Conducting a Situation Analysis
Collecting and Analyzing Marketing Information: Analysis Alone Is Not a Solution. Situation analysis is a necessary, but insufficient, a prerequisite for effective strategic planning. The purpose of taking things apart is to understand why people, products, or organizations perform the way they do. Data Are Not the Same As Information. Data-a collection of a number of facts that have the potential to provide information. Data, however, do not become informative until a person or process transforms or combines them with other data in a manner that makes them useful to decision makers. The Benefits of Analysis Must Outweigh the Costs. Conducting a Situation Analysis Is a Challenging Exercise. The Internal Environment Review of Current Objectives, Strategy, and Performance. The marketing manager must assess the firm’s current marketing objectives, strategy, and performance. The marketing manager should also evaluate the performance of the current marketing strategy with respect to sales volume, market share, profitability, and other relevant measures.
Poor or declining performance may be the result of:
(1) Holding on to marketing goals or objectives inconsistent with the current realities of the customer or external environments
(2) A flawed marketing strategy
(3) Poor implementation
(4) Changes in the customer or external environments beyond the control of the firm
Availability of Resources: Marketing manager must review the current and anticipated levels of organizational resources that can be used for marketing purposes
Organizational Culture and Structure
The marketing manager should review current and anticipated cultural and structural issues that could affect marketing activities. One of the most important issues in this review involves the internal culture of the firm. Internal cultures also include any anticipated changes in key executive positions within the firm. For most firms, culture and structure are relatively stable issues that do not change dramatically from one year to the next.
The Customer Environment
During this analysis, information should be collected that identifies:
(1) The firm’s current and potential customers
(2) The prevailing needs of current and potential customers
(3) The basic features of the firm’s and competitors’ products perceived by customers as meeting their needs, and
(4) Anticipated changes in customers’ needs
Who Are Our Current and Potential Customers
Demographic characteristics-gender, age, income
Geographic characteristics-where customers live, the density of the target market
Psychographic characteristics-attitudes, opinions, interests, etc.
What do Customers Do with Our Products?
Identifying the rate of product consumption (or usage rate), differences between heavy and light users of products, whether customers use complementary products during consumption, and what customers do with the firm’s products after consumption
Derived Demand-where the demand for one product depends on the demand of another product-the marketer must also examine the consumption and usage of the complementary product.
Where do customers purchase our products?
The fastest growing form of distribution today is nonstore retailing-which includes vending machines; direct marketing through catalogs, home sales, or infomercials; and electronic merchandising-through the Internet, interactive television, and video kiosks.
When Do Customers Purchase our products?
The “when” question refers to any situational influences that may cause customer purchasing activity to vary over time
The “when” question also includes more subtle influences that can affect purchasing behavior, such as physical and social surroundings, time perceptions, and the purchase task.
Why (and How) Do Customers Select Our Products?
The “why” question involves identifying the basic need-satisfying benefits provided by the firm’s products. This question is important because customers may purchase the firm’s products to fulfill the needs that the firm never considered. Barter involves the exchange of goods and services for other goods/services; no money changes hands.
Why Do Potential Customers Not Purchase Our Products?
Noncustomers have a basic need that the firm’s product does not fulfill. Noncustomers perceive that they have better or lower-priced alternatives, such as competing for substitute products. Competing products actually have better features or benefits than the firm’s product. The firm’s product does not match noncustomers’ budgets or lifestyles. Noncustomers have high switching costs. Noncustomers do not know that the firm’s product exists. Noncustomers have misconceptions about the firm’s product (weak or poor image). Poor distribution makes the firm’s product difficult to find.
Collecting and analyzing marketing information
Solution to get the benefit. Economies of scale and scope. Movie Rental Business for change in demand shift. Firm’s resource-based view
Resource of the firm should be:
1. Valuable
2. Rare
3. Imperfectly immit
4. Difficult to transfer to others
To have a sustainable competitive advantage: resource seeking and development and adjustable capabilities
Tangible v intangible
Untology?
Espiomology?
AMA (2007) definition of marketing: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and process for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
Out of four P’s: which is the most significant change: place
Everything used to be a physical place. There is no boundary now. Where: everywhere. Marketspace: computer networks—online. Where buyers and sellers meet online. Open 24 hours
Miles and Snow (1980)
1. Prospector-looking for the opportunity, new product launches
2. Defender-cheaper ways to produce a product and make technology better, know how to penetrate the market, cheap me 2 product, vision
3. Analyzer-combination of two above, Samsung
4. Reactor-similar to the defender, fail to penetrate the market
Marketing implementation. Strategy-getting the different jobs are done, a similar job at different
Best buy and fries have time utility because you can buy it here and now. retailers are not cheaper than the internet. online have price and place utility they bring the stuff to your door. competitors have a sustainable competitive advantage. pepsi and coke are brand competitors. product competitors phones and cars, brand competitors are out interest because we see them on a day to day basis
Most common criticisms leveled against SWOT analysis are that 1) it allows firms to create lists without serious consideration of the issues 2) often becomes a sterile academic exercise of classifying data and information.
COLLECTING AND ANALYZING MARKETING INFORMATION