Marketing Function, Roles, and Responsibilities Report for Subway

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the marketing function within Subway, exploring its core roles and responsibilities. It begins by defining marketing and its significance, then delves into the specific functions performed by the marketing department, including market research, marketing planning, promotions, product design and development, and standardization. The report outlines the responsibilities of the marketing function, such as enhancing brand image, listening to customers, pricing products, engaging customers, and ensuring customer satisfaction. Furthermore, it examines how the marketing function interrelates with other departments within Subway, including production, finance, IT, and human resources. The report highlights the importance of communication and collaboration between these departments to achieve organizational objectives. The report concludes by summarizing the integral role of marketing in creating brand awareness, analyzing customer needs, and promoting products, emphasizing its interconnectedness with other business functions.

MARKETING ESSENTIALS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
P1 Explaining the role and responsibilities of marketing function.............................................3
P2 How key roles and responsibilities of marketing relates to wider organisational context.....5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Marketing can be defined as the set of actions that are concerned with the promoting and
selling of the products or services. Another set of marketing activities include market research
for understanding the need of customers and advertising for attracting the consumers (Pike,
2015). Subway, American fast food chain is held privately was founded in 1965 and
headquartered in Milford, Connecticut, US. It mainly offers submarine sandwiches and salads
across the international market. The present report is going to discuss the role of marketing
function in the organisation and how it interrelates with other functions of the company.
TASK 1
P1 Explaining the role and responsibilities of marketing function
Marketing is basically referred to an activity of creating awareness about the products and
services of a business in the market (Baker, 2016). It involves identifying the needs and
requirements of the customers and offering them such products and services that have some
value to the customers. Marketing function in the Subway have different roles and
responsibilities that are discussed below:

Illustration 1: Marketing function
(Source: Functions of Marketing, 2018)
Market research: Marketing department performs the function of conducting market
research, gathering information relating to different aspect of business environment and
analysing it. The research involves identification of the customers and their specific demands and
requirements, position of competitors in the market, purchasing capacity of the buyers etc. All
this information becomes the base on which the significant decision relies like designing of the
products, branding, labelling, pricing strategies, method of communicating with the customers
etc (Malhotra, 2015).
Marketing planning: The marketing function play a role in making plans for enhancing
the production, sales, promotion of services and products of Subway. The plan outlines the
promotional, advertising, and other marketing efforts for providing a direction to the company in
achieving its specific organisational objectives and goals.

Promotions: The role of marketing function includes creating plans and conducting
various promotional events and campaigns for attracting the customers throughout worldwide, it
prepares the strategies of how the food items could be made popular in the market, what will the
market budgets for promoting the products and brand etc.
Designing and development of product: The marketing department plays a crucial role in
designing and developing a product because it is the marketing department that is directly
connected with the customers and possess the information regarding what the customers exactly
wants. Product designing involves quality standards in terms of shape, design, packaging for
attracting the customers. Product development involves making the sandwiches, burgers and
other offerings of the supreme quality that have the capability of meeting the expectations of the
customers.
Standardization: Subway being a fast food restaurant, its long term profitability relies on
the taste and quality of the food. The marketing function helps the restaurant in delivering
consistent quality of food to its customers by providing pre- determined standards to the
production department. These standards allow organisation in being uniform it is production of
food and delivery services.
Responsibilities of Marketing function
Enhancing brand image: It is the responsibly of the marketing department to build and
enhance the brand image of the fast food chain across the borders. Branding is the process of
differentiating food items of Subway from its competitors in terms of taste, quality, packaging,
price etc. (Marketing Functions: 12 Essential Functions of Marketing – Discussed, 2019).
Listening customers and support services: Marketing function has the responsibility of
listening and understanding customers’ needs, handling the complaints of customers additional
services that create value to the target audience such as after sale services. The feedback availed
from the customers helps the restaurant in achieving its objective of maximum customer
satisfaction.
Pricing of the products: Price of a product creates demand for the food items in the
market. Inappropriate pricing of the products could lead to decrease in the customer base for the
restaurant. Therefore, it is the duty of the marketing department to perfectly analyse the market
trends, customers buying power and their willingness to pay for a particular product. This
becomes the basis for pricing the products correctly.

Engaging customers: Customer engagement is the emotional attachment of customer
with a brand. Marketing undertakes the responsibility of creating and enhancing the customers'
engagement for building a loyal custom base for the business. Customers could be engaged by
offering discounts, holding contests etc.
Customer satisfaction: It is the key to success for the organisation. Making customers
happy helps Subway in retaining in them and this is done by the marketing function which
understands what a customer wants and offering them the value which satisfies them to the
utmost level.
P2 How key roles and responsibilities of marketing relates to wider organisational context
Marketing function gathers necessary information and communicates it with the other
departments of the company. The information provided by marketing department becomes basis
upon different business departments operates. It connected with other business functions in the
following ways:
Marketing and Production function: Marketing function is responsible for identifying
and assessing the knowledge about the customer’s preferences related to quality of food
products, prices they are willing to pay, current demand for the fast food items in the market. The
production department in the Subway afterwards plans its production as per the information
provided by the marketing department and ensure that food is of the quality that best meet the
expectations of the customers. Also, production scale is undertaken as per the market demand
stated by the marketing department. This helps in meeting dynamics of the business environment
(Hempelmann and Engelen, 2015).
Marketing and Finance department: Marketing function undertakes the activities of
research, promotions, distribution for which it requires funds. Lack of adequate funds can limit
the marketing function. Thus, finance department is communicated with such fund requirements
which it then arranges for marketing function for facilitating smooth flow of promotional and
research activities within in the organisation. Another way in which both the functions are
interrelated is that marketing is concerned with creating sales volume and enlarging market share
and finance department is concerned with cash flow generated with sales and making the
investment of the cash inflow in the most productive way (Sexton, 2016).
IT and Marketing: IT and marketing department of the Subway restaurant is closely
related in many ways. Firstly, IT provides the necessary infrastructure for the marketing

department for undertaking customer support services by providing customer relationship
management system (CRM). By this system, marketing manager assess and analyses useful
information about the customers. Secondly, increasing trend of online delivery of food has made
these departments even more related than before. For example, marketing department provides
the display designs of the website of Subway for making it more appealing and convenient and
IT department according develop such user friendly website for facilitating the online delivery
services (Pimenta, da Silva and Tate, 2016). Thirdly, evolution of technology has led to the
change in the marketing and promoting strategies of the restaurant. Like content marketing is
becoming very popular which has provided opportunity for Subway to highly engage its
customers. This increases website traffic leading to enhanced brand awareness and better ranking
on search engine. All this could be done only by the support of IT as it provides integrated
support system, freelancer integration and marketing automation facilities.
Marketing and Human resources: Marketing department requires talented and skilled
personnel for performing the activities of market research, product development. It also requires
creative people for providing inputs in creating innovative marketing strategies, competent sales
team for materialising the efforts of marketing department. HR department understands the
workforce requirement and provides the most suitable staff for performing the marketing
effectively and efficiently.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it can be summarised that making function is the integral part of
the company. This is because it helps it in creating a brand image, analysing the needs and
requirements of customers through which it serves those food products that are capable of
meeting the customer expectation. This function creates brand awareness in the market and
promotes the products based upon which sales team undertake their actions. Also, this function
does not operate in isolation is related with every other business function of restaurant for the
purpose of achieving organisational objectives and goals.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Baker, M.J., 2016. What is marketing?. In The Marketing Book(pp. 25-42). Routledge.\
Hempelmann, F. and Engelen, A., 2015. Integration of finance with marketing and R & D in new
product development: The role of project stage. Journal of Product Innovation
Management. 32(4). pp.636-654.
Malhotra, N. K., 2015. Essentials of marketing research: A hands-on orientation. Essex:
Pearson.
Pike, S., 2015. Destination marketing: essentials. Routledge.
Pimenta, M. L., da Silva, A. L. and Tate, W. L., 2016. Characteristics of cross-functional
integration processes: evidence from Brazilian organizations. The International Journal of
Logistics Management. 27(2). pp.570-594.
Sexton, D.E., 2016. 11 The Relationship of Marketing and Finance. Accountable Marketing:
Linking marketing actions to financial performance. p.137.
Online
Marketing Functions: 12 Essential Functions of Marketing – Discussed.2019. [Online].
Available through <http://www.businessmanagementideas.com/marketing/marketing-
functions-12-essential-functions-of-marketing-discussed/2288>
Functions of Marketing. 2018. [Online]. Available through
<https://www.gktoday.in/gk/functions-of-marketing/>