Reflective Essay on Strategic Marketing

Reflective Essay on Strategic Marketing1
Reflective Essay on Strategic Marketing
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Reflective Essay on Strategic Marketing2
Reflective Essay on Strategic Marketing
Marketing is a critical aspect that determines the survival and success of any business
organization. The current business environment all over the world is dynamic thus strategic
marketing has become a very vital tool in any business regardless of its size or nature. Marketing
is a term that refers to the process of developing services or products that are valuable to
customers and they fulfill the wants and needs of their customers, (Gronroos, 2006). Strategic
marketing is very essential in business organizations since it facilitates the growth in the sales
capacity, customer satisfaction as well as the development of innovative products and services.
This paper is my personal reflective essay outlining what I expected to learn from the case study,
what I actually learnt, what I will do differently going forwards and my actions and next steps.
This reflective essay should be considered as a way of demonstrating my truthful and critical
self-awareness, self-reflection, my ability to learn through reflection as well as demonstrate my
sensitivity to diversity in people and different situations.
In the case study, I expected to learn a lot about marketing strategies in this case study. I
expected to learn data collection and analysis as this is a major part of marketing in business. I
expected to learn how to develop effective communication and marketing tactics that will help
me become a competent professional in developing strategic marketing. Learning strategic
marketing is something that I really anticipated since I consider it a way of preparing myself for
my future career. I expected to learn so many principles and aspects of marketing such as
promotion, public relations, branding and advertising. Since marketing is really continuously
changing in the business world I expected to learn the personal skills and professional skills
required in order to formulate a strategic marketing plan to ensure the survival and success of
any business organizations.

Reflective Essay on Strategic Marketing3
I actually learnt a lot about strategic marketing from the Amazon case study. The case
study has mainly demonstrated to me that the best marketing strategies are not top-down; they
are outside in, starting with the customers' needs and wants. The Amazon case study has proven
that there are so many stakeholders involved in the business but the customer is the most critical
when it comes to strategic marketing. The customers' wants and needs are very important in
formulating a strategic marketing plan since the wants and needs change continuously with time.
The spending and purchasing habits of customers are highly associated with the changing
demographics and population size, (Perreault, Cannon, and McCarthy, 2015). As in the Amazon
case study, after analyzing their annual reports and realizing they had a lot of customers visiting
their site but more than half of them not purchasing any product they restated they restated their
marketing strategy. This is to ensure that they consider the new needs and wants of their
customers.
I realized that strategic marketing should also involve attracting new customers.
Attracting new customers may is not easy in the dynamic global and local business environment
this requires employing innovative and creative advertising tactics, (Weinstein, 2018). One of
these tactics includes identification of a market segment that the business organization will focus
on. For instance, in the Amazon case study, the organization had identified a segment of the
market which they have classified as "the hard middle". The organization had analyzed this
segment carefully and came up with the most effective way of advertising to reach them. They
have come up with such tools and related features that help the organization to connect their
products with the needs of these customers, (Chernev, 2018). This helps in creating products and
services that attract customers since they are connected with their wants and needs. I also learnt
that in advertising to attract new customer the Amazon business organization has employed