INTRODUCTION
Marketing plays an important role in the business organization because this is the only tool that can take a business on hike with a small investment of time and money. As marketing is a tool which utilizes to identify the requirements and demand of the customers cause if the firm knows the basic needs and requirements of the customers then only it can sustain in the marketplace. The business organizations realizes the customer relationship that is essential to attain a position in the market, there are various kinds of tools, techniques ans strategies which will be covered in this report along with respect of ALDI. ALDI is one of the biggest supermarket discount chain in the United Kingdom which is presently running over 10,000 store across 20 countries. It was founded in 1913 by two brothers Karl Albrecht, Theo Albrecht. The headquarter is situated in Germany (Dibb and Simkin, 2013).
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TASK 1
P1 Roles and Responsibilities of marketing functions of ALDI.
Marketing plays an important role in every organization and in ALDI it is utilizes to recognize the potential in of the market to know that where the firm can invest more to attain great profits. ALDI is a supermarket chain that offers grocery items to the public with a huge discount rates, but to attract the people it is not enough to furnish a store only with discounted products. So in order to attain the customer satisfaction it is required to get collect the information in which the customers are interested and what are they purchasing from the others. Marketing can provide the information about the products what the customers are consuming and then the firm can provide same item with the distinguishable price along with attractive promotional strategies. There are various marketing functions that can be include as marketing research, preparing a marketing plan, strategies for advertisements, product development strategies, distribution strategies for sales, customer service and maintaining public relationship. Marketing is crucial for business organizations specially for those that are looking for the profit and gives a new direction to rise in level of sales (Wirtz, 2012). Marketing functions has some roles and responsibilities that are described below -
Marketing Strategies- It would be better for any organization that they first develops strategies before just implement the actions cause it can be reason of huge loss for the company. Marketing strategies are the most impactful strategies that generates a path for to gain profit through increasing the sales. The first and foremost state of marketing function is to identification of the customer's needs and requirement because there are so many customers who has specific needs and they would like to spend their money on the priorities first. If the firm is producing such things that are genuinely required by the customers then for sure the company can go so far. But in case the firm is not doing so, then it will be beneficial for them to produce the things according to the market needs that can generate the sales. ALDI needs to develop such kind of strategies that are beneficial for both sides that is for the company and buyers as well. Because without the buying decision the company cannot raise its sales and to improve the sales its needed to be focused on the targeted customer preferences (Pike, 2015).
Management information system- Management information system or MIS is a collection of statistical data that is used to gather the information about the entire procedure of product development. It contains the information about the each stage of product from the planning, implementation and controlling. The MIS refers as a documentation of the product cause it contains the information about the production of certain items and the materials which are required to develop such goods. It is good if ALDI would apply the MIS cause it will support to achieve the objectives and goals.
Monitor the market –Every firm wanted to go higher with the time but for this it needs to monitor the market trends. The firms needs to improve it products and services to capture the attention of customers in the market cause there are so many changes that are capturing in the market. It is necessary to monitor the competitors to change the strategies and nature of product and services. The changes can be socio – economical factors, internal and external changes, political and legal changes in the marketplace.
Marketing research- The marketing research is crucial cause it provides a deep down inside the information which requires to develop a product and offer that in the marketplace. The research has an aim to know the requirement and needs of the customers with various elements. The customer satisfaction is the the main objective of the company to make the customers happy it is required to research on the customer's needs that can also give economic contentment to the firm and consumer both (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2011).
Market segmentation –Marketing segmentation refers to study about consumers on the basis of customer's requirements where the business is getting established . There are three marketing segmentation techniques that used to gather the information on specific nature and characteristics of the people. There are demographic, geographic, behavioural, and psychographic segmentation that uses to conduct research on these to encourage the sales.
Brand image –Creating a brand image is the biggest task for the marketing, it use to build a brand image by promotional activities like advertisement through various mediums. An ethical publicity is good for establishing an image among prospected customers. ALDI has a good brand image among its customers and that is because of its ethical publicity (Berkowitz, 2016).
P2 How roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational context.
There are several other departments of the organization which are interrelated to with marketing because they also plays an important role to accomplish the goals. These sections are support to produce the opportunities to explore a company with achieving the high results. The interrelation of the marketing with other section can be mentioned as below -
Human resource management– The human resource management retries the information from marketing department about the staff recruitment. The HR manager of the ALDI can recruit the staff for marketing and sales through various recruitment strategies.
Research and development– The marketing team put a research and development department to analyse the market requirement. The marketing department closely related to the people cause they are the main source of the information and the data collected from them will be define the information what actually support goods and services in that particular region where the ALDI is opening its store.
Manufacturing process –The manufacturing process is closely related to the marketing because the marketing team provides the information about the flow of goods and services in the marketing. When marketing team observe that there is a requirement of goods then it will tell the manufacturing department and then that will manufacture the goods to supply in the market. The marketing team of ALDI will provide the information to the manufacturing department because after that they can start the production and that will also reduce the overflow of production.
Finance department– There are so many activities for marketing that needs some investment and that finance is provided by the finance department. ALDI finance department can ask for the investment area where the marketing section wanted to spend the money and after that the finance department keep the account of marketing team and then it will assign the required amount (Perreault, 2010).
Information and communication technology –There are so many technologies are evolving in every day life yet the technology is also important for the business perspective. Information and communication technology or the ICT is one of the main source to promote the products. Marketing department of ALDI utilizes the ICT in order to increase the sales, it can use its customer information to inform them about the upcoming discount schemes or the new range of goods. It uses the technology in distributing the information through newsletter, emails, messages, etc (Jones and Rowley, 2011).
Administration– The administration is the highest authority of any business organisation that has decision power and implement the new planning and strategies. The administration can be the Chief Executive Officer of the ALDI that has the rights to take the decision and also establishing the rules for governance along with approval rights. The all rights are reserved with the administration until this will not sanction the marketing budget or any other marketing plan or strategies the marketing department cannot withdraw budget amount and also not able to implement any plan or strategies. The marketing team needs to take the approval from the administration department.
Consumer service –The consumer service department is closely related to the customers because if they face any problem with the purchased product then they can call to the customer service department where they can find the solutions regarding their issues . This information will be fetch by the marketing department and then it can be analyse that what kind of problems customers are actually facing to what are the ways from which the issues can be overcome. It will help to ALDI to provide better products that can be useful and satisfy the needs of customers and economic benefits to the company (Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2012).
TASK 3
P3 Compare the ways in which the ALDI applies the marketing mix
Marketing is a concept that encourage a business to make the profit through sales. After all business is always hunting for the a way that can improve the sales and that is what marketing is all about. It implements the strategies to increase business at proper place where there is a requirement of the product and at the exact time when it needed the most so that people can easily access the store and its products. There are 7Ps in marketing mix that explores the more opportunities to develop a strong business with the customers. Marketing mix is applied in various organizations to show that impact on the different organizations below is comparison between the ALDI and LIDL which defines the marketing plan with marketing mix -
Marketing mix |
ALDI |
LIDL |
Product |
ALDI provides the similar product like other brands. It provides products from the selected suppliers with affordable prices. The main product of the firm is food and along with this it also offers some products like vegetables, fruits, health and beauty products, clothes, stationary, electronic products, household goods and soft tools. It is also known as the largest retailer of wine in Germany. Along with all of these products these ALDI has almost 1350 variety of products in different stores. |
LIDL offers huge range of products with a commitment of good quality and it also source the products from the local farmers. The seventy percent of products are supplied by the British farmers and suppliers to maintain the freshness and quality of the edible products. It offers almost all kind of grocery items with effective quality like food items, clothing, baby products, fruits, vegetables, etc (Mihart, 2012). |
Price |
ALDI has a strong customer bond because of its cheap price and quality that it is maintaining from years. It has specific products and that are not available at competitors stores. It has several pricing structure like unit pricing which can be compare with the other grocery items. Market penetration charges a low price to successfully enter in the market and share the profit. Competitive price are takes place in the high competition level where the products price can be reduce with respect to the rival brands. Along with these there are psychological and loss leader pricing is also applied by the company. |
It uses the penetration pricing that uses the sales on low pricing policy to encourage the high sales. It has so many product with private labels that eliminates the middles man cost that's why it can easily sustain with its low cost products (Desai, 2013). |
Promotion |
ALDI has quite interesting promotional activities it encompasses the cost – saving strategy cause it spends negligible amount on promotional activities and even it does not hold any marketing department at headquarter. It has its own style of promotion which includes 'Super Buys' offers. The super buys remains till the last stocks and it changes every week. It provides information through using ICT that means it sends the information to its customer from newsletter, emails and messages. In the US, UK and Australia it use the print, electronic and display media to promote the sales along with this it use as swap and save to enable the customer's to switch the brand they were using (Lane, 2016). |
LIDL follows the integrated promotional campaigns that plays on TV throughout the year. Even it also has a 'Lidl app' for the iPhone and Android users so that they can reach towards the customers. It also has some weekly offers which aid to save the twenty five on goods (Nguyen and Simkin, 2012). |
Place |
ALDI is chain and it has more than 8000 stores in almost 18 countries and most probably it opens a new store in Britain every week. The store layout is very simple instead of investing in layout it expenses in the products that is beneficial for customer and their satisfaction. It is purchases many products in bulk and keep them safe in warehouse with quality assurance. It ensures the minimum wastage to control the environment harm. It tries to appear in the regional area of every country that's why it keep the name of the stores according to their local presence. |
The firm has various regional distribution centres to delivers the quality products at the stores. The customers can purchase the products from any store in the UK, USA (Swenson, Rhoads and Whitlark, 2014). |
People |
ALDI has thoughtful and well designed sections on each floor that reduces the workforce requirement that needed to assist the customers. There are employees at billing counter they are quick in scan and billing the goods. |
The staff get the rich amount of salary and they are highly trained in give fast services like scanning the items. The employees work hard to meet the expectations of the customers (Hsu, 2011). |
Process |
ALDI can make its product finding very easy for the customer through its fierce layout, so that customer can select their wishes of products that reduces the number of customer services that are needed to assist the customers. It keeps only a few high quality products on low cost to prevent the customer from getting confused. The all products has large barcodes that makes easy the identification process of items at the bill counter. |
It provides the self checkouts to allow customers the fast services and it reduces the long queues and it also improves the customer's interaction with the staff (Kennedy and Parsons, 2014). |
Physical evidence |
ALDI is renowned name for its easy and simple business process, standard and pricing system which remains same in all the stores across countries. Approximately 85% products are its home brands and the rest 15 % are acquired by the recognized brands. |
The LIDL keeps its store colour in yellow and blue so the people who are looking for the brand can easily access the nearby stores (Dibb and Simk |