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Introduction
Business organisations are facing dynamic challenges from the various external sources. Globalisation increases the scope of doing business all over the world and at the same time brings huge competition in the business environment. Organisations are conducting several functions among which marketing function is very crucial for an organisation to stay in the competition. The success of the business organisation is depending on the effective application of the marketing functions. Parcelforce Worldwide is the UK based leading express parcel delivery service provider which is part of the Royal Mail Group. The company has done a partnership with GLS, EPG, and EMS to cover the population all worldwide in the courier and parcel delivery service industry. This report will explain marketing functions, their roles and responsibilities, marketing mix and its comparison between organisations, and a basic marketing plan.
P1: Explain the key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function
Definition of marketing
Marketing is a professional discipline which is consistently developed and become diffusive in the business activities and society at large. Marketing refers the set of activities, processes for making, exchanging of information, delivering and communicating with the partners, clients, and customers (Shankar and Carpenter, 2012). In other words, marketing is the process of determining and meeting the requirements of customers and achieve the profitability of the business organisations. Edward (2011) claimed marketing is the way of thinking and interacting with the target audiences of the business to the long-term success. In the current business environment, marketing is a very powerful business function to achieve the business objectives of increasing brand image, sales, and profitability.
The importance of marketing for the Parcelforce Worldwide
In the current competitive business environment, marketing plays importance in achieving the organisational objectives. Similarly, marketing is important for Parcelforce Worldwide in various aspects those are explained below:
Identify the consumer needs: Every organisation has certain products or services which are offered to the target customers to meet their satisfaction. It is very necessary for an organisation to know the needs of the customer and in this context marketing are important because it collects feedback from the customers, perform market research so that management of Parcelforce Worldwide can determine the ‘urgent i.e. very fast’ and ‘deferred i.e. medium-speed’ service needs of customers.
Determine the market trends: The business environment is rapidly shifting from one context to another context. It makes doing business difficult for an organisation so that it is essential to know about the current and future trend of the market (Gillespie, 2011). As a result, the organisation can develop suitable marketing strategies to meet the needs of the market and gain competitiveness. For example, Parcelforce Worldwide wants to dominate in the courier and parcel delivery industry in the world so that the company has done partnership with GLS, EPG, and EMS to adjust with the market trends.
Product development: The competitiveness of a business organisation is depending on the number of products or services it offers to the customers. Marketing is helpful for product development of the organisation because marketing identifies the market demand for various products and inform the management of the organisations. For example, Parcelforce Worldwide develops various services such as business-to-business parcel delivery, business-to-consumer parcel delivery, and consumer-to-consumer parcel delivery to attract all people.
Increase the brand image: Marketing is important to increase the brand image of an organisation. In the current business environment, brand reputation is very vital to capture the market share. Marketing is important to create a brand image in the market and customer’s mind so that the sales and profitability are increased (Kumar, 2010). For example, Parcelforce Worldwide has a global brand reputation of fastest and affordable parcel delivery service all over the world so that the company is dominating in the mail service industry.
Definition of the marketing function
The marketing function is a vital part of an organisation that plays the role of identifying and sourcing appropriate products for the market the organisation is operating (Geetanjali, 2012). Marketing functions are supporting to achieve the objectives of marketing and overall business objectives. Marketing functions include market analysis, pricing, segmentation, distribution, after sales service etc. The business organisation will succeed to meet the marketing objectives when the effective implication of marketing functions is performed by the firm.
Key marketing functions
The key marketing functions are market analysis, pricing, segmentation, distribution, after sales service etc. these are described below:
Market analysis: Market analysis is the primary function of marketing that refers collecting necessary information within the industry (Dlabay and Scott, 2010). A market analysis helps Parcelforce Worldwide to identify trends in the mail industry, major competitors, market competition, customers’ needs, industry attractiveness and others.
Market segmentation: It refers the way of dividing a target market of an organisation into a different group on the basis of the potential customers’ characteristics (McDonald, 2010). An organization can divide the target market into one segment or multiple segments. For example, Parcelforce Worldwide segment its market into B2B, B2C, and C2C.
Pricing: A very crucial function of marketing is pricing the products or services. Appropriate pricing strategy is essential to capture and dominate the industry. For example, Parcelforce Worldwide is using differential pricing for B2B and B2C market and penetration pricing for its new Express service.
Distribution: Another marketing function is a distribution that means delivering the products or services to the customers (Newman, 2014). The distribution needs to be easy and simple so that customers can easily reach to the services of the organisations. For example, Parcelforce Worldwide has 53 depots in the UK and post office branches so that all customers of the company can easily send parcels all over the world.
After sales services: To gain customer loyalty to the organisation, after sales service function of marketing is necessary. For example, when Parcelforce Worldwide does not found the receiver of the parcel in the given address, the company send back the parcel to the sender of the parcel.
M1: Analyse the roles and responsibilities of marking
The roles and responsibilities of market analysis
Market analysis function of Parcelforce Worldwide performs several roles and responsibilities, for example, survey the market to get knowledge about the needs of services in the UK market and international market to attract more customers. In addition, the market analysis determines the needs and wants of customers of the Parcelforce Worldwide so that suitable services can be introduced. Moreover, market analysis helps to identify the potential market for the company in the long-term business.
The roles and responsibilities of pricing
The mail service industry is very competitive so that pricing plays various roles and responsibilities to support the business of Parcelforce Worldwide. Pricing determines the various services of the company and determines the services based on the urgent market and non-urgent market (Kumar, 2010). In addition, pricing plays the roles and responsibilities to determine the suitable pricing strategy for different service of the company to meet the organizational objectives.
The roles and responsibilities of market segment
There are many roles and responsibilities are conducting by market segment. For instance, market segment determines the potential customers of Parcelforce Worldwide such as B2B, B2C, and C2C both the UK and other countries. In addition, market segment plays the role and responsibility of identifying the potential market for expands the business operations of Parcelforce Worldwide.
P2: Explanation of how roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organizational context
Importance of marketing for Parcelforce
a) Identifying customer needs: Marketing helps to identify what the customers demand to satisfy their needs. Thus, it helps to create products and services that meet the demand of the customers. For example, Parcelforce categorizes its products in two types on the basis of customer needs. First, Global Express- a service for the customers who need urgent delivery and Global Priority- a service for the customers who need deferred or medium speed delivery. Thus, it enables customers to pick products that suite their needs.
b) Helps to defend competition: Marketing helps to identify the probable threat of competition and helps to defend such competition (Blythe, 2010). For example, Parcelforce customer research by marketing department showed that it had to improve its services because of increased competition and other external forces. Thus, it provides a competitive advantage that defends increased competition and makes the company as a market leader.
c) Good pricing: Marketing helps Parcelforce to adapt and identify appropriate pricing strategies and set reasonable pricing on the basis of customer perceived value (Baines, 2017). By doing this, Parcelforce is able to apply the appropriate strategy on the basis of the market condition. As a result, customer perceives that the service is worth of money. It helps Parcelforce to match or undercut its competitors’ prices. Thus, it helps to increase the market share of the company.
d) Efficient distribution: Marketing helps Parcelforce to establish distribution channel efficiently for its different markets and customers based on the customer needs. For example, Parcelforce has 53 deports to satisfy all of the customers such as B2B, B2C, and C2C. The C2C customers can send and collect parcels through the post office and all the local and international customers can access services from the company’s website.
Structure of Parcelforce: Organizational structures refer to how the organization performs and operates (Cravens and Piercy, 2013). From the context of Parcelforce, the company has functional structure. Functional structure refers to the units that are identified by specialties such as engineering, finance, accounting, marketing and customer service (Jain and Haley, 2009). This type of organizational structure is best suited for service organizations like Parcelforce. The units are interrelated to each other and work together when a difficult situation arises.
Operations of Parcelforce: Within the functional structure, there are many departments that perform some specific operations or activities. The operations that different departments perform in the organization are discussed below;
1. Finance: Actually the finance department deals with the financing activities of Parcelforce. The activities include investment decision in the new deport, authorizing finance to advertisement and promotion, providing finance to marketing department research and development, and financing in other activities (Edward, 2011).
2. Human resource: The primary activity of the human resource department is to hire right persons for the right job for Parcelforce. The operations that HR departments perform are an advertisement for recruiting, selecting, training and development, promoting, performance appraisal etc.
3. Marketing: Marketing is considered as the front door of Parcelforce. Marketing department performs activities to create demand for the services of Parcelforce. The activities of marketing department are market research, advertising and promotional activities, and creation of new products that fulfill the demand of the customers (Newman, 2014).
4. Customer service: customer service departments perform the activities of after-sales service issues. The department collects feedback from the customers, tries to solve the problem of customers and answer the queries.
Structure and operations of marketing department:
In Parcelforce, there are many types of personnel that perform different tasks of the marketing department e.g. marketing managers, consumer marketing communication manager, Brand and public relation manager, marketing data intelligence manager, and their teams. The customer marketing communication manager performs activities such as evaluating customer needs and preferences, perform marketing research and identify what customers want (Albaum, 2011). Brand and public relation manager deals with how to create the brand value of the product and maintain a relationship with customers to build brand value. And, marketing data intelligence manager collects and save data for the use of other managers. All of the managers work together in marketing Parcelforce services to reach the customers at the root level.
Marketing process:
Mission: The mission of Parcelforce marketing is to pursue its customers with new and unique products so that the company can remain the market leader in the market as well as ensuring the survival of older products. To keep its promise, the marketing department is always ready to take challenges.
Marketing strategy: As Parcelforce conduct its business activities throughout the world, it does not adopt same marketing and pricing strategy for all of the markets. Where there is an increased competition it chooses cost leadership in the non-urgent market and differentiation strategy in the urgent market. As a result, the company is the price leader in the non-urgent sector.
Marketing Mix: Marketing mix includes product, price, promotion, and place. Proper evaluation and analysis of these ensure company’s success (McDonald, 2010). The marketing department of Parcelforce put close attention to the four Ps. They consider these four P’s from the perspective of customers.
Implementation and control: When the appropriate strategy is decided and marketing mix is evaluated after the situational analysis, the marketing department now goes for implementation of marketing and business strategy. After implementation, the marketing manager observes whether the strategy working or not. The re-evaluate and redesign the strategy if needed.
M2: Analyse the significance of interrelation of marketing unit with other functional units
There is no doubt that marketing department is the heart of an organization. So it is interrelated with the all another functional department of Parcelforce. For example, marketing department analyze the market and develop new service of Parcelforce. When the marketing department assures that the product will be successful, the finance department will arrange necessary funds to finance the product. When marketing department observes frequent complaints from the customers, it will report to the human resource department that customer relation department employees are not performing well. Then, the HR department will take necessary steps to train and develop customer relation employees. Thus, it can be said that marketing department is interlinked with other departments.
P3: Compare the ways in which Parcelforce Worldwide and DHL express apply the marketing mix to the marketing planning process to achieve business objectives
Business objectives
Business objectives are the results that a manager wants to achieve and maintain when he runs and grows his business (Barney and Hesterly, 2016). A business objective is also called short-term goal that the company wants to achieve. The business objective is important to Ben Sherman to clarify the target to the management and employees’ what actually the company wants to achieve. For example, the business objective of Ben Sherman is providing quality and fashionable clothes at an affordable price to the customers.
Marketing Mix
The marketing mix is a set of tools and techniques that a firm uses to implement its marketing objectives (Armstrong et al., 2014). It includes product, place people, process, price, promotion and physical evidence.
Product: A product is an item that satisfies the needs of consumers. The product may be tangible and intangible in nature. Tangible products are those that can be seen and touched
Price: Price is the amount of money that a consumer is ready to pay for a product to acquire it (Raju, 2010). Management uses different strategies to set a price for its products such as price-cutting, discount, allowance and different payment terms, and conditions.
Place: Place in the area where the products will be placed for the convenience of the customers. Customers consider place as a convenience.
Promotion: Promotions are the activities that are performed by a marketing department to communicate reach to its potential customer. Different promotional activities are used by a company, for example, advertising, public relation, direct marketing and sales promotion.
Process: It refers where the delivery of the service is performed within the presence of the customers (Brassington and Pettitt, 2015).). It includes customer focus, information technology, design features etc.
People: Every organisation requires a human resource to complete the given tasks. Talent workforce is always created by the organisations.
Physical evidence: It indicates the existence of the organisation in the market. Physical presence includes a logo, store, sales people etc.
The application of marketing mix to the marketing planning process Ben Sherman
Product: The products of Ben Sherman are men’s products such as suits, shirts, footwear and casual clothing.
Pricing: The Company uses differentiate pricing policy where the company keeps price different for different products. It helps Ben Sherman to keep more customers to purchase the products.
Promotion: It promotes through television, newspaper, and magazine advertising. It also uses social media for its promotional activities. It also sponsors different national and international event to attract the visibility of the company’s product.
Place: Ben Sherman has over 200 stores across the UK and online shopping service from there customer can purchase products (Mackay, 2012).
People: The Company has over 5,000 employees all over the world who are rendering service to the customers.
Process: Ben Sherman uses modern technologies in the process such as online shopping process, online money collection etc.
Physical presence: The logo, salespeople, retail stores, vehicles are proving the physical presence of the Ben Sherman
Marketing mix application to marketing planning process of Parcelforce Worldwide
Product: A product is an item that satisfies the needs of consumers. The product may be tangible and intangible in nature. The product of the Parcelforce Worldwide is mail delivery service.
Price: Price is the amount of money that a consumer is ready to pay for a product to acquire it. Parcelforce Worldwide uses differentiate pricing, market penetration pricing for different services and different markets.
Place: The customers of Parcelforce Worldwide can reach the services of the company through the direct collection, post office branches, depots collection and international partner networks.
Promotion: Parcelforce uses above-the-line e.g. print and electronic media promotion and below-the-line e.g. sales promotions, public relations and e-mail marketing.
Process: The Parcelforce Worldwide uses modern technologies in the process to receive and code the parcels so that the scope of delivery the parcel in the right address is hundred percent accurate.
People: Every organisation requires a human resource to complete the given tasks. Parcelforce Worldwide has over forty thousand employees all over the world to complete the tasks.
Physical presence: It indicates the existence of the organisation in the market. The depots, post office branches, logo etc. provides the evidence of the physical presence of the Parcelforce Worldwide.
M3: Evaluate different tactics applied by the organisation to achieve business objectives
There are similarities and differences in different tactics applied by the companies to attain business objectives these are mentioned below:
Similarities in the applied tactics: There are similarities in the pricing tactics between Parcelforce Worldwide and Ben Sherman because both companies use different pricing strategy for different services. The tactics of the promotion are similar for both Ben Sherman and Parcelforce Worldwide because both companies use below-the-line and above-the-line promotion. The people of both companies are skilled, talented and committed to the company. And, the own logo, office, vehicles, salespeople are used by both companies for the physical presence in the market.
Dissimilarities in the applied tactics: There have differences in products between Parcelforce and Ben Sherman. Parcelforce provides mail services and Ben Sherman products are clothes and accessories. There is also a difference in the place between the companies because Parcelforce uses a branch, depots, and a third party to collect parcel whereas Ben Sherman uses retail stores, online shopping for selling products. The process is different for two companies because both companies develop own process to make an ease in their operations.
Conclusion
Marketing is a vital function of an organisation. Effective and appropriate applications of marketing functions will bring desired outcomes to the organisation. The organisations require develop a suitable marketing plan and carefully perform the marketing functions roles and responsibilities to meet the business objectives.
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