Business Environment: Marketing Theories, Evolution, and Strategies

This report delves into the realm of marketing theories, commencing with an exploration of the marketing mix and Porter's Five Forces, providing a comparative analysis of these frameworks. It traces the historical evolution of these theories and their adaptation to contemporary business practices, including the integration of technology and the rise of social media. The report further examines how marketers respond to consumer behavior, highlighting the influence of factors such as demographics, perception, and peer groups. A key component is a social media marketing proposal for a new product launch, which incorporates the marketing mix elements of product, positioning, price, and promotion. The report emphasizes the significance of user-generated content and the ability of marketers to adapt to rapidly changing technology and consumer preferences.

Running Head: BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT: MARKETING
Students ID:
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1. Marketing theories and their origination
Marketing Mix
The term marketing mix was found by Neil Borden who began using the phrase in the
year 1949. According to Jussila et al., (2015), the marketing mix is a mix of different
ingredients that are used by the company to evaluate their competitive position within the
market. Specifically, the marketing mix is a theoretical tool that is used by business and
market producers to determine the offerings of the product and brands.
Figure 1: Marketing mix
(Source: Jussila et al., 2015)
Marketing mix consists of different element product, prices, place and promotion.
After the foundation of there in the late 70's, it was acknowledged by the business markets
that it is necessary for marketing to be updated. These led to the development of expanded
PRICEPLACEPRODUCTPROMOTIONPROCESSPHYSICALEVIDENCE

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marketing Mix in the year 1981 by Booms & Bitner that added 3 more elements to the 4p
marketing mix that are the process, people, and physical evidence.
Porter’s five forces
Porter’s five forces theory of marketing is a framework that attempts to evaluate the
level of competition present within the specific industry and development of business
strategy. In this aspect, the theory draws upon the industrial economics for deducing the five
forces that demonstrate the competitive intensity and attractiveness of the industry (Groening,
Sarkis & Zhu, 2018).
Figure 2: Porter’s five forces of competitive advantage
(Source: Groening, Sarkis & Zhu, 2018)
However, the model is originated from Michael E. Porter's in the year 1980 in his
book popularly known as "Competitive Strategy". Since the publication of the book, this
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theoretical technique of marketing has been quite frequently used by the marketers for
evaluating organisation’s structure and its corporate technique (Lam & Harker, 2015).
In this book, Porter recognised five competitive forces that frame the industry and
market. These five forces of completive advantage help the organisation to evaluate the
intensity of growing competition and the attractiveness of the industry.
2. Compare and contrast of the marketing theories
Porter’s five forces is a theoretical tool that is used for analysing the competition in
the market to identify the major challenge of the organisation. On the contrary, Resnick et al.,
(2016) stated that marketing mix consists of four major p's product price, place and
promotion that helps to determine the product and service provided by the company for
retaining the customers. The marketing mix is usually functional in nature that helps to meet
the demands made by the consumers.
These components consist of the locations and networks by which consumers can
communicate with the organisation and distribution of the product (McDougall‐Covin, Jones
& Serapio, 2014). In addition to this, the price inside the marketing mix illustrates the
discount and credit terms that are appropriate for the product and the consumers.
On the contrary, Porter’s five forces determine the power of the suppliers and the
power of the consumers to demonstrate the relationship between the industry and the
consumers based on product and services (Huang & Sarigöllü, 2014). The theory also
determines the barriers and challenges faced by the organisation due to the emerging market
and threats of getting substitute due to the rising competition. Similar to this, the marketing
mix also evaluates the channels used by the organisation to defend competition in the market.

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Conversely, when profits fall down, consumers expect some of the firms to exit from
the market that will signify new entrants in the market with an expectation that future prices
may fall down. However, both theories determine the marketing requirement and competition
present within the market.
3. The emergence of these theories till the present time
The marketing mix was originally founded by Edmund Jerome McCarthy in the year
1960. However, with the development of the market, a new marketing mix was developed in
1981 by Booms and Bitner by adding the elements, process and physical evidence to the
marketing mix (Liu et al., 2017). The three additional elements of P's are used until now by
the different organisation. People in the marketing mix signify that all the people in the
organisation and general employees bring value to the company that may influence the whole
business.
Along with the evolution of marketing theories, strategies and concepts all these were
directly absorbed within the strategic marketing idea. Both of these marketing theories have
converged into the existing state of marketing strategy. According to Dobbs (2015), it is an
electric mixture of both complementary and conflicting approaches of strategy and concepts
in the existing time. Organisational managers, as well as marketers, use this theory of
marketing mix and Porter's five forces to measure the intensity of competition in the existing
market. By marketing the organisation is able to measure their growing strength of
technology and processes used by the organisation while manufacturing the products.
In order to set up successful corporate strategies in the organisation uses these
competitive forces in such a way that helps them enhance the position of the organisation. In
this context, Porter's five forces theory supports the evaluation of the driving forces within
the industry (Jarzabkowski & Kaplan, 2015). Based on the information derived from the

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marketing mix and porters five forces theory, the management within the organisation is able
to decide the influence and feature on a specific feature within the industry in the existing
period.
4) Role of technology in the evolution of marketing theories
A transformation of marketing strategies is underway as consumers are now spending
much of their time on mobiles, tablets and laptops. Therefore, it is the challenge for brands to
communicate with the consumers through the technological devices thereby creating
campaigns that work on social media and e-commerce platform (Huggins & Izushi, 2015).
In this context, the real-time communication that brands have with consumers as they
interact through websites and social media has transformed the nature of marketing in the
present era. Therefore, the modern day marketing is dependent on the combination of creative
idea associated with the technical side of data, and digital analytics.
According to Kane et al., (2015) marketing is concerned with the understanding of
consumer’s motivation and using these technological insights to develop campaigns for
promoting brands and influence people to purchase their products. All these activities are
now highly influenced by the use of technology specifically in social media marketing. With
so many various ways by which customers are now able to access media through Facebook,
YouTube, news websites, Instagram, twitter that can help the brands to gain huge scale.
Marketers nowadays just need to update their skills for making this systems move fast
and highly relevant through digital media. Technology now has brought data analytics inside
marketing, therefore, technically affiliated employees on the digital side have to become
more creative while advertising products and campaigns through social media and digital
platform (Huggins & Izushi, 2015).

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5. Marketers respond to the knowledge of consumer behaviour
Major organisations such as Apple and Ford have spent billions of money to study
consumer behaviour. They wanted to know the reason that influences the purchasing decision
of customers. As stated by Trainor et al., (2015), consumer behaviour is the collection of
behavioural patterns that consumer tends to follow while purchasing products.
The decision starts when the consumer becomes an area of their need to purchase the
product that usually ends with the cost transaction of the product. In this context, markers
respond saying there are several factors that may influence the buying decision of the
consumers. However, Dodgson (2018) stated that consumer behaviour in marketing is the
response given by the marketers that are exhibited by the target market against the marketing
resources.
For instance, marketers can market and promote each hour of the day for three
continuous months, but the marketers may not be aware of the reaction of the target market
will react to those messages or not. Then the marketers may waste the entire time of
marketing. Therefore, according to the response made by the marketer, it is necessary to
understand the throughout process about different alternatives that customer may choose,
consumer reason to select between different alternatives (Wu, Straub & Liang, 2015).
All these are required to be understood to improve and implement the marketing
campaigns in such a way to influence the consumer. To understand and enhance these
marketing campaigns, marketers use these marketing theories to retain an increased number
of the customer,
According to the response made by the markets, the considerations of the consumers
are influenced by three major factors such as an individual consumer's interest and opinion
regarding the product. These will be influenced by the demographics such as age, gender,

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culture and profession (Dobbs, 2014). Another is the fact that individual responses to the
specific marketing campaign are based on the perception and behaviour of the consumers.
Third are the peer groups from family and friends as well as social media influence.
6. Marketing strategy
User-generated marketing content in social media is the most influential way to
persuade the customer to buy products. According to the survey, it has been found that almost
839 millennial spend almost 5.4 hours each day creating content by their peers (Huang &
Sarigöllü, 2014). These accounts for 30% of their total media time and these are competed by
all the traditional types of media such as print, radio as well as television.
Along with this, in the similar survey, it has also been found that millennial have
stated that social media content marketing is 20% more impactful on the persuading the
purchasing decision of the consumers than any other media platforms (Lam & Harker, 2015).
This can be achieved by having customer’s shared personal content and by providing them
with the tools to create an ad for the company through social media. These will help to
increase the customer base as well as the satisfaction of the customers.
7. Social media marketing proposal for a new product or service launch
Marketing Mix
Product
The food product that will be launched will be a food bar as a replacement for a meal,
a healthy compliment and quick energy boosting bar for the customers. The product will be
made up of fruits, cereals such as oats and some nuts that have reduced calorie concentration
in it. The product will be launched by Woolworth for the health conscious customers.
Positioning

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The Woolworth store will position them as an importer of a high-end innovative food
product using a commercial cereal bar making processer (Risselada, Verhoef & Bijmolt,
2014). To obtain these, the machines will leverage upon their competitive edge. The product
will be launched in most of the grocery stores of Woolworth. The product will be targeted to
the young and middle-income customer who is health conscious and hardworking living in
Australia.
Price
The prices of the food bar will be designed in a competitive way with a fair margin
(Dodgson, 2018). The new food energy bar will be priced at AU$1.50 to increase the profit
thought the product and the competitions charges for the bard will be AU$2 for the bars and
$0.75 for the packaging prices of the product.
Promotion
The entire plan for launching the new product will be noted down in a report. After
this, the advertising employees of Woolworth will be needed to create an advertising
campaign and content creation through social media platform devoted to the target customers
(Kane et al., 2015).

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Reference list
Dodgson, M. (2018). Technological collaboration in industry: strategy, policy and
internationalization in innovation. Abingdon: Routledge.
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Huang, R., & Sarigöllü, E. (2014). How brand awareness relates to the market outcome,
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Huggins, R., & Izushi, H. (2015). The Competitive Advantage of Nations: origins and
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