An Analysis of Marketing Strategies and Practices: The Virgin Group

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the marketing strategies employed by the Virgin Group, a UK-based holding company founded by Richard Branson. It begins by defining key marketing concepts and terminology relevant to the group, including product strategy, branding, and promotional strategies. The report then identifies specific marketing tactics and programs that have contributed to the Virgin Group's organizational objectives, such as their use of YouTube videos, television advertisements, and social media engagement. Furthermore, it explores the marketing concepts and principles utilized in the Virgin Group's daily operations, focusing on the 7 Ps of the marketing mix. The report also examines the relationship between various marketing functions and other departments within the Virgin Group, highlighting the importance of customer-centric approaches and ethical considerations in achieving business success. Overall, the report offers valuable insights into the Virgin Group's successful marketing practices.

Marketing Principles &
Practice

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
1. Explaining key marketing concepts and terminology of The Virgin group............................1
2. Identifying the marketing strategy and programs of the Virgin group that helped in attaining
organisation objectives................................................................................................................3
3. Explaining the marketing concepts and principles used in the Virgin group's daily
operations....................................................................................................................................4
4. Explaining different relationship of marketing functions with different department in Virgin
group...........................................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is a crucial function for and business organisation, it is a broad process that
involves different functions including research, product design, development and customer
services. Marketing principles and practices are broad concept which includes different ideas
which are agreed upon most product promotion strategies. Many organisation uses different
marketing principles that assist them in order to enhance the performance of existing products in
market. Report will based on a case study which present the marketing activities of Virgin
Groups. Virgin Groups limited is a U.K based holding company which is incorporated by
Richard Branson. The report will helped in describing different marketing concepts that are
applied in Virgin groups. Further, it will discuss variious marketing strategies which assist the
organisation in attaining its goals in most ethical manner. Report will discuss the marketing
concepts which are essential in daily organisational operations. Further more, relationship
between different marketing functions will explained with different functional areas in Virgin
group.
1. Explaining key marketing concepts and terminology of The Virgin group.
Virgin is one of the world's most attractive brand that has many diverse sectors which are
expanded from travel to telecommunication, health to banking and from music to leisure. Virgin
has started as a mail order record in 1970, there are more more than 60 Virgin companies
worldwide approx in 35 countries. Virgin is Diversified grouping with more than 200
companies.
The marketing concepts is directly related to philosophy that every business use that is
create a product or services that can fulfil the needs of its customers that are essential for both
customers as well as the company. Every business use different marketing concepts in order to
gain more business in market. In order to attain and satisfy the objectives of organisation, they
have to adopt different marketing management philosophies that will help to satisfy the
customers better than their competitors. Marketing Concepts of Virgin Groups are directly
related to needs, wants and demand (Musumeci and et.al., 2013). The marketing concept of
Virgin group is diversified with a wide range of products, its branding and promotional strategy:.
The marketing concepts of Virgin group are as follows:
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 Product strategy: In this strategy, the concept of product works on the assumptions that
customers are prefer products of greater quality and price availability doesn't influence
their purchasing. Looking at the product strategy of Virgin Group, they have adopted an
unrelated diversification strategy. It can be defined as the entering in entirely new
industry that lacks with the existing industry of the firm. In case of Virgin Group,
unrelated diversification strategy has certainly been the successful strategy which helps it
to maximises its profit. The virgin group has more than 200 companies with wide
diversified products from the Virgin Bridal stores to Virgin Airlines. Virgin groups also
includes 60 different businesses with variety of products and services in from different
field. Virgin Atlantic airline and Virgin media. There are other numerous range of
products and services includes, Virgin mobiles, Virgin money, Virgin trains etc. Branding : With such a diverse product range, virgin brand has become common in day
to day life weather its airlines, railway, media or mobile (Lu and Oza, 2013). From
almost over five decades, Virgin company has emerged as a world's best known business
in the world. Virgin groups diversification in multiple sectors and industries are focuses
on the importance of customer experience with different product range. Being an British
company, the brand has spread across the globe. Whether in any sector, Virgin has earned
has earned immense success and become one of the most desirable and well known
company. Virgin groups biggest asset is Virgin brand, this brand is associate with
different products that linked with different styles and broader social values. The brand
strategy of Virgin has started expanding with its business. With the success in many
sectors, Virgin Brand has also witnessed many failures in 90's including Virgin Cola,
Virgin Brides and in Virgin Cosmetics.
 Promotional Strategy: One of the core value of virgin Group is to provide heartfelt
services and products to customers with full fun that can be seen in the group's marketing
activities. As per the characteristics possess by the chairman Richard Branson, always
enthusiastic and made headlines with his fun (Sola and et.al., 2015). The company's core
value of adventure has been promoted on social media and television by completely
adopting different way. Virgin groups simple promotional strategy is to communicate the
core value of the company too customer in simplest way possible.
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2. Identifying the marketing strategy and programs of the Virgin group that helped in attaining
organisation objectives.
Virgin group is the big combination of organisation with hundreds of subsidiary
companies. It has global success over various similar competitors in business sector like travel,
mobile, media, holidays and more. Virgin's brand in built around a desire in order to serve
customer, enhance revenue which ultimately assist the organisation in attaining its objectives. In
order to spread international level operations, Virgin group has adopted different marketing
tactics which can be termed as off-beat marketing tactic. These off-beat marketing approach are
very effective with the help of creativity and technology, Virgin groups has taken initiative to
adapt such approach for its marketing and promotional tactics (Hofmann, 2016). Some of these
tactics that virgin Group has adopted are: Videos on YouTube: With the help of internet, it becomes very easy to reach to the
customers. instead of being promotional, Virgin groups has its own “Disruptors” video
series. Richard Branson, Chairman of Virgin Groups himself can be seen in many videos,
exploring parts of the organisation etc. which makes the Virgin seems more personal and
caring combination of organisations. Creating a video on YouTube is an effective way to
get notices and attract customers. Marketing team of Virgin can make video with
effective content by making it more creative that helps the customers to see the other side
of the organisation, the product or services that intended to be offered. Television advertisement: Virgin has uses different television ads show for its marketing
purpose, from ads to different promotional events and programs. A number of celebrity
can be seen with the chairman which helps in boosting up the marketing of the business
and the way customer or client will see the virgin. Some events like on 25th anniversary
celebrity like Ellie Goulding was invited (Pizarro and et.al., 2013). Advertising is the
huge part of the promotion which helps in promoting the brand and attracting more
customers. the company draws particular attention to with its advertising campaign “Fly
in the Face of Ordinary”, which was launched in 2012. Virgin Atlantic TV advertisement
was one of the most effective piece of marketing which are full of images that defines
luxury, glamour and sophistication. Such television advertisement of virgin has helped in
portraying women dominance, in such ads both gender are represented equally that re
intended to attract female audience for promotion. This marketing tactics are very
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efficient in creating the image of virgin group as stylish and high-class but at the same are
customer oriented.
 Social Media: One of the main reason that Virgin group brand is much appealing is
having strong connection with its customers. The marketing team of Virgin is creative
enough to follow the latest trend in market for promotional strategy and experimenting
with out of the ordinary. Virgin group has strong presence on the social media including
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. As per the social media manager of Virgin Group, the
company has amongst highest growth rate of all time on Facebook, twitter for the airline
sector alone (5 Social Media lessons to learn from @VirginAmerica , 2018 ). The social
platform of virgin also provided excellence customer service by regularly be active on
social media, by regularly twitting, blogging etc. With the Virgin start-ups, the flash pack
was launched which was a marketing campaign that has went viral over the world. The
selfie on top of Rio De Janeiro became famous all over the world named as “ultimate
selfie” which perfectly explained the core value of company, of adventure. It helped
virgin group to attract more than 25 million views on company's website.
Virgin group has always followed the ethical consideration, maintains a code of conduct
while operating marketing activities also. Richard Branson being a entrepreneur, follows
entrepreneurial culture a and creating novel approach for customers. The core objectives of the
company in customer satisfaction by creating value for money by creating broader social values.
Al the Virgin Group's company centre attraction is its customers, all the marketing activity are
ensured to be attain the objective of the company in most ethical manner. As according to the
Richard Branson, ethical business and successful business are two side of same coin. Virgin
groups has works to attain its objectives by following the ethical code of conduct by fighting the
inequalities, safeguarding planet in order to make the future market for next generation.
3. Explaining the marketing concepts and principles used in the Virgin group's daily operations.
Marketing concept is an important strategy which is being used by virgin group in order
to satisfy the customer needs, increase sales, maximize the profit and assist in remain
competitive in industry. Marketing management is the important process which assist in
managing the marketing activities of the firms. Virgin group has used marketing mix approach
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which helped the company to target the potential customers with the product and services being
offered to them.
Marketing mix is all about getting right offer to right person at the right time. Marketing
mix of 7 P' s are very helpful for Virgin groups, which helps them in making different strategies
and tactics in order to promote the brand in target market (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012).
The following are the 7 P's of service and product marketing mix of virgin Group which helped
in its daily operations. Product: The product strategy that is being adopted by virgin group is focused on
customer by offering them quality products and services. The strategy of product which is
used Virgin is unrelated diversification strategy. It helped the company to enter in
entirely new industry with wide diverse range of product that helped Virgin to gain
immense success in many sectors from in travelling, telecommunication, media,
clothing etc. Price: Virgin group uses a competitive pricing strategy for its product and services. It
has mentioned from company's statements that price is not important than providing high
standard customer service. The product of Virgin group has set foundation of more
luxurious than other companies that are not looking appealing to customers that are very
beneficial for virgin groups. Promotion: The company's promotional strategy is effective and has impact on
customers. The company has adopted different promotional platform to promote its
different products and services. As per the personality possess by Richard Branson,
Virgin group also uses off-beat marketing approach to promote its brand (Armstrong and
et.al., 2014). From YouTube videos to TV advertisement, from social media to different
PR events, it helped marketing team to be innovative and creative in their marketing
operations. Price: With the wide range of product and service offering, having operations in diverse
sectors, their distribution channel is very wide and expensive. Being a global company,
they use direct distribution as well as indirect distribution. As it is very essential to
provide the product and service at the time, having vast network of distribution is very
essential. For Virgin Atlantic airlines, company is using middle-man that is travel agents
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like first choice and Thomas cook. Operational department has uses such distribution
channels that assist them to hit bigger market. Physical evidence: Virgin group operates from London, United Kingdom. They have
more than 200 subsidiary company under the brand virgin group that operates in UK and
more than 60 companies that are operating in all over the world. The Virgin Group
operates in more than 35 countries. Company is listed as holding company in 1989,
which helped the customer to had a proof of company’s existence (von der Heidt and
Quazi, 2013). It assists the companies to operate in more destinations to spread its target
market over the world.
 People: There are more than 71000 employees across 35 countries that are working in
Virgin Group. It helped the company to ensure proper employee engagement as they are
main representative of a company to the customers. Company gives much emphasis on
the employee’s engagement which helped in enhancing their performance a and
productivity.
Another marketing principle that are very essential for virgin group in their daily
marketing operations are STP concepts. STP is a three step approach which assist the marketing
team of company to build a targeted marketing plan. STP stands for Segmenting, Targeting and
Positioning. The STP marketing that helped Virgin group are as follows: Segmenting: Virgin group has made segments in the market in diverse form. It can be
said that the company has segmented many different sectors and market with the help of
its cross products and unrelated diversification strategy (Khan, 2013). Virgin group has
extended its market segments with much diverse range of products and services from
telecommunication, media, airlines etc. For different industry virgin group has segmented
their market on the criteria of demographic, age, gender and income basis. Targeting: After segmenting the market, virgin group has made strategy in order to target
different segments to attract more customer and made good market share. The most
profitable market segments of Virgin group are Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Mobiles. As
The Virgin Atlantic airlines target higher income customers for their business class
flights, Virgin Cola target young customers in order to entering the international market
that helped them in attracting more loyal customers.
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 Positioning: The goal of this stage is to create clear and positive image of Virgin brand in
minds of customers regarding the product and services of company. Marketing team of
virgin group is creative enough in taking out the best strategies of marketing that are
completely out of the box (Palmatier and Sridhar, 2017). This marketing operations
helped virgin brand to establish its market. Virgin Atlantic has helped in position itself as
luxurious yet cost effective in mind of customers.
4. Explaining different relationship of marketing functions with different department in Virgin
group.
Marketing functions is important activity of Virgin group which includes performing
market research, preparing a market plan, product development. It also includes making different
strategies that helps in promotion, advertising, distribution, sales, customer service etc.
marketing is an important function on which all the business activities are depends that is
satisfying the needs and wants of the customers (Gummesson, 2011). It can be said that
marketing functions are interrelated with other functional areas of Virgin group which links in
order to integrated plans of an organisation's functions.
The relationship of marketing and its functions with different functional areas of Virgin
groups are as follows: Research and development: The main function of this department is to generate new
ideas and innovation in order create new products and services. Being such a diverse
company, marketing research is the important functions which helps in collecting ideas
and information of new trend and customers’ needs which are essential in developing
new products and services. Operational department: Operational functions includes production, logistics,
maintaining supply chain. Distribution and selling of product and services in an important
functions of marketing (Brettel and et.al., 2011). The marketer of Virgin group
determines the need of products and services in the market on the basis of which the
production function can be operated. Human resource: the main function of HR department is to recruit, hire and train the
employees in company. They are concerned with hiring, managing and train the
employees for marketing department. The functions of marketing such as promotion,
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advertising, PR campaign of Virgin group will have required skilled employees.
Marketing team has to collaborate to HR department in order to prepare job description
for required employees.
 Finance: Virgin group gives much emphasis on its promotional marketing functions. All
the plans made by marketing departments includes a major financial dimensions. In every
organisation, funds are allocated to the extent of their return. In Virgin groups also
finance departments made budgets for every other department. On the basis of that
budgets, marketing department performs its various functions. In many cases on the basis
of marketing planning and plans, they required more funds, finance departments than has
to make allocate the funds as per the financing needs of marketing operations.
CONCLUSION
By summing up the above report, it can be concluded that, marketing principles and
practice is essential in order to satisfy the customer needs and demands by different product
promotion strategies. It can be concluded from the report that different marketing principles
assist in making different marketing strategies that are essential to attain the organisational
objectives. Present report had concluded different marketing principles and practices that has
been adopted by Virgin groups in order to attain its organisational goals and objectives. The
virgin group is UK based multi holding organisation which has more than 200 subsidiary
companies in more than 25 countries. The report has concluded how different marketing
concepts has applicable in Virgin group. Further, it has been analysed that by using off-beat
marketing approach Virgin Group has achieved its organisational objectives. Report has
concluded various marketing principles that are used by the company. At-last, it has been
concluded the relationship between different marketing functions to different organisational
departments.
Recommendation
It can be recommanded to the Virgin Group should entered the international market with
its best products and services. The company should adopt different pricing strategies in order to
attract more customers. It can also be recommanded that company should focus on its
promotional and off-beat marketing strategy that will assist in maintaining the market share of
company.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Armstrong, G. and et.al., 2014. Principles of marketing. Pearson Australia.
Brettel, M and et.al., 2011. Cross‐functional integration of R&D, marketing, and manufacturing
in radical and incremental product innovations and its effects on project effectiveness and
efficiency. Journal of Product Innovation Management. 28(2). pp.251-269.
Gummesson, E., 2011. Total relationship marketing. Routledge.
Hofmann, D. C., 2016. The Influence of Charismatic Authority on Operational Strategies and
Attack Outcomes of Terrorist Groups. Journal of Strategic Security, 9(2), p.3.
Jobber, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2012. Principles and practice of marketing (No. 7th).
McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Khan, T., 2013. STP strategy for New Product Launch-a Work in Progress. International Journal
of Business and Management Invention. 2(3). pp.56-65.
Lu, N. and Oza, S., 2013. A comparative study of the mechanical properties of hemp fiber with
virgin and recycled high density polyethylene matrix. Composites Part B:
Engineering. 45(1). pp.1651-1656.
Musumeci, G. and et.al., 2013. Extra-virgin olive oil diet and mild physical activity prevent
cartilage degeneration in an osteoarthritis model: an in vivo and in vitro study on lubricin
expression. The Journal of nutritional biochemistry. 24(12). pp.2064-2075.
Palmatier, R. W. and Sridhar, S., 2017. Marketing strategy: Based on first principles and data
analytics. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Pizarro, C. and et.al., 2013. Classification of Spanish extra virgin olive oils by data fusion of
visible spectroscopic fingerprints and chemical descriptors. Food chemistry. 138(2-3).
pp.915-922.
Sola, M. and et.al., 2015. The viability of chondrocytes after an in vivo injection of local
anaesthetic and/or corticosteroid: a laboratory study using a rat model. The bone & joint
journal. 97(7). pp.933-938.
von der Heidt, T. and Quazi, A., 2013. Enhancing learning-centeredness in marketing principles
curriculum. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ). 21(4). pp.250-258.
ONLINE
5 Social Media lessons to learn from @VirginAmerica . 2018 [Online] Available
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