MARKETING MANAGEMENT
Assignment
Total Word-1800 words (including 400 in SWOT/TOWS)
Please make this assignment through the following guidelines and mention the intext citation with APA referencing style.
Take one global company in situation analysis like Nike, Adidas, Apple, Samsung.
Internal analysis should be included with balance score card
Micro analysis should be including product life cycle (growth, maturity, decline)
Macro analysis should be included with steeple.
SWOT/ TOWS analysis should be 300-400 words.theory and research to determine what the correct course of action is given the current circumstances.
The basis of your discussion should come from your prescribed text and your research into what's occurring in your environment right now (or in the immediate future). You will need to relate issues you take from the organisation's situation back to relevant marketing theory. Because this assignment is due in week 5 it is highly likely that many of the problems or opportunities you see facing your organisation will not have been covered yet in your reading. In this situation you will need to draw on your knowledge from your under-graduate degree, experience in your workplace, readings, discussions on the Moodie forum, or in consultation with me to help you interpret the nature of the problem/opportunity.
Your frame and structure
The structure of your paper and its sub-headings will include the following:
Title Page
Executive Summary
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction
2.1 SituationAnalysis
2.2 External Analysis
2.2.1 Industry analysis 2.2.2 Market analysis 2.2.3 Competitoranalysis 2.2.4 Customer analysis 2.2.5 Macroenvironment
2.3 Internal Analysis
2.3.1 Operational analysis 2.3.2 Financial analysis 2.3.3 Product analysis
2.4 SWOT/TOWS
2.4.1 SWOT analysis 2.4.2 TOWS analysis Reference List
Appendix (if appropriate/required)
As you can see, I'm not asking for a Conclusion. In practice there isn't a break between this part of the plan (Situation Analysis) and the strategy section, so I'm just advising you to conclude your plan at this point and to take it up again following the SWOT & TOWS in your next assessment task.
Here's how to go about it
The first step with this task is to make yourself familiar with your organisation's current Strategic Plan and Annual Reports for the last 2-3 years. Get a solid picture in your mind of how the company has been travelling.
At the same time, you can be starting your analysis of the current environment they're operating in.
1.13 Introduction
The first point introduces the paper and the organisation: it's a snapshot of the current operating environment that sets the scene so that we're all on the same page. It'll be short and sweet and cover information such as:
What business are you in? Where are you headquartered? How long have you been in business? Just briefly, in one or two sentences, what is your product mix?
2.0 Situation Analysis
2.1 External Analysis
In this section you should analyse the current situation of the organisation in terms of the industry it operates in and the market it interacts with using appropriate tools of analysis.
2.1.1 Industry analysis
(e.g. definition size, growth, attractiveness)
Start this with a look at the industry and what's happening in it right now. Identify whether it's in growth or decline; the size of the industry; what's changing in it - if anything - how attractive is it?
There are a couple of tools you can use for this analysis. You may be familiar with Porter's Five Forces model from your undergraduate studies but, if not, that's not a problem, just do a simple ILC.
Porters Five Forces can be helpful to demonstrate the long-term attractiveness of the industry, but you may think it could chew up too much of your word count and that a simple little ILC would be sufficient, but I leave that decision to you.
212 Market analysis
Understanding your current market is fundamental to marketing planning and can be looked at in terms of market structure and customers.
2.1.2.1 Market structure
Market structure shows size, trend and how the market is divided by customer/consumer.
The second part of a market analysis looks at customers (the people who actually buy - or who potentially buy) of products or services in this product category. Remember, consumers are those who use the product as opposed to purchasing it. Sometimes they're the same entity - sometimes not. A useful distinction to remember,
A customer analysis along these lines could also be part of this section if you have the space.
Competitor analysis (e.g. some of the questions you may ask yoursel may include: who are they, who are their customers, what are their strengths and weaknesses? What are their strategies?)
Analysis of the competitive landscape (direct or indirect competitors) can be handled in a variety of ways.
2.1.5 Macraenviroment
In this section you will identify key trends in the external environment that will impact on your organisation and its products in either a positive way or a negative way. I've depicted this below by showing the opportunities for the newspaper industry
in green and the threats in red.
Operationally, five different types of environment may be identified: political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, environmental / natural.
What is the bearing of each of these variables on your product's future? What are the potential impacts?
How many issues would I expect to see under each of the macroenvironmental factors? There's no hard and fast rule - it depends on what's currently happening in your industry. If word space is an issue just remember that I expect to see at least three of the five most relevant variables examined here.
2.2 Internal Analysis
In this section, think about your company's current capabilities and core competencies in terms of marketing strategies, financial performance, human resource management. Include the company's profit and sales/market share objectives.
Product analysis also belongs in the internal analysis
A simple way to organise this is to look at the business in terms of the organisation's operations and its financials.
1. Operations
Under Operations you'd look at internal capabilities and competencies within the company to help identify the strengths and weaknesses existing.
Think about the specific skills and abilities in the workforce that contribute to your competitive advantage. Core competencies typically improve the perceived customer benefits of your product or service, are difficult for competitors to imitate and open up a range of markets to a company.
Financial Analysis
You need to check the company financials and give a brief summary from at least one Annual Report showing information such as liquidity, debt ratio, profitability. current return on equity and so on.
Product analysis
Current product
In this section you should cover the product attributes, current pricing, distribution and marketing communications. This is very brief, so don't allow yourself to get bogged down here. See Figure 9 (p. 10) for a possible method for presentation of this information. There is no need for analysis here, just the introduction of the figure/table is sufficient to depict the current product strategy. This is a very short description of the product or service that the marketing plan to follow is to be designed for.
Crurrent target
Include here a very brief description of that current target (which may change with your new marketing plan). Describe them in terms of the four variables covered in Chapter 6 of Armstrong et al.
This differs from the market analysis above in that this is (from the whole market described above) who you are currently targeting with your product and messages. Whereas in Section 2.1.2 you analysed the market in terms of buyers of the product category (as opposed to buyers of your particular product/service), now you are narrowing that down to the most attractive segments for your offering.
2.3 SWOT/TOWS
2.3.1 SWOT analysis
For this you'll compile all the identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats into a table and assign scores so you can clearly see what the level of importance each holds for your product.
2.3.2 TOWS analysis
TOWS Analysis for IBIS Hotel
Your SWOT/TOWS acts as a platform for the design of a marketing plan for the product/service described in 2.2.3. It enables you to crystallise all the important information into one tool. Now you must give some thought to how you will take it forward. What modifications/revisions to your offering must be undertaken given this situation analysis? How can you take it forward from this point?
Now that you have a very detailed understanding of the situation your product or service is in, how would you tweak your product/service to compete in this environment? Would you decide to target the tweaked offering/product/service to a different target? You have evaluated competitors and customers you understand the financial situation of your company and how you stand in terms of core competencies and capabilities. What's next?
2.3.4 What's Next?
This signals the end of your first assessment task and is followed by the Reference List. As I said on p. 2, I'm not expecting a Conclusion here. Your second assessment task (due Week 1 0) will take up from this point and the marketing plan/strategy will be designed around the best way to market your product/service in the environment you analysed here.
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