The Case Study of Multichannel Marketing Used in Sports Direct

the Multi-Channel Marketing and Business Expansion: a case of Sports Direct
The Case study of Multichannel Marketing used in Sports Direct
Student Name-NISHANTH VENU
Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfilment of the reuirement of the degree of
MBA
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DECLARATION
I Nishanth Venu Student of Dublin business school Student Number 10505923 declare that that
the dissertation submitted to for the award of MBA Marketing is the result of my own
investigation except stated otherwise, where it is clearly acknowledged by references.
Furthermore, my work is not submitted to any other University, institution diploma or degree.
Signed- Nishanth Venu
Student Number-10505923
Date-06 January 2020
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Acknowledgement
First all I really appreciate my supervisor Dr Sharon Harris Faculty of Dublin Business School
for all the support and motivation and valuable guidance and advice and her contribution will be
forever valued
Furthermore, I would like to appreciate all my friends, partners colleagues and everybody who
motivated me with their care and encouragement through this hard journey.
Also, I would like to thank all the employees of Sports Direct and their grateful customers to
help me during the research
And lastly, I am very thankful to my parents and family who encouraged me and motivated me
during the whole course and always gave their love, care and support without expecting anything
in return.
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Abstract
Multi-channel marketing is grounded upon the actuality that buyers involve greater options than
before with respect to attaining resourceful information related to products. Moreover, the
advancement of the available marketing networks, taking in the progress of email, social media
and mobile, has made marketing divisions to enhance their existence on such channels for
developing their customer relationship management (CRM) endeavours. The research aims to
understand the significance of the multichannel marketing strategy and analysis the same from
the perspective of business development of the organisation in a competitive market. This
research is a combination of both primary as well as secondary data. Firstly, the primary data
was collected through surveys and interview. There were 50 participants from different
designations. Among them, the majority i.e. 27 were working as a sales executive in different
outlets and 18 as marketing executives. 3 participants are designated as an operational executive
and 2 as the manager for the firm. Further, secondary information was gathered from library, past
studies, magazines, newspapers, online journals, textbooks etc. The research findings highlight
aspects and perceptions related to the notion of multi-channel marketing strategy and the manner
in which it helps business organisations in achieving higher success through more effective
marketing expertise.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction:...................................................................................................................4
1.1 Overview................................................................................................................................4
1.2 Aim of the Research..............................................................................................................4
1.3 Research Objective................................................................................................................5
1.4 Research Question:................................................................................................................5
1.5 Research Rationale................................................................................................................5
Chapter 2: Literature Review...........................................................................................................6
2.1 Introduction:..........................................................................................................................6
2.2 What is Marketing Channel?.................................................................................................6
2.3 Characteristics of the Marketing Channel.............................................................................6
2.4 Evaluating channel performance:..........................................................................................7
2.5 Types of Marketing Channels................................................................................................8
2.6 Significance of Multi-Channel Marketing:..........................................................................10
2.7 Analysis of the Impact of Multi-Channel Business on Consumer Behaviour.....................10
2.8 Development of an Effective Multi-Channel Strategy:.......................................................12
Chapter-3 Methodology.................................................................................................................13
3.0 Introduction..........................................................................................................................13
3.1 Research Outline..................................................................................................................13
3.2 Research Philosophy............................................................................................................14
3.2.1 Justification for selecting the philosophy of interpretivism.............................................15
3.3 Research Approach..............................................................................................................15
3.3.1 Justification for selecting the deductive approach............................................................16
3.4 Research Design..................................................................................................................16
3.4.1 Justification for selecting the explanatory research design..............................................17
3.5 Data collection method........................................................................................................17
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3.5.1 Justification for selecting the primary data collection method.........................................18
3.6 Sampling technique and size...............................................................................................18
3.6 Data analysis tool.................................................................................................................18
3.7 Research timeline.................................................................................................................18
3.8 Ethical consideration...........................................................................................................19
3.9 Research limitation..............................................................................................................20
Chapter 4. Finding and Analysis...................................................................................................21
4.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................................21
4.2 Finding.................................................................................................................................21
Demographic Analysis...............................................................................................................21
Survey:.......................................................................................................................................25
Chapter 5: Conclusions and Recommendations...........................................................................38
Reference List................................................................................................................................41
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Chapter 1: Introduction:
1.1 Overview
To start with, the buyers in the present day have several preferences with respect to from where
they purchase their products. Few buyers at all times prefer viewing the product at retail outlets
prior to making any purchase. Others may search the particular product on applications and make
the decision. Still other buyers might go through some advertisement and decide to buy the
product. Moreover, there will be still other buyers who decide to purchase the particular product
from some exhibition. In such a situation, cross-channel advertising has progressed steadily and
considerably as a means for reaching the buyers (Rosenbloom, 2007). Television, the Internet as
well as other means are utilized collectively for marketing products. Additionally, search
engines have transformed the manner in which individuals search for information. Moreover,
online advertising is advancing speedily and taking away budgets from traditional marketing
networks (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Additionally, the Internet doesn’t operate in
isolation, nevertheless and discussion about its spread shouldn’t overlook the roles other means
should perform (Arikan, 2008). Moving ahead, coincidental with the development in digital
ecosystem, a number of different marketing approaches are moving from passive approaches in
communicating with buyers towards higher proactive ones with involvement in manifold
communication networks. Even though, several marketers are laying higher focus upon online
advertising being an option, it still needs to reach its complete ability within the marketing mix (Kotler
and Keller, 2009). Thus, in such a case paid listings making use of search engines frequently aren’t
the foremost aspect of that media mix.
Moving ahead, there are a number of buyers out there and every buyer has a favoured purchase
channel. Gone are the days at the time when corporations attempted to target buyers by means of
just one marketing channel i.e. Retail (Arikan, 2008). However, the present era is basically of
Multi-channel or Hybrid Marketing and this approach proves highly effective for brands
(Rosenbloom, 2007). Moreover, as the name signifies, multi-channel marketing supposes that
there are diverse buyers purchasing the same items from diverse channels. As a result, they
develop their communications and message for different channels and also, strategize for
different channels (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Thus, their marketplace
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potential becomes bigger and they are more expected to experience a greater level of sales as
compared to corporations targeting just one or two channel.
Multichannel marketing refers to the practice by which companies interact with customers via
multiple channels, both direct and indirect, in order to sell them goods and services (Chaffey and
Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Companies use direct channels, or ones in which the company
proactively reaches the customer – such as physical stores, catalogs or direct mail – or indirect
ones in which they push content via websites or social media, also known as inbound marketing.
Other means of reaching customers with multichannel marketing include via mobile devices, text
messaging, email, company website, social media, search engine optimization (SEO) or GPS to
track customers' proximity to goods and services. Multichannel marketing combines the practices
of inbound and outbound marketing with the goal of reaching customers on the channel of their
choice. In this way, the buying process is more controlled by the customer than the marketer
(Rosenbloom, 2007).
Moving ahead, multi-channel marketing is grounded upon the actuality that buyers involve
greater options than before with respect to attaining resourceful information related to products
(Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Moreover, the advancement of the available marketing
networks, taking in the progress of email, social media and mobile, has made marketing
divisions to enhance their existence on such channels for developing their customer relationship
management (CRM) endeavours (Rosenbloom, 2007). The previous marketing methods, like
making use of print sources, broadcasting on radio and TV or telemarketing are no more the only
emphasis of marketing divisions. Such techniques are present even now, nevertheless are fraction
of a wider approach, which involves new media and evolves along with altering buyer
preferences and communication means. Companies in the present day, attempt to build analytics
for determining which buyers receive which messages grounded upon their demographic data
along with other conducts (Kotler and Keller, 2009). Apart from understanding who exactly the
buyer is and what he/she actually requires, corporations attempt to comprehend which marketing
channel a specific buyer prefers for maximizing the prominence of their messages (Arikan,
2008). This allows corporations to target the correct buyers with the appropriate content for
facilitating sales.
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