John Lewis Partnership's Essay On Marketing Segmentation And Advertising.

John Lewis Partnership is a retail company that targets both the consumer and business markets. Core marketing principles and practices include how the needs of the customers are met. You have to identify their use of marketing research, advertising and segmentation as part of your analysis of one of John Lewis Partnership product areas, which is Furniture. 

Present Marketing Situation

John Lewis Partnership is a popular retail company at U.K. targeting business markets and consumers. Their core marketing principles and practices involves meeting the necessities of customers (Knowledge, 2018). The following report intends to identify the usage of marketing segmentation, advertising and research as an integral part of their productive areas.

The report analyzes primary goals and recommendations, present marketing situation, target market and position of the organization. Further, marketing objectives are identified along with action programs and controls to be used to measure performance and monitor the progress. The steps to be undertaken are been illustrated using an Excel chart.

Target market and John Lewis’ position:

John Lewis Partnership has been serving as the link between consumers and manufacturer and trying to develop communication with the retail customers. It has been improving sales target and providing effective customer service and building a good image in front of common people. Further, they have been improving social responsibility and serving various markets (Westwood 2016). However, they have intended to convert their visitors to buyers and receive fast feedback regarding merchandise sells and different consumer services offered. 

Major segments for John Lewis Furniture:

At present, John Lewis Partnership has been operating a single manufacturing known as “Herbert Parkinson” situated at Darwen. The firm was established as a weaver dealing with jacquard fabrics and then possessed by “The Partnership”. Herbert Parkinson is involved in producing own-brand curtains and fabrics of John Lewis and various filled furnishing products like pillows and cushions.

Further this partnership also owned two more textile production. Next “Apex Textiles” was formed to but Jon Lewis’ business. “The Partnership” then announced their intention to retain the two businesses as primary suppliers as they have been under a new ownership and agreements (Christensen et al. 2016). 

Review of competition, a review of the company’s marketing mix for John Lewis:

One of the biggest competitors for John Lewis is Tesco. This is the biggest retailer situated at U.K. possessing over 3000 outlets. It is able to use their store network as efficient click-and-collect destinations. Those incremental developments have been helping to decrease spends at every visit which is an advantage for John Lewis. This growth has now been supported through initiatives revisiting some broader customer trends like tackling food waste and supporting a healthier living and eating.

The threats are discussed below:

Creating value for customers: 

However, there are particular strategies for every marketing mix. For example John Lewis must never underestimate value of free resources. This can be a printable PDF, company branded calendar, free guide and free resources to develop showcase and developing added value (Kolb 2016). The ability of their brand has been offering a little something extra to the customers. Further, free resources have been serving as a helpful tool to grow brand awareness and expose their target market to different services and products.

Marketing Objectives and Action Programs

In order to indulge into logistics of various action programs, it has been useful to define the ides of customer loyalty program. This is the marketing program rewarding members with purchase incentives. The programs have been incentivizing and tracking various purchasing behaviors and rewarding customers for their loyalty to specific brand. John Lewis have used these programs in attracting latest customers (Beltrán Fuentes 2017). However, they have been also using powerful customer retention tools. This is because they have been motivating their present customers to stay engaged and spend more. 

Examples on how those marketing strategies have turned into particular action program for the company: 

The various examples are demonstrated below.

To achieve all the above John Lewis must track all their retail promotion efforts from the initiates of their business analysts. For retrieving most of the benefits, from running retail promotion campaign, John Lewis must their sale percentages originating from promotional campaign (Blakeman 2018). They must be able to design tracking of codes or otherwise can discount those codes for certain products under their POS systems and create report for seeing how efficiently they are done since the initial launching of the campaign.

Another vital component is to set timeline for every campaign. This can encourage customers of John Lewis to react faster and help them to look at various promotions from a seasonal point of view (Hongisto et al. 2016). This must also be helpful to be far more strategic and provide enough time for planning all the things to development ensure that efforts are not wasted.

Thus, John Lewis can move forward with their promotions of retail during foot traffic and sales. Though this has not been a comprehensive move, however retailer like John Lewis can utilize that drive foot traffic. Thus these aforementioned methods can offer a strong place to start.

As a retailer John Lewis’s perpetual concerns has been driving sales. As one just get started on entrepreneurial journey, they must likely have some big queries. First of all they must determine how they can entice people in buying more from stores. Next they must determine what they must do while customers make purchases more frequently in higher volume (Reboll Rausell 2015). Next they must determine how they can boost business while the slow hours go on. 

Whatever might be their goals as a retailer, through developing time-sensitive in-store promotions and possessing good grasp on target customer demographic they able to incentivize proper actions. Thus they must get customers to respond and develop their business under that process. In this way, as John Lewis understands the power of the above promotions discussed, they can integrate them to their sales strategy spurring more revenue (West, Ford and Ibrahim 2015). Thus, the next time they stuck on how they can raise sales, they get new customers or otherwise retain current ones. In this way they have no trouble turning to perfect promotion strategy for their goal.

John Lewis Partnership's Strategies for Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

Controls that must be used for monitoring progress and measure performance:

It must be reminded by John Lewis that they have never just measuring performance. They are also meant to make progress. Further, they have been measuring other things also like monitoring processes, modifying behaviors and celebrate achievements. Hence for little side-step to usual performance measurement stuff, one must explore world of progress monitoring. Progress has been to results and actions. Thus it is essential to be aware how well they have been implementing their actions for reaching goals (Au 2015). Moreover, progress can take place at any moment or it might take time. This has been helpful to know how they have been doing at the particular moment. Further, it has been helpful to know what level they have been capable to hold in due time. This has not been actually the question of what progress measure John Lewis must use. However, they must be aware how to utilize them such that they can support each other (Camilleri 2018). This discipline has created habits that have made their activities easier for sustaining at upper levels. This has been making tangible progress towards different goals. Proper activity progress has been helping to sustain better performances and it has been providing more leverage to the status goals (Acheampong 2017). These actions programs are illustrated through the following Excel chart.

Conclusion:

In the above report the analysis of the terms marketing plan is done under the light of retail sector taking John Lewis Partnership as an instance. It has identified the usage of marketing research, segmentation and advertising as a part of the analysis. Importance of marketing mix and identification of various marketing strategies are explored here that must be used by the retailer for interacting and communicating with targeted customers. The organization’s position and target market are identified through understanding the major segments of the firm. As the initial plans are completed and the capital searched by John Lewis is obtained, they must know that business plan is a living document. Moreover, they must need to revisit that on daily basis, updating every section that must work for the business. As their business evolves, they must find older versions of their marketing plan providing a helpful reminder of how far they have come. 

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