Marketing Principles and Practices: Virgin Group Case Study

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the marketing practices employed by the Virgin Group, a highly diversified organization founded by Richard Branson. It delves into key marketing concepts and terminologies, such as segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP), as well as the 7Ps of the marketing mix, illustrating how these principles are applied within the company. The report examines how Virgin Group's marketing strategies contribute to achieving its organizational objectives, including vision, mission, and specific goals like increasing sales and promoting ethical considerations. Furthermore, it explores the relationship between the marketing function and other functional areas, emphasizing cross-functional collaboration. The analysis includes both successful ventures and failures, providing a balanced perspective. The report concludes with recommendations for the organization, offering valuable insights for marketing students and professionals seeking to understand effective marketing strategies in a dynamic business environment. The study also provides a brief overview of the marketing strategies used by the company.

MARKETING PRINCIPLES
AND PRACTICES

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
1. Key Marketing concepts and terminologies applicable to Virgin group............................1
2. Organizational objectives achieved by Marketing strategies.............................................3
3. Marketing concepts and principles used in the Virgin Group............................................4
4. Relation of marketing function to other functional areas of Virgin Group and cross-
functional relationship of marketing and other departments..................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
RECOMMENDATION...................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is a mix of all the activities and a broad process that include product design
and development, research, promotion, selling and distribution and customer service. Marketing
is surrounded with core principles, tactics and strategies. The Virgin group is a highly diversified
organisation founded by Richard Branson in 1970. Branson is known for his risk taking, fun,
charismatic and daring persona and is individual most important ingredient to all the success that
has been reaped. Branson started by selling mail- order records and expand the business into
record labelling as Virgin Records. Company's growth starts from Virgin Records in 1987 then it
expands in Virgin Trains, Media and Mobile, Lifestyle Virgin Money. All the business of Virgin
Group targeted towards five pillars created by Richard that are: travel, mobile phones, leisure,
entertainment, retailing and personal finance. Virgin Groups has ruled in British market and has
expanded and operates globally across 29 countries.
With all the success, Virgin Group also face failure in virgin beverages such as Virgin
coco cola, virgin railways and virgin financial services, cosmetics, etc. the main reason behind
these failures are large diversification of product range and increasing market size.
This case study will analyse marketing practices use in The Virgin Group. It will identify
marketing concepts and terminologies which are applicable to Virgin Group and how these
marketing strategies will help the organisation to achieve its objectives. The study will also look
at marketing concepts and principles such as Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning and 7Ps of
marketing mix use in the company. It will also discuss how marketing function relate with other
functional areas and how various departments of an organisation work as a team to achieve
organisational goal. Lastly report will end up with some recommendation for organisation.
MAIN BODY
1. Key Marketing concepts and terminologies applicable to Virgin group
Marketing concepts are the strategic elements that must be implemented by any
firm/company/brand to raise sustainability and likeability of product or services in the market
(Armstrong and et. al., 2015). These concepts can be well defined through the marketing concept
and techniques of an established brand named “the Virgin group” providing wide range of
services and products in the market since past 50 years. The key marketing concepts that any
brand/company adopts to enhance the sales, profit and value to the products/services are-
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Marketing concept: Marketing concept deals with segmenting, targeting, positioning the
of products/services in the market through market research and analysis. Virgin group adopts
direct marketing strategy to avoid the interferences of related partners in the marketing policy of
the organization. Direct marketing also helps the group to evaluate its growth and requirements
directly by customers' review. Product concept: This concept focus on the product quality, performance and innovation
without the diagnosis of needs, demands and requirement of the customers. Virgin group
emphasize on innovations and providing new services/products to the customers
continuously and thus widening its range of products/services by proper management of
product's concept of marketing. Selling concept: It focuses upon the strategic selling of the product/services rather than
its requirements, need, demands (Bahadir, Bharadwaj and Srivastava, 2015). Virgin
group provides abundant services in the market and few of its services are not up to the
mark in terms of its needs and demands. Hence, the brand must deviate its focus towards
the specific sectors only to maintain customers' satisfaction.
 Social Marketing concept: This concept refers to display the company services and
growth through social media and build strong and ethical connections. Based on
appealing brand name, Virgin group has strong connections with people because of its
workforce. It makes social connections through social media and campaign like “fly in
the face of ordinary” and many more. It strongly relies on digital marketing platform to
build stronger connections worldwide.
Along with it, the key marketing techniques that comply the mentioned marketing concepts are-
Branding- Branding deliver an innovative/creative/attractive punch lines, logo, brand
name to make the brand distinguished, memorable, likeable, and competitive in the market. Like
the Virgin group, has maintained an attractive brand name and a red inked handwritten logo that
is easy to memorise. With continuous alteration in the logo, it defines its flexibility with the
changing time. The branding strategy of Virgin showcase its easy approach and strong customer
relationship (Baker, 2014). Brand is identified with playful, cheerful and fun service provider. It
has a distinguished image in the market because of continuous innovative properties.
Product strategies- It deals with product innovations and development by different
approaches of marketing. Virgin team emphasis on various service sectors such as Travel,
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Media, Music & Entertainment, Financial and Healthcare services hence expanding the
products/services with innovative ideas and variety of products/services (Dolnicar, Grün and
Leisch, 2018). The products by Virgin group vary from financial services, Banking, Books,
Health care, Travel and Tourism, Internet, music and commercial spacecrafts. All these products
have different level of ownership such as Virgin group has high position in Travel, Music,
Healthcare, Charity, Start up sectors.
Promotional Strategies- It comprises various promotional tools for advanced brand
awareness, interests and sales. Virgin group promotes the brand through digital marketing,
celebrity endorsement for its upper class services and various charity programs conducted by
Richard Branson to embrace the value based promotions. Virgin group has been linked with
various environmental concerned issues and hence promoting the brand and creating value in the
market as well.
Public Relation strategies- Public relation strategy develops the best route to deliver the
informations to the public as well as partners regarding products/services. For PR strategy,
Virgin collaborates with entrepreneurs, philanthropists and motivational leaders to form a
powerful global community relations and utilize the digital marketing platform to demonstrate its
initiative, outreach and growth to public (Jindal and et. al., 2018).
2. Organizational objectives achieved by Marketing strategies
Vision: Company vision is to create a unique name in the market.
Mission: It is to enhance quality of product.
Objective: This is to increase the sale by 20% till year end.
The organizational objectives can be easily achieved by various strategic marketing
functions depending upon the mission and vision of the organization. Virgin group has
successfully attained its objectives of long term, positive impact on the customers, people,
communities and environment. The group has an objective of uplifting the society, environment
and economy by conserving human rights and value based approaches.
The objective of long term positive impact is achieved through the branding strategy of
Virgin group align with its objectives. The logo itself symbolizes its objectives in terms of
creativity and sustainability. Virgin group has established its brand image by getting involved in
various campaigns and has conducted around 40 charity programs till now.
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Sustainable objectives of Virgin group have been achieved by different promotional
strategies-
Objective of customer relations has been attained by its effective promotional strategy
that utilizes the digital marketing platform for its initiatives named “Virgin Unite and Virgin start
up”. The “SEED programme” has achieved objective of clean energy in Uganda and Rwanda
(Huang and Sarigöllü, 2014). The “Ocean is everybody's business” is an initiative to conserve the
oceans by engagement of business entrepreneurs hence, increasing community engagement
which provides effective promotion to the brand. Promotions of the brand has also accomplished
its objective of providing 20,000 jobs by 2020 with the help of entrepreneurs.
The objective of reduction of carbon emission with the collaboration of Rocky Mountain
Institute and The B team has been achieved with strategic marketing outreach.
The group has an objective to set up 50,000 community health workers in Sub Saharan to
provide healthcare facilities to door. Similarly, number of organizational objectives have been
achieved by Virgin group and its branches with strategic implementation of marketing strategies.
Ethical considerations-
Virgin group perform each of its activities with ethical considerations. The group works
with fair consideration of government and law to ensure the best workplace for employees and
loyalty to the partners. Using ethical and sustainable facilities to the services, the brand has
established a well defined platform of credibility (Moriarty and et.al., 2014). Since, the Virgin
group is an active partnership with various social security networks, hence the group has to be
sync with various applicable legal compliance. The marketing strategies are applied under the
UK's consumer protection act.
The personnel are fully aware of all the organizational ethics that need to be follow
within the boundary. The Virgin Media provides its services under the “Communication act,
2003”, it also complies General Completion of entitlement. The procedures of follow all the
necessary regulations of Business Companies Act. Hence, all the relevant ethical considerations
and laws have been integrated to the services of Virgin.
Marketing strategies used by the company
Various marketing strategies are been used by Virgin-group in order to expand their
brand. Like for example they are making use of promotional strategy through various social
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media websites. Also, firm is engaged in creating sales promotion and public relation as a
strategy to expand their market share.
3. Marketing concepts and principles used in the Virgin Group
STP
Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning to develop marketing strategies of Virgin group:
In modern marketing STP is a familiar strategic approach and it is most commonly applied
marketing models in practices. As, this approach is consumer focused rather than product
focused approach which help Virgin Group to communicate effectively with their audience.
Segmentation
It is a process of dividing market into specific groups of consumer who shares similar
tastes, needs and wants based on different characteristics. Virgin group's main market activities
are producing, providing services, marketing and retailing (Opresnik and Hollensen, 2017). They
are segmented in various products and markets recently and they were opened many outlets and
stopped after facing failure in over competitive market such as Virgin Brides was specializing in
weddings and bridal wear, it opened in 1996 and after suffering losses and struggling they
stopped taking orders in 2007 and Virgin cola was launched in 1994 and after losses Virgin
express closed in 2006. The other successful companies are Virgin media which included Virgin
TV, Virgin Mobile and Virgin Media Business, Personal finance, Leisure, Travel and Tourism,
Entertainment etc. Virgin group embodies more than 400 companies in various sectors.
Following are the segmenting pattern for Virgin Atlantic:
 Demographic segmentation; Virgin Atlantic Airways entertains the various status, age
and gender. Most of the traveller are business and leisure traveller. They allow children
age of 5 and above to travel. They also allow trained pets with blind persons. Some of
their passengers are friends, families and high yield business travellers (Rosa and et.al.,
2019). Behavioural; Virgin Atlantic brand is known for its premium air rides and they provide
complementary limousine pick, in-flight beauty treatment and business economy cabin.
Targeting
Virgin Atlantic offers individualized services to their consumers as they believe in the
importance of individuals. They apply focused or concentrated targeting strategy and target
primarily upper class customer who are business passengers. They mainly target consumers
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segment that are financially above average or strong as the services are qualitative and service
prices are above average. Their promotional activities are fun, unique and out of the box that
create consumer's interest and they feel attached to the brand.
Positioning
Positioning is an essential element and skill in good marketing. There is tough
competition by British Airways so it is important for the industry to position their products and
services effectively compare to its competitors. For effectively positioning the brand in market
they use various promotional activities such as- Print advertising, social media marketing they
effectively target segmented consumers and markets for successful positioning (Schlegelmilch,
2016).
Marketing Mix
Illustration 1: 7 p's of
marketing
Source: (7 P'S of
marketing, 2016)
Virgin group uses marketing mix or 7Ps in daily organisational activities to target market
effectively:
Product
In the product strategy, their separated areas or range of products must follow same
attribute with the name “Virgin” so the audience can recognise their groups. They offer
competitive products and services. The travel range provides Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Travel,
they also publish and distribute Virgin Books with other stationeries, Virgin media group
include mobile, Virgin media business, radio, etc. Financial services. At one time they expand
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their range of products and services but after failures and losses now their strategy is to focus on
strength categories which are demanded and liked by its audiences.
Price
Their pricing strategy is highly sensitive to the affordability and demand of consumer.
Virgin group use competitive pricing plan and offers competitive products and services. Virgin
group know that it is essential to understand that customers are ready to spend their money if
satisfaction level is greater. Organisation set its pricing strategy on the basis of factor that affect
global market including interest rates, inflation, political instability, etc. Richard develop trend of
premium division of market which forces audience to demand quality products at higher price
levels (Shaw, 2016).
Place
Place is a signifies location where products meet consumers. Organisation have tendency
to establish itself in best and speciality sector. Virgin Group's distribution channel is extremely
expansive. As the company is global so in some cases they use direct distribution when product
can't be retailed in physical store as well as in some cases indirect distribution.
Promotion
They follow monolithic branding in their marketing approach, that means they have
family name followed by the actual product and service range. Their branding strategies are very
clever, as their promotional adverts are influential, for example, they have fed a message that
says as long customer service is of high quality and high standards, price is no object, this
attracts those consumers who want premium products and services and are not price sensitive. In
advertising they do TV, press magazines, taxi sides and outdoor poster promotion as well as their
all range featuring Virgin logo all in red colour. They believe social media can absolutely drive
sales, Virgin Group use social media with a healthy sense of fun.
People
People include employees, management, culture, customer and customer service. They
focus on providing quality customer service which make customer loyal towards the company.
The targeted consumers are mainly youth who look for a service within a budget (Slack and
Brandon-Jones, 2018). People who work in respect of Virgin group are high trained and skilled
and they focus on customer need and satisfaction which lead company to achieve the desired
goals and building brand image and reputation.
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Process
This include the process of providing service to their audience from start to end point of
sale. Trained staff of Virgin Group should obtain consumer's feedback to analyse and measure
their current practices is helpful and efficient to consumers or not. They maintain the process of
buying products or taking services via their websites or physical store is easy and secure that
meet customer expectation (Solomon and et.al., 2014).
Physical Environment
Physical environment include comfort, facilities and infrastructure of organisation where
consumer meet products and services. Virgin Group allows communication with their consumers
that help to know about consumers perception about organisation. The logo of Virgin on every
product and store in red colour attract consumers towards the brand. Their facilities in every
services are qualitative and value for money to consumer and meet customer satisfaction.
4. Relation of marketing function to other functional areas of Virgin Group and cross- functional
relationship of marketing and other departments
Marketing plays an essential role in Virgin group as well as in all other departments for
achieving organisational objective and meet customer satisfaction. There are seven main function
of marketing such as; Marketing planning, Selling and Distribution, Marketing research, Product
development, After sales service, Advertisement and Sales promotion, Public relation.
Marketing and Sales
The relation between marketing and sales function are very closely rely on one another.
Advertising and other promotional activities of Virgin Group influence consumer to purchase
and generate sales. Without marketing functions, company are not able to aware consumers
about the products and services it can cause downfall in sale rate (Williams, 2017).
Marketing and Research and Development
It includes product development, marketing research, innovation etc. If marketing
function and Research and development are effective and focused on understanding on consumer
needs it results in high productivity in Virgin. R&D responsible for innovations in products,
creating new design and style as well as it bring innovation in marketing activities which can
influence consumers in current market. Marketing use the innovations done by research and
development teams to developing products and services, do marketing research and aware
consumers about it.
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Cross functional relationship of marketing and other departments
Cross functional relation means that various departments work as a team to achieve
common organisational goal. The team can be a group of expertise people from various
departments of the organisation. It may include people from marketing, finance, human resource
and operational department.
Marketing and Finance department
All marketing plans should include major financial dimensions. Both departments are
interrelated with each other where finance department determine organisational conditions which
provides a budget to operate to marketing department. Accounting department of Virgin Group
assist management in determining profitability of business by compiling financial statements and
marketing departments create sales programs and strategies which aimed at enhancing sales
through advertising and promotions (Moriarty and et.al., 2014).
Marketing and Production department
Both departments are important for increasing the performance of Virgin group. Usually
both departments are concern with their own goals but they also carry cross functional relation.
Production department create new products with maintaining the quality and marketing
department advertise these products towards consumers and concentrate on customer
satisfaction. All in all both departments focused on fulfilling consumer need and demand and
increasing organisational profit (Williams, 2017).
CONCLUSION
From the above study it was analysed that Virgin Group is highly successful organisation,
even though they faced lots of failures and losses but Richard Branson says that it is important
and beneficial for them to experiment in every field. It was analysed that company faced losses
due to extra diversification and it was suggested to the company to focus on their potential
market. Marketing concepts and terminologies gave understanding about various marketing
strategies can applied by Virgin Group to position effectively in the market and achieve its
objectives. By using marketing mix and STP strategy company able to identify its core value and
consumer to focus on. It was also concluded that different departments of Virgin Group can
collaborate and work as a team to achieve organisational goal, it seemed an effective strategy for
the company to team up as cross functional team.
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RECOMMENDATION
 There is rising concern regarding company's extent group diversification and it affect on
brand reputation, it is recommended to the Virgin Company to research the market and
select suitable range that suit personality of brand rather than diverse its market
everywhere.
 Company should understand how to differentiate its core consumers and their wants and
focus on to meet consumer satisfaction as well as make the organisation stand out from
the crowd by continuing its unique marketing strategy.
 Both Virgin Rail and Virgin Media ad many complaints from consumer and critics have
suggested that rail is weakness in virgin's portfolio, it is suggested to them to keep their
concentration and focus on their strength.
 It is recommended that the group should consider change in their policy to accommodate
both joint venture and independent to rely upon short term profit.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Armstrong and et.al., 2015. Marketing: an introduction.
Bahadir, S.C., Bharadwaj, S.G. and Srivastava, R.K., 2015. Marketing mix and brand sales in
global markets: Examining the contingent role of country-market characteristics. Journal
of International Business Studies. 46(5). pp.596-619.
Baker, M.J., 2014. Marketing strategy and management. Macmillan International Higher
Education.
Dolnicar, S., Grün, B. and Leisch, F., 2018. Step 9: Customising the Marketing Mix. In Market
Segmentation Analysis.(pp. 245-254). Springer, Singapore.
Huang, R. and Sarigöllü, E., 2014. How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand
equity, and the marketing mix. In Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors. (pp. 113-
132). Springer, New York, NY.
Jindal and et.al., 2018. Point-of-Sale Marketing Mix and Brand Performance–The Moderating
Role of Retail Format and Brand Type.
Moriarty and et. al., 2014. Advertising: Principles and practice. Pearson Australia.
Opresnik, M.O. and Hollensen, S., 2017. Marketing: Principles and Practice: A Comprehensive
Guide for Students and Practitioners. Opresnik Management Consulting.
Rosa and et.al., 2019. Introduction: Presenting the Case for Studying the Emergence and
Development of Family Business Groups. In The Family Business Group Phenomenon.
(pp. 1-13). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Schlegelmilch, B.B., 2016. Segmenting Targeting and Positioning in Global Markets. In Global
Marketing Strategy.(pp. 63-82). Springer, Cham.
Shaw, S., 2016. Airline marketing and management. Routledge.
Slack, N. and Brandon-Jones, A., 2018. Operations and process management: principles and
practice for strategic impact. Pearson UK.
Solomon and et. al., 2014. Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being (Vol. 10). London:
Pearson.
Williams, D., 2017. Richard Branson as a Global Magnate. What to learn from him about
Business.
Online
Virgin Group. 2016. [ONLINE] Available through
<https://www.arabianbusiness.com/companies/virgin-group-76902.html>
7 P'S of marketing. 2016. [ONLINE]. Available through
<https://www.professionalacademy.com/blogs-and-advice/marketing-theories---the-
marketing-mix---from-4-p-s-to-7-p-s>
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