Marketing Plan Development: A Pathway to Business Growth

A well-structured marketing plan is essential for business growth and sustainability. This document covers various aspects of marketing, including market research, target audience analysis, product development, pricing strategies, promotional efforts, and distribution channels. The integration of these elements into a cohesive strategy ensures that businesses can effectively reach their goals and maintain competitive advantage. By investing time and resources into developing a detailed marketing plan, companies are more likely to achieve long-term success and adapt to changing market conditions.

Running head: STRATEGIC AND ENTREPRENEURIAL MARKETING
Strategic and Entrepreneurial marketing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
The purpose of the report is to observe, analyze, identity the different marketing strategies used
by large multinational organization to have an edge over other in the market. This project report
critically describes the various strategies used by Ford Car Industry, in marketing their product.
The Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker headquartered in Dearborn,
Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. It is a global brand sold its product in all parts of the world. Its
product portfolio also included automobiles and commercial vehicles under the Ford brand and
most luxury cars under the Lincoln brand. The company moved into other countries, both in
terms of manufacturing and product sales, becoming an international corporation.
It is the strategies and marketing plan devised by the company, which makes the company get
placed among the top brands. Various innovations made by the brand have helped to spread
thereby increasing sales. The only evident thing in the World is change, therefore in order to
sustain in the market the company must change and bring about innovation in the product quality
and product, advertising. It is the new strategies, which supports the company to sustain in the
market.
To conclude we can say that in today generation, Ford has trusted, quality brands, which serve
the people. The MNC makes a way forward by focusing on various business strategies,
convenience and the choice, which the customers make in the market.

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PART A...........................................................................................................................................4
Ford Multi-branding Strategy: Is it the Right Move?......................................................................4
Examples of problems faced by Ford and the solution....................................................................4
PART B...........................................................................................................................................5
Introduction......................................................................................................................................5
Observation, Analysis, Identification and Explanation of Marketing Strategies............................6
Description for target group for the brand...................................................................................6
Type of segmentation..................................................................................................................7
Positioning of the Product...........................................................................................................7
Factors involved in positioning the product............................................................................7
Analysis of Life Cycle Stage...........................................................................................................8
SWOT Analysis...............................................................................................................................8
The Strengths of the organization is as follows:..........................................................................9
The Weaknesses is as follows:....................................................................................................9
The Opportunities is as follows:..................................................................................................9
The threats are as follows:.........................................................................................................10
Corporate and Strategic Planning..................................................................................................10
Strategies for Growth.....................................................................................................................11
Analysis of Porters Five Forces.....................................................................................................11

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Focus on the marketing problem and the solution.........................................................................12
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................14
References......................................................................................................................................16

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PART A
Ford Multi-branding Strategy: Is it the Right Move?
The changing attitudes of consumers towards healthier and wealthier lifestyles and the
subsequent decline in the CSD consumption during the old times led the manufacturers to push
them above. Not to be left behind, over a century old beverage maker Ford Limited., having the
world’s most ubiquitous brand - began to concentrate on the cars and automobile segment since
the end of 1990s. It began offering a diversified range of products like cars and vehicles under
various brand names (Armstrong et al, 2014). This case facilitates discussion on whether it is the
right move for Ford to adopt a multi branding strategy while holding one of the world’s strongest
brands.
Examples of problems faced by Ford and the solution
The biggest challenge faced by Ford in this generation is the quality. There has been the supplier
and distribution issue that is faced by the brand. Ford has introduced its new trucks and the cars.
It faced a huge crisis on the launching of its new model, there has been a issue with its parts Thu
the brand has been constantly working its suppliers to fix the issue and so as to ensure that they
can launch their big car again (Armstrong et al, 2015). Thus Ford has been facing quality
problems.
The second problem that they are facing is that that the brand Ford is dependent on the American
best selling truck and their SUV sales. There is too much dependency of the brand on success
and sales of North America.

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PART B
Introduction
Marketing strategies used by all the manufacturing, wholesale, retail and even all the industry.
Business owners in USA are trying to establish business strategies in order to improve on
marketing their product. Successful business plan and strategies helps to increase the profit from
the business. The scope of the report is to analyze how the brand Ford has made a largest
position in the automobile industry as manufacturer, distributor and marketers of the brand
(Czinkota and Ronkainen, 2013). It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16,
1903.
The five pillars of business marketing is price, product, place, promotion and the people.
Marketing strategies formulated depend on those above points. The essential elements of
business strategic or tactical planning is the product itself, the price of the product, the placement
or the position of the product in the market and at last is the advertisement and promotion of the
product. The pricing of this brand is done according to market and to the country it is sold, price
is based on competitor pricing. In order to promote, the brand advertises its product and
increases the demand by organizing advertisement campaign depending on the life style and
behaviors of the people in the market. This strategy can be enables selling the product at a
reasonable price to attract the consumers towards their brand (Eilert et al, 2107).

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Observation, Analysis, Identification and Explanation of Marketing Strategies
Description for target group for the brand
The companies have learnt and understood that the “customer is the king of the market”
which has changed from t h e earlier perception that “customer will accept whatever he is
given” , t h i s change in mindset has led to the opening up of one of the significant and very
important “P” in the marketing mix called promotion. Their promotional strategies help them in
doing that efficiently. Promotion being a vast topic encompasses many terms and the most
important of them being ‘advertising’.
The target market for Ford is business man. Ford introduced methods for large-scale
manufacturing of cars and large-scale management of an industrial workforce using elaborately
engineered manufacturing sequences typified by moving lines. Men and women need and
consume in a different manner, they purchase differently and in general, have different attitudes
about consumption of caffeine (Epstein and Buhovac, 2014). Many advertisements direct at one
sex or the other. It operates in more than 320 countries, because of the local nature of their
business; they were able to have a unique position, which contribute to the economic vitality of
even the most remote communities around the world.

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Type of segmentation
Figure 1: Pattern of Segmentation
While for the demographic variables Companies focus on factors such as income, education, and
marital status , and the gender, age, and stages of life thereby the company is able to analyze how
the consumers influence purchase decisions.
In order to determine psychographic segmentation, Ford targets people based on general brand
consciousness (Firat, 2014).
Positioning of the Product
Positioning refers to the position where the product stands with respect to competitors in the
market and even to the consumers mind. In the past, it has also produced tractors and automotive
components and now a big brand company (Ford, Mattsson and Snehota, 2017).
Factors involved in positioning the product
a. Price: Shares of Ford sells in the market at high price. The products are manufacturing
goods having high sales and low profit volume. In order to achieve a dominant position

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and penetrate in the market, the company sets low prices than the higher prices. The price
strategy is to lower the price in order to attract customers. The greatest disadvantage of
low price strategy is that the competitors also reduce their prices so thereby the advantage
of price reduction falls.
b. Packaging: It is a important business strategy the famous logo of Ford differentiate the
brand with the rest of the competitors.
c. Promotion: In order to promote the brand the company arranges advertisement campaign
which advertises campaigns have been launched in order to achieve specific objectives
(Ford, Trott and Simms,2016).
Figure 3: Print Advertisement
d. Differentiating: The symbol of Ford is luxury and elegance in its line of product.
Analysis of Life Cycle Stage
Product life cycle is the stage through which a product goes through product goes through three
stages Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline. At the introduction stage, the cost of the
product is very high, the demand created and there are no sales. At growth stage cost is reduces
and sales are increased and the consumers are aware of the product. At maturity, cost gets low
and sales reach to saturation, brand differentiation done at this point. At Decline stage, this point
the sales volume decline as a result the profit decreases

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SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis means to analyze the strength, weakness, opportunities and threats potent to the
company.
The Strengths of the organization is as follows:
• Market leader of all the automobile company
• Ford has enormous world appeal. The product's image is displayed. This recognizable branding
is one of the greatest strengths (Lasserre, 2012).
• Additionally, Ford logo is one of their greatest strengths. It allows the company to conduct
business globally at the same time maintaining a local approach.
• Social Corporate Responsibility –The Company does sponsorship at UK Football Leagues.
They continue sponsorship at the Olympics.
• Seasonal advertising awareness e.g. TV Christmas advert and summer advert.
The Weaknesses is as follows:
• Ford cannot out beat the rest of the luxury brand, which is an issue.
• Being costly car therefore everyone cannot afford it (Zavattaro and Adams, 2016).
• Brand market share makes the direct competition for competitors and new competitors
emerging in the market.
• Previous failed marketing strategies

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The Opportunities is as follows:
 Opportunity to introduce new product into market, marketing pull (Laudon and Laudon,
2016)
 Brand recognition is the significant factor affecting the competitive position.
 The brand name is well known throughout the world today
 The primary concern over the past few years has been to get this name brand to be even
better known.
 Packaging changes have also affected sales and industry positioning, but in general, new
products do not affect the public.
 Need for ‘green businesses and sustainability in packaging business
 Opportunities to develop social responsibility in lesser demographics
The threats are as follows:
 Currently, the threat of new viable competitors in the industry is not very substantial.
 The threat of substitutes, however, is a very real threat. Possible substitutes that
continuously put pressure on the brand
 Consumer buying power also represents a key threat in the industry. The management
must continuously respond to the changing attitudes and demands of their consumers or
face losing market share to the competition.
 Consumers can easily switch to other brands with little cost or consequence
Corporate and Strategic Planning
BCG Matrix

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Cash cow: Ford is a automobile company that has been operating as a cash cow for, as the brand
is sold across 200 countries in a mature beverage industry. A larger segment of the operations
based on finished products. It is available to the market in their respective regions, enabling the
organization to earn significant amount of revenues from its finished products categories. Since
the industry is mature, the company needs to invest little effort to keep the sales high as the
business unit has captured a large market to generate cash (McDonald and Wilson, 2016.).
Stars: The product in the category is a star for the organization. The rising number of people
increases the need to produce more innovative cars to fulfill the needs of the expanding
population
Question mark: The market has growth opportunities, but these products have not been able to
take benefit of these opportunities in an effective manner.
Dogs: The products that are included in the category of dogs are a part of mature industry, thus
the chances of further growth are limited. Another issue that raises question about the feasibility
of these business units or products for the company is that they do not offer significant revenues
to the organization. The outlook of these products is also bleak, necessitating the evaluation of
the viability of continuing business operations in this domain.
Strategies for Growth
The brand follows intensive growth strategy, which include strategy to penetrate into the market.
The Company makes strategy to for market penetration, product innovation and for
diversification of its business. In order to grow the brand focuses on revenue generation, the
company invests in brand and business, thereby becoming much efficient. Among these brands

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are 20 that generate more than a billion dollars in annual distributor and retail sales (Nagle et al,
2016).
Analysis of Porters Five Forces
Porter’s five forces allow companies to see how competitive an industry is. It is able to use these
five forces to determine where it stands in the industry.. The threats of entrants are low, that
means that it is difficult for new companies to enter the market. The power of customer is
medium to high because there are numerous alternatives, but because of brand loyalty,
consumers chose to buy the brand they like the most.
Product Differentiation Strategy: Through the differentiation strategy, the company tries to
position its product in the manner that it stands out to be different from the products of the same
category.The company spends about 20% of its budget on advertisement so that it could maintain
a differentiation strategy. The company uses a unique blend of advertisement and marketing
strategy, which helps it to be a leader among the different soft drinks companies.
Cost Minimization: Through cost leadership strategy, the company tries to position its product
cheaper than its competitor does and for this, the company tries to minimize the cost. To make
this happen, the company manages its cost in an efficient manner. It administers its operating
expenses and manages the flow of cash in the organization. The investments made in those areas,
which seems profitable to the organization. The company also makes production on a large scale
so that the operating cost is low, and the customers benefit from this. It becomes a win-win
situation for both, customers, and the company (Savitz, 2013).
Market Focus Strategy: The focus strategy based upon creating the cost, as well as differentiation
focus. Focus strategy based on serving niche marketing, where it serves a particular segment of

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customers and cater to their needs and preference. By focusing on the development of its design,
size, and taste so that it could match the requirements of the customers, is the differentiation
focus of the company (Shank. and Lyberger,2014).
Focus on the marketing problem and the solution
Firstly, there have been many issues faced by the company and the biggest example is that the
organization has once been broken and now it had a successful turnaround for Ford Motor
Company under the leadership of CEO Alan Mulally. When CEO Alan was elected the
strategies including the marketing and the branding and the franchising issues were all broken
and their stock price also fell and its debt status was all bad and it was the worst year for the
company Ford with a $12.7 billion loss (Tannady, 2016). It was thought that the company would
run into bankruptcy and become insolvent, however with time there was a turnaround and the
company regained its position and came out of the bad times (Ward and Sobek , 2014). At the
time when the CEO retired the company became and achieved the most eminent “history-
making revitalization.”
Secondly Ford faced a huge crisis when their sales decreased during that time the company
started to follow a new strategy which includes the “The way Forward”. This helped the
company to reduced their cost at the same time was able to maintain the customers. They
focused on the cars and the car based crossover vehicles (West, Ford and Ibrahim, 2015). Ford
has a huge loss during that time and there was a problem with the distributor and the supplier,
but Ford focused on the business model on the customer which lead to stronger brands and
thereby targeted the specific market segments. Ford them aimed at a new promotional campaign,
the Fusion Studio. The Fusion Studio is a pop up store.

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Another problem faced in the re branding its car therefore it followed its global strategy which
was introduced as Ford Fiesta being a global brand, which was meant to be of the standard
quality and comfort. It was one of the strategic plans for Ford which created car models for the
brand. Its strategies for rebranding and new product launch included that it shifted its focus from
luxury Europe to the Asian market. It had their strategic move and therefore it offer smaller fuel
and efficient cars to this market. Ford with times has increased its sales and manufacturing
capacities and also increased the dealer and the distributors and the suppliers all over the Asian
Countries. This increased the rapid demand of the consumers.
The problem faced by the brand is the pricing and promotional campaign during the recession
period which caused the slowdown of the vehicle sale. Even though the company faced a huge
crisis during this period and many of the company ceased and did not continue with the business
but it has been able to improve its plant and it has made the plant one of the productive
automotive plants.
Conclusion
To conclude we can say that a marketing plan is not a simple document. It takes loads of
information, researchers, skills, time and efforts. Marketing plan covers all necessary
information including, business and market research, analyzing target market, product
development, price setting, promotional efforts, and distribution matters. Injecting efforts in
developing a marketing plan will give you a fruitful reward at the end. Marketing plan covers.
The more efforts given in the marketing plan, the more growth in business happens.

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Czinkota, M.R. and Ronkainen, I.A., 2013. International marketing. Cengage Learning
Eilert, M., Jayachandran, S., Kalaignanam, K. and Swartz, T.A., 2017. Does It Pay to Recall
Your Product Early? An Empirical Investigation in the Automobile Industry. Journal of
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Shank, M.D. and Lyberger, M.R., 2014. Sports marketing: A strategic perspective.
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