the establishment and and in the long run
operations of the firm. Finance department is accountable for allocation of funds in different
activities that are being performed at the work place. Much of the organisation expenses are
incurred in the marketing for which it needs to provide a clear vision regarding the future
demands of finance so that situation of unavailability of required funds for the given department
can be avoided (Hair and et. al., 2012).
Research and development – In order to develop the brand name in the market the
given organisation works towards developing strategies which helps in advertising the
organisation in the market. This function is performed by the marketing department as it does the
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investigation of the current trends and available resource that are present in the external
surrounding so that they can be adopted to develop own business and growth can be experienced
in the organisation. With the assistance of research team the marketing department gets to know
about the various strategies that can be adopted by the organisation in order to reduce its total
cost of production.
Human resource and marketing – In Your destination HR chief assumes crucial part in
calculating the usage of assets that are accessible in firm. It is necessary for promoting and HR
supervisor to work with coordinated effort, so powerful administration must be finished. The
significant motivation behind firm is to expand business deals through drawing in productive
clients. HR office are centred around selecting knowledgeable and talented individuals in their
firm who are having the capacity to create manageable development for organization. In
promoting office, organization name those individuals who are having aptitudes and capacity to
comfort individuals for exploiting offered administrations of firm (Hansson, Wrangmo and
Solberg Søilen, 2013). As a transportation organization Your Destination worry about drawing in
customers who are ready to exploit offered administrations of firm. They energize association
and individuals through dispersing merchandise and enterprises of wanted time frame.
P3 Concept of marketing mix
Marketing Mix in simple terms is bringing different aspects of marketing all
together. It comprises of 4P's of marketing and 7 P's of service marketing, where P stands for
Product, price,promotion, place, people, process and physical evidence. This means launching
the right product at right time at right place and and right price. Every company is required to use
a combination of these 7 P's to make its product successful . However, how much importance
should be given to which P differs from company to company and from product to product.
Now we will take a look on how these 7 P's and its combination can be used by our
company “Your Destination” to make it successful.
Product: It is the service or good provided to the customer . It can be both tangible or
intangible. Product should always match the requirement and demand of its user only then it will
be successful (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2011).
The various products and services offered by Your Destination are:
 It provides door to door service for the convenience of its clients.
 It offers insurance and custom service to secure costly and confidential parcel .
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 It has numerous centres ,toll free number and online tracking service to serve its client
24*7.
 It has tie ups with other courier service so as to reach in areas where they don't operate.
Price: It is the total amount inclusive of all taxes that the client pays for using a product or
service. Price should always match the price range of its substitute or of its competitors product.
Its the most important aspect of marketing mix. If price is too high customer might switch to
competitor service and if its too low they might consider it to be of inferior quality.
Your Destination has a combination of both fixed and flexible pricing method. By
adopting this technique it is able to offer discount and offer to its existing customer and also
attract new customer. However the price differers from client to client depending on its size,
packing and clients pick up and delivery demand.
Promotion:It basically means marketing or advertising a product or service. Promotion can be
done either for an existing product to increase its demand or while launching a new product or
service so as to provide complete knowledge about it to its user (Lipsman and et. al., 2012).
Various elements of Promotion are:
 Advertising
 Word of mouth
 Online
 Sales promotion
Your Destination mainly believes in Word of mouth promotion. It feels that the best way
through which a new customer will get attached to company is by review and feedback of its
existing satisfied customer. This type of promotion involves zero promotional expense and thus
the company is able to provide service at best possible rates. Apart from this the firm also does
some online promotion by giving offers and discounts to regular and new client.
Place:It refers to the location from where the product or service is made available to its user.
Location should be such that it is within easy reach of customer . However, the transportation
cost of company should also be taken into consideration while selecting appropriate location.the
various factors that has direct relation to place are:
 Franchising
 Logistics
 Retail outlet
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 Geographical factors
 Distribution Channel
 Market Coverage
Your Destination believes in giving service 24 hours a day. Hence, it has opened many
branches within a proximity of approx 10 km. So as to make it easy for customers to reach its
office. It also provides Pick up service, online booking service and tracking right from pick up to
delivery.
People: It refers to the man power required to deliver a product or service. In service marketing
People plays a very important role as it is the attitude and nature of your employee that is directly
related to the service quality. This is because here an intangible service is provided. People refers
to not only the quality of your employee but also its Quantity. Whether there are enough
manpower in your company to deliver timely service to its client. To provide on time service to
its customers Your Destination have various departments and each department has good number
of employees to manage its work (Malhotra, Birks and Wills, 2013). They have separate teams
for scheduling pick up and deliveries, feeding tracking details , sorting parcels as per areas and
urgency, despatching through various modes of transport, drivers, handling feedbacks, and back
office management teams.
Process: Service process is a continuous task in which a service or good is delivered. Process
should be such that it ensures that the best service is provided in the least amount of time and
that too with 100% accuracy rate. Your Destination believes in complete customer satisfaction.
For this purpose and to save on cost it has its own vans, tie ups with best airlines. As soon as a
order is received it makes sure that it is picked up at the exact mentioned time, then its brought to
the office where it is sorted with other parcel according to the area of delivery and its urgency.
Then it is loaded for further transportation. Once it has reached the area of delivery its again
sorted and sent with delivery boys at its final destination.
Physical Evidence: In service industry it is the proof of service being provided to its user. It can
be any document or bill stating the same. Since the service provided cant be this evidence plays a
vital role in feedback process. Your Destination provides unique number to its customer for
every individual order, it contains all the details related to the parcel like name of sender and
receiver, location , time of pick up, signature of sender, online tracking number, price, weight,
dimensions and so on (Marshall and Johnston, 2011).
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Comparison between National express and Your destination
Your Destination National express
Product It deals in the personal goods It on the other hands deals with
the industrial goods.
Price Price offered by are less
expensive.
Prices under this are
formulated as per the present
tax rates.
Place Easy assess to customers as it
is available in near by areas.
Customers may even have to
travel long distance as it is
available on selected locations
only.
Promotion Use of social media and print
media is done in order to
promote the goods and
services.
It uses television or newspaper
to reach its potential
customers.
People It includes staff members and
other person at the various
designation.
Under this organisation there is
government availability too.
Physical evidence It is present in different
locations hence it has more
physical availability.
It is difficult to get the services
of this company as in order to
take the services of this brand
customers need to go even far
of places.
Process Their main focus is on giving
quality services for which they
use the best available process
of production.
Their main concern is to
deliver service within the
given time frame for which
they even compromise with the
quality of services.
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TASK 3
P4 Marketing plan for Your destination
To achieve the goals and objectives of the organisation it is necessary that effective
planning is done as only than the set targets can be achieved (Martin and Reed, 2015). Planning
helps in determining the possible treats which further helps in taking the required corrective
measures. Given below is a plan for the referred commercial enterprise:
Company overview – It is a courier services that deals in the services of product delivery to
distinct places and provide satisfaction to its clients. It is privately owned and was incorporated
in 2014 on July 22nd.
Marketing objectives -
 In order to promote the business in the present world it is using various promotional tools
which may help the organisation to earn higher profits.
 To gain the customer loyalty company is focussing on improving their quality of services
so that they can build strong relations with the customers (McDaniel and Gates, 2013).
Vision of organisation
The prime vision with which the organisation operates is expansion of its total market
share by exploring new markets with better opportunities.
Mission of Your destination
To become a strong competitor for all those who are dealing in the same business type.
SWOT analysis of Organisation
Strength – It has got good brand image and is known for its efficient services which
helps it in acquiring major market share. Apart from this Your destination charges less price for
its offered services which further raises its demand in the market.
Weakness – Since the organisation is not very old it faces a good competition from those
companies which are old in this field.
Opportunities – by discovering to new and potential market Your destination can
increase its total sales.
Threats – A new organisation may face the major danger of excessive competition as
they are less effective than those who are old in this field and has comparatively more resources.
Porters five force model
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it is another tool through which major threats to an organisation are identified. Different
danger which are observed under this concept are as follows in context to Your destination are as
follows:
 Threat to substitute – The referred organisation faces maximum pressure from other
companies that are dealing In the same industry.
 Threat to competitors – there are various other firms too which are providing same
services to the customers and hence reduces potential market for your destination.
 Threat of new entry – Since this business is earning higher returns it is attracting more
and more customers to join this sector which is a major danger for your destination
(Mittal, 2014.).
 Bargaining power of customers – as there are many enterprise which are dealing in this
industry it gives more strength to customers to negotiate the prices of company.
 Bargaining power of supplier – this is a labour intensive business which gets effected if
the supply of labour is not maintained or discontinued.
Budget
Particular
(Marketing
Expenditure)
1st year 2nd year 3rd year
Promotion 8000 6000 4000
Sales advertisements 6000 9000 8000
Direct selling 12000 14000 10000
Total 26000 29000 22000
CONCLUSION
From the above given report on marketing essentials it has been summarised that in an
organisation from the different department marketing is one of the most important one. It helps
the business enterprise in achieving its targets and goals by performing all the duties and
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responsibility in the most appropriate manner. It has its high interdependency on other functions
also and together with them it leads to the development of overall business firm. Than the
marketing mix discussed above shows how each element of 7Ps helps in the decision making
process as in that way concentration to each important departments are given. It has been
compared with national express too which further describes how it differs from your destination.
Than in the last the report summarised with a new marketing plan for your destination which can
implemented in order to observe development in the future.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Campbell, R., and Martin, C., 2015. Media essentials: A brief introduction. Macmillan Higher
Education.
Dibb, S. and Simkin, L., 2013. Marketing essentials. Cengage Learning.
Fader, P., 2012. Customer Centricity. Philadelphia: Wharton Digital Press.
Garrigos-Simon, F.J., Lapiedra Alcamí, R. and Barberá Ribera, T., 2012. Social networks and
Web 3.0: their impact on the management and marketing of organizations. Management
Decision. 50(10). pp.1880-1890.
Gordon, R., 2012. Re-thinking and re-tooling the social marketing mix. Australasian Marketing
Journal (AMJ). 20(2). pp.122-126.
Hair, J. F. and et. al., 2012. An assessment of the use of partial least squares structural equation
modeling in marketing research. Journal of the academy of marketing science. 40(3).
pp.414-433.
Hansson, L., Wrangmo, A. and Solberg Søilen, K., 2013. Optimal ways for companies to use
Facebook as a marketing channel. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in
Society. 11(2). pp.112-126.
Lamb, C. W., Hair, J. F and McDaniel, C., 2011. Essentials of marketing. Cengage Learning.
Lipsman, A., and et. al., 2012. The power of “Like”. Journal of Advertising research. 52(1).
pp.40-52.
Malhotra, N. K., Birks, D. F and Wills, P., 2013. Essentials of marketing research. Pearson.
Marshall, G. W. and Johnston, M. W., 2011. Essentials of Marketing Management. McGraw-
Hill/Irwin.
Martin, S. J and Reed, P. A., 2015. Instructional Alignment of Workplace Readiness Skills in
Marketing Education. International Journal of Adult Vocational Education and
Technology (IJAVET). 6(3). pp.31-44.
McDaniel, C. D. and Gates, R. H., 2013. Marketing Research Essentials 8th Edition. Wiley.
Mittal, A., 2014. Role of Marketing Mix for Indian Marketers. Global Journal of Finance and
Management, 6(3), pp.191-196.
Online
Bhasin, H., 2017. Service marketing mix – 7 P's of marketing. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.marketing91.com/service-marketing-mix/>. [Accessed on 1st November
2017].
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