Marketing Essentials

This document provides an in-depth analysis of marketing essentials, including the key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function. It also explores the comparison of marketing mix between Burberry and ZARA. Additionally, it offers insights into the basic marketing plan for Burberry's new market segment. The document covers various topics such as customer satisfaction, marketing research, setting marketing strategy, brand equity, identification of target market, managing marketing budget, and the inter-relation between marketing and other departments. The subject of this document is Marketing Essentials, and it is relevant for students studying marketing or business-related courses. The document type is a study material or guide, and it can be used as a reference for assignments or research.

Marketing Essentials

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
Key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function.......................................................3
Roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational context...............5
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................6
Comparison of marketing mix of two different companies of same sector...........................6
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................9
Basic marketing plan..............................................................................................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................14

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is the key tool in every business to get their products and offerings reached to
mass number of consumers by understanding their needs and requirements. This also helps in
making their relationship with customers effective and efficient. In current market business
environment since competition is increasing as day passes so along with this importance and
requirement of marketing increases to get the competitive edge over all its competitors. With
view of this every business organisation is trying to formulate an innovative and creative
marketing strategy to reach mass number of customers efficiently it enables the business to
survive and sustain in long run. To understand the above-mentioned marketing tool we are
preparing this report with background of Burberry, which is luxury fashion, engaged company
based out of UK and founded in 1856. The headquarter is situated in London and the company
is conducting its operations in 51 countries with 498 stores within global periphery. (Sharma,
Davcik and Pillai, 2016).
TASK 1
Key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function
There are multiple roles are responsibilities tagged to Marketing Department which are
associated with both marketing and promotional decisions. Their major role is to increase the
customer base of the organization and improve their relationship with customer by fulfilling
their expectations and needs. As in every other organization, Burberry department too has their
own marketing department whose responsibilities are to increase the number of customers and
to reach their target market in an effective and efficient manner along with customer
satisfaction. Some of the roles and responsibilities of marketing department of Burberry are as
follows:-
Customer Satisfaction: This is primary goal of every organization to satisfy their customers
rather we can say it is necessarily required to sustain and survive for long term in the market
place. In context of Burberry, their marketing department innovatively and creatively makes
customer satisfaction as their primary goal. They are luxury fashion associated brand and to
satisfy their core group of customers they carefully focuses and analyses needs of these
customers and implements the same in their products. Even after the sale they continuously be
in touch with their customers to get their feedback and estimate the satisfaction level of their
customers (Homburg, Jozić and Kuehnl, 2017).

Marketing Research: This function is considered as base of every marketing strategy.
To understand the customer needs it is necessarily required for marketing department to first
gather the relevant data and information through process of marketing research from various
available sources. Marketing department of Burberry conducts marketing research to make sure
that they completely understand their customer needs and their product are satisfactory to them
through various sources such as Feedback, surveys, culture, region, demographics etc.
Setting marketing strategy: This role is played by marketing department post
completion of their marketing research and analysis. In this stage, they finally formulate their
marketing strategy to successfully achieve their desired goals. Burberry department has
specialised marketing persons who researches and formulate the strategy based upon research
outcomes. Targeting strategy by targeting customer groups of upper class is policy used by
Burberry. They have position and brand of hygienic and standard and all their marketing
policies and strategies are focused towards that to maintain their core customers (Baker and
Parkinson, 2016).
Brand Equity: In today’s environment, its brand name and brand image who captures
and retains the customer most of the times. It is responsibility and role of marketing department
of every organization to build, develop and maintain the brand image and goodwill of the
business. Various marketing tools and strategies can be used to achieve the same. In context of
Burberry, since it operates in multiple countries it is necessary for them to maintain their brand
image, which is of being a luxury fashion brand for upper class group of customers. Their all
products are focused mainly towards this idea to maintain their brand image.
Identification of target market: Every business organization has its own target market
or target customer group. It is difficult for a single business to cover needs of every customer or
market and trying this might affect their quality and satisfaction level of customers. This
strategy needs to be necessarily taken in consideration to make sure that target profits are
achieved and brand image is maintained. In context of Burberry, their target customers are
upper class group who prefer luxury products to other products and it has been their market
strategy to innovate and manufacture all their products based upon specifications and
requirements of this group. This enables them to identify their competitors and make policy
updates to that by tracking their competitor moves.

Managing marketing budget: Every business activity requires some resources both
personnel and monetary and to make sure that the resources are utilized to its complete
efficiency and effectiveness they have to pre plan their usage, budget the resources and control
their usage. Marketing department of Burberry has a dedicated team working towards this who
based upon the funds allocated to them by finance department distribute and budget the same
for multiple activities planned. Once the budget is prepared, they continuously keep a track of
its usage and compare the actual results with budget to notice or identify if there is any major
discrepancy or deviation. This role with make sure that they do not run out of funds at any point
of time.
Roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational context.
In today’s business operating environment every business process and department is
connected with each other somehow. Due to this inter-relation between these functional
departments ready to use information and data is available at any point. These helps
organization to achieve their visions and missions effectively, efficiently and smoothly.
Burberry too has an ERP system implemented which assist them in maintaining this
interrelation. Some example of inter-relation between various departments is explained below:
Marketing and human resource department: Like every other business activities, activities
carried on by marketing department too requires human resources specialised in marketing
activities and HR department of the organization assist them in procuring those resources. Due
to inter-relation between these two departments, marketing department shares their requisitions
and specifications with HR department who provides them with suitable candidates. In
Burberry, too same inter-relation is followed but in mass numbers as their product, revenue is
highly influenced with those marketing personnel performances. There HR department have
their defined process to identify and recruit the suitable persons requested by marketing
department (Mukherjee and Shivani, 2016).
Marketing and finance department: It is the role of Burberry’s finance department to
allocate the adequate and eligible amount of funds and budgets to each department to continue
their functional activities flawlessly. Similar to all other departments marketing department of
Burberry too needs to have adequate funds from finance department. So, for this they have to
make proposals of their strategy and innovations and present the same to finance department
with approvals and with this inter-relation finance department after evaluation of this proposal

allocated the adequate amount of funds to marketing department and later on formulate a
budget from that funds for their various activities.
Marketing and information technology department: In the modernized world, IT has very
important role to play in success of any business. IT includes Hardware, Software, and
Research, Innovation and any technological activity or process in the organization. The IT
department in Burberry is responsible to manage and maintain inventory of various
technological hardware’s for the organization and it is their responsibility to make sure that
information technology followed by Burberry is up to date and all the advance innovations are
considered regularly in that. This activity is to make sure their IT department gets edge over
their competitors in terms of technology used for conducting IT activities. It is required for
them to be inter-related to make sure that Marketing department get what required and they
know what they have in organization (Koo, Kim and Kim, 2016).
TASK 2
Comparison of marketing mix of two different companies of same sector
Marketing Mix is a combination of various marketing factors that is considered in
marketing policy and can be used and controlled in strategized manner to influence the
customers in the most positive manner and place and stabilize their product in the market. There
are multiple frameworks available to evaluate and formulate marketing strategy based upon
marketing mix. There has been 6 P’s framework considered by us to evaluate and compare
marketing mix of Burberry and ZARA:
Basis Burberry ZARA

Product Burberry has focus on
various fashion segments
such various types of ready
to wear outerwear’s, Training
clothes and accessories,
fashion accessories,
Fragrances, Footwear’s,
Cosmetics etc. They are
preferred for The outerwear
and fragrances.
ZARA is also engaged in
fashion segment and it has
product offering from
multiple segments i.e.
outerwear, innerwear, shoes
accessories, fragrances,
fashion for kids and all the
possible products directly or
indirectly related with
fashion.
Price As discussed and mentioned
above Burberry is focused on
Luxury fashion products and
from that we can also derive
that price range of it is on
higher end for rich segment
consumers and its products
price are not effected or
decided keeping in mind the
middle class or poor range of
customers. Generally, their
price range is not affected
with demand it’s base on
their brand preference.
ZARA is also considered as
luxury brand but it’s product
are not just limited to high
end of Luxury fashion’s price
range instead it additionally
covers lower range of luxury
price range as well. Products
of ZARA can be used and
purchased by well-set middle
class consumers and its focus
is to cover complete range of
luxury consumers instead of
just targeting some specific
group of customers.
Place Burberry has its headquarters
located in London, UK and it
is an MNC operation in 51
countries around the world
with 498 outlets and stores.
They are planning to have
their stores everywhere based
The company is having
headquarters located in
Arteixo, Spain. This too is a
globalized company
operating in 96 countries and
those operations are carried
on smoothly with well-
structured 2259 outlets and
store in either malls or outlets
(Shen, Qian and Choi, 2017).

on audience of their target
consumers.
Promotion Burberry promotes and
advertises its offerings
through luxury mode of
promotions i.e. Fashion
shows, fashion booklets,
ramp shows, sponsorships
and advertising on television
by celebrities and faces
famous whole around the
world since their customer
group is rich.
Similar to Burberry ZARA
also focuses on
advertisements of it offerings
majorly through Fashion
shows and sponsorships.
However, just in addition
their focus is more on
television advertisements as
well as they have higher
target audience to be reached
out.
People At present Burberry is
carrying on its operations
worldwide with 9862
employees and those
employees consists of
designers as well as highly
trained and professional sales
executives who can influence
the customer to buy the
product in positive manner.
ZARA operates whole over
the world with thousands of
employees being
professionally trained in their
respective jobs
Process Burberry is not concerned
with costing of their product
manufactured instead they
follow the process of well-
designed clothes which
fulfils all the needs and
specifications of their target
customers and provide
ZARA too has a process
similar to Burberry for its
business products. They have
practice to get the designs
approved and innovated from
professional designers and
they operate their business in
a large way through online

satisfaction. They follow
process of continuous
feedbacks from their
customers and sponsoring
well known celebrities.
platforms.
Physical evidence Comfort comes part of
fashion in case of Burberry,
while designing their
products they also considers
comfort experience of
customers. They make sure
that all their products should
provide customers with
physical comfort along with
latest fashion and trending
designs.
ZARA is considered one of
the most comfortable outfits.
In case of their cloth segment
of business their products are
light in weight so considered
to be comfortable to carry for
a long day as well. (Mandal
and Joshi, 2017).
TASK 3
Basic marketing plan
Marketing is required in today’s world to reach the large range of customers and achieve
organizational goals and to achieve those goals marketing plan is necessary required to be
formulated. This responsibility of formulating the marketing plan lies with marketing
department in case of Burberry. The marketing plan and strategy keeps formulated and updated
whenever there is any new product launch or any situation comes to mitigate the challenges. It
is the blue print of steps to be carried on by marketing department to get the product reached
and offered to consumers and attracts large number of consumers to purchase the product and
offerings (Pham and Nasir, 2016). In case of Burberry, they are planning to manufacture junk
jewellery within their new market segment.
Company overview
Burberry is a Listed British luxury fashion brand based out of London. It was
established in 1956 focusing on outfit attire, which later was changed to high luxury fashion

market. It is most famous product is trench coat made up of Gabardine kind of fabric originated
by themselves, which is comfortably breathable and waterproof. It is currently operation in 51
countries all over the world and has 498 stores in operations. It has a worldwide recognition
with being ranked as 73rd best global brand in a report in the year 2015. Its major competitors
are Prada, Louis Vuitton etc. It deals in various fashion segments such as clothes, accessories,
perfumes etc.
Situational analysis
SWOT ANALYSIS
1. Strengths
 It has been 156 years since Burberry is established and it has a strong and stable
market position in Luxury fashion segment.
 Price of its products is not affected by its demand in general instead price is not a
limitation for it and they can completely focus on providing the best design and
satisfaction to its customers.
 It has dedicated, experienced and well-known team of designers and sales
executives who constantly innovates their products, ideas and offerings to their
range of customers.
 Burberry is renown all over the world and is considered with top brands in the
world saying Prada and Louis Vuitton and it is one of best brands all over the
world (Okonkwo, 2016).
2. Weakness
 The target consumer range of Burberry is less as compared to several other
fashion engaged brands due to which number of consumers are not vast, this fact
seems to be a weakness as they can try and explore some product range for new
customer group as well.
 The product line of Burberry is limited and in terms of number of varieties, there
is a limitation due to which sometimes it is a challenge to ensure the customer
that it has adequate varieties.
 Employee attrition rate is high for Burberry, which increases their training costs,
and efforts and it impose risk towards customer experience.

 Inventory turnover is also low which too is a challenge and weeks as inventory
maintenance cost keeps occurring.
3. Opportunities
 Since target customer is currently very low for Burberry it provides them with a
opportunity to cover large number of customers uncovered by offering new price
range products.
 There is also an opportunity for them to diversify their business and launch a
complete new range of offerings that might lead to increase in their profits and
revenues.
 With changing tastes and preferences day by them there comes an opportunity to
innovate their designs and create something ahead of their competitors.
 With increasing focus on customer satisfaction there comes an opportunity for
them to innovate, their customer experience with technology advancements and
retain them for long run (Franco, 2018).
4. Threats
 There is threat from competitors like Gucci and Prada to Burberry that they may
out run it through new product offerings and technology advancements.
 As number of varieties and offerings are limited, it may lead to customer
dissatisfaction.
 Technology is constantly evolving day-to-day and with this, there is a major
threat imposed on Burberry that its competitor might displace it from market
place by technology advancements in their business processes.
 Another major threat faced by Burberry is that its target customers are only rich
groups, which skips 95% of other consumer range.
Objectives: The main objective of Burberry is to be a leader in Luxury Fashion and
provide its customers with Innovative, Exciting and delighting creativity experience.
Specific: The Company has its constant and specific focus on Luxury Fashion used by
Rich customer user groups. It is specifically focused on enhancing their experiences.
Measurable: To measure the performance they are following process of identifying its
figures and then compare those results with results of its all other competitors and also in the
terms of customer satisfaction.

Operational Experience: There major emphasis was always on simplification and
efficiency of the process and invests in advance technologies to drive procurement savings.
Inspired People: It is been their regular consideration to keep their force motivated and
invests majorly in leadership core capabilities and talent (Blakeman, 2018).
Digital: They are focused on enhancing their customer experience positively through
content duration and store telling.
Strategies
Segmentation: They have constantly attached towards their Luxury fashion segment
from very beginning and they are dedicated towards that. They have plans and intentions to
excel in this particular segment over all its competitors by enhancing their customer
satisfaction.
Targeting: Strategy followed by Burberry is simple as they have just one single group
of target customer’s i.e. rich user group through fashion shows and magazine modes.
Positioning: Burberry is leading luxury fashion brand in the world and is often
considered as best fashion brands by renowned publications (Constantinou and Sauvage, 2018).
Marketing Mix
Product: They have range of fashion products and accessories designed and manufactured
innovatively to offer it to customers.
Price: Price range is petty high and luxurious that cannot by afford by 95% of total consumer
class all over the world.
Place: Their place of operation is all over the world with existence in 51 countries around the
world.
Promotion: Major mode and tool of promotion for Burberry is Fashion weeks, shows, stages,
sponsoring and magazines.
Cost allocation
Cost: Cost for the production of new product is discussed below:

Particulars Amount (€)
Marketing 20000
Design 40000
Raw materials 25000
Evaluation and control: In order to launch a new product Burberry has to majorly
invest towards design of their new jewellery product and they have to make sure that its
completely innovative unique and worth that (Cortez and Johnston, 2017). For evaluating their
marketing plan the company is using market share analysis method. In this a research is being
performed by them in order to examine that how much market they have captured and catering
by their new product offerings.
CONCLUSION
From all the concepts and theories mentioned above it is very clear that marketing is
necessary part of business activity. It needs to be efficiently carried on by Marketing
Department of Burberry to make sure that they target their specific range of customers and with
proper points that can attract them towards their new range of product and ensure about the
customer satisfaction reliability of them. It is necessary for every business to carry on its
marketing activities efficiently and effectively to understand exact need and response of their
customers that would help them in enhancing their product quality and experience in line with
customer satisfaction.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Baker, M.J. and Parkinson, S.T., 2016. Organizational buying behaviour: purchasing and
marketing management implications. Springer.
Blakeman, R., 2018. Integrated marketing communication: creative strategy from idea to
implementation. Rowman & Littlefield.
Constantinou, A. and Sauvage, N., 2018. Developer Marketing: The Essential Guide.
Cortez, R.M. and Johnston, W.J., 2017. The future of B2B marketing theory: A historical and
prospective analysis. Industrial Marketing Management, 66, pp.90-102.
Franco, M., 2018. Networking as a marketing tool in small companies: a random and informal
approach. Journal of Business Strategy.
Homburg, C., Jozić, D. and Kuehnl, C., 2017. Customer experience management: toward
implementing an evolving marketing concept. Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science. 45(3). pp.377-401.
Koo, K.R., Kim, S.J. and Kim, K.H., 2016. The effects of internal marketing capability on
export marketing strategy, B2B marketing mix and export performance. Journal of
Global Scholars of Marketing Science. 26(1). pp.51-65.
Mandal, P. and Joshi, N., 2017. Understanding Digital Marketing Strategy. International
Journal of Scientific Research and Management, 5(6), pp.5428-5431.
Mukherjee, S. and Shivani, S., 2016. Marketing mix influence on service brand equity and its
dimensions. Vision, 20(1), pp.9-23.
Okonkwo, U., 2016. Luxury fashion branding: trends, tactics, techniques. Springer.
Pham, T.H.M. and Nasir, M.A., 2016. Conspicuous consumption, luxury products and
counterfeit market in the UK. The European Journal of applied economics, 13(1),
pp.72-83.
Sharma, P., Davcik, N.S. and Pillai, K.G., 2016. Product innovation as a mediator in the impact
of R&D expenditure and brand equity on marketing performance. Journal of Business
Research. 69(12). pp.5662-5669.
Shen, B., Qian, R. and Choi, T.M., 2017. Selling luxury fashion online with social influences
considerations: Demand changes and supply chain coordination. International Journal
of Production Economics, 185, pp.89-99.