Analysis of Holland & Barrett's Marketing Strategies

Desklib provides solved assignments and past papers to help students excel in their studies.

Marketing Essentials
Holland & Barrett

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................2
TASK 1........................................................................................................................3
KEY ROLE OF MARKETING FUNCTION...............................................................3
RESPONSIBILITY OF MARKETING FUNCTION...................................................4
THE INTERRELATION OF MARKETING WITH OTHER FUNCTIONAL UNITS OF
THE ORGANIZATION.............................................................................................5
ANALYSIS OF ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF MARKETING IN THE
CONTEXT OF MARKETING ENVIRONMENT........................................................6
ANALYSING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INTERRELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN
MARKETING AND OTHER FUNCTIONAL UNITS OF THE ORGANISATION.......8
TASK 2......................................................................................................................10
MARKETING MIX OF HOLLAND & BARRETT AND SUPERDRUG STORE PLC
...............................................................................................................................12
EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT TACTICS APPLIED BY THE ORGANISATION. .14
TASK 3......................................................................................................................16
MARKETING PLAN...............................................................................................16
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................21
1

INTRODUCTION
In this assignment, the role of marketing and its interrelation with other functional
units of an organization are discussed. For a better and detailed understanding of
marketing role and it's interrelation in a wider context is discussed on the basis of
examples. To demonstrate my understanding of the marketing roles and it’s
interrelation a critical analysis and evaluation is included. The marketing strategies
can be better understood with its key elements hence those key elements are stated
and briefly discussed.
An organization’s marketing functions named Holland and Barrett are explained, and
then the evaluation and analysis of those marketing functions are featured. Further
part includes the roles and responsibilities of marketing functions, the comparison of
marketing strategies between Holland & Barrett and its entrant Superdrug Store PLC
and also the evaluation of different tactics used by these companies for
demonstration of how they achieve their business objectives. For comparison of
these two organizations, the use of 7P's is stated.
The latter part includes a basic marketing plan by the use of all the elements of 7Ps
and its evaluation. This part has a detailed, coherent and evidence-based marketing
plan developed by the use of 7Ps. The assignment contains the explanation,
evaluation and analysis of each topic discussed here.
2

TASK 1
Title- Role of Marketing and Its Interrelation with Other Functional Units of an
Organisation
Marketing
Marketing as the word says is the use of techniques, methods and procedures
undertaken by a company for promoting the buying and the selling of their products
and services to the consumers or to the other business companies. Marketing
includes various methods like advertising, selling and distinguishing the product or
service from other similar products (Jobber, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2012). The
company uses these approaches to draw more customers to themselves and to
maintain a positive relationship with them. The marketing functions on the basis Four
Ps i.e. Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Marketing function helps any
organization to identify and create such products which are impacting the
marketplace drastically and then differentiating it with the other product or services
for its better sales and to draw more customers to the company (Kotler et al., 2010).
This generally includes large planes like market research, market plan, product
development, market presentation and other tasks.
KEY ROLE OF MARKETING FUNCTION
Satisfying Customer Needs: Marketing helps in understanding the needs of the
customers and then understanding the product that can help any company to meet
their needs. The needs are influenced time to time depending on the social and
cultural personalities (Kotler et al., 2017).
1. Defining and Managing a Brand: The product or the service cannot be
reached to the consumer until and unless we present it to the customer in a
trustful manner. This needs different advertisement approaches and
promotions of the brand and the product.
2. Adapting the Right Price: The product makes its hold in a marketplace after
a lot of exchanges. These exchanges and feedback loops help any
3

organization to decide the right price for their products. Any organization uses
marketing research and analysis for setting a competitive price for the
products.
3. Getting Ahead from the Competition: Maintaining and rising above the
competition is necessary for today's business models. By observing and
analysing the market closed we can do both the things simultaneously;
understand the customer needs and managing the competitors offering
simultaneously.
4. Making Place for New Products: Marketing definitely helps in understanding
the new product ideas and making them reach customers and increase
drastically explode its sales. This again includes the market research and
analysis so as to identify that the product will survive in the market or not.
5. Producing internal communications: The employees and every other
individual of the company need to understand the company, the product and
its priority. Marketing helps in the internal communication of the organization
and play a key role in maintaining its integrity (Ahmed, et al., 2013).
RESPONSIBILITY OF MARKETING FUNCTION
The marketing function has various responsibilities. Taking globally marketing plays
a vital role and has the responsibility to keep the product and the organization going.
The main responsibilities are discussed below (Jobber et al., 2012):
1. Tracking Current Trends: It’s important to know the current position of the
company in the marketplace and understanding the current situations and
scenario of the market. This cannot be done without marketing strategies like
research and analysis. Marketing helps us to understand the present
situations accordingly to the users and to know the company what the user
actually wants and how much it wants (Bernhardt, et al., 2012).
2. Understanding the Requirements: It is really necessary for any organization
to get closer to the customer and develop a market strategy to understand the
social and physical requirements of the consumer. It is the responsibility of the
4

marketing department to make plans for receiving and analysing proper
feedback from the customer. The feedback can be received from the internal
channels of the company like information from the sales team and the
customer support team and also from the channels outside the company like
private connections and social media.
3. Maintaining the Brand Value: Usually the brand shows the feelings that
products and the services, and the company shares show. It’s the
responsibility of the marketing function team to maintain a good image of the
organization’s product and the organization itself so that the old customers
stay satisfied and connected and the new customers keep on drawing.
4. For Innovating New Ideas: The new ideas get discovered when the market
and the customers are observed carefully. While analysing them if the
organization tends to figure out any loopholes or problems in the system then
the organization can create unique products that can even surpass the
competitions. That is why it is necessary for the marketing function team to
observe the market and the consumers carefully.
5. To Draw More Customers and Increase Sales: The customers cannot be
drawn to the company and sales cannot be increased just by mouth publicity.
For increasing the sales generate more revenue an organization needs to the
promotion of the product and the brand, publicity and eye-catching
advertisements for the products. We need marketing so that we can perform
all these things and increase revenue.
THE INTERRELATION OF MARKETING WITH OTHER FUNCTIONAL UNITS OF
THE ORGANIZATION
A company is not a group of departments it is a chain of departments and for its
proper working, each department must perform its work properly and responsibly.
Suppose in case the management and the development department successfully did
their job but if in case the marketing department failed to complete its work the
company will definitely face big losses in every single aspect. The work and relation
5

of the marketing department with other functional units can be described as follows
(Le Meunier-FitzHugh, K. and Piercy, 2011).
1. Finance Department: The organization cannot afford to invest wholly in
production and management only. The marketing unit helps in calculating how
much investment is required for the research department, promotion and
distribution.
2. Production Unit: The marketing unit will need to work closely with the
production department so that the exact production of the product is done and
the current and the future need of the customer will also be satisfied. Other
than the quantity the marketing department also helps in managing the
product’s quality. The marketing department also helps in making the product
available at the right time.
3. Human Resource management: The marketing unit helps in research and
development of new ideas and meet the production of the targets. Not only
this, but marketing also helps in creating an ambitious and competent sales
team.
ANALYSIS OF ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF MARKETING IN THE
CONTEXT OF MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
1. Understanding and Satisfying Customer Needs: As discussed above the
marketing unit functions to identify and satisfy the customer needs. The
influencing needs require regular analysis and feedback so that it can be
changed with the requirement to. But how is this done? How marketing identify
customer needs? How marketing satisfy these needs? For understanding the
customer's needs they are divided into these parts (Mohsan, et al., 2011):
a) Direct Needs: These are the needs that are clearly specified by the customers
and provided as feedback, directly reported to the customer services or which
the customer shows the dissatisfaction.
6

How to identify these needs: Such needs can also be identified by performing
surveys, question and answers, opinion panels etc. Moreover, these needs
can be identified by direct reviews and customer feedbacks.
b) Latent Needs: These are the problems that any customer faces but they get
failed to identify and that is why these are also called as hidden needs.
How to identify these needs: To identify these needs observational techniques
are used like doing exactly the same thing that the customer will do with the
product. The identification of such needs requires a very keen observation of
the customers.
c) Assumed Needs: These are probably the riskiest things done in any business
organization. The correctness of these needs can be tested by customer
feedbacks, survey forms and other research methods.
How to identify these needs: As the name suggests these needs are assumed
based on the results of researches and other tests performed during the
development phase.
2. Establishing and Managing a Brand: Another factor that affects marketing
roles and responsibility is brand management. It may take years to establish a
brand but it takes more efforts and creativity to manage and grow it further. Here
is how this all is done (Keller, KL, et al., 2011):
a. External Competition Analysis: Identifying who and what our competitors
are and what they do to manage the brand value will allow us to
understand our brand more clearly and then we can establish a more
potent way to establish our own brand.
b. Strategic Internal Analysis: Identifying the inner loopholes, drawbacks and
weakness of the organization and fixing them with creativity will for sure
help to draw more attention of consumers towards the organization.
c. Advertising: The creative and eye-catching advertisements that affect the
customer's feelings socially is the best way to promote our brand. Hiring
the most attractive actor and actress for the advertisements also affects
the person's social values.
7

d. Positive Social Relations: Public relations are the best way to find loyal
and long term customers. This may contribute a little to draw more
consumers but this may help an organization to establish long term pillars
for themselves.
3. Innovating New Ideas and Making Place for New Products: Analysing the
new ideas and to encourage them is the most effective role and responsibility for
the marketing function. Without a marketing environment, new products cannot
survive in the market and may withdraw quickly after facing failures. This is how
marketing functions to make a place for entrepreneurship ideas (Dhebar, A.,
2016):
a. Targeting the Right Consumers: For the establishment of the foundation of
new ideas and products an organization must target the right audience
and serve as to fulfil their needs. Understanding the right customers for the
product can be done only within the right marketing strategies. If done in
the right way, this may turn the sales grow more easily and can save a lot
of manpower and time.
b. Analysing the Competition: The competition analysis includes various
methods and techniques, some of them can be named as SWOT analysis,
PESTLE, Poster’s Five Forces Framework. This analysis helps us to
understand our products, the right audience for the product and of course
the competitor is doing to maintain its own marketplace.
c. Choosing Right Marketing Strategy and Tactics: The establishment of any
new products takes time and patience until it grows in a brand. But the
right marketing strategy can change these factors and can even grow the
business drastically.
ANALYSING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INTERRELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN
MARKETING AND OTHER FUNCTIONAL UNITS OF THE ORGANISATION
1. Analysing the Relationship with Finance Departments: As explained
above that marketing functions are related to accounting. But what are the
actual factors that affect their relationships? These can be:
 Deciding the overall budget for research and production departments.
8

 Understanding the sales and cost ratio.
 Compensating the needs of investment in raw products.
2. Analysing the Relationship with Production Unit: This is how these two
departments link with each other:
 Deciding the production units.
 Changing the quality of products based on customer feedback.
 Deciding the right price of products.
 Increasing the production of the product.
3. Analysing The Relationship with Human Resource management: Human
resource management is related to the marketing department as explained
above. Here is how:
 Deciding what amount and of what kind of manpower is needed and in
which department.
 Promoting HR management efforts on social media.
 Promoting the product for boosting the confidence of HRs.
9

TASK 2
Title- Marketing Mix of Holland & Barrett and Superdrug Store PLC
Introduction to Holland & Barrett
Figure 1 - Holland & Barrett
[Source: HM Stores]
Holland & Barrett is one of the world's leading health and wellness retailers. Their
main roots are Europe. They supply a wide range of vitamins, minerals, proteins and
other health supplements. They have their retail stores mainly in the UK and other
than that they are expanding in countries like Netherlands, Malta, UAE, China and
India (Holland & Barrett who we are, 2019)
10

Introduction to Superdrug Store PLC
Figure 2: Superdrug Stores PLC
[Source: SS Store Front]
Superdrug Stores PLC is one of the UK’s leading health and beauty product
retailers. It has more than 800 stores all over the world. They provide in-house
services too. They have both online and offline retail stores (Superdrug Store PLC
about us, 2019).
Introduction to Marketing Mix
The marketing mix presents a variety of methods and approaches to put any product
in the market in the right time, on the right place, and at the right price so that the
product sales go high. The problem arises when we try to perform these methods
well and try to accomplish high expected results. Marketing mix can be imagined as
a set of different models that an organization applies to accomplish the deserted
results in the market. (Huang, R. and Sarigöllü et al., 2014)
11