Strategic Marketing Report: An Analysis of P&G's Strategies

This report provides a strategic marketing analysis of Procter & Gamble (P&G), a leading consumer goods company. It begins with a situation analysis, examining P&G's market position, competition, and sales trends in the FMCG sector, highlighting the challenges of new product introduction. Th...Read More

STRATEGIC MARKETING
Introduction
The marketing strategy may be considered to be one of the most Critical Success
Factors (CSFs) in a business and the instant paper delves into the analysis of
marketing strategy with respect to a given case study.
Situation Analysis
The instant situation is related to the case study of Procter & Gamble Co.
(hereinafter may be referred to as “P&G” or the company or the business, as the
case may be), one of the largest consumer goods businesses across the world with
its widespread customer base and quality product offering in Fast Moving Consumer
Goods (FMCGs) segment.
 The demand of the product is regular and not seasonal.
 The sales volume in last few years may be stated herein:
Figure 1: Revenue of P&G
(Source: "Can Procter & Gamble’s Revenue Cross $72 Billion By 2021?", 2018)
 The FMCG market across the world is extremely competitive and competitors of
the company in the USA may include Colgate, Wal-Mart etc.
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 The changing horizon of testes and preference of the customers, any changes in
the regulatory environment and labor market may affect the business operations.
 The company may be considered to be in the growth stage of PLC where the
saturation has already been achieved, Now, the management may need to
diversify the product lines to gain competitive advantage and be within the
competitive market (Banerjee, 2017).
 The company follows a multi-distribution model where the products are sold in
both online as well as offline through retailers and online shops.
 The brand value, large customer base etc. are some of the strengths; whereas,
the extreme competition and price-war in the market are may be considered to be
weakness in the form of threat which the company is struggling to counter.
 The company’s cost structure is efficiently designed and most of the revenue is
being spent towards production, acquisition and administration. The marketing
budget has also been considerably reasonable and it may be stated that the
company incurs sizably towards promoting its brands and offerings through
aggressive publicity campaigning.
Defining Symptoms
The problem, as stated within the given case study is related to the fact that the
company is suffering from the issue of new product introduction in the market. IN
doing so, the company is facing the issue related to distribution and marketing
strategy to be adopted in this regard. The management needs to ponder over the
relevant and fruitful strategy that should be implemented to promote the product
among the targeted audiences (Dobni & Sand, 2018).
Objectives
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The company has the advantages large number of satisfied customer base across
the world with its efficient distribution network. Therefore, introduction of new product
line may not be perceived to be an issue for the management if the marketing
strategy is designed effectively. However, the primary objective here for the
management would be to reach out to the large number of people with their latest
offering.
Generating and Evaluating Alternatives
In order to achieve the aforesaid objective, the company may need to have certain
alternatives in place. These alternatives are briefly discussed as below:
 Focus on e-commerce and online distribution: It is observed that the online
distribution and marketing cost is cheaper that of the physical store keeping cost
and hence, companies nowadays prefer mostly to online instead of marketing
their products through hoarding, billboard and offline retail stores (Jain & Sharma,
2018).
 Cost restructuring: The Activity Based Costing (ABC) may need to be applied to
identify any redundant costs so as to eliminate the same and enhance budget
accordingly towards marketing and promotional activities (Chernev, 2018).
 Product differentiation: ABC method will also enable the management to redesign
the product and a Business Process Engineering (BPR) may be performed to
introduce new product in the market by tweaking the existing product only.
 In-house production: The management may need to consider setting-up own
manufacturing unit where most parts of the product may be developed to
increase the quality and reduce the cost (McDONALD, 2016).
Decision and Conclusion
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Based on the evaluation and assessment as performed in the previous sections of
the paper, it may finally be concluded that the company should combine all three
alternatives and eliminate the in-house production. This is because the same may
involve one-time set-up cost which may prove to be costly presently. However, the
recommended combination will surely add value to the company’s marketing
strategy (Sahaf, 2019). So, it may be concluded that a well-designed marketing plan
supported by efficient leadership and management will significantly help the
business to achieve its long-term goal of sustainability in the industry in most cost
and time-efficient manner (Tomczak, Reinecke & Kuss, 2018).
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References
Banerjee, S. B. (2017). Corporate environmentalism and the greening of strategic
marketing: Implications for marketing theory and practice. In Greener
Marketing (pp. 16-40). Routledge.
Can Procter & Gamble’s Revenue Cross $72 Billion By 2021?. Forbes. (2018).
Retrieved 6 April 2020, from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/10/31/can-procter--
gambles-revenue-cross-72-billion-by-2021/#17de8f3eaee9.
Chernev, A. (2018). Strategic marketing management. Cerebellum Press.
Dobni, C. B., & Sand, C. (2018). Strategy shift: Integrating strategy and the firm’s
capability to innovate. Business Horizons, 61(5), 797-808.
Jain, A., & Sharma, R. (2018). Flagship and Flanker Brands: Consumer Preference
Study of Hindustan Unilever Limited and Procter & Gamble. IUP Journal of
Brand Management, 15(3), 7-22.
McDONALD, M. A. L. C. O. L. M. (2016). Strategic marketing planning: theory and
practice. In The marketing book (pp. 108-142). Routledge.
Sahaf, M. A. (2019). Strategic marketing: making decisions for strategic advantage.
PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.
Tomczak, T., Reinecke, S., & Kuss, A. (2018). Marketing Implementation and
Management Control. In Strategic Marketing (pp. 223-244). Springer Gabler,
Wiesbaden.
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