Assignment: Creating an Effective Marketing Mix

In the Shared Activity, you conducted an informal marketing audit on the organisation you chose for your Final Project. Such an audit helps organisations understand whether they are positioned to effectively market their products, including whether they have the right marketing mix.

One of the key areas examined in a marketing audit is how well the organisation makes use of its marketing mix for a product or brand. Typically, a marketing mix is composed of a group of attributes known in the field of marketing and brand management as the four P's. Traditionally, these Ps are: product, place, price and promotion. These P's were chosen to reflect the most critical aspects of any marketing strategy, specifically the following:

• Is this the right product for the targeted consumers?

• Is it being sold or marketed through the right channels?

• Is it priced effectively so as to maximise profits?

• Is its message being communicated effectively?

In recent years, to better capture certain organisational offerings, other P's have gained recognition, including: process, people and physical evidence (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick, 2013).

Brand effectiveness may also be analysed in terms of Ps. Dillon et al. (2001) proposed that brands can be analysed based on two components: brand-specific associations and general brand impressions. Brand-specific associations refer to ‘features, attributes, or benefits that consumers link to a brand and that differentiate it from the competition' (Dillon et al., 2001: 417).

This concept has been further refined by Lee et al. (2008), who have proposed a useful model for brand analysis that looks at brand-specific associations, general brand impression and brand commitment.

Because, for your Final Project, you will be proposing a new product that will fit with an organisation's brands and product line, it is important that you know how to apply insights on marketing and brand audits in practice.

If you have already completed your Shared Activity, information gleaned from that activity may be helpful as you develop a more effective marketing mix for your proposed product.

To prepare for this Individual Assignment:

• Review the Readings. Focus on specific examples of effective marketing mixes that improved the marketability of a product or brand. Also focus on digital applications related to the marketing mix.

• Consider the need for a marketing mix in a marketing strategy. What would be the danger in too little or too much of a focus on one of the P's?

• Using online or other sources, explore how the organisation that produces the brand you chose for your Final Project makes use of its current marketing mix. Pay special attention to how much or how little it focuses on each ‘P'.

THE CASE STUDY I PICKED IS STARBUCKS

To complete this Individual Assignment:

Evaluate the effectiveness of the current marketing mix for the brand you selected for your Final Project. Does the marketing mix meet goals of forming consumer brand relationships? Include in your evaluation whether the marketing mix includes the right mix of P's.

In a 1,000-word paper, create a marketing mix you believe would be more effective for this new product in order to build brand equity in an international market and explain why you chose this mix. Include a variety of marketing methods, including digital marketing. How is the marketing mix for this new product different from the marketing mix that was most likely used for the organisation's other products? Why?

Activity: Marketing Audits Using SWOT

A marketing audit analyses current marketing objectives and evaluates how well certain tactics are working to reach these objectives. It is composed of essentially two elements: an internal and an external analysis. Both attempt to capture how well an organisation is doing in terms of the skills, tactics and strategies used in marketing its products or services. Once this baseline is established, an organisation can develop a plan of action (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick, 2013).

One tool for synthesizing information gathered through a marketing audit is a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This information is typically portrayed as a matrix in which each category is listed in its respective cell to give a quick overview of a business's strategic position (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick, 2013). For example, an organisation might list a strength as being one of the first to develop a particular product, such as Amazon's Kindle, one of the first e-readers. Numerous other similar e-readers, such as Barnes and Noble's Nook, quickly threatened Amazon's market edge.

A SWOT analysis is a strategic tool that should not be viewed in a vacuum with only marketing in mind; an organisation's other business operations, such as its production and staffing capabilities, also affect and are affected by marketing strengths.

To complete this Shared Activity:

• Conduct an internal audit on your selected organisation's marketing strategy using a SWOT analysis. Identify the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities you identified in the organisation's internal environment using a SWOT matrix. Identify at least three items for each SWOT category.

Explain the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats related to the internal environment of your selected organisation at the overall organisational level. Could any of the items that you listed cross different cells? For example, could something be both a strength and a weakness, or a strength and an opportunity? If so, explain, using concrete examples.