BHO6505 Marketing Management Essay Is Insightful And Informative.

Marketing is an art for the marketer to understand the market, their trends, understand the competitors and customers to manufacture the product which fulfill the needs as well as the desire of the consumers. 3M is one such company which believes in making the lives of consumer easy in every aspect through their innovative products. The company has employed more than 80000 employees in more than 60 countries. The company uses technologies to develop more and more products which can help the peoples in their daily life. The objective of this paper is to analyze the operating environment of 3M from a marketing perspective.

3M is an American based company headquartered in Maplewood, Minnesota USA formerly known as Minnesota, Mining and Manufacturing Company. The company holds the annual sales of $30million. The company is known for the producing more than 55000 products including adhesives, dental, electronic, medical products, car- care etc.                                  The company operates in more than 65 countries including 29 international companies and 35 companies with laborites. The company developed its first exclusive product three-M-ite cloth. Other innovation includes masking tape, waterproof sandpaper and scotch brand tapes.

The products are available through retailers, distributors and online. There are several patterned which are filled under the company’s name (Caprar & Devinney, 2015).

The firm should understand the external and internal situation which includes the customers, the firm’s capability, and the market environment in order to understand and satisfy the customer needs.

The 5C analysis is a framework used to analyze the situational analysis. The 5C is an environmental scan which is important while making marketing decision making. It is an extension of 3C analysis which includes Customers, Company and Competitors. This analysis covers the most important areas of marketing and helps the company to understand the problems and challenges faced by the organization. The analysis works only for particular area of marketing (Ramjawan, 2011).

• Company: The company factor of 5C analyzes an organization’s vision, strategies, capabilities, product lines, technology, culture and objective. It is important for the firm to understand the existing and potential problems with the business.

The company 3M believes in delivering simplicity and efficiency for the people at home as well as in office. The company owns the product from band-aids to paint removers. The company mission is to ensure the easy work life balance for all its consumers.

• Customers: Understanding customers is the key of understanding any business. This analysis involves understanding the target audience, their behavior, market size, market growth, their buying pattern and purchase size.

3M has one of the largest customer bases due to the various numbers of brands of products. The company has more than 5000 product under its umbrella. The customers of the company are from the age 10 till his life. The company has divided it customers into two categorizes i.e. Corporate customers as well as consumers.   

• Competitors: Competitor analysis is an understanding the external environment in the area in which the firm operates. This analysis involves the understanding of competitor’s strengths, weakness, positioning, market share and new entrance in the market.

There are very few competitors of 3M that are present in the market. There can be competitor for every brand rather than the competitor of as a whole operating firm such as for all the electric supplier the common competitor is General Electric and Siemens. Therefore, all the brands of 3M there are competitor present.

• Collaborators: Collaborators are external stakeholders who join hands together with the organization for mutual beneficial partnership. Suppliers, distributors and business partners comes the list of collaborators. It helps the organization to understand their capabilities, performances and issues for business problems.

3M’s collaborator can be all the company leadership people as well as the supplier, distributors and retail market people. Customers can also be categorized under the list of collaborators. There is a separate department who work closely with these suppliers as well as the distributors of the company.

• Climate: Climate analysis is the evaluation of macro-environment factors that affects the business. PESTEL analysis is used to analysis the climate – Political, economic, social/cultural, technological and legal scenarios are included in PESTEL analysis (Anderson, G).

The firm manufactures the products for the large consumer base; therefore, it is necessary for the company to manufacture the right product for the target audience at the right time period. To identify the right product, it is important for the firm to understand the requirement of consumers. To help in identifying these requirements, the firm requires understanding the market either through market intelligence or market research (Chidlow & Ghauri, 2015).

Market Intelligence includes the data sources used to obtain information from the business environment for decision making process. This data relates to the various political, technological, environmental and sociocultural factors. The data can be internal or external. The data is usually collected through market intelligence data or through market research which done either or research or government agencies (Cornish, 1997 pp 143-165).  

Market reports:  The companies usually determine how they are performing in the market. The usually go for secondary data research in order to understand the market.

Competitive Information:  Competitive information is another type of market intelligence. This is done using industry report, articles, newsletters and personal observation to study their competitors. Competitor analysis can be done through several other ways such as competitor brochures, buying any product of the competitors and understanding their features and technology.

Internal Database Information:  Since the firm has the detailed information about their customers including age, gender, income, education etc. This can be used to understand the requirements and to target the audience for the upcoming product. This information will help the firm to understand the customer better and manufacture new and new product through theses technology (Modou & Sow, 2016).

3M being of the product as well as the manufacturing based company. The consumer base of the company is also one of largest among the other companies. The company believes in delivering simplicity and efficiency to their consumer at home as well as in office. Therefore, it is one of important factor for the company to understand the market needs of the customer in order to produce the correct product for their consumers. The company has proved its necessary need assessment through its previous inventions such as post-it, scotch-brite etc. There are many products which comes under the brand and have been people living their life simply. The company uses the market intelligence to understand the need and desire of the consumer. This helps the firm to understand their customers, market trend as well as their competitors (Lackman,  Saban, & Lanasa, 2000; pp6-9).

Market segmentation is the process of dividing the consumer market into small groups in order to identify the potential target audience (Menzly, and Ozbas, 2010; pp 119-135). Market segmentation is one of the strategies of marketing. With the increasing customer population and increasing number competitors the market segmentation becomes the critical issues in marketing plan. The firm does their market segmentation even before launching the product. The market or the consumer base can be classified into three ways, they are: needs, wants and desires.  The first step to determine which type of customer will prefer which product of the firm. According to the customer the target audience will be formed (Dibb, 2010). There are four types of market segmentation and their implementation will vary accordingly. They are:

1. Demographic Segmentation: Demo graphic segmentation is one of the simplest and one of widest type of market segmentation used. Segmentation divides the population as the variable such as age, gender, income, religion, occupation, race and nationality. This type of segmentation can be applied for any type of market. Age, life cycle stage, gender, income can be used for demographic type of market segmentation (Cantwell, 2014).
2. Behavioral Segmentation: Behavioral segmentation divides the market according to the buying behavior of consumer and their decision-making patterns. This type of segmentation can be easily judged in e-commerce sector (Cantwell, 2014).
3. Psychographic Segmentation: This type of segmentation is one which judges the lifestyle of people, their activities, interest along with the opinion to define a market segmentation. This segmentation is similar to the behavior segmentation. The psychological segmentation also takes the buying behavior into account (Cantwell, 2014).
4. Geographic Segmentation: This type of segmentation divides the people according to their geography. The potential customers from different geographic region will have different needs as compared to others. This is the easiest type of segmentation which is used where the industries are new with less reach. As of today, the reach of this segmentation is high and geographic segmentations are used while expanding the business in local as well as international territories (Santacreu-Vasut & Shenkar, 2014).

3M being one of the biggest organizations in the market. 3M has segmented their products into two different target audience i.e. products for business and products for consumers. This segmentation can be categorized under behavior segmentation as the buying pattern of b2b customers will be different from the b2c customers (Monteiro & Veiga, 2015).

The company is operating into several countries. The company holds patterns of several products. The company holds the product into several industries. The B2C products of the company can easily segment its target audience into demographic segmentation as there are certain which can be required for male and some for female. The segmentation can also according to the occupations. There are several products which are under students, decoration as well as office supplies.  The buying behavior of each and every consumer’s segmentation will be different and it totally depends on industry the consumers can fall into (Goyat, 2011).

The marketing mix is one of most important tool of marketing. The Marketing mix is an operational part of the marketing plan. The marketing mix can be defined as the set of controllable marketing tools such as Product, Place, Price and Promotion which are the 4P’s of marketing mix and the service marketing mix consists of 7P’s of marketing which is an extension of 4P’s. The 7P’s of marketing are Product, Place, Promotion, Price, Process, People and Physical evidence (Singh, 2012, pp 40-45).   3M is a product company therefore; it uses the 4P’s of marketing. This tool is used by the firm to produce the response of the needs and desire in the target market.

Product:  Products can be defined as the goods or services that a company is offering to the consumers to satisfy the needs of the target audience. The product can be tangible or the physical items that can sell and brought in exchange of money. All the intangible items are known as the services. The nature of product can be classified into three types i.e. CORE, ACTUAL and AUGMENTED (Rahmani, Emamisaleh, and Yadegari, 2015; pp 98-108).

3M has more than 5000 products that the company manufactures and tries to innovate the new and new products. The company product range is divided into two groups i.e. Product for business and product for consumers. The products are into varied number of industries such as automotive products, Aerospace & Aircraft maintenance, Hygiene, medical devices and optical components etc.  3M is one of most profitable company in the market due to its innovative products and their strong customer base.  The most common product of 3M is post-it, Scoth brite, Scoth, Nexcare etc.

Price: Price of a product can be defined as that any consumer who is willing to buy the product in exchange of the amount. Price is one of the important parts of marketing mix as this segment decides the company’s goal in term of price.

The products of 3M are very cheap and affordable for all the income level of consumers. The price of products varies from the product of one industry to another. The company understands the basic needs of the customers. Price has helped the company to grow and become one of most profitable company worldwide.

Place: Place of the marketing mix should be defined as the area where the company activities that makes the product makes available for the target consumers. The Place can also be known as the channel or distribution through which the goods or services are moved from manufacturer to the target audience.

The products or 3M are easily available through online, retail stores and through different suppliers as well as the distributors. The reach of the company is vast which help them to understand the buying behavior of the products.

Promotion: Promotion is the activities that marketers use to create awareness about the brands and their product to attract the potential customers and increase the sales of the product. Promotion includes all the tools that are available for the marketers for marketing communication. There are many promotional elements that are included such as sales, advertising, sales promotions, public relations, direct marketing, online communication and personal selling.

There are lots of ways through which 3M can promote their brand and create awareness. The basic way of promotion 3M uses is word of mouth. This type of marketing channel is one of fastest effective marketing channel (Peattie, and Peattie, 2011; pp 152-166). It is important that the tactical marketing plan of 3M should be based on number of internal and external factors. The leaders of 3M should realize the fact that the external factors like political, social, etc. are not same in different regions. Therefore, it is important that the company should have customized strategy to operate across the regions. The market plan that works best in Australian region may not be best in India region. For example, 3M may want to focus on product differentiation in developed markets and it may want to focus on ‘cost leadership’ in emerging markets like India. Likewise, the tactical marketing plan of 3M would change in different countries based on the high-level business strategy that the company had adopted. For marketers, it is important to based their marketing strategy on the business strategy. The successful execution of any marketing plan depends on the way business people are able to implement and execute their business strategies.

3M which was originally known as Minnesota, Mining and Manufacturing Company is one of biggest profitable company worldwide. The company has more than 5000 brand of products that are currently used in the market. The company also holds the pattern of several products. Post-it and socth brite are one the most commonly used by the consumers. The company has bifurcated it products into two categories such as products for business and product for consumers. The buying behaviour of both the consumer will be different and assessed through the internal database of marketing intelligence. This report does the analysis of marketing including the need assessment and marketing segmentation.

Anderson, G., Framework For Marketing Planning.

Cantwell, J., 2014. Revisiting international business theory: A capabilities-based theory of the MNE. Journal of International Business Studies, 45(1), p.1.

Chidlow, A., Ghauri, P.N., Yeniyurt, S. and Cavusgil, S.T., 2015. Establishing rigor in mail-survey procedures in international business research. Journal of world business, 50(1), pp.26-35.

Caprar, D.V., Devinney, T.M., Kirkman, B.L. and Caligiuri, P., 2015. Conceptualizing and measuring culture in international business and management: From challenges to potential solutions. Journal of International Business Studies, 46(9), pp.1011-1027.

Cornish, S.L., 1997. Product innovation and the spatial dynamics of market intelligence: does proximity to markets matter?. Economic Geography, 73(2), pp.143-165.

Lackman, C., Saban, K. and Lanasa, J., 2000. The contribution of market intelligence to tactical and strategic business decisions. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 18(1), pp.6-9.

Modou, B. A., Sow, D., Faye, S., Sow, A. G., & Sall, M. D. (2016). The Drying Kinetics Study of Couscous for its Conservation, Comsumption and Urban Marketing. American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS), 16(1), 223-231.

Monteiro, P. R. R., & Veiga, R. T. (2015). The Use of the 3M Model to Predict Traits Related to Involvement with Sports and Fashionable Clothing. In Proceedings of the 2007 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 323-327). Springer International Publishing.

Jaworski, B.J. and Kohli, A.K., 1996. Market orientation: review, refinement, and roadmap. Journal of Market-Focused Management, 1(2), pp.119-135.

Menzly, L. and Ozbas, O., 2010. Market segmentation and cross?predictability of returns. The Journal of Finance, 65(4), pp.1555-1580.

Dibb, S., 2010. Market Segmentation Success–Making it Happen!. Strategic Direction, 26(9).

Goyat, S., 2011. The basis of market segmentation: a critical review of literature.

Peattie, K. and Peattie, S., 2011. The social marketing mix–A critical review. The sage handbook of social marketing, pp.152-166.

Singh, M., 2012. Marketing mix of 4P’s for competitive advantage. Journal of Business and Management, 3(6), pp.40-45.

Santacreu-Vasut, E., Shenkar, O. and Shoham, A., 2014. Linguistic gender marking and its international business ramifications. Journal of International Business Studies, 45(9), pp.1170-1178.

Rahmani, K., Emamisaleh, K. and Yadegari, R., 2015. Quality Function Deployment and New Product Development with a focus on Marketing Mix 4P model. Asian Journal of Research in Marketing, 4(2), pp.98-108.

Ramjawan, S., 2011. Identifying marketing tools and strategies to provide a platform to non-users in the use of library and information services (Doctoral dissertation).