Marketing Principles and Practice Assignment Report

WORD COUNT: 3534
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MARKETING
PRINCIPLES AND
PRACTICE
ASSIGNMENT REPORT
Vittorio Pennacchia –
433030217
7/19/2019

Table of Contents
Section 1.............................................................................................................. 3
Introduction........................................................................................................... 3
About LIDL.......................................................................................................... 3
External factors influencing marketing in LIDL......................................................4
Elements of marketing process.............................................................................6
The positioning of LIDL.......................................................................................... 8
LIDL Segmentation................................................................................................ 9
Marketing mix...................................................................................................... 10
Current technology impact on LIDL marketing analysis......................................11
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 11
Section 2............................................................................................................ 12
Market research methods.................................................................................... 12
Strategic objectives for a marketing plan for ready meal....................................12
Target market...................................................................................................... 12
Macro environmental factors...............................................................................13
Micro environmental factors................................................................................14
Marketing mix for Lidl ready meal.......................................................................15
Product............................................................................................................. 15
Price 15
Place 15
Promotion......................................................................................................... 15
Factors relevant to marketing plan implementation............................................16
References........................................................................................................... 17
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Section 1
Introduction
Marketing can be defined as the process of making the customers understand
why they should choose the product or service over those of competitors. In this
globalized world, marketing becomes the cornerstone of every business with the
key objectives to sell more products and services with raising of consumer
satisfaction (Voegtlin, Patzer and Scherer, 2012). In relation with business
objective, Lidl wishes to rise turnover and at the edge of establishing the targets,
the marketplace was in negative growth. For achieving growth, and in the lack of
changes in new store or expansions to the corporate model, the company set
themselves a number of marketing objects. These goals were developed to
encourage deeper shopping behaviour amid current consumers.
This report outlines marketing practice of Lidl, a German global supermarket
chain having more than 10,000 stores in the United States and Europe.
About LIDL
Lidl is one of the leading supermarket chain initiated back in 1930 in Germany. In
1973, the company first stores was opened and considering today's markets, the
company have more 1000 plus competitors. In early 1990, the company also has
decided to expand outside Germany and build stores across Europe. Lidl has a
vision to offers its consumers high quality products at lower prices and thus
enjoys 5.7% market share in the industry (McDonald, 2019). Lidl has the key
marketing objective to become strong in the sector and gain the highest share in
the market possible.
In Germany, Lidl is the second largest discount supermarket chain and is part of
the Schwarz group. In 2017, Lidl created revenues of approximately 24.33 billion
euro (statista.com, 2018). This shows that company have huge opportunity in
the form of available potential marketplace while the focus of customers is
flowing from status to value. However, the company is influenced by various
external forces, stated in next section of the report.
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External factors influencing marketing in LIDL
These external forces influence Lidl marketing can be analysed with the help of
PESTLE tool elaborated below -
 Political Factors –In case of Lidl, the political factors may include Brexit
issued and its impact on Euro and Pound, Trump administration policies
and USA price war, Euro commerce membership.
For instance, Lidl was registered as a Europe Commerce member and it
has been potentially business for any competitive environment by getting
access to any market barrier (Lever and Miele, 2012). In the same way,
Brexit impact can be seen on pound as it was dropped by more than 10
percent in front of U.S. dollars. This also leads to various aspects such as
higher cost of imports, decrease in people wages, etc. As people wages
has been decreased, people look for cheaper grocery stores such as Aldi
and Lidl in front of big giant (Walmart, Tesco and so on).
 Economic Factors – In case of Lidl, low price and high cost of discount
chains have brought both benefits and drawbacks for the company
(Steenkamp and Kumar, 2009). Considering the company, it helps in
getting more amount of profit due to low price of the item as it will attract
customers to purchase more on a cheap price. The output gap for Malta in
2016 was 0.91% of the potential GDP which shows that economy of Malta
was outperforming by handling actual output higher than its maximum
potential. This help Lidl to do business in Malta market directly or
indirectly.
 Social Factors – For any organisation, social responsibility now becomes
a part of their core business strategy as the company is acquiring its
resources from the society itself. Considering Lidl, the company also
follows various necessary sustainability pillars (Steenkamp and Kumar,
2009). Lidl also undertakes employee satisfaction as the top priority in
their company that help indirectly to boost sales and raise customer
satisfaction. Socio-cultural factors in Malta are mainly determined by
family life and its relative with the established church. Hence, this
presents Lidl an opportunity to introduce nutritious menu items under
private label strategy.
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 Technology factors - As part of the company's switch to the new
electronic Lidl Retail Information System eLWIS (SAP), the integration
platform has aided smooth and fast assimilation of current systems
(Langlois and Chauvel, 2017). Lidl uses Software AG’s web methods
Integration Platform to synchronize the data between its stores and
domestic systems in aligning with the central retail information system.
With the help of this technology, the company do benefit from various
sides such as faster decision making, low communication cost, lesser
infrastructure and so on. Malta was also ranked at 20th in relation with
technological readiness as per WEF Global Competiveness Report. This
allow Lidl to gain necessary resources from the country itself rather than
sourcing it from other countries.
 Legal Factors – It includes various necessary legislation of the country
that has significant impact on company success and growth. However, this
environment force has been a major drawback for Lidl as the company
have suffered various lawsuits such as Kroger files (Mladenovic and
Cuzovic, 2014). In addition, there is also a legal action has been taken
over pay scale dispute and this was led Lidl to sparked a wage war.
 Environmental Factors – In today’s worlds, every company is required
to undertake its operation considering various environmental aspects so
as to create positive image in the society as well as boost in brand image.
This external force is managed by Lidl in a very effective way such as the
company is adopting carrier bags and energy efficiency solutions in all
their stores. In addition, the company is also supporting British Farming
and environment by creating various jobs (Tench, 2016).
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