Strategic Marketing : Marketing Strategy

Grewal and Levy (2010: p32) state that ‘a marketing strategy identifies, (1) a company’s target market(s), (2) a related marketing mix - their four P’s and (3) the bases upon which the firm plans to build a sustainable competitive advantage’.

A marketing strategy provides a big picture of what a firm can do in a specific market. When creating a marketing strategy, a firm must identify a target market and a related marketing mix. A target market is "a group of similar customers to whom a firm wishes to appeal," and a marketing mix is "the controllable variables the company puts together to satisfy this target group." (Perrault and McCarthy 36) Focusing on specific target customers can help a firm develop a marketing mix that satisfies those customers ' specific needs better than another firm, making a firm less likely to face direct competitors.

Marketing strategies are activities designed to fill market needs and achieve objectives through the marketing mix.

Marketing strategy is an explanation of what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts and investments. It must go hand in hand with your business goals. A key component of marketing strategy is keeping your strategy in line with your company’s overarching mission statement which Thomsons ITM work extremely hard at.

“Marketing strategies can have a broad impact on the business in terms of instilling a marketing orientation among all those in the firm: the way of thinking or philosophy of the whole organization. However, marketing strategies can alternatively be seen as dealing only with the development of competitive advantages directly associated with the marketing function such as customer loyalty and distribution channel control. In the latter case, the domain is sometimes even further restricted by sole attention to the various element of the marketing mix rather than the more general issues of customer and channel relationships. There are two key

Every organization needs to have a marketing strategy so that they know who are their competitors, which market they need to target, do they have resources to compete in that market and what strategies they need to adopt to gain competitive position in the industry. The most important thing is with the help of marketing, company is able to make people aware of its product.

Marketing strategies has been defined differently by many economical authors through over the years. First was defined by (Drucker, 1973) as a process that any organization is applying which consist of examining the different environmental, competitor factors that affect this organization. Munuera and Rodriges (1998) defined it as the realization of customers needs and analyze our competitors and satisfy those customers needs in order to gain a superior advantage (long term) and increase our sales. McDonald marketing strategies:

It is very important for every business to have a marketing strategy. It’s the important tool to attract customers to buy yours product or service. The main aim of marketing strategy is to be sure that your relationship with your customers is strong and long-term, you’ll make a profit on this relationship and, of course, that your product meet the need of customers. Marketing strategy of the company should be flexible, in order to be persistent to the changes in demand of people. [1]

Effective marketing begins with an estimated marketing strategy. A good marketing strategy helps in defining vision, mission and business goals and explains the steps need to achieve these goals.

1. Define strategy and define marketing strategy. Is strategy important for marketers? Support with examples and references. Due 5 August (10%)

The marketing strategy should be tailored around the firm's target market; if this were not the case marketing would be then less successful. Each aspect of the marketing mix would need to be formulated with the target market (consumer) in mind. For example the design of the product would need to be such that it would satisfy the consumer's needs. If it did not consumers would see no need to have it and buy a competitor's product. The price of

Strategic Planning is the process of developing and maintaining a strategic fit between the organizations goals and capabilities and its changing marketing opportunities.

Strategic marketing is creating a plan to better reach and satisfy customer while increasing profitability and productivity. Competition strategy is an important strategic planning process to

Strategy can be defined as a firm’s positioning to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace (Michael E. Porter 1996)[1]. A strategy is always to secure organizational effectiveness by performing the right activities at the right time and to .achieves the right fit with the external environment. Building upon this idea, a marketing strategy allows firms to develop a plan that enables them to offer the right product to the right market, with the intent of gaining a competitive advantage. Marketing strategy research has focussed arenas such as marketing strategy

‘Strategy’ means a plan of action that is mainly design to achieve the future goal or objective. And in the other hand ‘marketing’ means a business of promoting good or services and selling that with market research and advertisement. So strategic marketing is an explanation of the objective that we need to achieve in future with the help of marketing.