Zara Marketing: Functions, Environment, Mix, and Business Objectives

This report provides a detailed analysis of Zara's marketing essentials, focusing on the roles and responsibilities of marketing functions within the company. It examines the importance of marketing in the broader organizational context, highlighting the interrelationship between marketing and other functions such as sales, production, finance, and human resources. The report also delves into the marketing environment, discussing factors like the political, economic, competitive, technological, and socio-cultural environments and their impact on Zara's marketing strategies. Furthermore, it compares Zara's marketing mix with that of another organization, Ben Sherman, analyzing the product, place, price, and promotion strategies employed by each. The report concludes by examining the tactics applied by Zara to achieve its business objectives, offering a comprehensive overview of the company's marketing approach. This assignment solution is available on Desklib, a platform offering study tools and resources for students.

MARKETING ESSENTIALS
ZARA

Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
LO1..................................................................................................................................................4
P1 ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF FUNCTIONS OF MARKETING.........................4
M1: ROLE OF MARKETING WITH REFERENCE TO THE MARKETING
ENVIRONMENT AND ITS FACTORS................................................................................6
P2 ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF MARKETING IN BROADER AND WIDER
ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT..............................................................................................8
M2 SIGNIFICANCE OF INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MARKETING AND
OTHER FUNCTIONS OF ZARA.........................................................................................10
LO2................................................................................................................................................11
P3 COMPARISION OF MARKETING MIX OF DIFFERENT ORGANISATIONS IN
MARKET PLANNING PROCESS...........................................................................................11
M3 DIFFERENT TACTICS APPLIED BY ZARA TO ACHIEVE ITS BUSINESS
OBJECTIVE..........................................................................................................................15
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................16

TABLE OF FIGURES
Figure 1: functions of marketing.....................................................................................................6
Figure 2: marketing environment....................................................................................................7
Figure 3: Marketing Mix...............................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is the process of selling and promoting goods and services produced by the company
to the targeted buyers using advertisements, sales promotions and other methods. Marketing is
the function of management of the company, which deals with the methods of providing the
final products to the customers and information about company’s products to buyers and
attracting the new customers to buy company’s products and services (Baker, 2016).
In this assignment, the essentials of marketing are discussed. What is marketing and functions
of marketing are discussed in detail? The importance of marketing and the role of marketing in
the marketing environment is also analysed together with different types of the marketing
environment is also discussed (Blythe et al., 2019).
Two different organisations’ marketing mix is compared and it is also analysed how these
organisations use marketing to achieve their business objectives. The chosen organisation in
this assignment is Zara. Zara is a luxury brand that sells lifestyle products all over the world.

LO1
P1 ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF FUNCTIONS OF MARKETING
MARKETING
Marketing is defined as the activities which are done by companies in order to sell their products
and services to the customers by the means of advertising, product promotions and sales. All the
activities related to the selling of product from promoting the product to meeting the clients,
sending appreciative e-mails and other such gestures come under marketing (Baker, 2016).
IMPORTANCE OF MARKETING
Marketing is a very important function of management in Zara, which helps the final product to
reach in the hands of customers. Marketing plays a key role in bringing the income to the
company because it is the process through which the product reaches to the customers, who in
turn purchase it with money. At Zara, marketing function helps the brand to create standard
products according to the demand of customers. It is as important as the production of goods to
market the produced goods. Marketing is helpful in the decision- making the process in Zara as it
helps in deciding which products should be produced and which services will cater to the
customer satisfaction and help Zara to develop its economy (Blythe et al., 2019).
MARKETING FUNCTIONS
Marketing is the process of selling goods and services to people. Functions of marketing include
identifying the demands, needs, wants of the customers and providing this information to the
production team and then presenting the final products in the market (Blythe et al., 2019).
Marketing functions refer to the functions performed by the marketing team. These functions are
not just selling and promoting goods and services but also analysing the customer market,
branding of products, providing specific information to the production team, etc. In Zara,
functions of marketing are the key factors in achieving customer satisfaction and providing the
best products to the customers (Waheed et al., 2017).

FUNCTIONS OF MARKETING ARE:
Market analyses: At Zara, the marketing team analyse the market of lifestyle goods. It provides
information about trending goods and services, also about the current demands of customers.
Marketing helps in knowing the direction of trends in the market and in this way, it helps the
production team to produce desired goods (Waheed et al., 2017).
Market segmentation: It is very important to recognise the target customers to sell the goods to.
When the target customers are recognised, it helps in the specialisation of products and helps in
achieving customer satisfaction and greater sales. Marketing in Zara helps in the segmentation of
the market through which target customers can be pointed out (Blythe et al., 2019).
Pricing and distribution: At Zara, marketing helps in recognizing the appropriate pricing for
goods and services which can be accepted in the market and can help in reducing the
competition. It also helps in the distribution of products and services to customers through sales
and different modes of transportation (Waheed et al., 2017).
Risk taking: Marketing helps Zara, to take necessary risks to produce goods and services which
might be purchased by the customers. It is an essential function of marketing because, without
risks, there would be no possibilities for future increased profits (Blythe et al., 2019).
Figure 1: functions of marketing
Source: (Waheed et al., 2017)

M1: ROLE OF MARKETING WITH REFERENCE TO THE MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
AND ITS FACTORS
MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
Marketing environment refers to all the factors which affect the sales and promotion of goods
and services to the customers. There are internal and external marketing environment and
external marketing environment refers to the factors which affect the society and therefore
affects the marketing of the company.
Figure 2: marketing environment
Source: (Gürhan-Canli et al., 2016)
FACTORS OF MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
There are many factors which affect the marketing environment such as technological
environment, socio-cultural environment, etc. There are some roles and responsibilities of
marketing towards these environmental factors, they are:
The Political and Regulatory environment:
Marketing plays an important role in a company like Zara. In the country, there are several
political changes like change in the governing party, changes in the marketing policies, changes
in tax and services. It is the role of marketing to inform the company about these changes so that

it can be prepared to face these changes and use these changes for the benefit of the company
(Davcik and Sharma, 2017).
The Economic environment:
Economic environment affects the companies in many ways. The changes in the economic
environment can lead to a change in the sales of the company. In Zara, marketing informs these
changes to the company as companies should have different policies and the time inflation and
recession and there can be the changes in waste disposable income of the customers due to the
economic crisis and these issues are analysed by marketing (Davcik and Sharma, 2017).
The Competitive environment:
Zara is a lifestyle brand but there is a cut-throat competition in the market which Zara faces.
Marketing provides information about competitors and analyse the policies of competitors and
helps in coming up with proper solutions.
The Technological environment:
Marketing plays an important role in reviewing the changes which are taking place regularly in
technology. It helps Zara, to keep track of the technology and use more tech-savvy methods to
attract customers in order to win over its competition (Gürhan-Canli et al., 2016).
The Social and Cultural environment:
The social and cultural environment refers to the cultural and social sentiments of people living
in society. By marketing the products, keeping in track these sentimental values of the people
can help Zara to increase its goodwill among people and also help in increasing the sales of its
products (Gürhan-Canli et al., 2016).
Marketing plays important roles and responsibilities in an organisation to deal with the changing
factors of marketing environment and Zara should focus on developing its marketing department
in order to gain benefits from it.

P2 ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF MARKETING IN BROADER AND
WIDER ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT
All the functions of Zara are interlinked with each other. The marketing function is linked with
the production function which in terms is related to other functions (Armstrong, et al. 2015).
The marketing team is linked with other functional teams in one way or other. A detailed
analysis is given below of how the working of marketing team effects and are linked to other
functions:
Sales department: the marketing and sales department are like interwoven threads in an
organisation. The main aim of the marketing function is to increase sales. Various strategies are
planned by the marketing department and several promotional schemes are carried out in order to
increase sales of the products. The strong and developed marketing department is the supporting
pillar of the sales department. Ergo, a strong and well-developed marketing team helps in greater
sales of Zara (Armstrong, et al. 2015).
Production department: production department and marketing department actually work in
coordination. The marketing department provides information about the targeted buyers to the
production team of Zara in order to meet with the demands of customers. Production department
produces goods and services as per the requirement of customers, and the information about the
requirements are provided by the marketing team (Cacciolatti et al., 2016).
Finance department: finance department maintains the main resource of the company, i.e.
capital. In order to carry out the research and development, the finance department of Zara
produces an adequate budget for the marketing department (Cacciolatti et al., 2016). All the
activities done by the marketing department require money and this money is provided and
maintained by the finance department.
Human Resource department: human resource department of Zara is responsible for recruiting
the skilful employees in the company in order to work in a different department according to
their skills. The workflow of the company is maintained by human resource department and
human resource department is linked with the marketing department to spread information about
recruitment among the people (Cacciolatti et al., 2016).

Above written points imply that the functions of an organisation are closely interlinked with each
other and if Zara needs to make more progress and grow, all the functions need to work
effectively. It can be clearly seen that all the functions are dependent on each other and
ineffectiveness or problem in one function can hinder the overall growth of Zara (Armstrong, et
al. 2015).

M2 SIGNIFICANCE OF INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MARKETING AND OTHER
FUNCTIONS OF ZARA
Zara is the brand under the largest apparel company and is a very famous and recognized brand.
The growth of the company is directly related to the performance of its different functions and
their interdependence on each other (Armstrong, et al. 2015).
Marketing is the key function of any organisation because it is through marketing, that the
products and services are reached out to the customers. But marketing function alone can not
manage to pull off the growth of the company. It is the finance department that makes the budget
for marketing. Human resource department recruits skilful individuals which make great
strategies in order to promote goods and services and production department produce goods
through the information provided by the marketing department (Armstrong, et al. 2015). Overall,
the development and growth of the company are highly dependent on the interrelationship of its
different functions.