SWOT Analysis And Its Use In The Marketing Plan Essay.

Market research for branding a product

Questions:

1.Who Are The Competition For Your Favourite Product?

2.SWOT Analysis and Its Use In The Marketing Plan?

Marketing is a very complicated task and it has to go through various steps. The production of a market product and its following packaging and branding needs to be done very swiftly so that the marketing can be done properly. The first step for branding a product is to make a proper market research. Marketing research is seen as a basis on which the entire marketing program depends on (Malhotra, Birks & Wills, 2013). The steps of a marketing research are to prepare a brief research design. The research design should be based on a thorough overview of the current marketing positions. The importance of the primary and secondary data should be understood. The secondary data should be based on the sales records and the customer profiles. The responsibility of the marketing research should be given to a specialist company who will carry it out.

Marketing plan is something that is needed to be done according to the outcomes of the marketing research process (Westwood, 2016). A marketing plan is something where proper strategies have to be fixed so that the proper strategies and tactics can be employed for a positive outcome in the business. A marketing plan has to be focused on the time period of the next 12 months. Suppose a famous automobile company like Volkswagen group of companies that is located in Wolfsburg, Germany must make some good marketing strategies that can attract the entire European markets as well as the world markets. It is very important to capture the market by competing with the other famous companies like Mercedes, Toyota, Audi and others. They should assess the strategies of the other companies and make theirs to sustain their markets.

In this part the topic of discussion is the comparison between the favorite product and its competitor. According to the requirements, the favorite product has been chosen as the Apple iPhone 7. The competitor of the product is the Samsung Galaxy s7 phone. The competition market in the sphere of electronics market is immense (Mayer, Melitz & Ottaviano, 2014).  All the companies are recruiting its best resources to capture the market and adopting the best strategies. The external factors that impacts on the market may be considered as the tactics and strategies applied by them. The different strategies have to be assessed by the favorite product companies (Glowik, 2016).

In this scenario, the favorite product is the Apple iPhone 7. The most recent brand in the smart phone industry by Apple company is the iPhone 7. Their competitor in the market is the Samsung Galaxy s7 which is also a new launched product in the market. Apple is a much reputed company famous for their iPhones and iPads. These are very popular products to the upper class families. The main aspect is that the cost of these products is very high and have particular customer base. Samsung is trying to capture the market of Apple lovers. It is a known fact that these two products are run by two software platforms-iOS and Android (Liu et al., 2013). The iOS software does not support many applications though it is a symbol of pride and status. On the other hand, Android software supports most of the applications so it can attract young generation members.

Developing effective marketing strategies

The favorite product Iphone 7 must adopt some strategies so that they can produce some cost effective products. These cost effective products will be able to attract the middle class families and it would make their brand more popular than their competitor product. 

PETSEL analysis is a very effective way of assessing the marketing strategies of an organization (Jurevicius, 2013). The PESTEL analysis somewhat helps this process by analyzing the different aspects in the marketing criteria. The aspects include the political, economical, social, technological, environmental and legal issues. They are very useful collectively to draw out the proper marketing tactics to launch a product. The company chosen here is Vodafone which is a leading telecommunication industry. The latest example of the Vodafone products is the Vodafone Smart powered by 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7225 processor.

Vodafone is a reputed telecommunication industry spread in the entire world. The countries in which they are doing their business must support their endeavors. If a country is politically unstable, it would be very problematic to do a proper marketing, Political unrest would hinder Vodafone to market their products and this is why they should choose countries, which are politically stable. 

The economic aspects do not affect the business directly but it affects the business on a bigger level by affecting the goods, services and the financial state of the business. It also conforms to the ideas of customer demands and taxes (Bodie, 2013). Vodafone must assess their economical strengths and be able to manage the losses when it comes to count. They should always try to keep up a good economical stability in their business profits.

The social factors include the introduction of the social media in the lives of people and the marketing analysis. Social marketing has become a part and parcel in the people’s lives. The society is changing and the marketers have to keep updated with the changing scenario. They should introduce new plans that would attract the new customers and prove to be benefit for them. They should cater to the needs of the societal progress. 

The recent technology has to be used in manufacturing the products and the infrastructure of the organization. They must provide the customers with a better network and sufficient data speed so that it would keep the customers satisfied always.

The environmental factors have to be analyzed before the launching of the product like the customer health, climate change, physical condition of the earth and others. Vodafone should also present their product benefits to help the needs of the customers. These things are very important for the growth of Vodafone.     

The legal factors include following the law and not violating it at any cost. They must follow the legal guidelines of the countries to keep their reputation alive.

It is observed that SWOT analysis is one of the significant strategic marketing tools that help the organization to identify the internal as well as external forces that have strong impact on the business. The strength gives the confidence regarding the factors, which the firm has the right as well as which it could capitalize on. Likewise, Agarwal, Grassl and Pahl (2012) mentioned that weakness demonstrates the weak areas within the company, where the management needs to work on. Similarly, opportunities are referred to the strategic options available to the company to develop the business and gain customer base. The last aspect of SWOT analysis is the threat that determines the major threats for the organizations, which could be both internal and external. The SWOT analysis is effective when the organizations need to develop a new strategy or expand in a new market. Before implementing the strategies, it could focus on its internal capabilities and external opportunities. Based on the analysis, the company could further modify the strategies. The significance of SWOT analysis has been discussed in the following with an example of its application used by KFC. The latest example that KFC has produced is the Chili Chizza.

Comparing favorite product and its competitor

Table 1: SWOT analysis of KFC

(Source: Nehir  &  Simsek, 2012)

The organization’s market growth depends on how it treats the market, which how the company deals with the customers. Thus, as the advanced marketing strategy, the company categorizes the market based on the demography, psychographic as well as geography. Therefore, to understand the application of segmentation and its impact, the example of beverage company Coca Cola has been discussed in the following.

Demography- Coca Cola significantly focuses on people whose age falls under the category of 15 to 25 years (Karnani, 2014). It significantly targets the both male and female as the beverage items are purchased by both male and female. In addition, the company also focuses on the income while designing the beverage items. For example, the people who have low level of income prefer to buy the returnable glass bottle, whereas people with high income prefer can. Thus, Coca Cola design its products based on the average income of the people in the market and their age. The latest product launched by Coca Cola is the Aquarius mineral water.

                                                                        Figure 1: Demographic Segmentation

                                                                            (Source: Karnani, 2014)

Psychographic- As consumer buying behavior has strong impact on the organizational operation, the design of products and service should be based on the buying behavior of the consumers. However, people who are brand conscious may not drink beverage items of less know brands. Therefore, Coca Cola focuses on the market that has increasing percentage of education to convey its brand message.

Geographic segmentation- The beverage items of Coca Cola is based on climate, population and locality. As put forward by Barkay (2013), Coca Cola sells its products based on the country and region. However, it varies in accordance to the taste and income level.  For example, the third world nations are given low quality and taste.   As people most prefer cold beverage items, the main idea of Coca Cola is to serve the items cold. Therefore, it focuses on the hot areas of the world such as UAE and other Asian nations.

Target customers- The target customers of Coca Cola is youths and adult. The brand mainly focuses on high school students and college goers who prefer to hang out in the pub and restaurants.

Positioning- In order to position the brand, Coka Cola mainly focus on the markets that have highest population such as downturn of the cities, Tier I and Tier II cities. However, due to the increasing popularity of brand, Coca Cola even got into the small cities (Singh, 2013).

It is not certain that launch of every product will bring success to the company. Many organizations are there in the global environments that have experienced the product failure in their long-term operation in the market.

Product Failure of Nokia-Lumia –Even though, Nokia has gained a tremendous popularity in the global environment due to cell phone, in the recent time the operation of Nokia has largely been affected due to the strong market presence of Samsung. Samsung introduced its Smartphone in 2009 collaborating with the Google and it gained a tremendous popularity as people have shifted their focus from low cost cell phone to innovative Smartphone (Kolk & Rungi, 2013). However, Nokia took many years to launch its Lumia collaborating with Microsoft and people were already aware of Microsoft Windows software (Karnani, 2014). Therefore, the product did not gain popularity as the customers were looking for innovative software like android instead of used software. The latest product launched by Nokia Lumia is the Microsoft Lumia 550 powered by Windows 10 version software.

Undoubtedly, Amazon’s Kindle has gained an excellent success in the market. Nearly, Amazon sold 17.5 billion of Kindle devices in the last year (Soler et al., 2012). First time in history, e-book lovers have received that worth their money and time. Excellent features of Kindle helps users to read any book and stories. These user-friendly devices help the buyers carry the devices wherever they go.

References

Agarwal, R., Grassl, W. &  Pahl, J., (2012). Meta-SWOT: introducing a new strategic planning tool. Journal of Business Strategy, 33(2), pp.12-21.

Barkay, T., (2013). When business and community meet: a case study of Coca-Cola. Critical Sociology, 39(2), pp.277-293.

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

Glowik, M. (2016). Market Entry Strategies: Internationalization Theories, Concepts and Cases of Asian High-Technology Firms: Haier, Hon Hai Precision, Lenovo, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TCL, Xiaomi. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.

Jurevicius, O. (2013). PEST & PESTEL Analysis. Strategic Management Insight, 13, 2013.

Karnani, A., (2014). Corporate social responsibility does not avert the tragedy of the commons. Case study: Coca-Cola India. Economics, Management, and Financial Markets, 9(3), pp.11-23.

Kolk, A. & Rungi, M., (2013). Total exploitation orientation in capability development: the cross-case of Google, Ericsson, Microsoft and Nokia. Research in Economics and Business: Central and Eastern Europe, 4(2).

Liu, Y., Li, F., Guo, L., Shen, B., & Chen, S. (2013, March). A comparative study of android and iOS for accessing internet streaming services. In International Conference on Passive and Active Network Measurement (pp. 104-114). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Malhotra, N. K., Birks, D. F., & Wills, P. (2013). Essentials of marketing research. Pearson.

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

Mylonakis, J. &  Evripiotis, M., (2016). Towards an assessment of globalization and localization of western east-food chains in china: the case of kfc. European Journal of Business and Innovation Research, 4(3), pp.17-28.

Nehir El, S. & Simsek, S., (2012). Food technological applications for optimal nutrition: an overview of opportunities for the food industry. Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, 11(1), pp.2-12.

Singh, D., (2013). The brand personality component of brand goodwill: some antecedents and consequences. Brand equity & advertising: Advertising's role in building strong brands, p.83.

Soler, L.S., Kok, K., Camara, G. &  Veldkamp, A., (2012). Using fuzzy cognitive maps to describe current system dynamics and develop land cover scenarios: a case study in the Brazilian Amazon. Journal of Land Use Science, 7(2), pp.149-175.

Westwood, J. (2016). How to write a marketing plan. Kogan Page Publishers.

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