Presentation Day

Welcome to the final episode of my Marketing 111A blog!

Diane’s forth session was all about:

• Big picture marketing
• The marketing mix
• Marketing strategies
• Marketing tactics

A major point of consideration from this week’s lecture is that companies tend to be either asset-led or market-led. An asset-led company aims to utilise its core competencies – or, its sustainable competitive advantage – in developing new products and services. A market-led business, on the other hand, is one that is purely focused on the customer’s needs and operates accordingly.

This session was also the platform for our first group presentations for the year. I wish to congratulate all groups for the level of work that was delivered. We certainly have come a long way since Certificate IV! I was certainly not expecting such a broad scope of creativity in the material presented. For example, James, Kevin and Daphne’s group discussed their strategy of expanding their winery into Asian markets. Their data on the market attractiveness was well researched. Well done!

Considering everyone had the same case study, I was surprised to see unique strategic planning ideas from each group. Above all, listening to everyone’s presentations made me realise that no matter how creative an idea is – as long as it aligns with the corporate objectives and the needs of the consumer – anything is possible when it comes to strategic marketing planning.

The honourable mention with regards to this weeks’ readings goes to Kolar and Toporisic (2007) for their look at metaphors from the military field within marketing. In a similar way that Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is used by business managers to manage strategic planning, this paper showed that military strategy in general is reflected in modern marketing. Kolar and Toporisic explain how more emphasis is placed on ‘flexibility, speed, logistics, intelligence and conflict avoidance’, rather than on expensive frontal campaigns and exhausting all resources. …Food for thought for the strategic marketer!

Where are we now?

Hello again, readers!

This blog entry is focused on Session 3 of Marketing IIIA: Strategic Situation Analysis.

This lecture covered the topics of:

• Situation analysis
• Environmental scanning
• Customer, industry and competitor analysis
• Market opportunities and forecasting demand

During this session, there was much discussion on the topic of strategic analysis. In particular, I learnt that most organisations fail to evaluate their strategic position as often as they should, which may ultimately cause them to stray from their mission or vision. As Schmidt pointed out in one of this week’s readings, a strategic review is usually only performed during transition or hard times, as was the case with the struggling Intercontinental Petroleum (actual company name protected!). Schmidt concluded that the petroleum company was able to remain viable and enter new markets, but what could have been if the organisation reviewed its situation before experiencing hardships?

Intercontinental’s investment in strategically reviewing its position eventually paid off – but in order for a company to sufficiently answer, ‘Where do we want to be?’, first they must ask, ‘Where are we now?’ The latter question can be answered using two basic methods of strategic analysis:

• Internal audits – use of data generated from within the business, such as: productivity, efficiency, costs, SWOT analysis etc.
• External audits – use of data generated in the external environment, including; PEST factors, competitor analysis etc.

An examination of internal and external material can clarify the firm’s situation analysis. This provides a segue to market analysis, which can be broken down in terms of market position, segmentation techniques, market objectives and market structure.

In earlier qualifications, I became familiar with the marketing function of an organisation. More or less, we were taught that marketers controlled the four Ps – Product, Place, Price & Promotion – and thus generated revenue based on the engineering of the marketing mix.

However, Jain and Punj wrote a paper that asserted strategic marketing was the ‘strategic’ function of marketing, whereas the marketing mix paradigm served as an ‘operational’ function. From this paper, I learnt that strategic marketing can largely benefit the marketing management functions because it considers:

• the consumer
• the corporation, and
• the competition

It is easy to comprehend that strategic marketing is an improvement to the marketing mix paradigm, because there is no point generating a mix of Ps without consideration of the consumer, the corporation or the competition. I have inserted a link to the model here. This knowledge will place my assignment team in good stead when it comes to formulating our strategy for Assignment 3!

Until next time, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading!

Nick.

Case of the Kongs

Welcome to the second week of Marketing III

This week’s lecture was all about strategy development, but also discussed the corporate culture, which can often make or break a strategy’s implementation. Also discussed was the role of the marketing manager and the skills required to perform this job effectively. Honourable mentions for this week’s readings go to Piercy and Giles for their practical guide to making better use of SWOT analyses. The parameters that they used to focus their SWOT analyses has provided excellent direction for the SWOT my team will compose for Assignment 3. However, I think the most valuable reading this week was the paper by M. J. Thomas. Thomas highlighted the key competencies required to be a successful and prosperous marketing manager. Definitely worth the ink – get it printed!

As discussed in class, Dr Linda Ford personifies corporate culture as an 800 pound gorilla (or Donkey Kong, if you will!) – a force to be reckoned with. See her video below:

Dr Linda Ford identified that corporate culture can indeed be somewhat of a gorilla. So, how can a firm tame its culture monkey into a little Diddy Kong? In my humble opinion, it begins with the effectiveness of the employer branding, and thus, the employee brand commitment and the benefits that follow. Common sense would suggest that with great employer branding comes great corporate culture. Upon further reading, this suggestion has been supported by Sullivan (2008). See the Best Places to Work in Australia (2009) list to see which companies are the best at fostering a great corporate culture.

Know your Diddys from your Donkeys!

Diane also discussed strategic planning and types of strategy during Friday’s lecture, as follows:

• Competitive Advantage – giving an organisation some advantage over its rivals.
• Cost Advantage – a strategy to seek out and secure a cost advantage of some kind – lower average costs, lower labour costs, cheaper resources costs, etc.
• Market Dominance – achieved through a) internal growth, or b) acquisitions – mergers and takeovers.
• New Product Development – to set the pace in the market.
• Contraction/Expansion – focus more on core competencies/strengths or seek to expand into a wider range of markets?
• Price Leadership – through dominating the industry – others will follow your price lead.
• Global – seeking to expand global operations
• Reengineering – thinking outside the box – looking at new ways of doing things to leverage the organisation’s performance.
• Downsizing – divesting unwanted business units – similar to contraction.
• Delayering – flattening the managerial structure, removing bureaucracy, speeding up decision making.
• Restructuring – complete rethink of the organisation.

The last three dot points (in grey) are internal strategies that may be applicable to our South Oz Winery assignment. It may be the case that we decide to sell unwanted parts of the business, such as the B&B, for example. Or, there might be a need to delayer the hierarchical structure to achieve the organisation and marketing objectives.

Thanks, and stay tuned!

Week 1

the communication of strategic marketing strategy

When Chris Marriott said,

“Marketers often get lost in the ‘how’. They need to force themselves up a level and ask: “What’s the overall strategy?”

he got marketers to put their managerial caps on. He also had me intrigued by the shift towards the strategic way of thinking as a means of achieving success, which can be applied not only to marketing, but a wide range of disciplines.

Sun Tzu‘s The Art of War is an ancient Chinese text that presents a philosophy of war for winning battles and managing conflicts. Fortunately, I’m not about planning wars in the military sense, but The Art of War has applications to Western marketing concepts. Low and Tan (1995) examined this very connection, discussing what it takes for a company to succeed when confronting its competitors.

However, Rule (1981) highlighted the need to change the culture of an organisation to allow a new strategy to be implemented synergistically. This week I have learnt that communication is critical to the successful development to organisational strategies. This knowledge will be handy when it comes to Assignment 3 (namely, the control mechanisms requirement for South Oz Winery’s SMP).

consumer needs in the wine industry

I am very pleased to report that this subject will focus on wine marketing! Assignment 3 will require us to develop a Strategic Marketing Plan for a fictitious winery (more on that in posts to come). Week one’s lecture included documentation that featured in The Queensland Wine Business Conference (2007). The following elements of the marketing plan were discussed in class:

• Understanding consumer needs
• Relation to the strategic marketing process
• Customers and the distribution channel
• Consumer decision-making process & behaviour model
• The evoked set (in terms of brand awareness)
• Involvement levels in decision making
• Perceived risk & individual factors influencing consumer behaviour
• Market segmentation and positioning

The readings for this week included a paper by Quinton and Harridge-March (2003), who conducted a study to determine if wine producers in the UK use the Internet as a fundamental part of their marketing strategy. A key point that I have drawn from reading this paper, is that success for online providers can be attributed to a consumer-oriented interface, and with considerable strategic planning and application.

the proof is in the plan

Ringbakk (2007) states that, “corporate planning is in trouble”. She highlighted the importance of strategic planning and action planning in (particularly, North American) organisations. Sull and Donald (2010) add that strategic planning plays a pivotal role in ‘operational agility’. This point can be applied to my group assignment, as I’d much rather succeed than fail!

Some further reading on strategic planning can be found here.

Moving up a level: This is Marketing IIIA

Welcome readers!

Marketing IIIA is a component of the Advanced Diploma of Marketing that I am currently studying at TAFE SA, Adelaide. This is my inaugural blog that has been posted to keep you up-to-date with the happenings of Marketing IIIA’s lectures and further readings.