MKT 3123 Marketing Management Assignment

Group Report: The market audit

This 12 page written report requires that your group conducts a market audit on one of the private companies of Bangladesh.

Guidelines to consider in developing the report

Part 1 – Understanding the organisation

The aim is to provide the reader with a snapshot as to what the organisation does, why it has been successful (or not) and what it stands for.

• Provide a brief overview of the organisation in terms of what it sells, analyse its mission statement and how its history has shaped the organisation (e.g., the development of core competencies).

• Identify and prove the organisation’s marketing orientation and comment on how this impacts their market definition. Again, has the marketing orientation changed over the years and if so, why?

• Describe the current state of the organisation’s resources (financial, capital, human, research and development, marketing) and where these resources are invested. Are these resource levels expected to change and how do you expect the organisation respond to this.

• What has been the organisation’s core strategy? Has their growth strategy changed over the years? If so, understand the reasons why.

Provide a brief overview of the organisations performance from a financial and marketing perspective. Some common marketing metrics include market share, brand awareness, advertising spend, % of satisfied customers, marketing expenditure to sales ratio. Identify the organisation’s marketing goals and objectives. Are these objectives are consistent or inconsistent with the organisation’s mission statement, recent trends in the external environment and the customer environment. Note: it is important to understand if the organisation has been divided into Strategic Business Units (SBUs). If the organisation has been divided into SBUs, after you analyse the organisations overall situation, it is important to then select one SBU to focus on otherwise the market audit will be too big and too general to be effective

Part 2 – Understanding the customer

Identify how the organisation has segmented the market and provide a profile of each segment. Assess each segment and identify the most attractive segment/s for the organisation to pursue.

• Who is the organisation’s current target? What are their needs and benefits sought? Determine what is the organisation’s current positioning.

• It is often beneficial to also understand why non-users of the organisation are ‘non-users’ as a potential strategy is to convert these customers to users.
• How are the organisation’s products or services consumed or used? Are there consumption situations that influence the customer’s behaviour? Is it influenced by factors such as seasonality?

• Identify the important players in the purchase process (the purchaser, the user, the influencer etc) and explain how they influence the customer.

Understand the relationship customers have with the organisation. Are they generally brand loyal or switch brands regularly? Do they seek a long-term ‘relationship’ with the brand or are they driven by functional/rational benefits?

• Does the organisation have strengths regarding the components of a brand (i.e., imagery, symbols, benefits)? The summation of this will help you understand how strong the organisation’s brand is as an asset.

• Identify the role of intermediaries (e.g., retailers, wholesalers, online stores) on the customer’s purchase. Are these intermediaries strategies and values consistent with the organisation’s and does this have the potential to impact the organisations performance?

Part 3 – Understanding the external environment

• Provide an overview of the market. What is its size and growth? What stage of the lifecycle is it in?

Identify the economic trends that may affect purchase behaviour or the resources of the organisation. These may include the conditions of the national / state / or local economy. It may be economic factors that affect the ability of the target market to purchase the product.

• What are the current and potential political and legal issues that may affect the organisation in producing the product or may affect the purchase behaviour of customers?

• Identify how technology trends have or will change the way in which the organisation does business. Has technology affected / improved / or provided opportunities / threats for the organisation? Has technology affected the customer’s needs/ preferences and behaviour?

• Sociocultural trends can affect how the organisation produces the product or how customers use the product. As an example, do customers have a growing expectation that the organisation will be more ethical and socially responsible.

• Analyse the competitive dynamics in the market by considering Porter’s five forces and identify the dominant factors that the organisation needs to consider.

Identify the major competitors and their characteristics in terms of size, growth, market share, profitability and marketing capabilities. What factors have contributed to their success (or decline)? What are their major strengths and weaknesses?

• What segments do the main competitors target and what is their positioning? How does this impact your organisation? Identify the organisation’s nearest competitors?

• What is the organisation’s competitive strategy within the market? Are they a market leader, challenger, niche? Do they focus on cost-leadership or differentiation? Discuss the implications.

Part 4 – Assessing the current situation

In order to formulate a strategy, what needs to come from the market audit is a set of conclusions about the organisation’s situation

• Identify the critical success factors within the market. What things must be done exceptionally well to operate in the industry? What factors cause organisations to underperform?

• Assess where your organisation is position with respect to the critical success factors. Remember this will largely depend on its relative strength compared to competitors.

• Conduct a SWOT analysis and present the key points. Then assess whether the organisation has the strengths to capitalise on the opportunities. Are there threats which the organisation needs to address? Does the organisation need to turn any weaknesses into strengths?

• Relate your analysis to the organisation’s core strategy, competitive strategy and marketing objectives. How realistic are these, given the anticipated environment including the actions of competitors and the organisation’s level of resources?

• Based on your assessment is the organisation pursuing the right segment/s and does it have the right positioning. If not, which segment/s should the organisation pursue and what positioning should it take? How well equipped is the organisation for targeting this segment?

Additional comments

To be an effective in marketing, a person must be precise in written and oral communications. They have to organise their thoughts clearly and make points logically, supporting them with data and arguments. Therefore, the following criteria will help in developing your report 1. The better reports integrate the concepts developed in the lectures, study materials and situations found either in written cases or with other organisations. 2. Statements and inferences need to be justified with evidence and / or research. 3. The report is 12 pages long, which means that you cannot include everything. Be selective with what you include with your aim being to give the reader an instant grasp of the business. A good audit will give the reader confidence to write the marketing objectives themselves. 4. Remember that that the objective is not to convince the reader about how great an organisation is. You are assessing the organisation and therefore, you need to remain impartial and detached from the organisation. 5. Do not rely solely on only a couple of information sources. In addition, sometimes the best information you will find on an organisation is from a competitor or a case study. 6. Much of the work you do on a marketing audit will not get used within the document. To demonstrate the level of analysis that has gone into a report, many students have placed information like matrices into the appendix.