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Marketing Management

Trevor Henry

Argosy University

Professor Walker

11/23/2016

Introduction to Marketing

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix of the Waters Bottling Company (WBC) is product, place, price and promotion. The product is bottled water and will go by the name The High Mist. The water will be promoted as mineral water which is rich in natural nutrients. The aim is to reach customers who are focused on taking healthy drinks that are not carbonated. Hawkins (2016) says that the water should be packaged ad natural from the source as a way of promoting the freshness of the water. The water should be placed in water auto vending machines, highway shops, in fuel stations and supermarket. The target market is travelers, tourists, and homesteads. The price should be affordable for the product to be sold to many. An approach of sales maximization will be used as a way of marketing the products to the homesteads. The social media should be used to promote the High Mist. Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp should use to promote the water. The reason is it has far-reaching target customers who are techy savvy.

The Marketing Environment

The marketing environment is composed of macroenvironment and microenvironment factors. Gross domestic product(GDP), inflation, employment, spending, and monetary and fiscal policy. Macroenvironment factors are things that affect WBC from outside the firm for they are applicable across the nation. The factors are spending habits of the customers, an inflation rate of the country, gross domestic product(GDP), employment rate, and fiscal and monetary policy. Microenvironment is things that affect the WBC only and is internal. The factors are customers, suppliers and marketing intermediaries. According to Kurtz (2012), customers are techy savvy consumers while suppliers should be ethical. Marketing intermediaries used should be indirect to reach different regions in the market.

Marketing and its relationship with other functional areas of business

The HR should recruit the right employees. The human resource should recruit employees with digital marketing skills. Customer service should be used being responsive to customer inquiries, feedback, and complaints (Hawkin, 2016). Sales should be used create brand awareness by looking for indirect intermediaries. Accounting department should set aside enough money to support marketing activities. Distribution should ensure they receive and process customer’s orders on time. The firm should invest in research and marketing as a way of identifying customer needs and make innovative products. Production should ensure machines and equipment are to ensure production schedule is met so that the marketing unit does not lack products to market. Purchasing should ensure that there are adequate packaging materials for use in the WBC.

Strategic Marketing

Planning Process

The High Mist will be sold as an international brand. WBC should focus on using digital marketing and traveling companies to market the products. Digital marketing focuses on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Instagram will be used to showcase production process of the High Mist bottled water. Kurtz (2012) says that Instagram supports videos that are difficult to edit by downloading hence the credibility of the production will be maintained. Customers can view, share and comment the videos. A marketing competition can be launched using the Instagram as a way of encouraging customers to hook up new potential clients to the products. Facebook can be used as the platform where there will hold an interactive session of customer inquiry, feedback, complaints, and suggestions. Facebook allow for both public and private interaction with the clients. Public interaction come as posts to the timeline while individual interaction comes as messages through the inbox. Twitter should be used as the official communication point by WBC. Twitter posts are displayed immediately to followers accounts. Therefore, the customers who follow the WBC will get the messages instantly they are posted by the firm.

Strategy

Organizational Levels

WBC should focus on presenting healthy bottled water. The water should be presented and sold as natural products without any addictive. According to Hawkins (2016), natural minerals should be enhanced in the water as a way of increasing the health benefits of the water. Natural water ensures that the freshness of the water is preserved. The organizational mission is to meet the need for a healthy water product. The above vision and mission can be achieved by having the latest production technology. Machines and equipment should be modernized as a way of standardization of the production process.

Goals and Objectives

Employees should constantly be trained on new production methods. The aim is to make them creative in designing attractive packaging bottles. The High Mist should be sold at affordable prices as a penetration means to the market. Employees should be used in promotional activities by giving them free bottles of water which they can give to their friends and family (Kurtz, 2012). Free delivery of water will be done for consumers purchasing more than ten packets of 24 bottles in quantity of 500 ml or 12 bottles in quantity of 1 liter.

Planning Gap

Ethics in Marketing

Hawkins (2016) says that vigorous testing of the water should be done to ensure that the safety standards set by the food and drugs agency are met. The safety measures will ensure that the High Mist bottled water is safe for human consumption. The water should be passed through ultraviolet treatment as a way if killing all bacteria therein the water. UV treatments kill cancer-causing microorganisms in the water like phthalates that are found in the water. Reverse osmosis will be used to ensure that all impurities in the water are eliminated.

The price charged to clients will be affordable. The price of the High Mist bottled water should be within reach of much of the households. According to Kurtz (2012), the cost of the bottled water should aim at recovering the production cost and a small margin. The small margin will enable the firm to operate profitable during market penetration. Charging a small margin will make the bottled water by WBC cheaper than those produced by Coca-Cola and Pepsi company. The result will be increased sales for high Mist leading to huge profits realized through sales volume strategy.

WBC should promote a green production. The bottled used to package High Mist should be biodegradable and can be recycled. The aim is to ensure that the bottles do not litter the environment. The firm should have a reverse distribution channel through which the bottled are collected and recycled by the firm. Reverse logistics ensure that the rate at which products litters the environment is reduced (Hawkins, 2016). The recycling avoids biodegradation of the bottled that takes over 50 years to completely integrate to the soil. The firm should be involved in land conservation. Land from which the water comes from should be planted new forests as a way of conserving the water catchment. When forests where the source of water is conserved, it protects the source of the water for the future generation’s use. The firm should ensure that the local community where the plant is located are supplied with tap water as a way of promoting good governance in production.

References

Hawkins, G. (2016). Plastic Water. The MIT Press.

Kurtz, D. L. (2012). Boone & Kurtz contemporary marketing. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.