Marketing Essentials: Tesco's Marketing Mix and Strategic Planning

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Marketing Essentials

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
LO 1 Explain the role of marketing and how it interrelates with other functional units of an
organisation......................................................................................................................................4
Using examples from your chosen organisation explain the key roles and responsibility of the
marketing function and also analyse the roles and responsibilities of marketing in the context
of marketing environment of your chosen environment (P1, M1)..............................................4
Explain how roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational context
and also analyse the significance of the interrelationships between marketing and other
functional units of your chosen organisation (P2, M2)...............................................................5
Critically analyse and evaluate the key elements of the marketing function and how they
interrelate with other functional units of your chosen organisation (D1)....................................7
LO 2 Compare ways in which organisations use elements of the marketing mix (7Ps) to achieve
overall business objectives..............................................................................................................8
Using your chosen organisation and another organisation, compare how organisation use the
various elements of 7P’s marketing mix in the marketing planning process to achieve business
objective (P3, M3).......................................................................................................................8
LO 3 Develop and evaluate a basic marketing plan......................................................................13
Using your chosen organisation, produce and evaluate a basic marketing plan to meet
marketing goals and objective. The marketing plan should include all elements of the 7Ps
marketing mix, with an action plan and measures for marketing and evaluating the progress
and meeting of your chosen organisation’s goals and objectives (P4, M4)..............................13
Design a strategic marketing plan that should tactically apply the use of the 7Ps (D2)............17
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................19
Reference.......................................................................................................................................20

Introduction
Using the different concepts of marketing helps the company in the various ways like it helps the
company in identifying the untouched demand and needs of the customers, enhancing the
satisfaction level of the customers through experiencing the services and products offered by the
company. In this way, it would not be wrong to say that he success factor of the company highly
depends on how well the company is able to adopt the different concepts of the term marketing.
Here, two concepts of marketing i.e. marketing plan and marketing mix would be explained in
detail through the example of Tesco (a supermarket in UK). Along with this, the roles and
responsibility of marketing as a function and also in the context of marketing environment of
Tesco would be discussed in the current assignment.

LO 1 Explain the role of marketing and how it interrelates with other functional units of an
organisation
Using examples from your chosen organisation explain the key roles and responsibility of
the marketing function and also analyse the roles and responsibilities of marketing in the
context of marketing environment of your chosen environment (P1, M1)
Key roles and responsibility of the marketing function: The process of marketing comes under
the most important processes of the organisation. Here, the key roles and responsibilities of
marketing function are explained:
- Conducting researches: In order to make the decisions and policies, the company Tesco
has to conduct various researches that provide an idea to the company about how the
success rate of the company could be enhanced in the market through adding some
features in products and services that the company is offering. So marketing plays a very
important role in conducting the researches regarding the products and needs of the
customers (Borden, 2016).
- Identifying the needs and wants of customers: The main motive of using the marketing is
to identify the exact needs and wants of thee customers presents in the market so that the
company could be able to know what services could fulfil their needs and wants. So,
here, it could be said that marketing plays a very important role in satisfying the needs of
the customers through identifying their needs and wants.

Roles and responsibilities of marketing in the context of marketing environment of Tesco:
The marketing environment of the company includes the various factors like competitors,
customers, government policies etc. Here, the roles and responsibilities of marketing in the
context of Tesco are explained below:
- Analysing the information regarding competitor and customers: As known that he
competition in the marketing is increasing and along with this the customers are also
being aware of their rights, here, the concepts of marketing helps the company Tesco in
gathering and analysing thee information about the competitors and customers so that the
proper actions could be taken and Tesco could gain the success (Cravens and Piercy,
2015).
- Formulating of corporate business and marketing strategic decisions: Marketing also
plays a very important role in formulating the strategic policies and decisions so that the
corporate objective and visions of Tesco could be fulfilled.
Explain how roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational
context and also analyse the significance of the interrelationships between marketing and
other functional units of your chosen organisation (P2, M2)
Roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational context: Here, the
roles and responsibilities of marketing related to the wider organisation context are explained
below:

- Roles in meeting the organisational objectives: the organisational objective of Tesco
includes increasing the marketing share and growth, share price etc. Here, the marketing
helps the company Tesco in achieving all these organisational goals through formulating
the strategies and policies.
- Roles in streamlines product development: In Tesco, the decisions on the product
development like price of services etc are set by the policies and strategy of marketing.
Here, marketing analyse the environment and then suggest Tesco about all these
strategies and policies (Grönroos, 2017). So here, it could be said that marketing plays a
very important role in developing the products of Tesco to another level.
Significance of the interrelationships between marketing and other functional units of your
chosen organisation: Whole responsibilities of Tesco as an organisation are divided among
small units which are also known as departments. Marketing unit of Tesco is interrelated with
units of the company. Here, the significance of interrelationship between the marketing and other
functional unit of Tesco is explained:
Significance of the interrelationships between marketing and
- Finance department: with the help of marketing units, the finance unit of Tesco is able
to prepare the budget where it could arrange the money or revenue of the company in the
positive direction.
- Human resource department: Marketing unit of Tesco helps the human resource unit in
explaining the required skills and talent of the candidate through which it could conduct
the processes like recruitment and selection in the effective manner.

- Research and development (R&D) department: The interrelationship between the
R&D unit and marketing unit benefits Tesco in the various ways as with the help of this
interrelationship Tesco is able to anticipate the exact needs and wants of the customers
present in the market.
- Production department: with the help of this interrelationship, Tesco is able to supply
the products and services as per their demand and wants.
Critically analyse and evaluate the key elements of the marketing function and how they
interrelate with other functional units of your chosen organisation (D1)
As described in the section given above that marketing process is very important for the
company as this executed the various functions that can enhance the value and share of the
company into the leading marketing (Kalyanam and McIntyre, 2018). The key elements of
marketing functions could be explained through following concepts:
1. Strategic marketing and
2. Marketing management
Due to the enhanced competition and demand of the customers, the company Tesco is using the
concept of strategic marketing management where the company focuses on formulating the
strategies and policies so that:
- Valuable information could be gathered and analysed.
- Tactics on corporate business could be formulated.
- And marketing philosophy could be executed.

The concept of marketing management is also used by Tesco that plays a very important role in
- Developing the product marketing plan
- Executing the product marketing plan
LO 2 Compare ways in which organisations use elements of the marketing mix (7Ps) to
achieve overall business objectives
Using your chosen organisation and another organisation, compare how organisation use
the various elements of 7P’s marketing mix in the marketing planning process to achieve
business objective (P3, M3)
Organisations adopted different methods to develop their marketing mix which depends upon
their business strategy. Every organisation has different goals that make them to use the elements
of the marketing mix in different manners. However, some of the basics of the marketing mix
elements remain same which are summarised below:
1. Defining the product and services of the company
2. Setting up the price of the products and services on which the product has to be sold to
the customers
3. Defining the methods of distribution and
4. Defining the promotional strategy for the products and services of the company.
Tesco and Sainsbury are two organisations that operate in the supermarket and retail sector and
both of these companies have developed their own marketing mix (Little, 2016). A comparison
between the marketing mixes of these organisations is provided below:
1. Product

Tesco is an organisation that operates in different segments. The company has largest market
share in UK supermarket segment where company sells many different brands of household
items. Tesco is also in the electronic market and company launched some of its own brands in
electronics. Tesco also developed clothing brand which has shown significant growth in recent
years. Other than this, Tesco is also involved in financial market where company offers many
banking services to its customers.
Sainsbury also operate in the supermarket like Tesco but company focuses more on selling the
brands of other organisations instead of its own brands. Sainsbury also operates in Energy sector
where company operates with British Gas.
2. Price
Tesco is on organisation that focuses more on acquiring more customers and because of this
reason, the company always try to use either economy pricing strategy or penetration pricing as
these pricing strategies help the company in larger numbers of customers to get associated with
the company (Manchanda, Rossi and Chintagunta, 2014).
Sainsbury is an organisation that focuses on premium pricing strategy and skimming pricing
strategy. In premium pricing, the company charges extra for its quality services that increases the
profit margin ration of the company. In skimming strategy, the company initially sell products on
lower rates but as products get more popular among the customers, company starts increasing the
pricing because of the lack of substitutes and customer loyalty.
3. Place

Tesco covers almost entire United Kingdom as company as approximately 7,123 stores in the
country. Because of this, the company products are accessible even in the remote areas. Tesco
also provides online ordering of the products and once purchased by the customer online,
products are delivered at customer’s doorstep. Tesco has its transport services which makes the
delivery of the products efficient. Tesco superstore, Tesco express Tesco extra and Tesco
compact are different types of distribution channels used by Tesco PLC. Similar to Tesco,
Sainsbury also offers both delivery methods – Online and Offline. However, in case of home
delivery of the products, Sainsbury relies a lot on other service providers which affects the
quality of service and also affects the margin of the company.
4. Promotion
When it comes to promotion, Tesco spends lots of resources on promotional campaigns and
marketing strategies. The company has developed a marketing strategy that focuses more on
online promotion of the company products and services (McCarthy, Shapiro and Perreault,
2017). In online promotion, Tesco uses Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine
Optimisation as its main resources. In SEM method, company pays search engines to display the
company’ website or e-commerce portal in the search results when company relevant keywords
are used in search
Sainsbury focuses more on print media advertisement and direct marketing. Company has a team
of skilled executives who contact the customers directly and pitch company products. Sainsbury
also use Social Media for online promotion of its products.
5. People

Tesco has one of the largest workforce that includes 5, 10,000 employees. Tesco has a structured
training program to make sure that its resources are highly trained and skilled in the work
assigned to them. Rewards system in Tesco PLC is also appreciated by the employees as they get
many benefits for excellent performance.
Sainsbury has 1, 98,000 employees which is very less compared to Tesco PLC. However, market
researchers have shown that the Sainsbury provides lesser compensation to its employees
compared to Tesco PLC (Peter, Olson and Grunert, 2015). Because of this reason, the employee
turnover rate at Sainsbury is higher than Tesco PLC. This result in more expenses on the
recruitment and selection process and also more expensed on the training of the new employees
6. Process
There are different processes that are very important for organisations such as Human resource
planning, recruitment and selection, sales and marketing, billing and distribution of the products
and service. Tesco has a standard recruitment and selection process where entire process is
managed by the HRM department of the company. Tesco also has automated its entire supply
chain management form procuring the raw material, manufacturing the products, distribution to
the billing which has helped the company a lot in its growth (Shoham, 2016).
Sainsbury outsources its recruitment and selection process to placement agencies that manages
the job advertisement, resume short listing and online test. The remaining process of interview is
conducted by the HRM department of Sainsbury. Like Tesco, Sainsbury has also automated its
supply chain management however; the extent of automation is less compared to Tesco.
7. Physical evidence

Tesco is very careful in designing its stores as company has hired a team of interior designers
who plan the design of every store of the company. Tesco also keep renovating its old stores to
make sure that the ambience always sounds good to the customers. The online portal of the
company used for e-sale of the company products is also very user friendly and contains easy
navigation.
Sainsbury has developed a standard approach in designing its stores so that a similar theme in the
company stores could be maintained. Sainsbury does not believe much in experimenting. Like
Tesco, Sainsbury’s online commerce portal is user friendly and company also provides support
to the customers during their purchase via instant chat and calls with company executives.