marketing B2B

Refer/Defer Guidance 5mark009w (B2B marketing PLAN)

Additional Guidance & Help for Assignment 2- B2B Marketing PLAN [in blue]

All information for this assignment was covered in lectures, 7-10

2000- words maximum.

1. Prepare a marketing plan to cover the following areas:

a) Identify the key macro drivers affecting this B2B sector. Please do not use PEST for this. (10%) (250 words)

One of the biggest mistakes’ students make here is their failure to understand the role of derived demand in B2B marketing. Because B2B may be situated several layers away from the actual end use customer, there may be many intervening variables which affect the actual B2B industry. Here, it is necessary for you to think of the likely macro drivers [the things that are likely to affect, positively or negatively, the demand for kindergarten furniture- which IKEA also sell). You should be able to distil this into 5-6 key points which you will support with evidence and then be able to identify if this is likely to present an opportunity or a threat to the industry(Kindergarten furniture. Which IKEA and others sell).

When you talk about macro drivers, you should be thinking about its affect on the industry, not IKEA specifically. To save word-count, you may present this in table format ONLY as indicated in the example below from lecture 7a)(taxi Industry), but please make sure you format the table so that it is no longer than 1/3 of the page( font 9/10, single line spacing is ok for this).

This is how I would like you to produce this section:

Emerging Issue or Trend	Fact	Implication	Rating: Opportunity (+1 to + 5) Threat: (-1 to -5)
Increased disposable income	Couples getting married later, Declining birth-rate(1.8 per couple) (Mintel, 2017)	Higher discretionary income for socialising and comfort travel.	+5
Urbanisation	82.84 percent of the total population in the United Kingdom live in cities (Statista, 2018)	Growing urban market which is suited to taxi business.	+4
Disruptive Technologies	Development of smart: technology integrating GPS; payment security; safety systems (TechTarget, 2017)	Allowing for easy tracking & payment of trips, greater sense of safety by passengers(Females)	+4
Regulation:	TFL stepping up on regulating taxi business. (The Economist, 2018)	Devastating for business: Business licences may be withdrawn	-5
CO-2	Increased concern regarding the environment. (Gov.UK, 2018)	Resulting in restrictions on # of taxis: traffic curtailment exercises in London/other cities. Likely to result in increased fares & resulting decline of market.	-3
Brexit	Growing GDP (ONS, 2018), but storm clouds arising from BREXIT: Inflation outpacing wage increases.	Impacting negatively on discretionary incomes: taxi trips are likely to take the first hit.	-2

b) Analyse the core competitors to IKEA in this sector:

· Draw a positioning map to identify the main competitors and identify the core strategic group of competitors whom IKEA compete with.

· Having selected the 3-4 key competitors[for the sector under study], you should use 3-4 years statistics to identify key trends in the industry coupled with the various strengths and weaknesses of the selected competitors. Please do not use Porters 5 forces model for this analysis. (20%) (500 words)

One of the biggest issues we have found in the past is that students do not clearly identify the competitors to evaluate, and sometime, this is confused (sometimes, they fail to include the actual company[of study] in this section. In this case you want to be able to compare your company[IKEA] to other competitors.

A good starting point is always to draw a positioning map and see who you would position closest using the quality/price axes. This captures a multitude of areas for comparison, eg.: branding, quality, differentiation, price, quality..etc..and this is also helpful later when you think about segmentation, targeting and positioning. This allows you to identify strategic groups [those who are similar in terms of price/quality] (Example: From a B2C viewpoint, you would never position Harrods and Primark in the same strategic group!!).

This takes you to the next stage when you examine the key competitors; you are only interested in those within the same strategic group because they tend to target the same market, and are as such the key competitors. Next, you look at the financials of these competitors(3-4 years figures to see if they are growing, what their market share is and if they are profitable). Although you will put much of this detail in a table, you should summarise the key points you want to draw from this in a short paragraph after the table. Don’t forget to include IKEA in this section for comparison.

Lastly, summarise their key strengths and weaknesses. This can be done in a table also but be sure to summarise your key takeaways at the end of this section.

c) Based on your research, examine the growth and opportunity in this segment and justify a segmentation strategy to pursue. (10%) (250 words)

You already know the segment you are looking at, and you will also have determined where you are positioned from the previous section. However, you still must identify who you are going to target[B2B customers] This is important since it will influence ALL the remaining parts of this assignment. So, please spend time here making sure you are clear about your STP strategy. If this is not clear, it is unlikely that you will succeed in having an effective promotional plan, which will be detrimental to your overall grade.

So, you need to try to get as much information[data] about your segment to help justify it: e.g, is it a segment that is growing? And how fast? In other words, what is the opportunity here.

Lastly, you need to define what segmentation strategy you will chose. Many students fall back into B2C mode here and get this wrong. See lecture 7b to help understand the various B2B segmentation strategies and decide which is most appropriate for your segment and why . This is the level of granular detail we expect here. I would recommend reading Zimmerman’s section on B2B segmentation.

d) Outline the products & pricing strategy that you would chose for this segment. (10%) (250 words)

This section should be straightforward: IKEA has an existing product range [we are not anticipating NPD for this]. But there are ways of augmenting the product and you need to think about this. What sort of services could be added? Make sure you identify the theoretical product strategy also.

IKEA also have an existing pricing strategy [what is it? - needs some theoretical explanation here]. It would also be helpful to see products and prices for a range of [pertinent to the segment you are targeting] IKEA products and some of their competitors’ products]

e) Develop a promotional/communication strategy aimed at increasing awareness, developing leads and driving B2B sales for this segment for IKEA.

· Include an array of justified promotional tools to reach your target B2B segment . (Please be sure to include academic justification of your chosen promotional methods).

· You should also include some costings, and these should be based on your research taking due care to reference the sources of your costings.

· In addition, you should align your selected promotional tool with the AIDA framework and identify [specifically] which element of the DMU it will target.

· Finally, you should include a detailed Gantt chart which summarises your promotional plan which should be for one full year, starting from September 2020 (30%) (750 words)

One of the biggest mistakes’ students tend to make here is that they are stuck in B2C mode and only consider business-to consumer promotional approaches. We understand this in the context that you are B2C customers and can relate more to this. However, this subject is B2B marketing , and we have spent a lot of time delineating the difference between B2C and B2B.

There are many forms of promotional activities that are B2C-centric and therefore not suited to B2B. While social media is seen as one of the key ways of promotion in B2C today, it is still quite nascent in B2B.

And so, we want to see a range of traditional B2B promotional activities included in your promotional plan: including:

· At least one specific tradeshow with actual factual costings [no guess-work please]

· At least one trade magazine with real time costings.

Other things to remember:

We expect you to align your promotional plan with the AIDA framework and identify the DMU(we want you to be specific here and not just mention things like initiator, gatekeeper, etc.)

Lastly, we would expect you to program about 4 promotional activities in your plan and be sure to justify each activity academically, hence, at least one academic reference for each promotion activity. Also, don’t forget to put supporting data in, whether it is costings, or justification of your choice of promotion.

IMPORTANT:

The A 4 Sheet (no grade given this time), which you present to us for formative feedback MUST be uploaded by July 13th on Turnitin. This is to ensure we have time to look at it and steer you toward a successful completion of this assignment. Although there is no mark for this, it is important that you do it. In fact, you may be in a refer situation because you did not avail of the one-to one formative feedback sessions before. We will give you audio feedback:

To help us know that you are moving in the right direction, we need to see the following in the A4 summary:

· Macro Drivers: Include a brief summary in a table of 5-6 drivers with evidence as per example in Lecture 7a.

· Competitive intelligence; a list of the competitors to study

· Segmentation: the segmentation strategy with academic justification [reference] and some data to justify the size and/or growth of the segment being targeted.

· Product: a brief list of some of the products and prices which you will focus on selling to the segment. How you might augment the products? And list the product and pricing strategy [academically]

· Promotion:

· 1 to 2- trade magazines in name and their cost [why this might be effective and what stage of the AIDA framework they will target].

· A specific tradeshow [Name, date and the various factual costings] As per above, who is it targeting and at what stage of the AIDA framework.

· At least 2 other promotional activities that you may feel are necessary or pertinent.

· Please make sure you justify your choice of B2B promotional activities [include some academic references].

Lastly,

· Number all paragraphs and sub-paragraphs: If you use Microsoft Word, you can also have your table of contents created automatically.

· Make sure you are referencing correctly in-text and that you are creating a correct list of references: You can also do this automatically using Microsoft Word.

· Proof read your work: if you are having problems, why not use one of the many apps available for proof reading, such as ‘grammarly.com’.

· Make sure you complete all parts in line with the word-count: the maximum word-count is 2000words.

Good Luck.

The B2B team

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