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.