Analysis of Marketing Functions and Customer Behaviour at Woolworths

This report provides a detailed analysis of marketing functions and their practical application within the retail context of Woolworths. It begins with an overview of the organization, its products, and services, followed by an exploration of various marketing strategies, including target market selection, marketing mix analysis, and the importance of forming such strategies. The report highlights the benefits of effective marketing strategies, such as higher competitive advantages, brand recognition, and optimal pricing. It then delves into the impact of these strategies on customer behaviour, examining both internal factors like personality, lifestyle, motivation, and attitude, as well as external factors like culture and group membership. The customer decision-making process at Woolworths is also analyzed, covering need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchasing decisions, and post-purchase activities. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of digital marketing in attracting customers and increasing business value. References to relevant academic literature are provided to support the analysis.

Running head: Marketing functions
Practical application of marketing factors and practices
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author notes

1MARKETING FUNCTIONS
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Organization overview...............................................................................................................3
Marketing strategies...................................................................................................................4
Importance of forming marketing strategies..........................................................................5
Higher competitive advantages..........................................................................................5
Brand recognition...............................................................................................................5
Creative edge......................................................................................................................5
Effective distribution plan..................................................................................................5
Optimal pricing..................................................................................................................6
The overall growth of the firm...........................................................................................6
Impact of marketing strategy on customer behaviour of Woolworths...................................6
Internal factors influencing customer behaviour........................................................................6
Personality..............................................................................................................................6
Lifestyle..................................................................................................................................7
Motivation..............................................................................................................................7
Attitude...................................................................................................................................7
External factors influencing customer behaviour......................................................................8
Culture....................................................................................................................................8
Group membership.................................................................................................................8
Market campaigns..................................................................................................................8
Customer decision making process of Woolworths...................................................................9

2MARKETING FUNCTIONS
Need recognition....................................................................................................................9
Information search.................................................................................................................9
Evaluation of alternatives.....................................................................................................10
Purchasing decision..............................................................................................................10
Post purchasing activities.....................................................................................................10
Importance of digital marketing...............................................................................................11
Conclusion................................................................................................................................12
Reference..................................................................................................................................14

3MARKETING FUNCTIONS
Introduction
Selection of suitable marketing strategy boosts the profitability of an organization and
helps it to create a sustainable position in the market. In addition, for achieving competitive
growth and higher market reputation, marketing strategies play a vital role (Popkova et al
2013). However, the main advantage of suitable marketing strategy comes in forms of
increasing customer for the company. Not only effective strategies, rather several internal
organizational factors such as, motivation, perception and many such factors also affect the
purchasing behaviour of the customers. In addition, social, cultural and other external factors
can change the purchasing decision of the customers (Schmidt, Spann and Zeithammer 2014).
With the enhancement of this technological era, the marketing activities carried out by
different organization are also getting digitized. The main intention of undertaking digital
marketing practices is to attract as much customer as possible and increase the business value
in the market (Patrutiu-Baltes 2016). This report is going to give a brief discussion about the
importance of undertaking different marketing strategies and impact of those strategies on the
consumer behaviour in context of the retail organization Woolworths. In addition, the internal
and external organizational factors affecting the purchasing decision is going to be discussed
here. The decision making process of customers along with the need of adopting digital
marketing is going to be emphasized here.
Organization overview
Founded in the year 1924, the Australian supermarket chain Woolworths is a well-
recognized retail organization that provides thousands of products and several services to its
customers. Currently there are more than 100000 number of employees working in 1024
stores of this organization (woolworths 2020). The key products of this organization are
groceries, DVDs, beauty and other household products, magazines, baby supplies and many

4MARKETING FUNCTIONS
others. It provides both online and traditional shopping facilities to its consumers. Operating
with the slogans “Fresh food people”, “click and collect” the organization has created a
greater market presence and collected increasing annual revenue and profit.
Marketing strategies
Marketing strategies can be explained as the comprehensive plans created by
organizations for achieving marketing goals and long term market success of the
organization. The primary objective of formulating these strategies is to have a blueprint
which will lead the organization towards achieving its objectives. It acts as the building block
for a successful marketing plan and designed after performing a detailed market research.
Moreover, Öztamur and Karakadılar (2014) explained that marketing strategy is beneficial
for an organization for concentrating on its scarce resources and gather the best possible
opportunities for enhancing its sales. Organizations mainly designed the market strategy by
considering the followings;
Selecting the target market: Target markets is the selected group of customers based on
certain categories on which the organization put more focus for selling its products. Not
every market segments can turn out to be fruitful for an organization (Lim and Yazdanifard
2015). There exists some market segments that ensures quick profits; hence, a careful choice
need to be made by the organization. A depth research of the market need to be done by the
organization for identifying the needs of the target customers.
Analysing the marketing mix: Marketing mix explains the method in which the organization
sales its products. Under this, the organization focuses on 4P’s: Product, price, place and
promotion. Distribution channels of the organization, developmental strategies and price
structure of the product are stay in focus here.

5MARKETING FUNCTIONS
Importance of forming marketing strategies
Higher competitive advantages
Well-structured marketing strategy provides unique selling ideas to the brand and
enhances the benefits and features of the products. It provides a strategic, planned and
creative, manner of highlighting and selling the product that is better than the competitor. The
continuous and consistent communication strategies help the firm to create a unique identity
in the competitive market.
Brand recognition
The fundamental idea behind efficient marketing strategy is to promote the main
attribute and legacy of the brand. Having strategic marketing decision helps the firm and its
brand to achieve remarkable position in the competitive market and creates a successful
brand identity.
Creative edge
It provides the brand and its promotional activities an edge of creativity. The
marketing departments of an organization along with the media planners, design agencies, PR
agencies, and other departments associated with marketing have a clear blueprint and
roadmap of what to do. Planning helps the managers to come up with out-of-the-box,
exclusive and unique ideas which creates strong brand identity and gathers creative edge for
the brand.
Effective distribution plan
While the management of an organization understands essence of Marketing Strategy,
it can have a transparent distribution plan. Introducing different marketing practices and
strategies the company will have a vast distribution network and efficient promotional

6MARKETING FUNCTIONS
partners. Having effective distribution plan will enhance the selling capacity of the
organization and gather more profit for it.
Optimal pricing
Marketing strategy has a greater influence on the pricing of the product. As strategy
helps the organization to focus on the target market, the company on other hand arrives at an
optimal pricing plan for each of product and service (Gajjar 2013). Pricing strategy plays a
greater role in gathering competitive strategy for the organization.
The overall growth of the firm
Marketing plans facilitates increasing brand value, improved market share, higher
competitive advantage, as well as more sales for the organization, thus resulting in overall
growth of the organization. It also helps the firm create a remarkable place in the market with
a unique brand identity.
Impact of marketing strategy on customer behaviour of Woolworths
Woolworth’s main intention of forming marketing strategies is to attract the new set
of customers and make strong bonds with the existing of the operational and untapped
markets. The promotional techniques which are integral part of any marketing strategy
mainly focuses towards analysing the lifestyle, income levels, taste, and many such
characteristics of the targeted customers. Therefore, designing products according to the need
and expectation of customers will help the organization to convince more customer to buy its
products.

7MARKETING FUNCTIONS
Internal factors influencing customer behaviour
Personality
Personality of a customer is related to his/her personal characteristics which are
exhibited constantly. Moreover, personality is identified as the sum of several sensory
experiences that varies from person to person. Influencing the customer behaviour and
modifying their purchasing decision, personality plays a greater role. While buying a product,
several demographic indicators such as, income, age, occupation and many such affects the
buying decisions (Muruganantham and Bhakat 2013).
Lifestyle
Lifestyle of a consumer plays a greater role in modifying the buying decision of the
consumers. It is expressed by the way a consumer leave, the activities in which he/she is
engaged with and the interest that he/she expresses. Lifestyle is the factor that is directly
related to the marketing activity of every purchaser.
Motivation
Motivation the customer is usually related to the need or desire for achieving a certain
outcome. Linking motivation of the customers with the buying decision of the customers, it
explains factors like time constraints, financial decision and many such factors (Zhang and
Benyoucef 2016). These factors highly affects the buying decision of every customer.
Attitude
It is another internal factor that influence the buying behaviour of every customer.
Attitude explains what exactly a person thinks or feels about something. Attitude, in case of
marketing reflects the buying patterns and the act of customers towards a particular product
or service. It is an essential factor as once customers form their attitude towards a product, it
become hard to change. It is a long-lasting general attribute that usually generated from the

8MARKETING FUNCTIONS
personal experience of the customers (Jisana2014). For strengthening its bond with the
customers, Woolworths always look forward to satisfy its customer and hence maintaining
positive attitude towards it.
External factors influencing customer behaviour
Culture
The purchasing decision of purchasers mostly affected by their culture. Culture
expresses the beliefs, behaviour and mainly the way one observes other members of the
society. Religious belief, special interest and geographic location are some import aspect of
customers’ culture that affects their decision to whether buy a product or not (Mullen, and
Johnson 2013). Designing products by focusing on the cultural aspects of the organization
will gather profit for the organization.
Group membership
Similar to the cultural concerns, customers might belongs to many different groups,
sharing some common characteristics, which can highly affect the way they look a product or
service. Social class is one type of basic group that explains the social standing a person has
in a society, which is based on factors like occupation, education and income level (Ramya
and Mohamed Ali 2016). Family also comes under a basic group, which is the main factors
behind decision making of a customer.
Market campaigns
Promotional activities or advertisements are considered to be the major factor that
helps customers to buy a product. This external factor plays a greater role in making the
product information reach to the consumers and convincing them in buying a product or
service (Rani 2014). Marketing activities if conducted at regular basis can be beneficial in
reminding the consumers to whether to shop a product or not.

9MARKETING FUNCTIONS
Customer decision making process of Woolworths
The decision making process of consumers’ involve identification of the exact their
need, gathering information about the product, evaluating existing alternatives and then
making their purchasing decision (Block et al. 2016). The behavioural traits of the consumers
can be determined by several psychological and economic factors and these are mainly
influenced by different factors (such as cultural and social values). Analysis of the
purchasing decision making of the consumers is a complex procedure and
it includes several things starting from recognition of the problem to
different post-purchase activities (San Yap and Yazdanifard 2014). The
consumers of Woolworths take their buying decision based on following
criteria.
Need recognition
Need recognition happens while consumers determine their exact needs. During this
phase, they may feel like something are missing and need to address the problem for filling
the gap (for example a customer buying cold drink or even water identifies his/her need as
thirst). The marketing department of the discussed retail organization grabs such
opportunities and identifies what exactly the customers want. However, while customers
think of purchasing anything, recognizing the actual need is essential among all.
Information search
Information search comes next in the buyer decision process and it changes
continually depending on the amount of information collected by the customer according to
their needs. Information related to the product can also be collected by recommendations
from individuals having previous shopping experiences with the organization (Pescher,
Reichhart and Spann 2014). Apart from that, other sources of collecting product related

10MARKETING FUNCTIONS
information of this organization is the official website of Woolworth, experiential sources,
personal and public sources.
Evaluation of alternatives
There is no doubt that the discussed retail organization always provides customer
satisfactory product and services; yet according to the behavioural traits of the customers,
they always search for the best deals exist in the market. Under this stage, customers search
for the best possible options available for them (Lysonski and Durvasula 2013). Evaluation is
done looking forwards to several factors such as, price, quantity, quality and many others.
Purchasing decision
After completion of the above stages, finally the customers come up with the idea of
making effective purchasing decision. In this stage, all the factors are evaluated by the
customers and based on the facts a logical conclusion arrived. This conclusion might base
upon the emotional connections or influence from different marketing campaigns or
depending on the personal experience (Maity and Dass 2014).
Post purchasing activities
Purchasing of the products is usually followed by the post-purchase evaluation that
explains analysing whether the product has reached to the expectation of the customer or not.
These activities play a greater role in enhancing or decreasing the sales of products of an
organization (Samson and Voyer 2014). Positive post product evaluation of the products and
services of Woolworth has helped it in enhancing its market reputation and presence.
Apart from the above, the consumers of Woolworth also found to be having different
type of purchasing decision such as, minor new purchase, major new purchase, minor re-
purchase and major re-purchase.

11MARKETING FUNCTIONS
Importance of digital marketing
Digital marketing is the new age marketing tactic, which consists of a series of
marketing efforts that are undertaken by the help of internet and any kind of electronic
devices. There exists a number channels for example social media, search engines, email, and
websites to connect with the customers and analysing their perspectives (Ryan 2016). In
contrast to the traditional marketing approach that uses physical marketing, print ads or even
phone communication; digital marketing are carried out online electronically. In recent days,
almost every person is spending most of time online and hence, reaching to them and
providing product related information is comparatively easy (Yasmin, Tasneem and Fatema
2015). In addition to that, while thinking about visibility of a business, digital marketing is
the best way. Being easily available and noticeable on the web, and getting the name of a
business out there, updating efficient and relevant information can definitely attract the
customers towards its door steps (Tiago and Veríssimo 2014). In addition, it provides
analytics and higher brand recognition to the brand. Despite of being less expensive approach
than the traditional advertising method, digital marketing provides competitive advantages to
the business. Content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, affiliate
marketing, e-mail marketing and many such are different forms of digital marketing
(Leeflang et al. 2014).
Among all existing digital marketing methods, the Australian retail industry
Woolworths mainly focuses on social media marketing. As the name suggests, using this
marketing method, the organization uses different social media platforms such as, Facebook,
Twitter and many such for grabbing the customers’ attention. Participation of customers are
more visible in the social media and are more receptive (Kannan 2017). Social media
marketing is not only helping the brand to increase its brand identity, but also enhancing its
inbound traffic. This type of marketing strategy is helping the organization to focus on its