Strategic Marketing - Assignment

Running head: STRATEGIC MARKETING
Strategic Marketing
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STRATEGIC MARKETINGIntroduction
Strategic marketing is very essential in the modern world to gain competitiveness in the
market. It is the process that firms adopt to effectively differentiate themselves from the existing
competitors (Proctor 2014). Firms capitalize on its current and potential strengths for providing
better value to their customers than the competitors. It is a continuous process of gaining and
retaining competitive advantage in the market (Wilson and Gilligan 2012). Strategic marketing is
fundamentally based on a framework, with three ideologies, namely, segmentation, targeting and
positions, which is known by the acronym STP. This framework summarizes and simplifies the
market segmentation process, required for marketing.
As stated by West, Ford and Ibrahim (2015), the purpose of any marketing strategy is to
identify the needs of the customers and create an appropriate marketing plan for achieving
customer satisfaction, improving the company performance and increasing the profit. A formal
strategic marketing plan includes detailed strategy for identifying market needs, creating
customer groups based on particular needs and desires, creating specific targeting and
positioning strategies, creating schedules and implementation plans and presenting the product or
service in the market (Proctor 2014). With the help of this plan, the organizations can grow and
raise its level of market domination.
Segmentation, targeting and positioning process is very crucial for any organization to
design and successfully implement the marketing plans. This is helpful in identifying the
changing market dynamics and needs of the consumers, which determines the suitable strategy to
be taken to capture market share (Tanner and Raymond 2015). The following essay will explore
the segmentation, targeting and positioning framework in detail and highlight its applications in

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STRATEGIC MARKETINGthe industrial marketing. Based on the findings, generic recommendations will be made for
successful application of the strategies.
Discussion
Segmentation-Targeting-Positioning
STP model is used by the firms for creating effective marketing communication plans.
This helps the marketers in prioritizing the propositions, developing and delivering personalized
and suitable messages to the consumers, based on their needs (McDONALD 2016). In doing so,
the marketers for any particular product or service must know which customers it is planning to
serve, how they will satisfy the needs of those particular customers and how to create value for
them by differentiating. The in-depth analysis of the STP model is as follows.

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STRATEGIC MARKETINGFigure 1: Segmentation, targeting and positioning
(Source: Fahy and Jobber 2012)
Segmentation
Segmentation is the first step in the STP model for marketing. As stated by Kumar et al.
(2012), market segmentation refers to the method, through which the firms divide the consumers
or buyers within a market and put under different profiles. These profiles are created on the basis
of particular characteristics and consumer behavior patters. This step comprises of identification
of the market for segmentation, identifying the tactics to be used for proper segmentation and
developing appropriate properties.
The segmentation process is a highly debated issue regarding the choice of variables to be
used for dividing the market. Armstrong et al. (2015) debated to use individual factors, like,
brand loyalty, social and economic factors to divide the consumers while Kotler (2015) proposed
to use a wider base, that is, geographic, demographic, physiographic and behavioral factors.
Thus, segmentation process refers to organization of the market into different groups with
different characteristics to gain competitive advantage. However, () argued that there should be a
limitation in making too many segments of the market as over fragmentation can make it
difficult for the firms to serve each segments effectively with specific diversified products and
increase profitability. According to Fahy and Jobber (2012), the marketers look for the following
characteristics.
 Measurability: Size of the buyer groups, buying characteristics, and value of needs of a
particular market segment.
 Accessibility: Effective communication ability with a market segment