This Assessment covers following questions:
- Evaluate the important role and the responsibilities of the marketing functions.
- Make comparison in the ways in which Cadbury use elements of the marketing mix in order to achieve the organisational goals.
- Cadbury is a international confectionery company. Create and analyse the basic marketing plan in the context of Cadbury.
Introduction
Marketing is one of the most common term used by the management today. It is used as synonym for the activities related to selling a product with some principles involved in it. It is often seen as a management function rather than philosophy that drives the business selling department (Aeberhardt, Buono and Fadinger2014). For any organisation to be successful it is necessary to grasp the essentials of marketing and creation of customer focus. As the world is changing rapidly and to align the organisation with them it is essential to use marketing essential theories. In this report we have chosen the organisation which is second largest confectionery brand in the world named Cadbury. The headquarter of Cadbury is situated in uxbridge, London. This report will cover the principles of marketing enabling the organisation to develop basic marketing plan and to employ elements of marketing mix to achieve the objectives.
STRIP 1
Task 1
P1 The Key Roles and Responsibilities of Marketing Functions.
Concept of marketing
It refers to the activities of a company associated with buying and selling a product or service. It includes advertising, selling and delivering product to the people (Saunders and Hutson 2012). By implementing this strategy the company is able to recognise the needs of their potential customers. Which results in increased profit margin along with high market growth. Marketing concepts includes the following :
- Production concept: This concept helps in analysing customers needs and desire. It is based on the fact that customer will buy only those goods which are affordable and satisfy their wants. By analysing the demands of the customer the organisation is able to produce the product. In case of Cadbury their main is to develop the product that satisfies the customer desires.
- Selling concept: According to this approach it states that consumers will not buy enough of the companies products unless it undertakes a selling and promotion technique (Anderson Boud and Sampson 2014). Here the management focus on creating sales transactions rather than in building long term customer relation. In reference to Cadbury the company is selling their product through different sources so as to maximise the turnover.
- Marketing concept: This concept holds that achieving organisational goals depends on knowing the needs and wants of market and satisfying the wants of the customers. Under this concept the customer desires are taken on priority to enable the organisation to maintain maximum profit. In case of Cadbury to maximise their profit by the way of sales is to find the right product that suits the wants of its customer. It will further help them In competing their rivals.
- Product concept: This concepts holds that the consumer will favour the product that offers best quality to them (Ariño et. al., 2014). This concept focuses on the strategies to build best product which outperform their rivals. For this Cadbury focuses on making improved products which are easily available and are affordable to customers.
- Societal marketing concept: it states that marketing strategy should deliver values to the customer in a way that maintains or improve both the consumers and society well being. The main of Cadbury is to create a sustainable marketing strategy that needs the present needs of consumers and society.
When the firms first began to adopt marketing concepts they typically set up a separate marketing departments whose objectives is to satisfy customers wants. The marketing concept relies upon the marketing research to define marketing segments. Factors such as technology, globalisation influence marketing management to the great extend. Cadbury can focus on meeting the present needs of their loyal customer along with the plan to achieve organisation goals.
Marketing process is a process of analysing the opportunities in the market, developing the marketing mix tools and managing the marketing effort implemented. Cadbury must analyse the capabilities of their employees first, along with identifying the opportunities that are open to them for growth (Blaschke 2012). As the targeted market has competitors already having their roots grounded the organisation should use different marketing mix tools so as to grab the advantage over others. Marketing mix is a tool that is composed of certain variables of markets. The demand of the product is influenced by the use of marketing mix tools.
The roles and responsibilities of marketing involves:
- Identifying the targeted market: The main role of marketing Is to identify the area which has potential customers to make the product successful. In case of Cadbury the organisation must find the areas of market where the product can become successful and the areas which are potential and requires extra efforts.
- To build market plan: With the help of effective marketing tools an effective market plan can be build which can help the organisation to achieve its objectives. Cadbury should build different market plan which will help them in grabbing the potential customers.
- Responsibility towards firms and employees: Marketing management has a vital responsibility towards organisation and the people working under it (Boud, 2012). Different training and developments programmes should be build so as to develop skills in the employees which will help in achieving the organisational goals. Cadbury should create a culture of learning and developing among the employees of the organisation so as to fulfil the desired results.
- Customer responsibility: The main responsibility of marketing is to fulfil the needs and demands of its customers. It is the basic need of marketing to satisfy the wants of its potential customer. In case of Cadbury they should develop a suggestion and grievances cell that will listen to the wants of customer which will help in increasing brand loyalty.
Students also read about : The current marketing trends used by Cadbury in digital technology
P2 Roles and responsibilities of marketing in relation to the wider organisation context.
Interrelation between marketing with different functional departments:
Marketing is the basic of need of any business organisation to make it successful. It is a disciplined activity of business and is essential ingredient of making policies regarding the product sales. The importance of this comes out as the needs of meeting customers desires. Developing an effective a marketing plan will require close interrelation with other departments also. Relation of marketing team with different departments in an organisation is outlined below:
- Operations management and marketing: The marketing department will need to work closely with the operations department to ensure that innovation and development of the product is planned in such a way so that it satisfy the needs and wants of customers in present as well as future context (Boud 2013). Marketing department of Cadbury can help the operations in team in analysing the current trends that are followed in the market which will further help in innovating new products.
- Human resource and marketing: This will help HRM in ensuring that appropriate skills and knowledge are their in the person who is recruited in the organisation. The employee has skills to develop new products, has the power to meet the production targets etc. As in Cadbury it will enable them to seek suitable employee and will also help in creating a effective work place with and values which will enhance overall productivity of the employees.
- Finance and marketing department: In an organisation finance department is the most powerful department as it has financial power and has to make the decision according to which the budget is allotted to the different departments. They take care that which decisions will improve the financial sense of the organisation. In Cadbury the marketing team is highly dependent on this department to carry out various activities.
- Sales and marketing: This department is crucially interconnected without one the position of another is blank and of no use. Marketing eases the work of sales team by providing them with the feedback of the customers and connecting them (Brown and Knight 2012). In Cadbury the task of task of marketing team is to provide them with the sufficient data and so as to maximise the sales and generate revenue for the product. The marketing teams promotes the product to the customer and if the customer desires to purchase the product then the role of sales team comes.
Importance of marketing roles:
Marketing plays an important role in establishing relationships between customers and the organisation. It gives the confidence to the organisation to innovate the new product and launch it in the market. It shapes the image of the organisation and shows how people see the products or services. Marketing helps in creating the customers in maintaining and raising their standards of living (Chalmers and Fuller 2012). Innovation and development of new products is the main base of marketing.
As in the case of Cadbury marketing of products helped them in maintaining high turnover and making them second largest company in the world. They used different marketing techniques with the interrelation of different departments so as to build customer satisfaction.
STRIP 4
Task 2
P3 Application of Marketing mix to Marketing planning process to achieve business objectives.
Marketing mix is the set of controllable marketing tools that a company uses to produce a desired response from its targeted market. It consist of everything that a company can do to influence the demand for its products. This tools is used by the firm to increase the awareness in the market about the company. In context of Cadbury, they use this technique in order to promote its product in the market. This also helps the company to know the needs, tastes and preferences of the consumer of the product. For knowing the market influence of Cadbury and link its performance they compared the marketing mix with their rival Hershey's which has 44% of market share. The comparison is shown below:
- Product : Cadbury is the second largest brand in the world. The products that it deals in are Bars, bags, boxes and rolls, multi packs, beverages, ice cream, desserts, biscuits etc. which provides customers with wide range to choose (Cherry 2013). Along with this they provide their customer a range of customisable pack that they can customise according to their need. While in case of Hershey's they are one of the largest chocolate manufacturer in the world. They provide a wide range of products such as candies which are chocolate based and different types of chips which can be customised, they also provide chocolate bars, the one the flagship product them are chocolate syrup, they also deals in cookies, snack bars, etc. Cadbury outperformed them by innovating more products that are needed by the customers and providing them on time to the market.
- Price: One of the main base for any company to be successful is that how aggressively they price their product in the market with compared to its competitors. As in case of Cadbury they have used different techniques to bring the price of their product down. The product are made affordable with hidden profits in it. In case of Hershey's they have use the technique which is market-oriented. The main of the company is to provide the product at a price which does hamper its quality and worth.
- Place: This implies the area where the product has to sold. The success of the product depends on the area which the company has chose to sell. Cadbury uses different strategies in different countries and provide customer with the taste that they desire and like. The main motive of the company is customer satisfaction. Hershey's has headquarter in US and mainly has the income source from this country only. They have very less amount of business in other countries as compared to Cadbury.
- Promotion: it is the technique used by the company to promote its products in the market. As Cadbury has invested huge amount in its product promotion they are gaining the sales turnover accordingly (Coulson and Harvey 2013). They promote their product in different countries according to the trends followed. They provide festivals discount on the products and provide them with gift purpose. While Hershey's invest very less amount on the promotion of the product as compared to Cadbury because of which they lacks in sales as compared with Cadbury.
- People: Cadbury works with the huge amount of work force day and night in different countries so as to achieve the projected production target. As the company depends on the employees they provide them with better salary and helps in increasing their standard of living. They constantly focus on the issues among the employees and the customers and help in resolving them (Cunningham 2017). Hershey's on the other hand focuses on the customer satisfaction more as compared to the people who are making the organisation. They provide their employees with rewards and incentives to help them to increase their performance.
- Process: it specifies the process that the company is following to achieve its goals. To make the product available to the consumers Cadbury uses different process. The process is very fast and the machines that are used in production are highly efficient that they produce at large scale without compromising the quality. On the other hand Hershey's follow has build a standard for its process that has to followed in making any product. The process is little slow as compared to Cadbury but is efficient to produce quality product.
- Physical evidence: it refers to the area where the company is selling their product. The physical presence should be their in the market. Cadbury has opened several exclusive outlets which enable them to make feel their customer of exclusivity towards the product. Hershey's is lagging in this case as they doesn't have physical outlet and are only selling their product through the retail chains.
P4 Marketing plan for Cadbury.
Cadbury is the well known confectionery company and it also deals in food products which are made of chocolate. The company is well known for its chocolate bars and boxes which offers variety of chocolate. The vision of the company has been implemented in its action. The marketing plan has shown positive effects on the companies profit. In different economic situation company has maintained its constant value which has inspired the business and helped the organisation in building brand image (DeMarzo and Sannikov 2016). The marketing plan of the company is to enhance the market share by 20% in upcoming years. This can be done through:
Market segmentation: This is referred to as dividing a single market into different smaller segments. As cadbury has divided the market on the basis of Geographic and demographic which will help them in identifying the different market segments (Frank and Scharff 2013). Through geographic segmentation the company will be able to divide its market in different big cities and it can also perform in the smaller markets such as small towns. Through demographic segmentation the product will be divided according to lifestyle, tastes, textures and motive that the customer prefer.
Company should do a SWOT analyses so as to make the marketing plan and identify the area required focus.
- Strengths: The company has strong brand name which make it popular among the users and it also gets the loyalty of customers. The company employees over 71k workers in its different department so as to achieve the organisational goal. It has a wide variety of products which is the greatest strength of all.
- Weakness: The company had faced some problems when the advertisement about the worms got famous and caused them heavy damage to the brand reputation. The competitors are doing R&D regularly which has effected the working style of the company.
- Opportunities: there are lot of opportunities available to them. The company can enhance their market share by making their distribution system strong and effective (Gregory and Thorley 2013). The company can use advanced technology to better serve its product in the market.
- Threats: As nowadays people are more conscious about health and they feel reluctant in buying these products. The prices of the raw materials has increased drastically and the company has to maintain its product price accordingly.
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Conclusion
From the above report it is concluded that to make the firm efficient and successful it is required to follow efficient marketing strategies (Knight 2012). If the firm wants to create a healthy working environment they have to build a relationship among the different departments in the organisation. The organisation should use different marketing mix tools so as to enable globalisation and maximise the profit.
References
- Aeberhardt, R., Buono, I. and Fadinger, H., 2014. Learning, incomplete contracts and export dynamics: theory and evidence from French firms. European Economic Review.68. pp.219-249.
- Anderson, G., Boud, D. and Sampson, J., 2014. Learning contracts: a practical guide. Routledge.
- Ariño et. al., 2014. Contracts, negotiation, and learning: An examination of termination provisions. Journal of Management Studies. 51(3). pp.379-405.
- Blaschke, L.M., 2012. Heutagogy and lifelong learning: A review of heutagogical practice and self-determined learning. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning.13(1). pp.56-71.
- Boud, D., 2012. Developing student autonomy in learning. Routledge