Essay On Marketing Strategies, Product Life Cycle, Market Trends, And Regulations In Australia.

Market Penetration

1. Discuss each of the following terms in relation to marketing opportunities: market penetration, market development, product development and diversification.

Market Penetration: Marketing strategy adopted by companies to enter the market. The strategy is basically related with the pricing strategy. It is the extent to which a product is recognized and bought by customers in a particular market (Lee, Grana & Glatnz, 2014)

Market Development: Strategy targeted towards non customers and converting them into the customers. It is basically identifying new market segments for current products (Coleman, 2016)

Product development: In simple language, the creation of new product line, or some modification in the product, with added or modified characteristic, and adds values to the customer can be understood as product development (Eppinger & Ulrich, 2015)

Diversification: It is a corporate strategy to enter into a new market or industry in which the business currently doesn’t operate, also creating a new product for the same market or a new market (Bodie, 2013)

2. Explain each of the phases of the product life cycle

The Product life cycle has primarily 4 stages: Introduction, growth, maturity and decline (Stark, 2015)

Introduction: When the product is launched in the market.

Growth: This stage can be understood as the stage, when the product has already penetrated in the market and amongst the customers.

Maturity: This is the stage when the product shows no growth and just has a flat curve, it does not acquire any new customers and hence flat curve.

Decline: This is the stage when the product dies in the market, and it is slowly removed from the retail stores as it has reached its saturation stage.

3. Explain how to evaluate the size of a market

The size of the market is evaluated by first identifying the target audience according to the demographic of the market. After identifying the market size, it is estimated as to what percentage of the people are to be targeted, and based on that market size is calculated (Mayer, Melitz & Ottaviano, 2014)

4. Outline 3 information sources for determining market size.

The three sources can be: TAM- Total available market, SOM- Share of market & SAM- Served available market.

5. Explain why it is important to review market trends in the context of marketing opportunities.

It is extremely important to review the market trends because of it helps to understand how the market is functioning in a particular industry. How are customers reacting to a new product, what kind of pricing strategy is successful, how are employees being retained by the companies and what are the new ways by which the market share can be increased.

6. Outline four (4) key financial indicators that should be reviewed in relation to evaluating possible marketing opportunities.

The key financial indicators are market share, market size, market potential and market penetration.

7. Define the term return on investment and explain how it is calculated.

ROI is usually expressed as a percentage and is typically used for making financial decisions, in order to compare the company’s profitability or to compare the efficiency of different investment. The formulae is (Net profit/Cost of investment) *100.

Market Development

Identify and outline five examples of legislation and regulations that apply to the marketing industry in Australia.

Advertising- Misleading and deceptive conducts and bait advertising is ban in Australia.

Does not call register?

Pricing regulations

Spruiking

Trade mark laws

International pricing regulations

8. Explain why it is important for marketers to abide by the provisions of the Australian Marketing Institute Code of Professional Conduct?

It is extremely important for marketers to abide by the provisions of the Australian marketing institute code of professional conduct because it is the governing body for all the content and the advertisement. It is the body which controls the way the companies can advertise, it should not be misleading and be part of bait advertising and numerous other laws

9. Explain one aspect of this Code that is important in relation to identifying marketing opportunities?

The code explains to follow the legislation as prepared by the board.

10. Explain the purpose of the marketing mix and each of its components.

The marketing mix can also be known as the 7P’s of marketing, it is the entire marketing strategy for any company offering product or a service (Armstrong, Kotler, Harker & Brennan, 2015)

Product: It deals with the design, technology, usefulness, convenience, value, packaging, branding etc. of the product (Mintz & Currim, 2013)

Price: It refers to the pricing strategies for the product

Place: It refers to the place where the product has to be distributed, retailer, distributer, etc.

Promotion: It refers to the marketing channels of promotion like newspaper, web, etc.

11. Explain why is the marketing mix important in bringing a product or services to the market?

Marketing mix is extremely important as it breaks down the entire product strategy into 7P’s: Product, price, place, promotion, process, physical evidence & people. All these elements combined together help the marketers to formulate the strategy for the product to be distributed in the market. 

12. Outline four key steps in the marketing process

The key steps in the marketing process can be Research, Plan, implement, measure & optimize. Research is conducted on the customer behaviour and the market, planning is done for business goals, campaign strategy, implementation is done by creative and analytics, marketing process is measured on the basis of the goals made or the test strategy, and in the end, optimization is based on the report on goals and the scenario.

13. Outline four statistical methods and/or forecasting techniques that can be used to evaluate marketing opportunities.

Judgement & survey techniques

Customer and channel surveys

Sales force composite

Time series techniques

14. Explain the purpose of sales forecasting.

Sales forecasting is a very important tool used by sales organisation. By forecasting the future sales, appropriate product can be introduced in the market. All the marketing expenditure and opportunities revolve around sales forecasting. Sales forecasting helps to estimate the sales in the future, and thus the efforts to achieve that numbers are taken based on the forecast.

15. Outline one method for forecasting market growth rate

Time series technique: This technique examines the sales patterns in the past in order to predict sales in the future. For example, with a trend analysis, the marketing executive identifies the rate at which a company’s sales have grown in the past and uses that rate to estimate future sales.

Product Development

The company chosen is The Riverview Hotel, Notown, USA; it is a representative of the 5 star brands within the USA “Exclusive Business Hotels of the World” group. All Riverview hotels are boutique properties and offer between 25 to 30 exclusive rooms.

Prepare for the Meeting: The hotel is dependent on the business from automotive, IT & Trade sector, over the last few years the business from these sectors is on a downtrend. Also, this is 70% of the hotel business. The current trend of the market is slow due to economic downturn and political policies. Hence, how to turn the tables around and putting Riverview back in business is the agenda for the meeting.

Market Needs: Riverview hotel, at the very onset understood the pulse of the market, it focussed on value based pricing and has been providing more values to the customers at affordable prices, makes them rate highly on customer surveys.

So, the objective of the meeting is to identify its target segment, work on the objectives set by the management and work towards its future marketing strategies. 

Conduct a Meeting

Objectives to be Achieved:

• Focus on relationship building with the clients
• Increase the customer base
• Tap the customer segment untargeted.

Market Demographics: Families with children either staying home or away, and one of the Grandparents completed college from the town, is the demographic of the region

Market Psychographics:  Influential and strong, like- minded & community groups dominate the region.

Market Behaviour: The market is very predictable, with 68% awareness among the population, and a strong sense of community among business people, the businesses can rely on the relationship they built with the suppliers and trading partners.

Policies related to Corporate Travel: Due to multiple notices related to security, the domestic and international travel both has been adversely affected.

Local Business Trends: The local area is showing signs of weakness, conferencing business is low, and the local companies are choosing to conduct meetings in their own premises to cut down the costs.

Economic Cut Backs: The city had to cancel 3 major trade events, and also the ones being going had a fewer attendance than expected.

Market Growth: The market has shown great strength, even at the time of depression, travel & trade sector has been growing at an average of 7.1%, while the automotive sector is holding at 9.5%, and IT sector standing tall at 8%

Conducting a survey in the entire city and knowing the awareness of the hotel, and also working towards the Net promoter score and customer surveys.

Market to be expanded other than automobile & IT sector, the hotel should focus on the community of all the sectors.

Explore the fruits of social media marketing and promote the services and customer feedback on it.

For each of one of the three the marketing opportunities that you have identified as being most viable develop a report (in the template provided by your assessor) that addresses:

• Alignment with the business’ objectives and goals objectives and goals as described in the Marketing Plan – The objectives are in total alignment with the marketing opportunities and will result in increase in the market share of Riverview hotel
• Target customers: identify if they are new or existing customers- Existing customers and new customers from different industry and have strong community presence.
• Overall benefits to the business of pursuing the opportunity-The increase in brand awareness, increase in market share and the overall revenue increase are the benefits.
• Anticipated effect of the marketing opportunity on sales, profitability, growth and market share. A cost-benefit analysis or existing data in the Marketing Plan could be used to help estimate this.- A cost benefit analysis sees a jump in the sales by 25 %
• Additional resources that will be required, for example, additional funds, staff or equipment including finances, staff, and equipment – Funds will be required for social media marketing, employees for customer surveys and equipment to be in sync with the technologies.
• Estimated effect on return on investment. This should be an approximate estimate taking into account how much the likely cost of the opportunity would be against anticipated return. Use the information in the Marketing Plan to help you answer this- The ROI will complete in duration of 4 years, with 25% return year on year.
• Potential competitors – these may be existing competitors or new ones depending on the marketing opportunity pursued-Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt & Glendale are its major direct competitors.
• How any changes in economic conditions could impact on each marketing opportunity- If the travel ban is not lifted, it will definitely hamper the conference business of the hotel
• Technological factors that may affect the marketing opportunities identified- installing “on board” reservation system for rooms, it will require investment but will be a great differentiating factor for the hotel.
• Legal issues associated with each marketing opportunity, including legislation, regulations, standards and codes that apply- There are no legal issues as such
• Risks associated with each marketing opportunity. A risk assessment must be completed for each opportunity- The risk assessment is of not collecting proper data from customer surveys, inability to tap the target segment identified and break the already build relationship in such a strong community focussed town.

Evaluate and report on required changes to business operations in the event of the opportunity being pursued as follows:

• What organisational changes would need to be made to current operations in order to take advantage of the opportunities identified- Marketing team has to increase in strong numbers with deployment of additional customer relationship management department. A team to analyse the collected data has to be also put in place, in order to translate the numbers into statements for the management. A social media monitoring team also has to be hired. The company has to focus on all the aspects of the marketing mix in order to attack from all sides.
• Outline of additional resources that will be required for each of the viable marketing opportunities. For example, if additional staff are needed, how many or, if there are additional costs, what are they and what is the amount- A team of 3 required for social media monitoring, team of 4 to be used for data analysis and collecting the data
• Recommended strategies to ensure that the quality of service to existing customers is not affected by changes made as a result of implementing new marketing opportunities- The SERVQUAL model will be applied in the service model of the hotel and will be ensured that before and after the implementation of new strategy, the service parameters ranking don’t change or go down. 

References:

Lee, S., Grana, R.A. and Glantz, S.A., 2014. Electronic cigarette use among Korean adolescents: a cross-sectional study of market penetration, dual use, and relationship to quit attempts and former smoking. Journal of Adolescent Health, 54(6), pp.684-690.

Coleman, R., 2016. Fashion Dos: Acknowledging Social Media Evidence as Relevant to Proving Secondary Meaning. Trademark Rep., 106, p.776.

Eppinger, S. and Ulrich, K., 2015. Product design and development. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Bodie, Z., 2013. Investments. McGraw-Hill.

Stark, J., 2015. Product lifecycle management. In Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 1) (pp. 1-29). Springer International Publishing.

Mayer, T., Melitz, M.J. and Ottaviano, G.I., 2014. Market size, competition, and the product mix of exporters. The American Economic Review, 104(2), pp.495-536.

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.

Mintz, O. and Currim, I.S., 2013. What drives managerial use of marketing and financial metrics and does metric use affect performance of marketing-mix activities?. Journal of Marketing, 77(2), pp.17-40.