Introduction
Marketing is a process by which a business promotes its products to make the customers aware about the product which can fulfill their needs and provide customer satisfaction. The process starts with identification of a product, analyzing the demand, deciding the price and selecting distribution channels. The chosen company in this report is Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) having its headquarter in United States. KFC is a fast food restaurant chain that specializes in fried chicken. This report covers the role of marketing and its interrelationship with other units of organization. Further a comparison of different marketing mix of KFC, and lastly development and evaluation of its marketing plan (Dibb and Simkin, 2013).
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Task 1
Key role and responsibilities of marketing
Marketing is an organizational function of attracting the customers for selling a product or service. It is a link between the organization and the society, where the organization identifies the needs of the customers and fulfill the needs by providing according to their demand. The main objective of an organization is to provide customer satisfaction. Marketing includes market analysis, creating an understanding about customer behavior and providing best customer value.
Trends of marketing: The trend of marketing keeps changing according to the changes that takes place in the marketing environment. KFC uses digital marketing, newspapers to advertise the products. Social media can be the other way of promoting the products and services to a large number of customer. In social media, the organization can promote their products by advertising it on online media (Pike, 2015).
Marketing process: The marketing process helps the company to fulfill and provide customer satisfaction to the dissatisfied customers. It is done with the objective to know about the demand of the customers in order to increase sales by providing satisfaction to their needs. It is divided into four steps and the steps are as follows:
- Situation Analysis: It is an analysis of both external and internal environment that affects a business of an organization. These external environment consist macro factors and internal environment consist of micro factors. This analysis takes into consideration the past history, present and future aspects to identify the customer needs and fulfil them in order to survive in the competitive market.
- Marketing Strategy: A right plan can help the organization to achieve its target. In this step market research is done in order to gather specific market information that will help the organization to target a particular market segment.
- Marketing Mix Decisions: This step includes designing and producing the product, deciding the prices, executing contracts with various distributors and promoting the product.
- Implementation and Control: This is the last step of marketing strategy, in which the organization develop a marketing plan, implement the plan and prepare policies to achieve the targets and control the outcomes (Scarborough, 2016).
The marketing department of KFC performs various functions to make profits for the company by providing the best quality products. The marketing functions contributes to the growth of the business. These functions helps the company to capture a huge market share and make as many customers as it can. The functions are as follows:
Market research: Research is done to collect information about the target customers. It is an evaluation of the needs and demands of the customers, the factors affecting the organizational activities, tracking record of the quality required in the market etc. Market research is necessary to take decisions regarding marketing of products.
Market Planning: The planning is done by marketing manager with an aim of meeting the needs of the targeted customers. This helps the company on the enhancement of the presence of the product in the market. To achieve the target the manager performs promotion and many other activities (Baines, Fill and Page, 2013).
Product Designing and Development: A proper design of the product is very important before launching it in the market. It is about deciding on the quality standard that can be used for shape, packing and look of the product etc. The design of the product should be done in order to attract more and more customers and it should be better than the competitor’s product.
Standardization and Grading: Standardization means the process of producing products according to the standard set in order to achieve consistency and uniformity in products. The quality, price and packaging should be the same. Grading means categorization of products into different classes on the basis of various characteristics set by the company.
Branding: Every product requires a name to differentiate it from other products. Giving name to a product is called branding and this help in increasing customers’ loyalty. A brand can vary according to the segment of a company.
Pricing of the products: Pricing should be done by considering various factors. This is the amount a customer needs to pay to buy the product. According to the general perception of most of the customers, that if the price of a product is high, the demand will less and vice versa (Wirtz, 2012).
Promotion: Promotion is done for making the customer aware about the product. Promotion can be done through advertisement, door to door sample selling etc. It is done to provide complete information about the product such as prices, uses, features.
Distribution channel: It is the function of storing and transportation of the products. The function starts from selecting a warehouse where the products in bulk can be stored and transporting them as and when required. Distribution channel helps in smooth delivery of the products at various places.
Financing: In this function, the manager works in a way to provide various financing facility to the retailers and distributors in order to gain customer loyalty and to retain them. Such facility includes giving products on credit basis.
The marketing functions plays a vital role in maximizing the profitability. These functions help the company to make loyal customer, expand distributor chain, survive in the competitive market conditions, capture a large market share etc.
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Inter-relation of various units functioning in KFC
The inter-relationship among different units of an organization is very important. In KFC, the marketing department interrelates with other units of it such as production unit, human resource, finance etc. Inter-relation provides a co-ordination between all the units working in a company in order to achieve the goals of the company. Since KFC is big fast food restaurant chain, it becomes essential to have synchronization in all the activities otherwise the internal management could be failed, leaving the company in losses. Interrelationship of marketing department with other department of KFC are described below:
Marketing and Finance: The marketing department perform their function to target the desired customers thereby helping the finance department to make budgets regarding for promotional activities. Increase in the number of customers will increase the sales which will result in profits. The finance department has to account for the profits and also its utilization in the activities of KFC (Clow and James, 2013). The marketing department will require the funds for successful implementation of the plan, the fund can be allotted by finance department only.
Marketing and Human Resource: Marketing function is a process by which company promotes its products and services. Promotional activities are done with a motive of attracting the customers to the products and services. Companies like KFC requires good number of personnel to perform these promotional activities effectively. Human resource management department can get the right person to this job.
Marketing and Production: These two departments work closely with each and are interrelated. Marketing department gives the details about the requirement of the demands of products to the production department. The right detail at the right time do not cause delay in production thereby reducing costs and hours associated with wastage (Rossi, Allenby and McCulloch, 2012).
Marketing and Research: Research department of KFC collects information about the targeted market. This information is used to identify the demands, behavior of the buyers, market conditions etc. All these information helps the marketing department to make plans and strategies.
Task 2
Marketing Mix
|
Basis |
KFC |
McDonalds
|
|
Product |
It is a fast food restaurant chain that specializes in fried chicken. The other products offered by KFC are chicken burgers, wraps, French fries, soft drinks, salad etc. |
McD is also a fast food company that specializes in hamburger. It also serves products like breakfast items, soft drinks, milkshake, wraps and desserts. |
|
Price |
The prices of the KFC products are high. It follows market skimming pricing strategy. It target the middle upper class people (Pricing strategy,2017) |
McDonald’s uses various pricing techniques to keep the price competitive. The prices may vary according to the number of other factors. |
|
Place |
It has more than 300 outlets. The business of KFC is based on franchisee and company run outlets. They also provide the products through online media. |
The distribution strategies vary country to country. They offers home delivery in some countries and many of the outlets are open 24 hour a day. |
|
Promotions |
The promotional activities are done by offering add-ons on existing menu, gift coupons, meal etc. The promotion is done through LCD displays, and it also does online and television advertisements. |
Mcd uses television, newspapers, magazines, internet and other media to promote its products (Brassington and Pettitt, 2013). |
|
People |
The staff of KFC are trained by the company itself. They are required to be act according to the KFC’s guidelines. |
The main objective of Mcdonalds is to consider the issues of employees and customers. It believe to keep customers happy so that they provide good services to the customers. |
|
Process |
The process of ordering the foods starts when the customers visits the outlet and they can also order online. |
It uses many ways to deliver the products ordered by the customers. They maintains transparency while making the food. |
|
Physical Evidence |
It is the physical outlet where customers can visit. The interior is designed in a specific way as given by the parent company. KFC uses advance technology equipment. |
The outlets of McDs have attractive interior and they maintain clean and hygienic interiors. The equipment used are not that advanced. |
Conclusion
From the above-mentioned report, it has been concluded that marketing department plays an important role in overall success of the company. Proper implementation of marketing plans and strategies contributes to company’s profitability. Further, the co-ordination among different units is important for targeting the market. The marketing plans help the company to implement the policies so that sales can be increased.
References
Books and Journals:
- Dibb, S. and Simkin, L., 2013. Marketing essentials. Cengage Learning.
- Pike, S., 2015. Destination marketing: essentials. Routledge.
- Scarborough, N. M., 2016. Essentials of entrepreneurship and small business management. Pearson.
- Wirtz, J., 2012. Essentials of services marketing. FT Press.
- Baines, P., Fill, C. and Page, K., 2013. Essentials of marketing. Oxford University Press.
- Clow, K. E. and James, K. E., 2013. Essentials of marketing research: Putting research into practice. Sage.
- Rossi, P. E., Allenby, G. M. and McCulloch, R., 2012. Bayesian statistics and marketing. John Wiley & Sons.
- Brassington, F. and Pettitt, S., 2013. Essential of marketing.
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