Part – A Marketing Mix Final Essay

ASSIGNMENT TITLE: MARKETING STRATEGY AND APPLICATIONSStudent Name: Student ID number:PART – ALO2: Compare between two companies- how they apply their marketing mix to achieve their organisational objectives?DEFINITION OF MARKETING MIXThe marketing mix refers to the set of actions, or tactics, that a company uses to promote its brand or product in the marketThe Marketing Mix is the set of marketing tools often referred to as the four Ps: The Product, its Price, Promotion and Place, that the firm uses to achieve its objectives in its target market (McCarthy, 2001).

In more recent times it has been expanded and called the 7 Ps – the four Ps with the addition of People, Process and Physical Evidence (Chartered Institute of Marketing, 2004).Importance of the marketing mixAll the elements of the marketing mix influence each other. They make up the business plan for a company and handled right, can give it great success. But handled wrong and the business could take years to recover. The marketing mix needs a lot of understanding, market research and consultation with several people, from users to trade to manufacturing and several othersThe following points clarify the significance of marketing mix.

It aids in a hygienic mix creationour marketing mix must contain all the P’s compatible with each; other. The price has to be compatible with the engagement of the product. The product should be compatible with the promotions. In general, all the P’s are intrinsically linked to each other.As a result, when you are making a marketing mix, it becomes a chain of strong bonds. And these bonds then guide you forward in making the chain longer; Whenever you are considering adding a new feature or changing existing things, you have to look at the overall picture, which helps in creating a clean marketing mix for the product- .Market mix helps in new product development However, designing a surviving product, there are any number of ideas which can come up for a related product that can be designed by the company. The pricing, place and promotions might be different for such a product. Nevertheless, ^it can be categorized as a new product and hence while designing the marketing mix, the company can come up with good ideas for NPD as well’Marketing mix helps rise the product port-folioEvery time you want to upsurge the product-depth/product-line and length, you have to create minor changes to the product. In quintessence, you are building minor changes in the marketing mix itself. You are creating changes to the product structures, to its pricing and possible to its promotions. As a result, by changing the marketing mix and certain features within it, you can end up with an enlarged product portfolio’It is a guide to develop a businessPhysical evidence was an important P in the service marketing mix. If a restaurant or an interior design business realises it’s important, then naturally they can act on it and improve the physical evidence of their business thereby bringing in more businessThe significance of marketing mix is evident in more than a single P. People and process are important to the organization too and optimizing both can improve the overall working of the organization. Hence, marketing mix is an excellent guide if someone wants to improve their business and is doing gap analysisIt helps in differentiationWhen you analyse the marketing mix of Competitors, ;there are many different ways that you can differentiate yourself from the competitor]. The competitor might have poor promotions and by analysing them, you can create better promotions of your own productThe competitor might have poor-placement of products or he might have the wrong process or the wrong people in place. !All this can be improved upon giving you a better marketing mix and therefore a competitive advantage in the market;.Finally, it helps you in being dynamicA company which is well-prepared is also greatly-prepared when any disaster strikes. During recession or during a poor business environment, a company should be ready to respond. At such times, |the company needs to be dynamic in nature. Such a company needs to understand its product, processes, people, promotions and all other P’s better. If it understands them, it will respond with a better agility|.MARKETING MIX PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION 4P COMPARISONS OF 4PS BETWEEN M&S AND PRIMARKM&S PrimarkProduct The corporation’s asset all over the history has been the quality of its goods, and regardless of all the problems people still associate the M&S brand with quality. As 87% of customers consider the quality of clothing as important, the company is doing the right thing in emphasizing the quality image of its products in its latest autumn/winter collection. The year 2018 will show how they are providing on this quality assurance;M&S has a chance to both strengthen its position in the quality goods market and aim on the increasing number of consumers interested in clothes, footwear, bags and accessories for women and also offer Home and furniture made in UK by fetching back some of its manufacturing to UK. They would join the line of many companies including General Electrics, Google and Ford. M&S has recoiled to safe ground in womenswearFour-fifths of clients see return policies imperative and a quarter places a high significance on free returns or a longer refund period. Public who shop online for clothes at M&S, Debenhams and John Lewis are the most concerned by a retailer’s returns policy. (Mintel, 2018) As a result, M&S needs to certify they have a simplified process for returned goods and that returning clothes is a pleasing experience for the consumers’ Primark is one of the top retailer brands with multi-brand products. Primark has a huge variety of products from men’s wear, women’s wear, children’s wear, accessories, footwear, lingerie, home wear, hosiery and much more. As a huge share of customers are women, the company focuses more of the women’s wear. This focus is based not only on the products, but also in terms of promoting and floor space allotted. Its varied offering in its marketing mix product collection include Men’s- wear, Women’s-wear,Kidd’swear,Homeaccessories,beauty products, tech products etc.Price PRICING STRATEGY M&SM&S customers give importance to quality of clothing over low price (Mintel, 2018). ! They have the budding to use value-based pricing by providing quality goods with somewhat higher prices than its competitors such as Primark and H&M|. However, in order to enhance like-for-like growth, this should be well-adjusted with regular marketing discounts particularly in goods that are not picking up demand as estimated. Although, M&S were to invest in bringing back some of its manufacturing back to UK, the new lines would have the prospective to be sold at a premium given that there is most interest in clothes made in Britain from high spenders and 67.6% of M&S’ PRICING STRATEGY PRIMARKPrimark’s quality of products is questionably lower than that of its generations. Hence; the core capability is its on-trend product with less pricing. The company yields simple trends, manufactures the most standard sizes and therefore uses economies of scale to lower the prices for the end users. Amazon’s dynamic pricing has enabled Primark to price its products as per the performance and buying patterns of the online visitors’. This will help to bring regular online buyers and thus increase the overall revenue.Place Marks & Spencer is targeting for a multi-channel style in its distribution ChannelsChannels of DistributionStores ” Products are sold through 1010 stores across UK in different locations across high streets and out of town retail parks. A new store idea has been introduced to over two-thirds of the stores; M&S is now also drawing younger customers. Even though it is not their core objective market this is certainly a positive approach because the company needs to make sure they have a combined customer base in the future when the older generation of loyal M&S customers die outOnline Sales ” M&S had a 26.6% increase in online sales in 2017. This booms with the national boost in sales made through Internet. Primark places itself as a brand for teens’ who want to keep up with the latest trendy products but have a budget limitation too. Hence; its target age group is between 16-30 years. Primark got hundreds of stores across U.K, U.S.A, Ireland as well as Europe. They are main sites of these stores including places like Manchester’s, Liverpool, Cardin, Belfast, Oxford Street, New Castle; etc. Primark has a strong DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL with more than 368 stores in Europe and a lot of similar kind of outlets in other countries too. It has also expanded in Germany, Spain and France and set up outlets to increase its customer base;Yet, the customer observation about this brand is that low-slung price is somewhat proportional to poor quality. This discernment is supported by the stores bad customer experience, particularly during peak hours.Promotion Promotion Strategies for M&Sa. Advertising and branding: The revitalized advertising promotion for the autumn &winter womenswear ranges has had a strong effect on salesb. Public relations: Besides getting celebrities to approve the company’s clothes, M&S could get a celebrity to endorse their Plan A and sustainable working ethics, in the same way as Nestl© has done with Espresso and George Clooneyc. Direct and online marketing:|M&S has online presence in the social media including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube besides to direct online marketing. A latest study by Bazaar voice, a US based company that does online reviews for retailers including Marks & Spencer and Next, found that when a brand’s reaction to a negative online review offered to refund, upgrade or exchange a dissatisfied customer’s product, consumers were 92 percent more likely to purchase than those who saw no reply!d. Personal selling-Personal selling does not play a main role in M&S’ business but through customer service and in-store selling the consumers insight about M&S’ brand and business can be affected’. Promotion Strategies for PrimarkPrimark’ is one of the few brands which does not route to any sort of promotion as such. It trusts on word of mouth marketing. The reason could be lack of skilled-workers, digital-marketers, advertisers, or simply budget constraints. Additional reason could be lack of flexibility by top level management to resort to any kind of change in its Promotion strategy. This resistance to change could be a form of satisfaction, because the company’s sales is decent without any promotions. The lack of stability across the Primark bricks and mortar stores may also have an adverse effect on the brands image, mainly with no ecommerce to support them.Process Marks & Spencer stores will; be found at malls, sub urban areas. These stores are attractive and suitably organized as compared to other supplies like pantaloons, wills lifestyle etc.The Marks & Spencer stores are divided into floors which mean they have separate section for clothing, gifts and flowers, furniture and other home accessories. Within each section there are separate sub sections for women, men and kidsConsumers may choose the stuff and there is a checkout counter on each store where they can pay the bills. Also the customers can make online purchase by logging into M&S website just like other e commerce website Primark has a solid distributive channel; which make sure prompt delivery. However; in the peak hours, the in store customer experience is something to be thought seriously by the top-level management. The process carried out, counting the customer experience, employee training and timely delivery has to be improved widelyPeople Marks & Spencer have more than 1050 stores in over 55 countries. Marks & Spencer employee strength is around 83000+. The company pays superior attention to the employeesApart from just the basic pay the company rewards its employees based on performance to give increase to individual performancesThe company offers option for flexible working hours to support working parents or employees who wants to build career elsewhere Primark has so far, employed over 75,000 employees, which are being paid similar to the way its competitors like Debenhams and H&M pay. It marks teens and young adults aged between 16-25 years who are style conscious and try to get the new and trendy clothes at low pricesPhysical Evidence Marks& Spencer consists more than 1050 stores in over 55 countries in the world. M&S started its operation in India from year 2001 and right now it has more than 58 stores in IndiaThe company as more than 83000+ employees worldwide. Marks & Spencer’s major business is in UK where the company has around 850 stores. Some of the other countries where it has got its presence are Turkey; Spain; France! Ireland, Hungary, Finland etc. All these stores act as the physical evidence for the companyThe company has got its own website from where the customers can buy products and get home delivery. Hence, this covers the Marks & Spencer marketing mix Primark’s largest physical evidence are their storesThe low pricing strategy has a disadvantage too. Since the prices are fairly low, the brand was initially hesitant to put its merchandise on the online platform. |This is because the cost of shipping will be higher than the product price itself. This will discourage the online buyers to purchase the product unless they arre making a bulk purchase to compensate for the higher cost of delivery. Hence this concludes the marketing mix of Primark.REFERENCE K. (2014). Surprise inflation fall may put interest rate rise on hold’. The Guardian. 15 October Available: CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2. (Accessed 29th Nov 2016)Baker, M.J. (1976) Marketing: Theory and Practice. MacmillanHooley et al (2008) Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning. 3rd ed. Prentice Hall Financial Times