Effective Marketing Strategies: Objectives, Niche, and Product Life Cycle

Posted on Jan 4, 2025 in Economy

Marketing Strategy

Marketing Strategy
A firm’s marketing strategy depends on a number of things:

  • Its resources
  • Their strengths and weaknesses
  • Competition
  • Skills and assets of the business
  • Market opportunities and threats
  • Marketing objectives

Marketing Objectives

Marketing Objectives
Marketing objectives are targets that the marketing department wants to achieve. These objectives help businesses achieve their overall objectives. Marketing objectives allow businesses to achieve their marketing strategies.

Examples of objectives:

  • To increase market share by 5%
  • To increase distribution by 4%

Niche Marketing

Niche Marketing
Niche marketing is where a business concentrates on a small segment of the market. This is often used by small companies as it is a way of avoiding competition who may not be interested in such a small segment.
E.g. Gardening magazines, Science fiction books

Mass Marketing

Mass Marketing
Mass marketing strategies aim the strategy at the whole market. This is generally used by larger companies whose products appeal to everyone.
E.g. Ariel washing powder, TV magazines, Bestsellers

Product Differentiation

Product Differentiation
This is how businesses make their products stand out from the competition. They can use USPs – unique selling points to differentiate their products. By differentiating products you are able to charge a premium price. Differentiated products are often aimed at specific market segments as they have the features they desire.

Product Life Cycle

Product Life Cycle
The Product Life Cycle shows the life of a product from its conception to its death. There are five stages in the product life cycle:

  1. Research and development – the product is being developed, high costs
  2. Introduction – the product is introduced to the market, sales are low, profit is negative as research and development costs are being met
  3. Growth – Sales increase rapidly, firm starts to make a profit
  4. Maturity – Sales reach their peak, profits start to decline as competition increases
  5. Decline – Sales fall, profits begin to fall, the product might be taken off the market.

Product Life Cycle – Extension Strategies

Product Life Cycle – Extension Strategies
Firms often try and extend the life of their products to stop them going into decline. Extension strategies include:

  • Reduce price of product
  • Find alternative uses for product
  • Increase frequency of use of the product
  • Change packaging

Ansoff Matrix

Ansoff Matrix
Four different strategies a business can implement:

  1. Market penetration – sell more products to existing customers
  2. New product development – sell new products to existing customers
  3. Market development – sell existing products to new customers
  4. Differentiation – sell new products to new customers

Experienced Marketing Decision Making

Experienced Marketing Decision Making
Methods are based on the situation, time available and the manager’s expertise.

Managers make marketing decisions based on:

  • Data Hunches
  • Scientific Method
  • Experience

Scientific Decision Making Method

  • Marketing objectives are set
  • Data is gathered
  • Data is analysed
  • Marketing strategy is developed
  • Marketing strategy is implemented
  • Results are reviewed – this leads back into objectives

Quality Management

Quality Management
Quality control is the process of ensuring that products have standard or uniform quality. It aims to reduce any problems before a product reaches the end of the production cycle. All employees have to be committed to controlling the quality for it to be effective. One form of quality control is TQM (Total Quality Management)

Features of TQM:

  • Quality Circles – Workers meet to discuss issues relating to quality in the business, this can also act as a motivator to employees that are involved
  • Zero defects – these are systems that make sure no products leave the business with defects
  • Statistical Process Control – this describes statistics which are generated to enable the business to evaluate their quality procedures

Quality Assurance
This looks at guaranteeing all stages in the production process leading to high quality products. The emphasis is on preventing mistakes. Self-checking is a key part of quality assurance. Self-checking is where workers check their own work.

Government Regulations (UK)

Government Regulations (UK)
The UK government has a number of regulations and standards regarding quality. These include: ISO – ISO 9000 and ISO 14000. These are quality standards businesses have to adhere to. British Standards Institution (BSI) – The Kitemark and the CE mark are both important standards of quality.


Analyse one advantage and one disadvantage to GMC of changing to a more centralised organisation structure. [10]
Centralisation: Central/head office control over most key decision making

Advantages:

  • Economies of scale – centralised buying of support services (or any other resources identified by candidate) could lower unit costs
  • Consistency of decision making across countries gives a united image to the business
  • Conflicts between divisions can be resolved centrally rather than decisions made divisionally having a negative impact on other divisions

Disadvantages:

  • Takes away decision making powers from senior staff in all divisions – may demotivate
  • Existing structure seems to have contributed to company’s growth
  • Decentralised decisions can lead to more relevant/appropriate strategies for each country/division

Discuss an appropriate marketing plan for the launch of GMC cell phone services in your country.
Answers could include:

  • Marketing plan: Detailed report on the firm’s marketing strategy including objectives, budget, mix, time frame
  • This is market development – plan may need to reflect market conditions in new country
  • Candidate makes comments about own country market e.g. growing population, ageing population, high/low income
  • Objectives needed to assess outcome of plan e.g. market share in a given time period (SMART)
  • Budget needed to plan promotional activity – which must be focused on the market segment being aimed at
  • 4 Ps – discussion in the context of the candidate’s own country – and marketing objective set
  • Need for integrated mix

Evaluation might include:

  • Judgement about relevance/appropriateness for candidate’s own country
  • Most important factor(s) in the plan – related to own country
  • GMC overall corporate objective needs to be known before the marketing objective for this product development can be established

Assess the importance to GMC of doing detailed strategic analysis before taking important decisions on future growth strategy. [20]
Answers could include:

  • Strategic analysis: analysing the current position of the business, its products and the external environment.
  • Techniques include: SWOT, PEST, Boston Box, Porter’s competitive rivalry analysis or any other technique that provides situational analysis
  • Mendoza brothers seem to have good intuition and have been successful in the past – they seem to know the industries they operate in and the key strengths/weaknesses of their business.
  • So – is scientific strategic analysis really necessary?
  • It would help to establish SWOTs of the business and the main external factors operating on it – important when taking long term strategic decisions
  • Boston Box would allow consideration of market growth/market share – but how useful would this be for a decision such as this that involves diversification?
  • Porter’s competitive rivalry analysis could be very important when entering a completely new market/product area e.g. risk of new entry and power of suppliers (handsets) (although there are overlaps with current divisions of the business e.g. internet services).

Evaluation:

  • Decision is likely to be that some formal strategic analysis is undertaken – time consuming but helps to reduce risks and give greater chance of success – especially if entering completely new markets with new products – diversification – as in this case
  • As GMC expands so Mendoza brothers may lose control – more managerial approach likely to be used rather than entrepreneurial
  • Which is likely to be the most useful form of analysis in this case – and why?

Discuss the strategic decision-making techniques that CAL’s directors could use when making the choice between strategy A and strategy B. [20]
Answers could include:

  • Strategic choice – Ansoff, force field analysis and decision trees but other techniques might also be appropriate e.g. investment appraisal.
  • Ansoff – CRM is market penetration – could be achieved in the short term and it is a non-risky strategy.
  • Product development – riskier and likely only to yield benefits in the longer term.
  • Ansoff identifies risks but does not provide a decision making solution.
  • Force field analysis – how relevant in this case? There may be a need to reduce staff resistance to changing the way they operate and deal with customers with the CRM option.
  • Decision trees – explanation of how they could help make the decision in this case – but there are many uncertainties especially with calculating the probabilities and pay-offs from the product development strategy.
  • Investment appraisal – provides a numerical result and these can be compared but how reliable would the cash flow forecasts be?

Evaluation:

  • Ed might choose a non-scientific hunch approach – would this be more or less likely to succeed than using techniques of strategic analysis?
  • No one method is adequate – many factors and decision making approaches need to be weighed up.
  • Final judgement could come down to cost and time span – how important is it to opt for a strategy which will be likely to give quicker results