Introduction to Marketing and Growth Strategies

The following example essay focuses on the topic of introduction to marketing and growth strategies. Read the introduction, body and conclusion of the essay, scroll down.

Introduction to marketing

The organisations I have picked are ASDA and boots. Asda is a grocery chain it sells food, clothing and homeware at reasonably priced prices. And boots is a health and beauty pharmacy chain who sell a range of products.

Growth strategies;

Asda has realised from the upcoming conversation on sustainability and animal/workers right of what is ethically correct they have identified customers want visibility from where their foods coming from how they are processed.

They want the confirmation their food is being farmed and fished in an economically friendly manner. Asda achieved this by revealing their supply chain in their ocean disclosure project. This allowed customers to locate there fishing methods making them feel safer and giving them the information a knowledge they required. By asda becoming green this made people acknowledge asda as a reliable business.

And they are able to potentially rise their prices because of this affect according to out of 30,000 consumers from around the world 66 percent of those consumers agree they would pay more from products from sustainable resources. Like asda itself. This could be seen as growth, they are advertising to more costumers in a different target market.

ASDA has used a number of growth strategies that vary from product development, market penetration and development with pricing and branding strategies.

ASDA has grown majorly online and physically in the recent years.

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customers are picking up their groceries in store but shopping for them online. They say its market share of online shopping has increased by 18.4% and their click and collect service now accounts for 20,000 customers a week. And now their new scan and go this intrigues customer who are looking for a faster shop and to avoid queuing therefore another growth strategies. since then reported growing sales from the improvement of the customer experience. They now have it operating over 192 stores. Overall, they have managed to reduce operating cost from this. The money could have been put back into the business furthermore growing it naturally.

A reason why ASDA is popular among customer is for their cheap, reasonable prices. This strategy has interested customers in a large scale. They have been able to highlight their low price and high-sales volume profit margins as tag lines, save money live better and use it to target specific groups (low income families). They offer several incentives and discounts on particular days like celebrated holidays e.g. Christmas, Easter, Halloween to increase its bulk saves.

ASDA uses social media platforms to create a positive brand equity as part of its promotional strategy announcing their discounts that are available. this helps them to retain loyal customers by keeping them aware. And makes them able to branch out to new ones too. They are also aware of the positive effects celebrity endorsements have on a brand so they make sure to create eye-catching commercials with people like Leonard Rossiler, Michal Owen and James Bolam. They advertise via newspaper, leaflets, television adverts and radio.

Survival strategies;

Asda and Sainsbury`s had to cut costs over a failed merger this resulted in 3000 store staff made redundant. ASDAs cuts included areas involved in bakery, petrol and back office jobs. The company announced 30 head office management staff were to be axed, more than 300 head office staff being made redundant and the cuts led too 900 job losses in the past 2 years. And people lest with either no job or reduced shifts. This is one of the survival strategies they had to fire people to cut costs

The 14million failed asda and Sainsbury`s merger was blocked and the head of Walmart was considering floating the business after the collapse of the merger, from it they declared their product range would be seeing some changes

Branding;

Branding is important to any company to getting a long-term market share. A brand such as ASDA has a defined name/design that reminds and sticks with the customer. Helps them to identify the products or services they are offering and distinguish them from competitors.

People normally recognise brands well. A good brand delivers their message of what they want to put out clearly. Like ASDAs permanently low pries.

The retail industry continues to show positive signs of growth. However, it is a fast changing, highly competitive industry.

Currently a strategy I have identified that ASDA have been using is customer satisfaction, they have done previous re- launches where they involve the customers to help choose a name for their private label range and they also launched a opticians business using similar logos and making references to ASDA. be a real spec saver with ASDA these have helped gain customer satisfaction and were all aimed to strengthen its position in the market and further increase customer loyalty. ASDA is always promoting its benefits of low prices and range of high quality products.

Relationship marketing;

Relationship marketing is management that focuses on customer loyalty long term engagement rather than individual sales. This will create strong customer connections that can lead to promotion of word of mouth and attract more customers to the business.

Boots;

The limitations and constraints of marketing there are legal and voluntary constraints a few consists of; sales of goods act, consumer protection from unfair trading regulations, consumer credits act, consumer protection (distance selling) regulations, data protection act, code of advertising standards authority, pressure groups and consumerism and acceptable language. The majority are enforced by the law and must be followed.

Sales of goods act;

The sales of goods act 1979 is a act from the parliament of the UK to concilidate the law to the sale of goods.