Marketing Communications Report: Promotional Plan and Ethical Issues

This report, prepared for Morrisons as a Marketing Manager, provides a comprehensive analysis of marketing communications. It begins by examining consumer behavior, including psychological and environmental factors, and explores the role of advertising and promotion. The report details the communication process, advertising's role in promotional strategies, and current marketing trends, including social media and ICT. It evaluates the benefits of relationship marketing and presents an integrated promotional plan, outlining goals, strategies, potential barriers, and policies related to pricing, distribution, and communication. Market segmentation and effective monitoring techniques are also discussed. The report further addresses ethical and legal marketing issues, compares below-the-line and above-the-line techniques, and evaluates the organization's capability for planning marketing activities. Finally, it assesses the impact of ethical issues on market planning, offering a well-rounded overview of marketing strategies and their implications for Morrisons.

MARKETING
COMMUNICATIONS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
Measure the background to consumer behaviour for Morrisons and explanation of the impact
of psychological and environmental variables on customers......................................................1
Role of advertising and promotion in marketing........................................................................3
Communication Process and regulation......................................................................................3
The role of advertising and branding in promotional strategies.................................................4
Current trends in marketing........................................................................................................4
Evaluate the benefits of relationship marketing..........................................................................5
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................1
Marketing and integrated promotional plan.....................................................................................1
Goals and strategies.....................................................................................................................1
Barriers that may affect the implementation of plan...................................................................2
Pricing, distribution and communication policies.......................................................................3
Market segmentation...................................................................................................................4
Effective monitoring and control................................................................................................6
Steps to measure campaign effectiveness and requirement in performing these steps. .............7
Intellectual of ethical and legal marketing issues.......................................................................8
Task 3.............................................................................................................................................10
3.1 Comparison of Below the line and above the line techniques............................................10
Task 4.............................................................................................................................................11
4.1 Evaluating the organisation capability for planning marketing activities...........................11
4.2 Evaluating the impact of ethical issues on market planning...............................................13
CONCLUSIONS............................................................................................................................14
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................16

INTRODUCTION
Marketing communication briefly cited as MC, marcom and marcomm is the process in
which a business communicates with the market. It is basically relevant to the promotion element
of the marketing mix (Patti and et.al., 2017). The steps included in the marketing
communication process are analysation and evaluation of database information, allocation of
budgets, creation of marketing communication programme, capturing responses and record &
maintain data. In this learning, the impact of variation in organisation's psychological and
environmental on customer is evaluated. Also, market promotion and advertisement are
considered as most important tool for marketing and this learning states their role through
communication process and regulation. This assignment contains a marketing and integrated
promotional plan that meet the expectations of the target market. This plan shows the realistic
and achievable goal and the hurdles in achieving them. Moreover, this report helps in
understanding different marketing techniques such as BTL and ATL. This assignment further
helps in evaluating best pricing, distribution and communication policies for the organisation.
Furthermore, this study involves the advantages of relationship marketing for the business
premises.
The present report is done for the organisation, Morrisons. This study is undertaken as the
Marketing Manager of the entity. All the marketing research is performed in context to the
launching of a new product by the organisation. The main aim of the entity is to withstand in this
competitive era and it is only possible when they attract the customer figure towards them.
Again, customer enhancement depends upon the effectiveness of the marketing. They further
aims to develop popular and useful services which is a plus point for them in the campaigning
process. Organisation also wants to implement the current trends in their advertising and
promotion to boost up the advertising and promotion of their product.
TASK 1
Measure the background to consumer behaviour for Morrisons and explanation of the impact of
psychological and environmental variables on customers.
Consumer behaviour is the learning of different characteristics possessed by various
individuals, groups and organisations. This study also involves their product select, usage and
experience. Behaviour of consumers can be well explained with the help of different theories
which are explained below-
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 Marshallian Economics: According to this their, customers buy that services which
provides them most with the personal satisfaction. This theory helped the organisation in
estimating several factors such as- lower priced services are most liked by the customers,
sales of product depends upon the income of consumer, etc. Thus, this model helped
marketers in setting the target market depending upon the class of the people, doing
pricing of the services, etc.
 Psychoanalytic Theory- In this theory, it is stated that customers do not understand their
own motivations because of the unconsciousness of the psychological factors that form
them (Hajli, 2015) This unconscious part is full of desires which influence them in
buying the luxurious services that helps them in meeting their desires. Thus, this model
suggest to contain an emotional appeal in the the marketing process of the business. Pavlovian Theory- This theory states that most of the customer decisions results from
conditioned responses. This theory will help marketers of Morrisons in acquiring the
knowledge which can made or alter the habits of user.
 Vebelenian Social-Psychological Model- According to this model humans are that
creatures that set their standard and culture depending upon the social conditions they are
residing in. This theory further explained by monitoring the culture, the desires of an
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Illustration 1: Marshallian Graph
(Source: Patti and et.al., 2017)

individual can be controlled. This model can help Morrisons by providing them an
advantage to understand the social influences that can assist them in altering culture.
Thus, these are some theories that assist in understanding the consumer behaviour so that
the organisation can design the innovative marketing strategies accordingly.
There are some factors that influence the behaviour of consumer towards the services
offered to them by the organisation. Some major variables that highly impacts upon the
consumer behaviour are as follows: Psychological Factors- This are those factors that states the mental thoughts of an
individual that forces him/her to find satisfaction in a service. Some major psychological
factors involves: Motivation, perception, learning and attitudes & belief. These are the
elements that influence the buying behaviour of a consumer of the cited Morrison
through motivating them towards the product, their perception that decides the buying of
product, their learning of the services and products they are about to buy and their belief
towards the service and the associated firm from where they are buying it (Royle and
Laing, 2014).
 Environmental Factors- Environmental factor involves the social, cultural, personal,
family and social group influences that dominates them in buying a service or product.
The buying behaviour of an individual highly depends upon his social class, the products
that are accepted in their culture. Cultural trends are also an important factor that
influence consumer in purchasing goods and services of Morrison. The sum of factors
involves belief, traditions, customs, art, cultural knowledge, etc.
 Consumer of the Morrison company are both high and middle class people. Further both
man and women buy product and services of Morrison company.
Both psychological and environmental factor impact the consumer behaviour as because if the
product is not environmental friendly. Along with this if product do not fulfil the basic need of
customer then they may switch to other company products.
Role of advertising and promotion in marketing
Communication Process and regulation
Marketing is an integral procedure of Morrisons that directly results in enhancing their sales by
together rising their profitability agenda to a great extent. It is however associated with numerous
other activities that largely assists the cited firm to carry out an effective procedure of marketing.
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It is with a specific concern of engaging more number of consumers and attracting them towards
the offered goods and services (Jerath, Ma and Park, 2014) For which, there exists a huge
contribution of advertisement and promotion that in turn results in an effective marketing
procedure. This is for instance to ascertain the role of advertisement in marketing, one can easily
relate to its essentialist where it is often referred to be one of the most important constituent of
marketing. However, it is together specified to interlink with the tactics of marketing where it
directly supports in acknowledging people about any newly proposed products and services. On
considering the type of interaction done through advertising, it indicates the passive form of
communication. This reflects the one-way nature of advertisement where the businesses like
Morrisons hereby insists the consumers to buy a promoted product without affecting the choices
made by them. It together shows the persuading nature of advertisement that in turn leads to
encourage brand recall.
The role of advertising and branding in promotional strategies.
Link between role of advertising and promotional strategies
Promotional strategies and advertising role is to create awareness among customers
related to the products and services. Company can promote its product with the help of social
media marketing while advertisement need TV or newspaper of product which company want
to sale. Further both role is to provide information of the new products.
Advertising and branding are those key elements that enhance the marketing process.
Advertising is a marketing communication tool either in form of audio or video that promotes the
service with specific message (Kanchanapibul and et.al., 2014). It is considered as the most
important tool of promotion. Some major factors governed through this instrument involves-
 Control- Advertisement involves some investments to be made on the promoting tool and
this investment enables better monitoring of the function of the Morrisons.
 Brand Management- The main purpose of advertisement is on development of the brand
image of the organisation. In case of Morrisons, they aim on proving their services as
distinct from many of other entity and this image helps them in receiving the set prices.
 Helps in creating value proposition- Through advertising entity can promote their pricing
statements in front of the audience. The value thus created ion concentrated on
persuading the customers .
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 Passive communication- In contrary to the traditional direct buying and selling methods,
advertising helps in attaining the market research top evaluate the impact of ad on their
services. This factor impacts upon the brand image 0of the products that are being offered
by the Morrisons.
Branding is a marketing practice to create the name and image of products and services.
This tool helps Morrisons in clear delivery to the message that helps in assuring the creditability.
Further, it helps in combining set targets with the products. It also plays a great role in
motivating buyer to buy the products (Hajli, 2015).
Current trends in marketing
Nowadays, various tools are used by the entities in their advertising and promotion.
Current trends of them includes-
 Social media- In present time, social media sites are the largest platform for promoting
the services of the organisation. These sites are accessed by large mass of audience that
helps organisations in passing their message to a large group of people enabling
profitability to the company.
 Emails- It is secondly most used promotion method via which entities directly contact
with individual person through mailing them with the recent offers they are keeping with
them in their services.
ICT stands for information communication technology which when assisted to the
advertising and promotion methods, brings effectiveness in the marketing process of the
organisation. This system improves the customer services and demand through various database
development, website designing, translation software, direct mailing, etc. Further, internet helps
in advertisement via websites, E-mails, social media, etc. Present era is of internet and almost all
the marketing methods are based on it.
Impact of ICT on the company
The use of ICT and technology has affected every aspect of business, transforming not only the
way that business is conducted but also creating new business sectors and jobs. With the help of
ICT it becomes easy for company to increase sale and profit. The use of websites has allowed
companies to develop new and cheaper ways of reaching new markets, offering customers the
opportunity of buying goods and services whenever they want and often at reduced cost, whilst
also enhancing the level of customer service.
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the impact of social media
Social media play significant role as it help in developing the awareness related to the
products and services in consumers. Further it can be stated that it help in increasing the sales as
many of people use social networking sites and they like to buy product after comparing it from
different company.
Evaluate the benefits of relationship marketing.
The main objective of relationship based marketing is to create loyalty between the
offered services and customers. There are many type of customer relationship marketing for
example electronic , operational, analytical and data mining. All these factors accounts in
evaluation of past purchasing. Few major advantages of these relations are explained below-
 Communication- Relationship marketing enhances the level of communication with the
customer (Hajli, 2015). This communication further helps in more customer feedback to
the organisation which will help Morrisons to improve and develop the product and
services. Customer satisfaction can also be enhances by addressing the complaints made
by them through communication.
 Customer profitability- Maintaining communication with the customers helps in
motivating and influencing them it buy the services. This influence directly helps in
boosting up the profitability of the entity.
 Easy targetting- Better relationship with the customers simplify the targeting step of the
organisation. With possessing good relations Morrisons can easily target the customers.
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TASK 2
Marketing and integrated promotional plan
Integrated marketing of Morrisons is the combination of various marketing strategies
which can be used to optimize the proper communication channel of the brand name of the
company to their stakeholders (Patti and et.al., 2017). This marketing communication plan is
having different thematic messages which can be promoted by using several promotional
activities. Before making any plan, the goals, mission and vision of the company should be clear
so that it will be easy for them to decide the marketing strategies.
Goals and strategies
The marketing policies of Morrisons is not only about providing goods and services to
the consumers, but to meet their demand and give them benefits as per the needs and demands
from the consumers. The process of marketing is very long as it requires very specific and
particular set of skills from the employee to co-ordinate and manage the activities and implement
the plan successfully.
Goal: To increase the revenues and profitability by providing quality products and
becoming food specialist.
Vision: to become “better and different than ever”. It will always bring improvements in
the performance of the company.
Marketing strategies
It can also be considered as the process which can permit the organization to focus more
on the assets of the as an opportunity to increase the sales rate of the company. At the same time
they can gain competitive advantage in the market. Few of the principles of marketing strategies
are as follows;
People oriented marketing: The strategies developed by the company is to create the
advantage for the company among their competitors. They are more oriented around the
consumers, so that they are able to fulfil the needs and demands of the customers (Shkurkin and
et.al., 2016). By this strategy, the company will be able to retain their customers and will attract
more users towards their product and services.

Flexible cost: Anther strategy used by the company is keeping the cost of the products
well within the reach of the consumers of all level. The aim of the company is to increase their
sales rate. This can only be done by keeping the cost low and the quality of the products very
high. Consumers will not think anything else if the quality of the product is high and they will
spend the money also, so this strategy can be used by the company for marketing their products.
Promotional strategies
The promotion of the product is very necessary as it is one of the essential thing in
putting the product of the company in front of public and attract new consumers (Eisenack and
et.al., 2014). There are several ways by which the company can promote their products.
Social media: it is the best way to promote the product because majority of the people are
using social networking mediums to getting the information and to attract with people. It can be
said as the direct marketing at its best.
The advantages of social media is that it help in targeting large number of customers in less time.
On the other hand its disadvantage is that it become difficult to target particular group of people
only.
Product giveaways: This is another promotional strategy which can be used by
Morrisons. The company can give sample products to their consumers, whenever they are
launching new products. They can also take feedbacks from the customers, so that it will give
them some idea about the position of the product in the market.
Barriers that may affect the implementation of plan
Lack of employee involvement: This can be considered as the most common barrier.
Employees are always feared about change, it can also be possible that the most loyal member
will resist to change. Most of the organizations are not including employees in their decision
making process and this is creating some negative image on the mind of the employees (Royle
and Laing, 2014). They will not be having that desire to contribute in the success of the plan and
thus, it will become a barrier. Any plan will become successful only when the company is
including all of their workers in the plan. They will listen to their opinions and according to that
the final decision is being made. This is the way by which Morrisons will be able to reduce the
effect of this barrier.
Lack of communication: Effective communication is the most essential thing for the
implementation of any plan. There will be few people in the organization, who thinks that once
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they have announced something, then it will be clear to all the employees. But it will not happen
all the time. Some people will take time to understand the processes involved in the plan and it is
the role of senior members of the company to clear their doubts (Taiminen and Karjaluoto,
2015). The board of directors and senior member of the company should stop announcing the
plan directly in front of the employees. They must discuss about the development of the plan by
keeping their opinions in mind. They have to ensure that the workers know how that plan will
affect them and how it will be helpful in increasing their performance level.
Organization complexity: It is possible that the organizational culture and structure will
become complex. The process of making the plan and it's implementation can also become
complex. The complexity will include the products of the company and the process of
development of the promotional plan which can be complex. These are sometime difficult for the
worker to understand (Wang and et.al., 2016). Therefore, Morrisons have to make sure that the
integrated plan should be clear to all the employees including the senior members of the team.
They have to use such approaches by which the plan can be made in the simplest way possible.
They should not keep on changing the techniques and methods used to develop that plan because
it will again create confusion.
Lack of creativity: This is the ability to think more originally and develop such ideas
which are innovative. If the company is not using any creative thinking while making the plan,
then it will not be having that much effectiveness during the implementation. Therefore, they
have to ensure that the employees who are selected for the development and implementation of
this plan should have creative thinking capabilities (Zeng, Dasgupta and Weinberg, 2016). They
should be able to create it in the most effective way so that it will be implemented successfully
and it will be beneficial to the company. The leadership should be proper and the leader must
inspire other people to work harder so that the target set by the company can be achieved.
Pricing, distribution and communication policies
Company used pricing policies in which it set out its pricing such as penetration pricing policy
which help in selling products and services effectively. Further, for distribution of the product
company sale its product online as well as it has physical store through which it sales products
and services. Apart from this all the information related to the product is communicated with the
help of social media and email
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The pricing policy of Morrison is economic pricing. They are putting themselves as the
low price supermarket and using the strategy of love it cheaper. The company has completely
changed the supermarket pricing strategy by this and they have started taking the food market
from their competitors like Lidl and Aldi. The economic pricing is done by keeping the price of
the product well below what their competitors are offering (Helm and Gritsch, 2014). Such kind
of pricing strategy is implemented to attract more number of consumers who are price conscious.
The company have reduced the cost which are related to the marketing and promotional activities
as well as their production methods, so that they will be able to keep the cost of the product at
the lower level.
The consumers can buy the products and services without any frills. This type of pricing
strategy can be very successful for the large organizations like Morrisons, because they are
distributing their products in bulk. Therefore, they will be able to generate more profit even
when they are keeping the low prices for their products. Skimming pricing can also be used, so
that they will be able to increase their sales rate for the new product developed.
The distribution of the products can be done either by using direct distribution or indirect
distribution. Morrisons is using both the techniques because they are selling their products
through their stores and through online marketing. The indirect distribution is when the end
product is reaching to the consumers via various paths. Firstly the product will go to C&F from
the manufacturer and then it will go to distributor, then to retailer and finally it will reach to the
end customer (Boyle, 2015). This is very long chain. Direct distribution is when the company
will sell their products directly to the consumers through their retail stores or via online. This
process is very small and the end product will reach to the consumer in very short duration of
time.
Communication policies are the one by which the company is communicating to their
consumers. They are organizing various campaigns so that it will be easy for them to be in touch
with the local people. Use of social media is the best way to communicate with the people
because majority of the population is using social networking medium to get the news or to share
the information (Backer and Morrison, 2015). The company can also communicate with their
employees so that they will also get to know about the marketing plan which will be used by
them to sell their products. They can also use the referral incentive program through their
application. By this way they will be able to keep majority of the users in touch with the
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