The Body Shop Marketing Plan: Unit 2 Marketing Essentials Report

This report presents a comprehensive marketing plan for The Body Shop, a UK high-street retailer, exploring the core concepts of marketing and its significance within an organization. It delves into the advantages of effective marketing strategies, such as sales promotion, communication and engagement, competitive advantage, and brand perception. The report further examines the interrelationship between the marketing function and other functional units like operations, administration, finance, IT, sales, and human resources, highlighting their collaborative roles in achieving business objectives. The 7 P's of the marketing mix (product, place, promotion, price, physical evidence, positioning, and people) are analyzed in detail, demonstrating their application in developing efficient marketing strategies. The application of the 7 Ps framework involves identifying target customers, understanding their demands, researching the competitive environment, and determining effective pricing and promotion strategies. The report concludes that effective marketing is crucial for attracting customers and achieving business goals, emphasizing the importance of the 7 Ps marketing mix as a key tool for developing successful marketing plans.

Running head: MARKETING PLAN FOR BODYSHOP
MARKETING PLAN FOR BODYSHOP
Name of the student
Name of University
Author note

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Introduction
Marketing refers to the activates and functions undertaken by a business organization
in order to build positive relations with the targeted customers, generate their engagement and
promote the sales of the products and services offered to them (Keegan 2017). Business
organizations are required to perform several important functions in order to ensure the
fulfillment of their goals and targets pertaining to productivity and profitability. In this
regard, the most important functions of business organizations can be identified to be
operations, administration, marketing, sales, human resources, information technology and
finance. Among these functions, the role of marketing is to integrate the separate functions of
the business organizations and generate the targeted amount of revenues. The report will
further establish the interrelation among the various functional units of a business
organization with that of marketing. Furthermore, the framework of 7 P’s of marketing mix
will also be analyzed with respect to its importance in developing efficient marketing plans.
Discussion
Importance of Marketing Strategies
As discussed earlier, the function of marketing plays an important role in determining
the extent to which the product and services offered by a business organization to its targeted
customers reaches out to them and is sold in the market. In the age of growing competition in
the business environments, organizations seek to constantly make improvements in their
marketing strategies to remain competitive in the market (Deepak and Jeyakumar 2019). In
this regard, the chief advantages of using effecting marketing strategies within the scope of
business include the following:
 Sales promotion – One of the primary functions of marketing is to promote the sales
of the products and service being offered to the targeted customers of the business

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organization. Such sales promotion is done with the help of different kinds of
promotional strategies like advertisement campaigns, direct selling and the like.
 Communication and engagement – Marketing also helps in establishing a means of
communication between the organization and its targeted customers (Terkan 2014).
This is done with the help of different tools like social media platforms and the online
website of the organization. Such communication in turn increases the among of
engagement between the business organization and its targeted customers.
 Competitive advantage – Effectiveness of marketing strategies also helps business
organizations to gain a competitive advantage n the targeted market. This is ensured
with the help of increasing the presence of the brand through several mediums such as
promotional events, campaigns, advertisements and the like. Increased engagement
with the customers through these mediums enables them to acquire a greater amount
of brand presence in the market as compared to the competitors.
 Brand perception – The creation and development of a positive brand identity and
perception among the targeted customers in the market is one of the most essential
functions of marketing strategies adopted by business organizations. Positive brand
perception in turn increases the tendency of the customers to prefer the brand over its
competitors.
Interrelation among the Functional Units
As discussed earlier, the different elements or functional units of a business
organization have been identified to be operations, administration, finances, information and
technology, marketing, sales and human resources. The functional unit of marketing is
interrelated with the other functional units of a business organization with regards to its
ability to meet the demands of the customers and determining the efficiency of the overall
business operations (Rosemann and vom Brocke 2015). In terms of operations, marketing is

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directly linked with the scope of research and development for product development, which
in turn is marketed to the customers. Marketing depends on the financial functions of the
organizations in terms of budgeting and the administration in terms of strategy development
(Anderson, S.J., Chandy and Zia 2018). Information and technology is essential in obtaining
the necessary details about the changing trends in the market, customer preferences, strategies
used by the competitors and the like so that the marketing strategies can be developed
accordingly. The sales of the products and services offered by the organization is directly
related to the efficiency of the marketing strategies (Järvinen and Taiminen 2016).
7 P’s of Marketing Mix
The framework of the 7 P’s of marketing mix involves certain important elements that
are to be considered by the business organization while developing an effective marketing
plan. The elements that comprise the 7 P’s of marketing include product, place, promotion,
price, physical evidence, positioning and people. Business organization often make use of
another framework for developing marketing plans, known as the 4 P’s which involves the
first four elements mentioned earlier. However, the 7 P’s marketing mix provides for a more
efficient evaluation of the market in which the products and services of the business
organization are to be sold (Mohammad 2015). In this regard, it may also be mentioned that
the 7 P’s marketing mix involves essential criteria within the mentioned elements, providing
for a comparison between the strategies and resources available to the business organization
and its competitors so that the organization may be able to improve it s marketing strategies
and gain a competitive advantage in the market.
Application of 7 P’s of Marketing Mix
The method in which the framework of the 7 P’s of marketing mix is to be applied to
the marketing plans of a business organization involves the identification of the target
customers of the organizations and their demands. This helps in the development of products

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and means by which they will be promoted. The identification of the target segment of
customers is therefore to effectively reach out to them. Furthermore, a research on the
competitive environment in which the organization operates is also essential to determine the
pricing strategies and processes in which the products and services will be marketed.
Conclusion
From the evaluation of the report, it can be concluded that marketing constitutes one
of the most important functions of a business organization. Efficiency in marketing strategies
helps the organization to attract its target customers and achieve the goals and targets in terms
of business outcomes. There are several tools of developing effective marketing plans for
business organizations, out of which the framework of the 7 P’s of marketing has been
identified to be widely used.

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References
Anderson, S.J., Chandy, R. and Zia, B., 2018. Pathways to profits: The impact of marketing
vs. finance skills on business performance. Management Science, 64(12), pp.5559-5583.
Deepak, R.K.A. and Jeyakumar, S., 2019. Marketing management. Educreation Publishing.
Järvinen, J. and Taiminen, H., 2016. Harnessing marketing automation for B2B content
marketing. Industrial Marketing Management, 54, pp.164-175.
Keegan, W.J., 2017. Global marketing management. Pearson India.
Mohammad, H.I., 2015. 7PS marketing mix and retail bank customer satisfaction in northeast
Nigeria. British journal of marketing studies, 3(3), pp.71-88.
Rosemann, M. and vom Brocke, J., 2015. The six core elements of business process
management. In Handbook on business process management 1 (pp. 105-122). Springer,
Berlin, Heidelberg.
Terkan, R., 2014. Importance of creative advertising and marketing according to university
students’ perspective. International Review of Management and Marketing, 4(3), pp.239-246.