Marketing Principles

This document provides a comprehensive guide on marketing principles and strategies. It covers topics such as market positioning, target market segmentation, marketing mix, and more. The document also includes a case study on Star Software Inc. and its marketing plan.

Running head: MARKETING PRINCIPLES
MARKETING PRINCIPLES
Student’s Name
University Name
Author note

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Executive summary
The star software incorporated is a family owned small corporation. The company is
associated with selling custom-made calendar programs and other similar items to other
business firms and organizations, which uses the software for promoting their business
products and services. The company faces seasonal demands for the service offered, mainly
during the months of October, November and December. In other months, the business
activities are lower and remain idle most of the time. The challenge faced by the company is
raising its profit and business activities during its lean season, when the business remains
idle. Therefore, the company plans to make better use of the company’s resources during the
off-season and increase its sales and revenue. The marketing plan describes and applies the
market positioning, the market segmentation of the product and services offered, the
marketing mix strategies including the price, place, promotion and distribution strategy of the
company.

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Environmental Analysis
Star Software Inc. was founded as a commercial printing company, which has evolved
itself to be a marketer of high quality and custom-made calendars along with other specialty
items of the business (Westwood 2013). The company since its establishment in the year
1960, with its full time commitment has turned itself to be a successful business operation.
 Competitive forces: The competition faced by the company is very strong. Strong
competition prevails in paper segment industry and it comparatively weak in software
based segment.
 Economic forces: A large portion of the company’s budget is spending on sales
promotion. Specialty advertising is done on software-based calendar.
 Political forces: the political influences are low.
 Legal forces: there is some legislation, which may introduce to curb mail advertising.
 Technological forces: the technological developments include personal information
managers, PIMs and others.
 Sociological forces: The software based calendar fits in the social trend of paperless
society.
SWOT analysis
Strengths
Star Software products have a differentiated strategy; it has high commitment towards
providing high quality customized product and services. It provides fast response to the needs
of the clients. The company is highly focused on providing quick response to the needs and
requirements of the clients (Chernev 2015). It has a common vision for the development and
process of production. The company has a long-term relationship with the supplier.

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Weakness
There is high level of centralized management hierarchy and it lacks managerial backup. It
single sourcing makes it vulnerable to the dissolution of current supplier. Moreover, the
product demand is highly seasonal in nature, which creates bottlenecks in cash flow and
productivity. There are excessive stress on the personnel and provides strains on the facilities.
The client base lacks diversification (Stevens, Loudon and Nykiel 2013). It depends on
current reorder rates, invite competition. The developments have a possibility to make
software calendar obsolete.
Opportunity:
The use of personal computer has become a commonplace and the managers of personal
information have gained popularity. The computer-based calendars are distributed globally
and nationally. There is opportunity to establish new client relationship in global market.
Threats:
There is possible entry of new competitors in the market; there is possibility of theft of trade
secrets and software privacy, which becomes difficult to control.
Marketing objectives
The marketing objective of star software inc. is to help other business organization
market their products or services. The mission statement of the company is formulating a
marketing oriented and customer focused business. The company needs to establish certain
objectives in order to achieve the cumulative growth of around 50% over the next few years.
As per the planning, the company will be achieving 50% growth while acquiring new clients
and customers, and from the no seasonal products being delivered in the off-season period of
the calendar cycle (Stevens, Loudon and Nykiel 2013). In order to accomplish the goals and
objective of the star software inc. it needs to develop a benchmark for measuring its progress

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and performance. The business organization will be gathering feedback and take corrective
actions time to time. The plan also includes focusing on digital media for prompting its new
products and efficiently utilizing the current resources, equipments, technology and
knowledge. The company will be conducting research and analyze the similar product lines in
the market, which will help the company to developing specialty advertising software based
products. The business-marketing plan includes gaining a better understanding of the needs,
requirements and satisfaction of the present customers. It plans to retain the customers as well
as acquire new customers for the business. The marketing plan analyzes the target market
segmentation as a marketing strategy of the Star Software Inc. It identifies the marketing mix
of the product and service offered. It describes the products, price, distribution and promotion
of the product (Armstrong et al. 2014). It analyzes the product positioning of the product and
service offered to its clients.
Marketing strategies
Target market segmentation
Target market 1: Star Software Inc. primarily targets the large manufacturers and stand-alone
manufacturing units of the large business units and corporations with extensive broker, dealer
and the distributor networks. Specifically it targets the agricultural chemical producer. For
example, it provides its products and services to Dow Chemical Company. It distributes its
products and services to rural feed and seed distributors and dealers. It provides customized
calendars with the Chicago Board of Traders (Lamb and Crompton 2017). It offers
agricultural report dates to them, which would be highly beneficial for the mentioned
potential clients and customers.

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Target market 2: Star Software Inc. targets the non-manufacturing and non-industrial traders
as well as the business-to-business market. It has an extensive customer networks including
the banks, the medical service providers and the financial planners. The calendars are
customers as per to the specific sports along with PGA, Virgina Slims and the other tour
dates. For example: golf, running and bowling with national tour dates, various national
marathon dates with it.
Target market 3: The Company also targets the direct consumer markets for brands such as
Coca-Cola, which has proper license arrangements for the consumer products. The products
having major brand recognition including the Harley Davidson motorcycles would help the
company to provide additional markets for the product offered by the company that is
customized computer calendars. Star Software Inc. targets the brands with licensing
agreements for the consumer products will enable the company to gain additional clients and
customers.
Target market 4: It targets the national institution including National Dairy Association and
other industry associations which regularly held’s and sponsors trade fairs, meetings,
conventions and other conferences. The company develops customized calendars for these
groups.
Marketing mix
Products and services offered: Star Software Inc. provides specialty-advertising services to
its clients and customers apart from providing calendar software. The company has intangible
attributes such as its abilities it meets the demands and exceeds the expectations of the
potential clients and customers of the company (Baker 2014). The company speedily delivers
its products and services to their customers and it responds to the customer’s demands. The

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company excels at anticipating the demands, needs and expectations of the potential clients
and customers. Therefore, the intangible attributes of the company adds to the ability of the
company, providing it a competitive advantage. These attributes of the company are difficult
for the competitors to imitate.
Pricing strategy: Star Software Inc. provides specialty high quality advertising products and
customized services for the client’s needs and demands. The pricing of the company’s
products and services are premium priced, which reflects the value of the products, and
services offered by the company (Paquette 2013). In addition, the company is highly sensitive
to the price elasticity of its products, services and the overall demand of the consumers.
Distribution strategy: Star Software Inc. uses direct marketing strategy for distributing its
products and services. The products are compact in size, it is light weighted and characterized
as non-perishable, and therefore it can be shipped from the central manufacturing location
directly to the clients or the customers with the use of services like United Parcel Service,
Postal services or FedEx. One of the competitive advantages of the company is that it can
ship its products to various and multiple locations for every client or each customer. This
ability of the company is an asset for selling its products and service.
Promotion strategy: The promotional expenditure of the Star Software Inc. needs to mainly
focus on the new product offering through the use mail advertising and other trade journals
with specialty publications. Moreover, Star Software Inc. must involve in social media and
digital media marketing for promoting the content of the business (Branch 2014). This also
helps the business organization to engage with the target customers and clients with the use
of various social media platforms. The company must use this business tactic as it helps to
increase the awareness about the company and its product and service offerings; it helps to
generates more leads and enhanced the engagement with the customers. The Star Software

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Inc. wills able to able to better access the needs, demands and requirements of the customer.
Social media promotion ideas helps the business organization to boosts its marketing
promotion campaigns, gets the users involved with the business and ultimately make the
business to impact the bottom line.
Market positioning
The positioning strategy of the Star Software Inc. includes various competitive
advantages of the company. The positioning strategies of the company are described below:
Cost driven positioning: The Company offers its products and services at a premium price,
which reflects the high quality products, and services. Advanced technology is used by the
company to product new and most effective product and service which crater to the needs and
desires of the customers. It is most effective than its competitors (Eagle et al. 2014). The cost
driven strategy of the company helps to position its business as the high quality product
offering.
Niche service specialization: Under this strategy the Star Software Inc., focus on offering a
product or service that is not widely availed to its competitors. The rarity of the product
offering and services helps the company to position its business. The company specializes in
its product offerings that presumable a generalist would not have. This makes the company a
specialized expertise. This approach would work well for the company as there are
comparatively less number of competitors offering the same kind of products or service
(Kolb 2013). However, the strategy is not efficient for the long term, as entrance of new
competitors in the market dilute the specialty of the product offering and service offering of
the company.

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Industry specialization: Star Software Inc. also focuses on industry socialization, which is
one of the competitive advantages of the company. This strategy is considered popular and
most effective to positive the professional service organization. Therefore, it is suitable for
the Star Software Inc. the company keeps its focus on the marketing and evolves its service
offering according to the changes in the market scenario (Paquette 2013). However, this
positioning strategy involves high amount of risks as there are possibility economic decline
and the competitors may fray and disrupt the positioning of the business.
Quality of service positioning: high quality product and service offering is one of the
competitive advantage of the company which can be used by the company to position its
business in the market. By enhancing its quality of product and the service offered to the
customers they would be able maintain competitiveness in the market and by able attain
market position. It is evident that the clients or the customer are more quality conscious; they
are ready to make a purchase considering the quality of the product or service offered even at
a premium price which reflects the quality of the product or service.
Marketing Implementation
The implementation activities are to begin from the next fiscal year, it aims to create
four sales manager positions and the marketing director. The company will be assigning
members to research on the new product and service offering, analyze the billing cycle and its
practices, teams will also be responsible for designing customer survey project. Marketing
director will take these responsibilities. After the results of the analysis, the business teams
will review and recommend (McDONALD, M.A.L.C.O.L.M. 2016). It will develop a
marketing information system in order to monitor customer satisfaction. After the customer
satisfaction survey, the new product and service will be implemented. It will re establish

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objectives of the business analysis team for the next fiscal year. The marketing director will
take the responsibility.
Evaluation and control
The company will be comparing the financial expenditures with the plan goals. Every team in
the management will be held responsible for reporting all the financial expenditures,
including the salary of the workers and the direct expenses. The total budget will be divided
within the entire budget. The marketing director will be held responsible for the adherence to
the project budget report on weekly basis. The director will also responsible for redirection of
budget dollars, the new product offering will be evaluated in quarterly basis and analyze its
profitability (Paquette 2013).
Monitoring procedures
In order to analyze the effectiveness of the marketing plan, the company will be comparing
the actual performance with the plan objectives. The project management concept is to be
used to evaluate the implementation of the marketing plan by establishing the human
resource needs, the budgetary expenditures and financial requirements. Comparison between
the actual activities and the planned actives will be conducted on monthly basis and the
implementation of the plan (Eagle et al. 2014). The project team will be responsible for
analysis the changes made in procedures, product focus and operation in the area.

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References
Westwood, J., 2013. How to write a marketing plan. Kogan Page Publishers.
Chernev, A., 2015. The marketing plan handbook. Cerebellum Press.
Stevens, R.E., Loudon, D.L. and Nykiel, R.A., 2013. Marketing your business: a guide to
developing a strategic marketing plan. Routledge.
Burns, A.C., Bush, R.F. and Sinha, N., 2014. Marketing research (Vol. 7). Harlow: Pearson.
Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S. and Kotler, P., 2014. Principles of marketing. Pearson
Australia.
Lamb, C.W. and Crompton, J.L., 2017. Analyzing marketing performance. In Marketing the
Public Sector (pp. 173-184). Routledge.
McDONALD, M.A.L.C.O.L.M., 2016. Strategic marketing planning: theory and practice.
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Paquette, H., 2013. Social media as a marketing tool: a literature review.
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Eagle, L., Dahl, S., Czarnecka, B. and Lloyd, J., 2014. Marketing communications.
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