Marketing Plan Report: Evaluating The Body Shop's Strategies

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of marketing plans within a business organization, specifically using The Body Shop as a case study. It delves into the significance of marketing, emphasizing its role in building a positive brand image, fostering customer engagement, and driving sales. The report examines the alignment of marketing with other functional units like finance, human resources, and operations. It then explores the 7 P's marketing mix (product, price, promotion, place, packaging, people, and positioning) as a framework for developing effective marketing strategies, highlighting how it helps businesses create value for customers. The efficiency of a marketing plan is evaluated based on customer engagement and sales performance. The report concludes by reiterating the importance of marketing in connecting businesses with their target audiences and promoting sales. The report also contains a detailed list of references.

Running head: MARKETING PLAN FOR THE BODY SHOP
MARKETING PLAN FOR THE BODY SHOP
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author note

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Introduction
A business organization is comprised of certain functional units that ensure the
efficiency of its operations and functions. These functional units of a business organization
include operations, marketing, human resources, finance, administration and information
technology. In this regard, it may be mentioned that marketing plays an important role in the
organizational efficiency of business as it helps in the establishment of a connection of the
company with its targeted segment of customers (Deepak and Jeyakumar 2019). In other
words, marketing entails all the processes and activities that are undertaken by the business
organization in order to promote the sales of the products and services offered by the business
organization to its consumers. Marketing strategies adopted by a business organization
directly determines the identity and perception of the company in the market (Keegan 2017).
The report will further highlight the relation of marketing with the other functional units of an
organization, along with an evaluation of the model of 7 P’s as an efficient framework to
prepare an effective marketing plan.
Discussion
Importance of Marketing
Marketing plays an important role in a business organization, assisting it to align its
operations and functions in order to successfully achieve the expected business outcomes and
increase its productivity and profitability (Haider et al. 2017). The primary advantages of
adopting effective marketing strategies in a business organization have been listed as under:
 Building of positive brand image – Marketing helps in the creation of a positive
brand identity and image of the organization in the targeted market. This is facilitated
through a provision of information about the activities of the company with respect to

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meeting the demands of the customers, and fulfilling the responsibilities towards the
society through corporate social responsibility activities.
 Customer engagement – Effective marketing strategies help in increasing the
engagement of business organization with its targeted customers (Chernev 2018).
This is facilitated through a promotion of how the company has strategized means to
meet the demands and requirements of the consumers.
 Promotion of sales – Marketing also helps in boosting the sales of the organization
by providing advertisements for the products and services offered by it and providing
information on why they are better than those offered by the competitors.
 Communication channel – Another important function of marketing is to provide
adequate information about the products and services provided to the customers and
about its availability in different locations in the market at particular prices
(Aghazadeh 2015).
Alignment with Functional Units of Business
Marketing, as an important functional unit of a business organization, is aligned with
the other functions of finance, human resources, sales, administration, operations and
information technology. Marketing is directly related to the function of sales as effective
marketing strategies help in the boosting of the sales operations. Marketing is also aligned
with other operations of the organization like research and development, production,
manufacturing and revenue generation as it helps in the building of demand among the
customers. Information and technology are important elements that aid in the development of
innovative products and efficient marketing strategies to promote them (Saha 2017). The
financial functions of the organization determines the budget of the business organizations to
execute the marketing strategies.

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In this regard, it may be observed that the function of marketing has a close
connection with the other functional units of a business organization. The overall skills and
performance of the employees and members of the organization determine efficiency of the
product development. The sales of these products is then directly propelled through efficient
marketing strategies that not only provide the targeted customers with adequate information
on these products, but also improve customer engagement with the brand to promote sales.
7 P’s Marketing Mix
The framework of the 7 P’s of marketing mix was developed by E. Jerome McCarthy
as a tool to integrate all the important elements of marketing into an efficient marketing plan.
The key elements that are considered in the 7 P’s framework are product, price, promotion,
place, packaging, people and positioning (Khan 2014). The importance of the framework of 7
P’s marketing mix lies in its ability to determine the manner in which the organization must
establish an engagement with the targeted customers in order to generate revenues through
sales of the products and services offered.
The framework of the 7 P’s of marketing are utilized by the business organization in
order to determine the activities or functions that are to be undertaken to create value for the
brand to the customers (Wirtz and Lovelock 2016). Business organizations make use of this
framework to evaluate the efficiency of the current business activities in terms of creation of
product quality and image, branding strategies, trade channels, payment methods, training
and skills of the staff, provision of customer services, product packaging and the like, and
determine means to improve them (Grădinaru, Toma and Marinescu 2016). Therefore, it can
be said that the 7 P’s framework helps in a competitive evaluation, through an identification
of the strengths of the company in the above mentioned fields and strategizing means to
improve upon the weaknesses.

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Evaluation of a Marketing Plan
The efficiency of a marketing plan adopted by a business organization can be
evaluated on the basis of the amount of customer engagement received by the brand after its
incorporation as well as the increase in sales of the products and services offered. The
response of the customers towards the brand as well as the sales performance of the
organization helps in the evaluation of the efficiency of a marketing plan.
Conclusion
From the above discussion regarding the role of marketing in business organizations,
it may be deduced that marketing plays an important function in presenting the products and
services manufactured by the organization to its targeted customers and promoting its sales in
the market. There are several tools that can be utilized for developing efficient marketing
plans. The 7 P’s marketing mix is one such tool which helps the business organizations to
consider all the key elements of marketing and identifying it strengths and weaknesses in
terms of its engagement with the customers.

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References
Aghazadeh, H., 2015. Strategic marketing management: Achieving superior business
performance through intelligent marketing strategy. Procedia-Social and Behavioral
Sciences, 207, pp.125-134.
Chernev, A., 2018. Strategic marketing management. Cerebellum Press.
Deepak, R.K.A. and Jeyakumar, S., 2019. Marketing management. Educreation Publishing.
Grădinaru, C., Toma, S. and Marinescu, P., 2016. Marketing mix in services.“. Ovidius”
University Annals.
Haider, A.A., Zafar, A., Khalid, A., Majid, A., Abdullah, M.A. and Sarwar, M.B., 2017.
Marketing Management. Head, B, p.22.
Keegan, W.J., 2017. Global marketing management. Pearson India.
Khan, M.T., 2014. The concept of'marketing mix'and its elements (a conceptual review
paper). International journal of information, business and management, 6(2), p.95.
Saha, A., 2017. Mapping of Porter’s value chain activities into business functional
units. Available in: http://www. managementexchange. com/hack/mapping-porter’s-value-
chain-activities-business-functional-units. Access: 12th February.
Wirtz, J. and Lovelock, C., 2016. Services marketing: People, technology. World Scientific
Publishing Company.