Marketing Planning: Assessing Corporate and Business Strategic Objectives

This report provides an overview of the importance of marketing planning and how to assess corporate and business strategic objectives using relevant marketing theory. It includes a case study on Marks & Spencer, a British multinational company.

Marketing Planning

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................1
Using an SME organisation of your choice, in agreement with your module tutor, critically
Assess the corporate and business strategic objectives of that organisation. Use relevant
marketing theory to illustrate your answer.............................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
References:.......................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Corporate Strategy means various approaches to Strategic decision making by a business
organisation for creating values. Allocations of resources, organisational design, portfolio
management, strategic tradeoffs are various components of Corporate Strategy. These are also
known as four pillars of Corporate Strategy. It is important for every organisation to improve
strategy skills on time by taking holistic view, reviewing the business plan etc. Basically it
focuses on the long term success of organisation. This report includes the overview of company
M&S, corporate and business strategic objectives of the same organisation along with the
marketing theory.
Task 1
Using an SME organisation of your choice, in agreement with your module tutor, critically
Assess the corporate and business strategic objectives of that organisation. Use relevant
marketing theory to illustrate your answer.
Overview of Organisation
Marks & Spencer is a British multinational company. In 1884, it was founded by Michael
Marks & Thomas Spencer. It is mainly dealing in cloths, home products and food products. It's
headquarter is located in London, England(Mahadevan 2019). During the world War, the prices
of product got disappeared. In 1920, the organisation started revolutionary policy under which
they started buying stock directly from the manufacturers. Currently there are approx 1038 stores
are in across UK, in which almost 481 stores are situated outside United Kingdom. It is a huge
brand having approx 75 thousand are working in them. This organisation has faced various
problems, dry spells and PR problems but it always remains a good presence in the heart of
British.
Objectives of Organisation
Setting objectives in any organisation is the first step before doing any planning or
taking any action in the organisation(Kang and et. al., 2020). Marks and Spence is mainly
focusing on four factors i.e. quality, service, innovation and trust. It is the objective of M&S to
provide best quality product and services to the customers so that they can trust on it and
continuously doing something innovative. This company wants to provide goods of best quality,
no matter what will be the prices.
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This company is also working as employee oriented because they are expecting higher
contribution of staff in their success as they want to expend their business in clothing and
speciality food. For this purpose, they are developing a career path for their employees.
In last few years, food business of M&S faces many challenges because of high
competition and coping the innovative ideas of providing fresh food range. M&S made a
objective of doing something innovative do differentiate food of M&S to the food of other
various brands.
Marketing Theory
while doing promotion of products, marketing theory plays an important role. STP
analysis, Seven P's of marketing mix, SWOT Analysis, Consumer Decision Making Process,
Porter's Five Forces are some important marketing theories. Two theories are explained below:
Seven P's of Marketing Mix
Every organisation do market analysis on the basis of 7 P's(Pisicchio 2020). It is an
important tool of marketing theory which is used to analyse various aspects also it enables to
know about the offering of any product or brand. 7 P's of Marketing mix are given below:
Product- It refers to the physical or real product or service. It states how the organisation is going
to develop their goods and services in the market. Development of product is possible only when
the product is useful for audience(Makarova and et. al., 2018). M&S company is dealing in all
products which are coving all age group like cloths, accessories, flowers , gift items etc.
Promotion- It means what promotional tool is going to be selected by an organisation for
reaching to the customers and to beat the competition and make differentiate from their
substitutes. For doing promotion of products, M&S is using TV ads, mobile ads, print media and
a lots of social media campaign. They also run various programs for their customers, so that they
can know about the discounts offered by them(Arias Londoño 2019). Price- If any organisation wants to change the prices of their goods and services, this tool
will also help the same (Hilal 2019). Price means pricing the products as per market
standard. Because of this increasing competition in market, M&S is following
competitive pricing strategy. While selling seasonal items, company follows dynamic
pricing strategy.
 Place- Where to sell the product, is the next factor of this theory. It is necessary for every
organisation to sell product in the relevant market, if the market selected by the
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organisation is not as per the product, sell of good will become a huge task. M&S is
doing business in various countries as it is a multinational brand above 1k stores are
providing goods in different countries. Also consumer can buy product from their official
website also(Hall, S., 2017).
 People- According to the production or management activities, organisation have to
appoint right person with right skills to do the work in effective and efficient way.
Almost 83000 employees are currently working with M&S company. The organisation
arranges a huge learning and development programs for their trainee and also they
provide various reward to their employees(Gentsch, P., 2018). Also the employees of
M&S get various discounts on the purchase made by them.
 Process- This factor states about the restrictions which are coming in the complete
process of production to reaching customers at right place and right time. If any
organisation is facing problem in transportation or in production process, that aspects will
comes under processes. M&S brand makes their stores totally different from other
brands(Mu and et. al., 2018). They had made various sections covering different sub
sections of food, women wear, kids wear, men wear, furniture, gifts etc.
 Physical Evidence- Customer will always receive a physical product or evidence for
purchasing any good or service. Getting anything physical evokes the customer that they
got something in the exchange of money(Juska 2017). All the stores of M&S act as
physical evidence for customers.
STP marketing: Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning model
STP Marketing Model is a structure that clarify the process of marketing segmentation on
various basis. Performing the activities related to marketing is more easy and successful if the
organisation divide audience in some groups, select relevant group for marketing and then do
positioning the product in that group(Mizik 2018). M&S is following STP model of Market
Theory by providing right and quality products to the right group of customers. Below
mentioned is the STP analysis of Marks & Spence
 Segmentation:
The process of doing division of market into various segments or groups on various basis is
known as Segmentation(Guzman and et. al.,2019). At this step, customers are divided on the
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basis of age, region, education level, customer loyalty, hobbies, occupations of customers etc.
Below mentioned are the four segments under which the audience is divide:
1. Geographic Segmentation- Dividing or grouping the audience on the basis of country,
region, area, population density, metropolitan or rural location or climate.
2. Demographic Segmentation- Grouping the people or making combination of people on
the basis of age, gender, income, education, marital status, ethnicity etc.
3. Behavioural Segmentation- It is the process of grouping the customer on the basis of
attitude of customers towards product, knowledge of brand and brand's product, on the
purchasing behaviour of customers etc.
4. Psycho graphic Segmentation- Division of people or audience on the basis of Social
Status, Attitudes, Personality, Interests, lifestyle of customers etc.
Marks & Spence divide the compete market geographically as this company is a multinational
brand and working all over the world. They have various stores in various countries so they
divided customers or audience on the basis of location, countries etc. Along with this, company
has divided audience on the basis of age group, genders, ethical groups etc. because this
company is working in the cloth industry of all age group, it helps the organisation to make
clarity between all customers(Cortez 2018) .
 Targeting:
It involves the decision that which one segment is more attractive and useful for maximising
revenue and profit. Some Various factors which are useful while determining the best segment
for any product are: Size of segment, Profitability of segment, ease of reach etc. Along with this,
PESTEL and SWOT analysis are also useful tools which analyse the target market and customers
also they help the organisation to analyse about the opportunities and threats for organisation.
Between 2010 to 2013 Marks & Spence focused on the United Kingdom's Market(Rippé 2020).
They target the complete audience and decided to make M&S stores on every 30 minutes drive.
Currently they are focusing also on the UK market. They want to develop simply food stores in
the local areas to make a good space in food industry as well.
 Positioning:
It is the last step in the model of STP. At this step products and services are placed in the
market according to the customers. Every organisation wants to crap a unique position in the
market, for that uniqueness organisation have to select right segment and right target so that they
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can make their product different from others product(Ennis 2020). Marks & Spence has fixed
the prices of their product too high as it is a huge brand. People in market are ready to pay
premium amount for such products.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it is concluded that marketing planning is necessary before taking
any decision as it helps the organisation in avoiding future uncertainties, management of
objectives, achieving objectives,coordinating and communicating among various departments, in
controlling process etc. Furthermore, it is analysed that Marks & Spence a huge multinational
brand of clothing and food is following all marketing theories as mentioned in the report.
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References:
Books and Journals
Arias Londoño, A.F. and Rico Rodríguez, N.A., 2019. Formulación de la plataforma
estratégica de la dirección de marketing & comunicaciones (Doctoral dissertation,
Universidad del Rosario).
Cortez, R.M. and Johnston, W.J., 2018. Needed B2B marketing capabilities: Insights from the
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Ennis, S., 2020. Formulating and Implementing Sports Marketing Strategy. In Sports
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Gentsch, P., 2018. AI in marketing, sales and service: How marketers without a data science
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Guzman and et. al.,2019. Consumer centric antecedents to personal financial planning. Journal
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Hall, S., 2017. Innovative B2B marketing: new models, processes and theory. Kogan Page
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Kang and et. al., 2020. Business-to-business marketing responses to COVID-19 crisis: a
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Mahadevan, K., 2019. TLP for Integrated Marketing Communications & Digital Marketing
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Makarova and et. al., 2018. Informational and analytical support of planning processes of
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Mizik, N. and Hanssens, D.M. eds., 2018. Handbook of Marketing Analytics: Methods and
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Mu and et. al., 2018. Outside-in marketing capability and firm performance. Industrial
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