Identify and Evaluate Marketing Opportunities: A Comprehensive Report

This report delves into the identification and evaluation of marketing opportunities, encompassing key concepts such as market penetration, development, product development, and diversification. It meticulously explains the stages of the product life cycle, methods for evaluating market size, and the significance of reviewing market trends. The report outlines crucial financial indicators, defines return on investment (ROI), and highlights relevant legislation and regulations within the marketing industry, specifically in Australia. It emphasizes the importance of adhering to the Australian Marketing Institute Code of Professional Conduct and explains the purpose and components of the marketing mix. Furthermore, the report covers essential steps in the marketing process, statistical methods for evaluating opportunities, and the purpose of sales forecasting. The second part of the report features a case study of The Riverview Hotel, analyzing its market needs, demographics, trends, and potential marketing opportunities, followed by a detailed analysis of the most viable marketing opportunities. The report includes alignment with business objectives, target customers, benefits, anticipated effects, resource requirements, ROI estimates, potential competitors, economic and technological factors, legal issues, risk assessments, and required changes to business operations. The analysis provides a comprehensive framework for understanding and capitalizing on marketing opportunities.

Running Head: Identify and evaluate marketing opportunities
Identify and evaluate marketing opportunities

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Task 1
1. Discuss each of the following terms in relation to marketing opportunities:
market penetration, market development, product development and
diversification.
Market Penetration: Marketing strategy adopted by companies to enter the
market. The strategy is basically related with the pricing strategy. It is the
extent to which a product is recognized and bought by customers in a
particular market (Lee, Grana & Glatnz, 2014)
Market Development: Strategy targeted towards non customers and
converting them into the customers. It is basically identifying new market
segments for current products (Coleman, 2016)
Product development: In simple language, the creation of new product
line, or some modification in the product, with added or modified
characteristic, and adds values to the customer can be understood as
product development (Eppinger & Ulrich, 2015)
Diversification: It is a corporate strategy to enter into a new market or
industry in which the business currently doesn’t operate, also creating a
new product for the same market or a new market (Bodie, 2013)
2. Explain each of the phases of the product life cycle
The Product life cycle has primarily 4 stages: Introduction, growth, maturity
and decline (Stark, 2015)
Introduction: When the product is launched in the market.

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Growth: This stage can be understood as the stage, when the product has
already penetrated in the market and amongst the customers.
Maturity: This is the stage when the product shows no growth and just has
a flat curve, it does not acquire any new customers and hence flat curve.
Decline: This is the stage when the product dies in the market, and it is
slowly removed from the retail stores as it has reached its saturation
stage.
3. Explain how to evaluate the size of a market
The size of the market is evaluated by first identifying the target audience
according to the demographic of the market. After identifying the market
size, it is estimated as to what percentage of the people are to be targeted,
and based on that market size is calculated (Mayer, Melitz & Ottaviano,
2014)
4. Outline 3 information sources for determining market size.
The three sources can be: TAM- Total available market, SOM- Share of
market & SAM- Served available market.
5. Explain why it is important to review market trends in the context of
marketing opportunities.
It is extremely important to review the market trends because of it helps to
understand how the market is functioning in a particular industry. How are
customers reacting to a new product, what kind of pricing strategy is

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successful, how are employees being retained by the companies and what
are the new ways by which the market share can be increased.
6. Outline four (4) key financial indicators that should be reviewed in relation
to evaluating possible marketing opportunities.
The key financial indicators are market share, market size, market
potential and market penetration.
7. Define the term return on investment and explain how it is calculated.
ROI is usually expressed as a percentage and is typically used for making
financial decisions, in order to compare the company’s profitability or to
compare the efficiency of different investment. The formulae is (Net
profit/Cost of investment) *100.
Identify and outline five examples of legislation and regulations that apply
to the marketing industry in Australia.
Advertising- Misleading and deceptive conducts and bait advertising is ban
in Australia.
Does not call register?
Pricing regulations
Spruiking
Trade mark laws
International pricing regulations

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8. Explain why it is important for marketers to abide by the provisions of the
Australian Marketing Institute Code of Professional Conduct?
It is extremely important for marketers to abide by the provisions of the
Australian marketing institute code of professional conduct because it is
the governing body for all the content and the advertisement. It is the body
which controls the way the companies can advertise, it should not be
misleading and be part of bait advertising and numerous other laws
9. Explain one aspect of this Code that is important in relation to identifying
marketing opportunities?
The code explains to follow the legislation as prepared by the board.
10. Explain the purpose of the marketing mix and each of its components.
The marketing mix can also be known as the 7P’s of marketing, it is the
entire marketing strategy for any company offering product or a service
(Armstrong, Kotler, Harker & Brennan, 2015)
Product: It deals with the design, technology, usefulness, convenience,
value, packaging, branding etc. of the product (Mintz & Currim, 2013)
Price: It refers to the pricing strategies for the product
Place: It refers to the place where the product has to be distributed,
retailer, distributer, etc.
Promotion: It refers to the marketing channels of promotion like
newspaper, web, etc.

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11. Explain why is the marketing mix important in bringing a product or
services to the market?
Marketing mix is extremely important as it breaks down the entire product
strategy into 7P’s: Product, price, place, promotion, process, physical
evidence & people. All these elements combined together help the
marketers to formulate the strategy for the product to be distributed in the
market.
12. Outline four key steps in the marketing process
The key steps in the marketing process can be Research, Plan,
implement, measure & optimize. Research is conducted on the customer
behaviour and the market, planning is done for business goals, campaign
strategy, implementation is done by creative and analytics, marketing
process is measured on the basis of the goals made or the test strategy,
and in the end, optimization is based on the report on goals and the
scenario.
13. Outline four statistical methods and/or forecasting techniques that can be
used to evaluate marketing opportunities.
Judgement & survey techniques
Customer and channel surveys
Sales force composite

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Time series techniques
14. Explain the purpose of sales forecasting.
Sales forecasting is a very important tool used by sales organisation. By
forecasting the future sales, appropriate product can be introduced in the
market. All the marketing expenditure and opportunities revolve around
sales forecasting. Sales forecasting helps to estimate the sales in the
future, and thus the efforts to achieve that numbers are taken based on
the forecast.
15. Outline one method for forecasting market growth rate
Time series technique: This technique examines the sales patterns in the
past in order to predict sales in the future. For example, with a trend
analysis, the marketing executive identifies the rate at which a company’s
sales have grown in the past and uses that rate to estimate future sales.
Task 2
The company chosen is The Riverview Hotel, Notown, USA; it is a representative of
the 5 star brands within the USA “Exclusive Business Hotels of the World” group. All
Riverview hotels are boutique properties and offer between 25 to 30 exclusive
rooms.
Prepare for the meeting: The hotel is dependent on the business from automotive,
IT & Trade sector, over the last few years the business from these sectors is on a
downtrend. Also, this is 70% of the hotel business. The current trend of the market is
slow due to economic downturn and political policies. Hence, how to turn the tables

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around and putting Riverview back in business is the agenda for the meeting.
Market Needs: Riverview hotel, at the very onset understood the pulse of the
market, it focussed on value based pricing and has been providing more values to
the customers at affordable prices, makes them rate highly on customer surveys.
So, the objective of the meeting is to identify its target segment, work on the
objectives set by the management and work towards its future marketing strategies.
Conduct a meeting
Objectives to be achieved:
 Focus on relationship building with the clients
 Increase the customer base
 Tap the customer segment untargeted.
Market Analysis
Market demographics: Families with children either staying home or away, and one
of the Grandparents completed college from the town, is the demographic of the
region
Market Psychographics: Influential and strong, like- minded & community groups
dominate the region.
Market behaviour: The market is very predictable, with 68% awareness among the
population, and a strong sense of community among business people, the

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businesses can rely on the relationship they built with the suppliers and trading
partners.
Market Trends:
Policies related to corporate travel: Due to multiple notices related to security, the
domestic and international travel both has been adversely affected.
Local Business Trends: The local area is showing signs of weakness, conferencing
business is low, and the local companies are choosing to conduct meetings in their
own premises to cut down the costs.
Economic cut backs: The city had to cancel 3 major trade events, and also the
ones being going had a fewer attendance than expected.
Market Growth: The market has shown great strength, even at the time of
depression, travel & trade sector has been growing at an average of 7.1%, while the
automotive sector is holding at 9.5%, and IT sector standing tall at 8%
Marketing opportunities:
Conducting a survey in the entire city and knowing the awareness of the hotel, and
also working towards the Net promoter score and customer surveys.
Market to be expanded other than automobile & IT sector, the hotel should focus on
the community of all the sectors.
Explore the fruits of social media marketing and promote the services and customer
feedback on it.
Task 3

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3. For each of one of the three the marketing opportunities that you have
identified as being most viable develop a report (in the template provided by your
assessor) that addresses:
 Alignment with the business’ objectives and goals objectives and goals as
described in the Marketing Plan – The objectives are in total alignment with the
marketing opportunities and will result in increase in the market share of
Riverview hotel
 Target customers: identify if they are new or existing customers- Existing
customers and new customers from different industry and have strong
community presence.
 Overall benefits to the business of pursuing the opportunity-The increase in
brand awareness, increase in market share and the overall revenue increase
are the benefits.
 Anticipated effect of the marketing opportunity on sales, profitability, growth
and market share. A cost-benefit analysis or existing data in the Marketing
Plan could be used to help estimate this.- A cost benefit analysis sees a jump
in the sales by 25 %
 Additional resources that will be required, for example, additional funds, staff
or equipment including finances, staff, and equipment – Funds will be required
for social media marketing, employees for customer surveys and equipment to
be in sync with the technologies.
 Estimated effect on return on investment. This should be an approximate
estimate taking into account how much the likely cost of the opportunity would
be against anticipated return. Use the information in the Marketing Plan to

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help you answer this- The ROI will complete in duration of 4 years, with 25%
return year on year.
 Potential competitors – these may be existing competitors or new ones
depending on the marketing opportunity pursued-Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt &
Glendale are its major direct competitors.
 How any changes in economic conditions could impact on each marketing
opportunity- If the travel ban is not lifted, it will definitely hamper the
conference business of the hotel
 Technological factors that may affect the marketing opportunities identified-
installing “on board” reservation system for rooms, it will require investment but
will be a great differentiating factor for the hotel.
 Legal issues associated with each marketing opportunity, including legislation,
regulations, standards and codes that apply- There are no legal issues as such
 Risks associated with each marketing opportunity. A risk assessment must be
completed for each opportunity- The risk assessment is of not collecting proper
data from customer surveys, inability to tap the target segment identified and
break the already build relationship in such a strong community focussed town.
Evaluate and report on required changes to business operations in the event
of the opportunity being pursued as follows:
 What organisational changes would need to be made to current operations in
order to take advantage of the opportunities identified- Marketing team has to
increase in strong numbers with deployment of additional customer
relationship management department. A team to analyse the collected data
has to be also put in place, in order to translate the numbers into statements

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for the management. A social media monitoring team also has to be hired. The
company has to focus on all the aspects of the marketing mix in order to attack
from all sides.
 Outline of additional resources that will be required for each of the viable
marketing opportunities. For example, if additional staff are needed, how many
or, if there are additional costs, what are they and what is the amount- A team
of 3 required for social media monitoring, team of 4 to be used for data
analysis and collecting the data
 Recommended strategies to ensure that the quality of service to existing
customers is not affected by changes made as a result of implementing new
marketing opportunities- The SERVQUAL model will be applied in the service
model of the hotel and will be ensured that before and after the implementation
of new strategy, the service parameters ranking don’t change or go down.