MBA7003 Marketing Plan Report: E-commerce Business in Morocco Analysis

This report details a comprehensive marketing plan for an e-commerce business aiming to establish itself in Morocco. It begins with an introduction outlining the importance of marketing plans and their components. The report then delves into the business overview, including a SWOT analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It covers products, services, and the future vision and mission of the company. A significant portion is dedicated to market analysis, including the unique selling proposition, target customers, competitors, market research methods, and target market identification. The report also analyzes the environmental and industry landscape using Porter's Five Forces model. Furthermore, it explores marketing strategies, advertising, sales, and financial aspects like pricing, sales forecasts, and marketing budgets. The report concludes with a summary of the findings and includes references to support the analysis. The plan focuses on a wide range of consumer goods, delivery services, and the potential for beautician services to attract a broad customer base, particularly those active in online shopping and social media. It addresses the challenges of competition and customer loyalty in the e-commerce sector, providing insights into market research techniques and strategies for success.

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MARKETING MANAGEMENT
STUDENT NAME
12-18-2018

MARKETING MANAGEMENT 1
Self-Assessment
STRENGTHS
 Detailed research
 Authentic source of information
 Effective SWOT analysis
 Clear and specific vision, and mission
statement
 Professional Harvard referencing
AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT
 More analysis related to target
market
 Since the future is uncertain,
contingency planning could have
been included
 Critical analysis could have been
improved

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Contents
Self-Assessment...............................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Marketing plan.................................................................................................................................5
The Business................................................................................................................................5
Business overview...................................................................................................................5
S.W.O.T. analysis....................................................................................................................5
S.W.O.T. activity sheet............................................................................................................5
Products/services.....................................................................................................................7
Sales/marketing personnel.......................................................................................................7
The Future....................................................................................................................................7
Vision statement......................................................................................................................7
Mission statement....................................................................................................................8
Goals/objectives.......................................................................................................................8
The Market...................................................................................................................................8
Unique selling position............................................................................................................8
Your customers/clients............................................................................................................8
Your competitors.....................................................................................................................9
Market research.......................................................................................................................9
Market targets........................................................................................................................10
Environmental/industry analysis...........................................................................................10
Marketing strategy.................................................................................................................11
Advertising & sales................................................................................................................12
The Finances..............................................................................................................................12
Price.......................................................................................................................................12

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Expected sales/ sales forecast................................................................................................12
Marketing budget (in millions dollars)..................................................................................14
Monitoring/measurement activities.......................................................................................14
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................16
References......................................................................................................................................17

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Introduction
Introducing a business to a market, needs a proper planning before implementation. A marketing
plan is a portion of the total business plan. Under a marketing plan, a marketing strategy is
formulated, which becomes the foundation of most relevant marketing plan. A marketing plan
included business foundation, operation, and nature of the business. Moreover, to analyses, the
business, SWOT analysis of the proposed business is conducted. Vision, mission, and objectives
of the business are decided and set. After these, a most important part of planning is analyzing
the market, which is to analyze the USP of the business, target customers, rivalry firms, industry
analysis, and marketing strategy. Lastly, another relevant step is to analyses and decide on
financial aspect, that is the sales forecast, marketing budget, and pricing method.
In this report, a summary of a marketing plan will be created for a company that wishes to
establish an E-commerce business in Morocco. Therefore, all the relevant stages of the
marketing plan will be included in the report further.

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Marketing plan
The Business
Business overview
It is an E-commerce business, which likes to establish in Morocco, for which the company will
trade a wide variety of consumer goods online, with a service of delivery. The company will be
able to reach to the customers at their doorstep with products ordered by the customer with a
click of a mouse or through an application on mobile or tablets. The applications will be
available for apple and android users or the customers can even visit the website to order.
S.W.O.T. analysis
While analysis the business, the strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats will be known
which can be used while planning business in the future. That is to decide how strengths can be
used to gain opportunities, or how a company overcomes their weakness to avoid threats to the
company.
S.W.O.T. activity sheet
Strength
Ease of reach
Skilled workforce
Effective communication
Shipping and delivery
Products wide range
Weakness
System maintenance
No physical availability
Brand image
E-commerce leaders
Opportunity
Delivery options
Physical stores
Brand association
Own products
Threats
Competition
Customer loyalty
Transportation costs
Logistics
Seasonal products
Strength

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 Ease of reach – reaching to the customer is easy by targeting or approaching them online,
or through the internet, therefore reaching physically is not necessary
 Skilled workforce – the workforce, for the business planed is skilled personnel, which is
one of the strength for the company and will be responsible for the growth of the form.
 Effective communication – communication is conducted online that is through emails, or
social media platforms, which will be effective and reaching out to the maximum
customers at the same time
 Shipping and delivery – the delivery strategy of the company is to reach to the customers
on or before time or providing a quick delivery option, as the initial target of the
company in Morocco
 Products wide range – the products to be served to the customers are wide in range along
with the service option to make the goods available at the doorstep and beautician service
(Cooper, 2016)
Weakness
 System maintenance – since the large product and service rage is there, the maintenance
of the system becomes crucial and problematic
 No physical availability – there is no physical stores available to create better customer
relationship, or understand the customer more closely
 Brand image – creating brand image becomes very difficult in case of e-commerce,
because of no personal touch with the customers
 E-commerce leaders – there are already existing global leaders like Amazon in this
industry, which make new entrant companies a bit challenging
Opportunity
 Delivery options – the delivery options can be enhanced and increased, like one-day
delivery, and same day delivery for the beautician services
 Physical stores – the opportunity in future would make e-commerce business into the
traditional brick and motor business
 Brand association – associated with more and more brands to offer customers a wide
variety of products

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 Own products – this to manufacture own products and sell online, this could include
either a particular category of goods or all categories offered by the company under its
own brand name
Threats
 Competition – one of the major threat while entrancing into online business is the
competition and the existing companies in the market. Some of them are global leaders
and others are entering every day
 Customer loyalty – the loyalty towards the existing brands online can be a threat to the
company
 Transportation costs – since the major operating function is the transportation of goods
from the manufacturer to the warehouse and to the customer
 Logistics – logistics consist of many partners, and the threat is in case
 Seasonal products – some of the products are seasonal, whose sales are gone down at the
unseasonal time (Milah, 2015)
Products/services
Considering the products of the company, it will be trading a wide range of consumer goods
including the category of apparels, electronics, books, and cosmetics of authorized brands.
Moreover considering services, the company is forward to deliver goods to the customer at their
doorstep and would like to add beautician services at the customer doorstep (Oral, 2014)
Sales/marketing personnel
Sales or marketing team is a separate team working for the research and development, and
marketing objectives for the company. Their job role is to research for new product development,
search for marketing need, influence sales in the market, and get feedback from the customer
(Garland, 2015).
The Future
Vision statement
The vision statement of the company will be providing the best of products with the best
experience of shopping online.

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Mission statement
The mission of the company is to become the most customer-centric company and a one-stop
destination for customers to find any customer good they wish to purchase at the lowest possible
price
Goals/objectives
 Satisfaction amongst the customer after shopping from the company
 Provide authenticated and best quality products and services
 Make goods available at a minimum price as compare to competitors
 Availability of a Wide variety of products, with quickest delivery possible through sellers
 Use of upgraded technology, for the best experience of the customers
 Adding new styles, design, and updating products according to change in fashion rapidly
(Misra, 2017)
The Market
Unique selling position
The unique selling proposition of the company will be providing certified products and delivered
as quickly as possible. Moreover, one of the competitive advantages is that other than consumer
goods various services would also available to customers like beautician. There are various other
activities that the company will adopt, which could result into unique selling proposition like
making goods available to the customer which is not possible by the customer personally, like
goods imported from other countries, which are not available at brick and motor shop usually.
Like electronics from China, and makeup products from Korea (Petersen, 2015)
.
Your customers/clients
The company will be trying to target the widest groups of customer all over the country because
the products and services offered are wide in range for all men and women, old age, and kids.
Nevertheless, one of the thing here matter is the use of technology, those people who are very
active while using technical devices like smartphones are targeted more. Moreover, particularly
for beautician services, women with the high-income group are targeted more (Scicluna, 2018).

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Your competitors
The competitor's list is very long in this industry in Morocco, although some of the top
companies that are major competitor would be Amazon, eBay, Payoneer, globalsources.com,
rebubble.com, prestashop.com and many more. Moreover other than the direct competition,
some of the indirect competition would be the brands directly serving the nation through stores
or online, which are associated with the company. Moreover, brick and motor business like
malls, complex, and various departmental stores, which are physically available for the
customers, can be major competitors as well.
Market research
Market research is a very crucial stage while establishing a business, or in case a company likes
to grow the business. The benefits of market research include avoiding unnecessary expense,
actual trends of the industry are analyzed, and customer’s needs are assessed through market
research. This step to conduct is essential and wise to conduct. This included evaluation of
market demand, this could be a bit time consuming, but result into better business and marketing
plan, with no vague information, and the findings are in terms of facts and figure, making it more
relevant. Moreover, this could result in a better business decision to be taken in future as well.
Some of the appropriate online business tools can be utilized to conduct this research, and since
the industry is E-commerce, a most approachable method is online market research. Some of the
ideas related to market research are
 Keyword research – Google keyword planner can be a helpful tool to view how many
audience searching or awaiting for the company or product range the company is
deciding to offer to the customers. This will clearly indicate the interested audience in
any product or to purchase from the company (Hudson & Roth, 2016)
 Search for trends – this is the way company can take help of Google trends, according to
this tool, the company can compare search volumes from last few years between various
terms, a search of a similar business idea or how is any marketing event affect the
audience (Hutt & Ferrell, 2016).
 Social media examine – one can search for the trends, likes dislikes, and needs of the
customer from the social media platform (West, 2011)

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Market targets
The target market would be residents of Morocco and expanding the business globally in various
other countries. Moreover, the customer segment to target will be young age people, who are
influenced by shopping online, or are more towards the use of social media, online sites, and
believe in online trading. Both male and females can be a target as the products included both the
gender’s interest goods and services. Although, the middle and upper class is targeted, and lower
income groups are not to be intensively targeted (VanBelle, 2014).
Environmental/industry analysis
For the industry analysis, porter five force model can be helpful, for the e-commerce industry in
Morocco the five forces are as follows:
1. Bargaining power of buyers
The buyers are in a state of negotiation due to high competition in the industry. Although the
payment system is not so strong in Morocco, but still due to various options to purchase from
and the shifting cost for the customer is not so high, they can switch to any other company for
purchase. The bargaining power is in hands of customers, and the company needs to provide less
price for the products (Armstrong & Giardina, 2016).
2. Bargaining power of suppliers
The suppliers in this industry are also in the powerful position, because the company is
associated with a brand for the sale, and it cannot afford to lose any brand for the selling
purpose, therefore the brand supplying goods have the power to negotiate. Moreover, the
delivery partners are also in a state of negotiation, due to a limited number of companies
working as delivery agents in Morocco (Calboli, 2015).
3. Rivalry companies
This is the major issue of this industry that is competition. In this industry, competition is
very high, as the competitors already discussed above. This could be taken into
opportunity and with product differentiation, or by cost leadership, the company can be a
competitor to major global leaders, particularly in this market (Bhave & Mishra, 2014).
4. The threat of new entrants – the entry to this industry is not too restricted or difficult, in
today’s time, most of the sellers are becoming online sellers. The threat here involved is
that the company coming up afterward could come up with better and upgraded

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technology, and more innovative offers for the customers, and can result in a threat to the
company (Mura & Mariani, 2016)
5. Threat of substitutes
Substitutes in this industry are not so prominent, but still the brick and motor showrooms,
the store can be a threat to the online companies, because still many people believe that
the purchase must be made after seeing the goods and after selling the goods are tangibly
present. Moreover, the customers are loyal towards the store they use to visit, which can
be a threat to the e-commerce company (Chung & Fiore, 2017).
Marketing strategy
The marketing strategy for the e-commerce company includes:
 Product range – the range and variety of the products will be available in large scale, this
will attract more customer group and company will be able to target a large market
 Interface availability that is user-friendly – the use of website must be customer friendly,
as this is the major reason for the failure of many companies as the customer does not
easily understand from where to purchase and all the system.
 Strong communication system – the communication system of the company need to be
good inside out. The communication inside the organization leads to more coordinated
work, and more efficient work done, that is on time (Jawoski, 2018).
 Authenticated brands – the brands served by the company must be authentically linked to
the website, moreover, the certificate of the official certificate must be inserted with the
product image on the website as this will eventually increase the customer trust and
loyalty
 Search engine optimization – this is the words that the customer is searching and reaching
the page quickly. In case the whole name of the product is to be written by the customer,
then the customer would not able to reach to that product page quickly. With the use of
SEO, in case the customer is searching with a single term of the product, they can reach
the page easily.
 Application use and layout – the use of the application in phone must be handy and
updated according to the mobile software, and the layout must be attractive and customer
friendly

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 Technology up gradation – the upgraded technology is to use by the company to gain
competitive advantage, and avoid the threat of new entrants.
 Delivery system – the delivery partner and system must be efficient enough to reach to
the customers on time, and as quick as possible.
 Optimized checkout procedure – the checkout process, and the payment partner must be
optimized so that the customer is not irritated and do not change mind before making the
order. Therefore, the checkout process must be effective and optimum.
 Product descriptions and images – the description of the product should be very attractive
for the customer to read, that is it must include the characteristics of the product, USP,
ingredients, and expiry in case of beauty products (Dahl & Solomon, 2014).
Advertising & sales
To make the customer aware about the company and enhanced sale, one of the best method is
promotion through advertisement. There could be various advertising methods that can be used
to promote company and influence sale. Some of them are:
 Audiovisual methods – these include advertising through television advertisement with
some of the popular faces of Morocco, which can be an influencer to increase customer
loyalty for the company, and increase the trust of customers. Moreover, the advertisement
can be done through social media, and email marketing.
 Printing form – the printed advertising will include ads in magazines and journals, and
newspaper to make the customer aware of the company (Day, 2014).
The Finances
Price
Pricing strategy for this e-commerce company is price penetration or competitive pricing
strategies. The reason being that the price more than the competitors, as the switching cost is not
as such for the customers. And in today’s world, customers are becoming smart, they go through
various platforms online before making a purchase (Finne, 2017).
Expected sales/ sales forecast
The sales forecast is based on assumptions, and will be conducted for next five years
Cost-Volume-Profit Relationships -

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Breakeven
Per Unit Amounts
Selling price $ 200.00
Variable costs $ 35.00
Contribution margin $ 165.00
Total fixed costs* $ 500,000.00
Breakeven in units 3030.30
Breakeven in dollars $ 606,060.61
Fiscal year ends in December. EUR in
millions except per share data.
2019-
12
2020-
12 2021-12 2022-12
2023-
12
Revenue
1449
2
1463
4 16815 19491
2151
8
Cost of revenue 7352 7670 8788 9982
1081
4
Calculations of Sales growth rate
Fiscal year ends in December.
EUR in millions except per
share data. 2020-18 2021-18 2022-18 2023-18
Average
growth rate
Revenue growth rate 0.98% 14.90% 15.91% 10.40% 10.55%
Calculations of total expenses growth rate
Fiscal year ends in December. EUR in
millions except per share data.
2020-
18
2021-
18
2022-
18
2023-
18
Average
growth rate
Total COGS 4.33% 14.58% 13.59% 8.34% 10.21%

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Total operating expenses 1.31% 18.60% 12.11% 8.88% 10.22%
Marketing budget (in millions dollars)
Particulars 1st 2nd 3rd
Direct marketing 11000 10000 11000
Traditional
advertisement
4000 6000 8000
Social Media
marketing
4800 6000 7000
Sales 18000 13000 15000
Total 37,800 35,000 41,000
Monitoring/measurement activities
The last stage comes is monitoring the marketing plan. While evaluating the marketing intiatives,
four aspects is to be considered:
 External factors – since the environement is dynamic, and changing verey rapidly, one
must analyze the external factors constantly, and bring changes to the marketing plan
whenever required
 Cost benefits – this consideration, means that the result of any initiative taken must be
observed, that is to evaluate if the const spend on promotion or initiatives are resulting
into sales increment, or change in customer perception, whatever expected while making
plan

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 Feedback – from the initiative taken, the customer feedback mujst be take, that the
initative have implemented positively, ort negative according to the customer
 Long term perspective – whenever the marketing plan is made, the long term perpective
must be considered instaed of short term perspect, so that the resul of any intiative is
permanement or for long time (Fan & Lau, 2015).

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Conclusion
To conclude the report, it can be said that the marketing plan for e-commerce business to be
conducted in Morocco, is part of a business plan, where the focus is over marketing activities.
This plan is to be conducted in particular stages that is initially the business analysis was done,
according to which some of the strength of the business were ease of reach, skilled workforce,
and effective communication which can used to gain opportunities like delivery options, brand
association, and physical stores.
The market stage of the plan included the USP of the company that would be serving large
variety of goods and services, with quickest delivery. The target market was Morocco residents,
and the customer group who are more influenced with technological devices. Moreover,
marketing strategies were created like search engine optimization, and technology up gradation.

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