Marketing Fundamentals Analysis: Unilever Assessment 2 Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of marketing fundamentals, focusing on the processes and stages involved in implementing marketing activities within an organization, using Unilever as a case study. It delves into the crucial role of marketing in creating customer value, exploring how companies like Unilever can create value for their customers and how marketing strategies can be implemented to enhance customer relationships. The report examines stakeholder engagement and its impact on marketing efforts, along with reflections on communication tools utilized to generate interest in the topic. The report includes SWOT and PESTLE analyses to assess the internal and external environments affecting marketing decisions, and it provides insights into marketing mix strategies (product, price, place, promotion) and their implementation. Additionally, the report examines the importance of measurable goals, budgeting, and customer feedback in controlling and improving marketing plans. The report concludes with an overview of the key findings and the significance of marketing in the business world.

MARKETING FUNDAMENTALS
ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION-
ASSESSMENT 2

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1A.........................................................................................................................................3
Explain the process and stages involve in implementing the marketing activity ..................3
Explain role of marketing in creating the customer value......................................................7
Explain the stakeholder engagement and their impact on marketing activity........................8
TASK 1B.......................................................................................................................................10
Reflection on communication tool in generating the interest on the topic...........................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. Marketing is the business
process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers. With its focus on the customer,
marketing is one of the premier components of business management. Unilever is a British
company which used to manufacture the consumer good and used to supply the same all across
the globe. Unilever owns about 400 brands. Unilever was founded in the year 1929 by the
founder William Lever. This report highlights the process and the stages which are used by an
organization in implementing the marketing activity in the organization. Further, this report
highlights the role of the marketing in creating the value for the customer. After that report
highlights the Stakeholder engagement and their impact on marketing activity of the
organization. In the end, report highlights the reflection of the tactical tool used by me in
generating the interest on the topic.
TASK 1A
Explain the process and stages involve in implementing the marketing activity
Marketing can be defined as an activity which can be used by company in order to promote
buying and selling of product and services. Marketing process is a way by which value is created
for customers in order to satisfy their requirements. It is a series of action and reactions between
company and customers.
Mission: The mission of company is to add vitality to life (Unilever, 2019). To make high
quality products and be the customer first choice
Strategic Objectives: Unilever wants to launch new men's shoes in the market for raising
its sales up to 15%. For that the plan is implemented.
Situational analysis: It can be defined as collection of methods which is used by
managers in order to analyse organisation internal as well as external environment in order to
understand organisation customers and business environment.
Swot
Swot analysis is a method or framework which is used in order to identify internal as well
as external factors which may impact the product, place, person of project. In order to survive in
this competitive environment, it is highly required that companies do the continuous analysis of
itself so that it can make changes in its strategies accordingly (Kerin and Hartley, 2015). Thus,
the swot analysis is as mention below:
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Strengths
Unilever is an established brand in UK and in
other countries having good reputation and
brand loyalty.
They serve a wide variety of products targeting
different needs of customers.
Weaknesses
The products manufactured by Unilever can be
easily imitated by other competitors.
The company has limited amount of
diversification in its product range.
The company uses ineffective marketing
strategies that affect the firm in negative way.
In revenue aspect, the company is highly
dependent on their retailers as majority of their
products are sold through this medium.
Threats
The company faces tough competition in the
market and cannot exercise price monopoly.
Easy imitation of its products has made
company extremely weak in aspect of core
competency.
The market share of the company is regularly
being threatened by other emerging brands and
products.
OpportunitiesUnilever has an opportunity to
expand its business by offering new products
because it has its brand image in market and
that is why, it may diversify its product into
new ranges.
The company should work toward adopting
ethical and environment friendly manufacturing
processes.
Pestle analysis
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Pest analysis can be defined as a management method with the use of which company
can assess major external factors which affects business operations so that company can survive
in the competitive market.
Political Factor: Factors such as legislative changes, taxes, legal issues, trading and
embargo policies and employment issues are known as political factors which can affect the
marketing of men's shoes in negative as well as positive way. For example, legal framework of
UK will affect the working of Unilever, currency exposure is also one of the factor which may
affect business.
Economical Factor: The other factor which should be analysed is economic factors are
interest rate such as increase in interest rate in footwear industry may affect Unilever process of
footwear manufacturing (Berman, 2016). Increase in labour cost is one such factor which can
create threat for the company and as a result, it also affect the marketing of company.
Social Factor: Similarly, some of the social factors such as attitude of people,
population, physical active seniors belief are factors which affects the working of a business. For
example, if company uses marketing tools then sometimes it may also provide wrong message to
the public and thus,it may create negative impact upon business.
Technological factor: As the technology is increasing rapidly therefore it is highly
required that industries/companies keep close look at the changing technologies. The Unilever
may use social media as a marketing tool for marketing the men's shoes. This may help to reach
with wide range of customers in single way.
Legal Factor: This factor deals with the laws of the country and this may affect the
internal and external environment of the company. The legal factor may includes employment
laws, consumer protection act, regulatory bodies. Therefore, the factor also affect the marketing
of men's shoes in the market.
Environmental Factor: Unilever uses effective strategies that helps a firm to meet the
objectives in better way. On the other side, this factor includes the geographical location,
environmental offsets etc. Thus, for marketing, the quoted firm uses effective marketing tools
and this may not affect the environment.
Marketing strategy:
Marketing strategies can be defined as a plan which is made in order to make business
reach its objectives (Diem and et.al., 2016). The marketing strategies includes strategies related
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to target audience, measuring goals, preparation of budgets. The type of strategies which
companies make can be understood as follows:
Marketing strategies of Unilever: In order to promote the men's shoes, the company may
uses effective marketing strategies such as social media, advertising. E-mail marketing. This are
advance digital technologies that may helps a business to aware the customers about new
product.
Target audience: The target audience is divided on the basis of customer demographics,
geographic, behavioural and psychographic basis. Therefore, the shoes will be available in the
UK market and target customers will be men.
Measurable goals: to increase the sales of company by 75 % and acquire new customers
by 40%
Budget: The companies prepares budget for various marketing activities. For example, as
Unilever is planning to introduce shoes in the market therefore the budget will be:
Particulars Amount
Raw materials =
Printed advertising =
Advertising =
conducting campaign =
$20,000
$ 15,000
$ 10,000
$ 5,000
Total $ 50,000
Marketing mix
Role of marketing mix
Marketing mix helps marketers to create strategies on various factors which will help
company to influence consumers toward the product or service. In marketing these elements
plays important role to improve the selling process of organization and also help to get better
result in market place. Through marketing mix organization focus on different factors that are
related to the business promotion. It helps marketers to develop various strategies for company
products and services. Factors considered in it are-
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Product: The company provides various products such as food products, consumer
durables, home appliances, personal care etc. and for expanding the business, the company also
offer men's shoes
Price: There are various pricing strategies such as price penetration, skimming, offering
discount, credit policy etc., which companies can use in order to make their product more
attractive to customers. Unilever UK will use skimming strategy. With the help of this strategy
Unilever will introduce its product in market with low cost and then increase once its acquire the
position in market (Roukova, Keremidchiev and Ilieva, 2016).
Place: Place denotes the distribution channels and market which is used for making the
product and services accessible to the customers. Unilever will use online as well as offline
channels in order to make its product easily available to customers in the UK market.
Promotion: It is the important part of marketing process which is used to promote the
product and get the attraction of customers by using various means such as advertising, sales
promotion, publicity etc. Unilever will promote its product by using social media, print media as
well as by conducting marketing campaign.
Implementation and control:
This is the last stage at marketing process in which companies will reach to the customers
(Marketing process, 2019). The customer will be informed about product. It will also involve
arranging for the resources in order to market product, creating calendars to keep work on track.
In order to implement and control the marketing plan of Unilever following ways can be
used: Customer feedback will be taken as it will help to make changes in the product
accordingly. Secondly sales of company will be measured on the basis of revenue generated,
profit earned. This will be done with the help of market survey. Lastly actual sales will be
compared to the target market as per the marketing plan.
Explain role of marketing in creating the customer value
Customer play an important role in marketing process as they are the ultimate customers
from whom products and services are made. Value of customers is expectation of customer from
an organizations product in a desirable price rate. In simple word customer value is the
perception of what a product or service is worth to a Customer versus the possible alternatives
(Rihova, And et.al., 2015). As the Unilever is looking to introduce Men shoes in the market it is
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very important for an organization to create the good value of customers toward products to sell
product in the market.
Marketing activity of an organization plays a very crucial role in creating customers
value for an organization. There are generally five step through which value of customer can be
created i.e. To understand what drives the value for customer is the first step toward creating the
value for an organization, marketing research help an organization in understanding need and
requirement of a customer in the market with the help of evaluating both macro and micro
environment. Secondly it is essential to make products as per the needs of customers. Marketing
plays important role in organisation. It will help Unilever to make strategies regarding
introduction of new product in market. Tesco is an organization which used to invest very
heavily on the research and development program in an organization to develop products which
can satisfy need of customers in an organization. Third step is to identify customer and segment
which can create the maximum value for an organization, marketing activity help an organization
in identifying customers in market which are in need of products which helps an organization in
targeting the same customer to sell an organizations product (Kotler and et.al., 2018).
Organization uses the different platform to promote products of an organization in front of
customers with the help of different promotional activity. Promotion is the process of making
customer aware about products of an organization. Different promotional platform used by an
organization are local media, Television, radio and social media platform. Google is well known
organization to use the mixture of the promotional platform to promote products of organization
in front of customers. Google pay products of an organization was promoted at social media,
local and television platform together. Price is the another big element which play a very crucial
role in creating value for customers, fourth stage of creating the value looks at providing
products at the best price to customer so that they feel benefited from the deal. Marketing play a
very crucial role in deciding the price of an organizations by the help of evaluating trend and
price of the competitor in market (Payne, Frow, and Eggert, 2017). Marketing activity of an
organizations decides the price of products by keeping several of the point in mind such as the
price of the raw material, profit margin, demand of products and the quality of an organizations
product. Last and final stage of creating the value for customers is to regularly be in touch with
customers so that it creates good bond between customer and organization. Marketing helps an
organization in building the same as different marketing activity help an organization in
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understanding need of providing the different offers to the loyal customer of an organization and
on basis of the information gather by different marketing activity organization provide different
offer to loyal customer.
Explain the stakeholder engagement and their impact on marketing activity
Stakeholder are the individual or an institution whom are having some sort of the interest
in the functioning or operation of an organization. Some of the most common stakeholder of an
organization are customer, employee, Investor, supplier, communities and the Government.
Stakeholder used to have good amount of the power to influence the work of an organization and
at the same time organization also used to take the variety of the step in an organization to make
stakeholder happy (Stålberg, and et.al., 2018). All the stakeholders have different leval of interest
in organization working. All these stakeholder influence the work and procedure of organization
in such a way in order to save their profit and interest in an organization.
Power
Keep satisfied Manage Closely
Investors
Shareholders
Board of Director
Suppliers
Monitor Keep Informed
Government Employees
Customers
Interest
As shown in stakeholder matrix, organization need to engage stake holders in different
ways. Company need to keep investor, shareholder and BOD aware and satisfied to manage
operation and funding constant. It is important for organization to monitor supplier closely to
reduce the risk in production of organization. Unilever need to keep action of government under
watch to reduce impact of their decision on organization. The employees and customer are most
important stakeholder of organization so they should be aware of action and procedure of
company.
Stakeholder used to have the great engagement in development of the marketing activity
of an organization as some stakeholder are having the great information about the market in
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which the Unilever is dealing. They used to provide the information to an organization and on
basis of same Unilever used to make the strategy and the policy to implement marketing activity
in market, Generally, they are the external stake holder of the Unilever. Internal stakeholder used
to have a greater engagement as compare to the external stakeholder as they are one who used to
carry out the marketing activity for an organization in the market. Internal stakeholder used to
evaluate the idea and then pan and in the end implement the marketing activity of the
organization.
Stakeholder used to have a very good impact on the marketing activity of the Unilever as
there is a good amount of the engagement of the stakeholder in an organization. Investor are the
one who influence marketing policy development process of an Unilever (Kotler and
et.al.,2015). As Unilever used to work on the larger scale and used to provide products in the
global market they always require the good amount of finance from investor side. In return
investor always ask to adopt the marketing policy which is having low level of risk associated
with it as the investor used to have a monetary benefit from the operation of an organization. As
a result, Unilever always adopt the strategy after evaluating the scope of the strategy by the help
of looking at other organization who is already using the same marketing policy in their working.
This process sometime cause lead to process that result as losing the opportunity available in the
market for Unilever (Kotler and et.al., 2018). Employee is the other category of stakeholder
which used to have a great impact in the marketing activity of an organization as there are many
employees in Unilever who used to carry out the marketing activity of the Unilever. to safeguard
their position in an organization which eventually hampers an organizational goal of
implementing the efficient marketing policy in the market. Senior management and the manager
are considered as management category in stakeholders who have the huge impact on the
marketing activity of an organization. As all the decision which is taken in an organization is
taken by senior management of the Unilever and all the subordinate in an organization used to
seek the approval from the senior management before making any decision in an organization.
As a senior management used to have the responsibility to carry out operation of the business
they used to evaluate the decision and after that they used to make decision which sometime
takes the time for the Unilever to implement the marketing activity in the market which
sometime resulting as loss of opportunity for an organization.
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TASK 1B
Reflection on communication tool in generating the interest on the topic
Marketing is one of the most important operation of organization and it is also interesting
to understand. Various sources are capable to provide better information on marketing and
promotion function. Different tools are available that can be used to get more information of
marketing operations. Different tools I have used to generate interest in marketing are including
books on business and marketing, articals on local and international marketing strategies and
journals. I have also studied Blogs written by different marketing officials and I found them
useful to develop information on business marketing. I have also taken the help of the different
online tool and portal to pass on the message such as with the help of the Email and also with the
help of the Skype message and most importantly I have used a blog post. Blog post can be an
effective way of promoting a goods and services of a company (Payne, Frow and Eggert, 2017).
Popularity of blogging has increased in recent times and it is considered as the best of way for
attracting customers across the world, so, this has lead to my interest in blogging as a marketing
tool. It is very easy to publish a blog post, I marketed a company product by covering various
topics related to products. This has helped me to increase my target customers and it increased
the traffic on the site. As Unilever is a global company, so it was really important for me to make
content for a blog post which was appealing for the target audience and could attract the
customers across the world. This resulted in increase in followers every day. In order to attract
and make post effective it was really important for me to keep my links clear whether its is
linking from my own blog to site or to another blog posts or to various social media accounts.
For this I made my links obvious and authentic.
As I analysed that Blog post is the best communication tool that is used for marketing the
product in market. In order to determine the success, I used SWOT analysis which is the strategic
tool that is actually determine the success by considering the strength and weakness. For that the
success is as mention below:
Strength: I observed that Blog post is best effective communication tool that helps me to
reach wide range of customers. Further, this post also help me to use with the smart phones and
the post also read in variety of languages that assist me reach the masses in different countries as
well.
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Weaknesses: I analysed that the weakness of using blog post as a communication tool is
such that high competition mean the limited market share growth and as a result, sometimes
customer may ignore the post. This affect the business and creates hindrances in the marketing
Opportunity: Through blog post, I also generate the possibility to expand the business
and enhance new customer base as well. Moreover, I also analysed that introducing better blog
post in market as a communication tool will help me to creates an opportunity to boost up the
sales.
Threat: as I used blog post as a communication tool. But I faces threat related to security
issues and there may be chances of data leaks as well. On the other side, I also faces threats with
the new emerging competitive blogging platform that also affect my business as a negative way.
From the above, I observed that, the success of my blog post as a communication tool is good.
The tools I have considered for this research were effective and good to collect
information about current market conditions and various factors that are capable of affecting
business of organization. PESTEL is used to get information of current business environment on
national and international level and SWOT analysis is used to develop internal data base to
successfully influence customer to buy company product. Information sources like books and
journals are used to develop better marketing strategies for company. This is how market
information is utilised to improve performance of organization in current business scenario.
CONCLUSION
After going through above report it has been summarized that the organization has to follow
the proper strep and the process to implement the marketing activity in the organization. It has
been also summarized that marketing mix used to play very crucial role in the function of an
organization. It has been also summarized that the marketing used to play very important role in
creating the value for the customer and also stakeholder used to have a good impact on the
marketing activity of the organization as they are having the different sort of the interest as
compare to each other. In the end it has been summarized that the communication tool used to
play a crucial role in developing the interest in topic.
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