Analysis of Sainsbury's Food Products: IMC Program Development

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of an integrated marketing communication (IMC) strategy for Sainsbury's food products. It begins with an introduction emphasizing the importance of brand promotion and the role of IMC in enhancing product awareness and sales. The report then delves into a detailed market situation analysis, covering customer demographics, market segmentation, competitive landscape, and forecasting business climate. Following this, the report outlines specific IMC objectives, including brand awareness, favorable attitudes, and brand loyalty, as well as sales objectives. The subsequent sections address the establishment and allocation of a promotional budget, discussing different budgeting approaches such as marginal analysis, top-down, and bottom-up methods. The justification for the chosen budgeting approach and allocation is provided. Furthermore, the report details the development of an IMC program, outlining the use of various tools such as advertising, direct marketing, digital marketing, and personal selling. Finally, the report emphasizes the importance of monitoring, evaluation, and control of the IMC program to ensure it meets communication objectives and overall marketing goals.

Integrated Marketing
Communication
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................3
Analysis of current market situation of food products in Sainsbury...............................................3
Determination of integrated marketing communication objectives.................................................4
Establishment and allocation of promotional budget......................................................................5
Justification for choice of budgeting approach and allocation of budget .......................................6
Development of an integrated marketing communication program ...............................................6
Monitoring, evaluation and control of the program........................................................................7
CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................10
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INTRODUCTION
It is important for the business firms to promote their brands among the consumers not only
to standout rivals but also to survive in the long run. Promotion of brand enhances awareness of
products and services and eventually increases their sales, yielding high profits and revenue for the
company. Integrated marketing communication means integrating all the ways of brand promotion
for promoting product or service among the target consumers (Kitchen, and Burgmann, 2010). In
integrated marketing communication, all perspectives of marketing communication works together
for increasing sales and maximising the cost effectiveness. This report is prepared on food products
of Sainsbury which will contain information that can be utilised for an integrated marketing
communication.
Analysis of current market situation of food products in Sainsbury
Situation analysis of products is essential as it analyses the situation which the company can
face when it will launch its marketing plan. This includes the following heads:
Getting a handle on market:
Sainsbury has to start with a fact packed summary of market which it aims to serve. This
will include who will purchase its offerings, whether the number of products is increasing, holding,
steady or shrinking. For this, it has to cover the below described points: Customer description- The cited firm has to define its customers in geographic terms,
demographic terms (facts such age, gender, race, education level, marital status, income
level) and psycho-graphic terms. How customers divide into market segments- Market segments consists of unique groups of
consumers who possess the same features (Yeshin, 2012). These features can be gender,
age, income, buying pattern etc. Size of market and growth trends- It indicates size and information regarding growth for
overall market and for different market segments the cited organisation serves.
Assessing competition:
In this part, the firm has to summarise what type of competition it faces and it includes: Direct competitors- These competitors are those firms that the cited company's customers
consider when they think about purchasing. Indirect competitors- These competitors are those organisations that go after cited
company's customers through several and unanticipated methods. Competitive threats and opportunities- Threats such as new competitors, improved offerings
for old rivals and opportunities consists of changes that weakens the competitors or closure
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of long time rivals.
Forecasting business climate:
This is the final step in situation analysis which consists of looking at outside forces which
can impact the success of the organization. For instance: changing economic conditions can crimp
or enhance abilities of customers to purchase the food products. Some other factors to consider are
as follows:
 Increasing labour or supply costs that can affect the firm's pricing
 New rules and regulations
 Emerging new technology that can change how company or its competitors do business
 Social trends or shifting consumer preferences
 Regional or industry events or promotions which can affect visibility and interest in
company's offerings (Barker, 2012).
Determination of integrated marketing communication objectives
Integrated marketing communications is a wide marketing concept which focuses on
keeping marketing and communication efforts consistent and interconnected. Therefore, any type of
messages that Sainsbury delivers through the medium should strengthen a consistent brand image.
Effective IMC objectives are particular, measurable, quantified and within a set time frame. These
objectives are stated below:
 Brand awareness: This is one of the most common and old IMC objectives. Before the
cited organisation can sell its food products, it has to build brand awareness among its target
market to let it know about the brand and its meaning. A brand awareness objective may be
like increasing brand awareness by 10 % within three months.
 Favourable attitude: Once the firm establishes brand awareness, the next step is to
influence customers to purchase food products. As an IMC objective, persuasion may
consist of creating a favourable brand attitude or a high intention to buy among customers.
The company can assess general attitudes for its brand before and after marketing campaign
to see if it has improved (Shimp, 2010). It can study the aim of customers to buy after the
campaign has been done. An attitude goal may be “has 15 percent of market indicate an
intention to purchase the product within three months”.
 Brand loyalty: Finally, the long term objective of the cited company is to develop and
maintain loyal relationships with its customers. It can set IMC objectives for brand loyalty,
like increasing customer database by 20 %overall or increasing current customer database
revenue by 10 %within five months. The motive of these IMC objectives is to extract more
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business form the core customers.
 Sales objectives: Each of the above discussed IMC objectives are usually referred to as
communication objectives, or long term goals. Sales promotions drive business and revenue
in the short term. These objectives can be for example, creating a customer base, clearing
out excess stock or generating cash flow. Sales objectives are mostly easy to measure which
makes them popular among directors who want easy to quantify outcomes.
Establishment and allocation of promotional budget
Establishing objectives is an essential part of planning process, the limitations of budget is
also necessary. The objectives must be set according to the budget in Sainsbury.
Budget setting approaches:
11 Marginal analysis: As advertising or promotional expenses increase, sales and gross margin
also increase to a point, but then they level off. Profits are shown to be an outcome of gross
margin less advertising expenses (Percy, 2014). Using this approach to establish budget, the
cited company can continue to spend on advertising or promotional as long as marginal
revenues created by those expenditures exceeds the incremental advertising or promotional
costs.11 Top down approaches: In this approach, the budgetary amount is established (generally at
the executive level) and then then it is passed down to different departments. These budgets
are necessarily predetermined and have no genuine theoretical foundation. Top down
methods consists of affordable method, arbitrary allocation, and percentage of sales,
competitive parity as well as return on investment.11 Bottom approaches: The main defect related with the top down methods is that these
methods leads to predetermined budget appropriations mostly not connected to objectives
and the strategies designed to achieve them. A more effective strategy is to consider the
company's communication objectives and budget what is deemed important to accomplish
these goals (Morrison, 2016). The objective and task method of budget setting uses a build-
up approach including three steps- first is defining the communication objectives to be
attained. Second one is determining particular strategies and tasks required to achieve them.
And the last one is estimating costs linked with performance of these strategies and tasks.
The total budget is based upon the accumulation of these costs.
Allocation of budget:
Once the budget has been appropriated, the next step is to allocate it. Allocation of budget
consists of determining which markets, products and/or promotional elements will get which
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amounts of funds appropriated. Some of the basis for allocating budget are:
1. Allocating to IMC components
2. Client or agency policies
3. Size of the market
4. Potential of the market
5. Market share goals
Justification for choice of budgeting approach and allocation of budget
There are many approaches which are proposed for setting the budgets and to allocate it in
effective manner for Sainsbury. These budgeting approaches include marginal analysis which is
very effective and beneficial for cited firm as it gives long term benefits and can keep on spending
on advertising or promotional as long as marginal revenues created by those expenditures exceeds
the incremental advertising or promotional costs. This is very advantageous for the company
because through this approach profits are shown to be resultant of gross margin less advertising
expenses. The other approach is top down approach under which the amount of budget is
determined at the executive level only and then all different departments are informed about that.
This approach can prove effective when the organisation wants to make budgets through various
methods and not sticking to single method (Deshpande,). However this approach does not have any
true theoretical base. The last approach is bottom up approach which is also a good option for the
company as it utilises a build up approach. But the main disadvantage of this approach is that
methods results in predetermined budget appropriations often not linked to objectives and the
strategies developed to accomplish them. After these approaches of budgeting, budget has to be
allocated. The foundations used for allocation of budget are effective but more bases can prove
good for the cited company.
Development of an integrated marketing communication program
An integrated marketing program uses the similar thematic message in various different type
of promotions. The idea behind the message stays consistent whether consumers see a magazine
advertisement or company's web page. An integrated marketing communication program may
leverage its several promotion sources. Today's companies have more options than ever regarding
how and where to promote or advertise products or services. With traditional methods like print
advertising, and direct marketing, there are email marketing, web based advertising, multiple social
media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube along with mobile marketing (Shimp, and
Andrews, 2012). For developing an integrated marketing communication in Sainsbury, these tools
can be used:
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Advertising- Advertising is one of the most effective methods to promote a brand. It will help the
cited company to reach a broader audience within the shortest possible time limit. Advertisements,
in newspaper, television, radio, billboards will help the end users to trust in its brand and also
encourage them to buy the food products and remain loyal towards the brand. Advertisements will
not only increases the consumption of food products but it will also create brand awareness among
the customers. The cited firm is required to assure that the rights message is delivered to the rights
customers at the right time. The company has to be careful about the content of the advertisement,
as it has to pay for every second.
Direct marketing- Direct marketing enables the firm to communicate directly with the end users.
Several tools direct marketing are emails, text messages, catalogues, brochures, promotional letters
and so on. Through this method the message can be reached directly to the customers (Integrated
Marketing Communication Tools, 2017).
Digital marketing- Digital media tools should be aligned with company's advertising messages,
particularly when target market depends on the internet for information of the food products. These
consists of links to firm's website and Facebook pages in its advertisements. Inspiring buyers to
visit company's website means finding methods to interact with them once they reach the page, such
as acquiring email address (Blakeman, 2014). Creating rapport with them makes social media sites
ideal for sharing news about the products, encouraging satisfied customers to chime in and sharing
tips and facts related to the offerings of the firm. If cited organisation wants to cater to a large
regional or national market, it can go for pay per click ads on Google, Yahoo or Facebook to reach
more potential buyers.
Personal selling – This tool is considered as one of the most effective tools for integrated
marketing communication. This method takes place when the company or sales representative sells
products or services to clients. Personal selling goes a long way in strengthening bond between the
firm and the end users.
Monitoring, evaluation and control of the program
It is essential to determine how well the integrated marketing communication program has
meet the communication objectives and has helped the cited firm to achieve its overall marketing
goals and objectives. It is important for the cited company to not only know how well the
promotional program is doing but also why. For instance: Problems in advertising program may be
in the nature of the message or in a media plan that has not reached the target market effectively.
The firm has to know the reasons for the outcomes in order to take the rights steps to correct the
program. This is done to provide managers with regular feedback related to effectiveness of the
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program which can be taken in use as input of planning process (Thorson, and Moore, 2013).
Information on the results attained by the program is used in subsequent promotional planning and
development of strategies. Continuous monitoring of performance against predetermined targets is
of extreme importance. More important is the enforced discipline of a regular formal revision.
Understanding how the cited organisation can evaluate the effectiveness of the program can help it
in spending the marketing budget more efficiently. For this purpose it can perform the following
described evaluation techniques:
 Working in Tandem: The first step in building the right method to evaluate the integrated
marketing communication program is set goals for promotional messages. These can include
increasing sales, creating brand awareness etc.
 Numbers don't lie: This one of the simplest method to evaluate marketing communication
program. In this website traffic statistics are checked.
 Direct outcomes: These include direct response advertisement that consists of a telephones
number or website such as infomercials which gives a toll free number. For this the
company can ask people who call in or visit the stores or websites how they heard of the
firm (Edmunds, 2017).
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CONCLUSION
The above report is prepared to reflect integrated marketing communication and its
utilisation for Sainsbury company. For this purpose food products of the firm are taken into
consideration. The report analyses the current market situation of food products offered by the
company. It also highlights the establishment and allocation of promotional budget which includes
budgeting approaches such as marginal analysis, top down approach and bottom up approach.
Further, the report discusses about development of an integrated marketing communication program
which has proved effective for the cited organisation after its proper monitoring, evaluation and
control. It is recommended that techniques such as surveys and focus groups can also be taken for
evaluating the program.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Barker, R., 2012. Integrated marketing communication. Juta.
Blakeman, R., 2014. Integrated marketing communication: creative strategy from idea to
implementation. Rowman & Littlefield.
Deshpande, S., Integrated Marketing Communications. Wiley Encyclopedia of Management.
Kitchen, P.J. and Burgmann, I., 2010. Integrated marketing communication. John Wiley & Sons,
Ltd.
Morrison, T., 2016. Integrated Marketing Communications.
Percy, L., 2014. Strategic integrated marketing communications. Routledge.
Shimp, T.A. and Andrews, J.C., 2012. Advertising promotion and other aspects of integrated
marketing communications. Cengage Learning.
Shimp, T.A., 2010. Integrated Marketing Communication in Adver-tising and Promotion 8e.
International Edition. Printed in China.
Thorson, E. and Moore, J., 2013. Integrated communication: Synergy of persuasive voices.
Psychology Press.
Yeshin, T., 2012. Integrated marketing communications. Routledge.
Online
Edmunds. S 2017 Evaluation of Marketing Communications [online.] Available
through:<http://smallbusiness.chron.com/evaluation-marketing-communications-
74376.html>. [accessed on 16 January 2017]
Integrated Marketing Communication Tools 2017 [online.] Available
through:<http://www.managementstudyguide.com/managing-integrated-marketing-
communication.html>. [accessed on 16 January 2017]
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