Understanding Marketing Audit

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Benefits of Marketing Audit

Benefits of ongoing process of market analysis

Short-term benefits

These are the benefits that can be gained in short term time span .enefits that can be gain in the short period of time is known as short-term benefits. Some of short-term benefits are as follows,

1) Reduce Expenses

It will help you reduce expenses and save more money in the short run. It will help know where you are spending more money hence helping you to reduce cost. Saving money will help you to invest in other areas of the business.

2) Stabilize Business

It will also help you maintain transaction in the business hence creating uniformity in cash inflow and outflow. If setting up a business and there is no uniformity for the cash to flow in then there will be problems.

Medium-term benefits

This benefit is achieved gradually after some time

1) Lower the Risk

After setting up the business then you’ll have brief idea about how does the market reacts to a change therefore. You can forecast the changes hence lowering the risk if the organization opts for a changes within or outside the product.

2) Informing Customers

Letting customers know about the product will be highly beneficial as slowly the word spreads. Customers will know about the product.

Long-term benefits

In a long term reports these are the benefits that can be gained from market analysis.

1) Understanding Threats

Longer the time you are there in the organization better you understand the threats. You will even have a better idea to dodge the threats and overcome it

2) Maximizing Profits

When a business is well established the profits are expected to higher and wider reach of the customer as you better understand the market introducing new products will most likely to take higher market shares.

3) Wider reach of customers

In the long term benefits you’ll have access to higher number of customer and outlets to reach out for customer. The use of internet these day has enhanced the ability to reach out for customers at a wider range

Reference:

http://happycreativeblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/10-benefits-of-market-research/

7p's of Marketing

Executive Summary

The study was conducted on SiXT car rental company in the. The basic idea of the study was to analyze the internal and external market audit. The study was to know the current situation of the company and how is it running, and what are main factor that drove this company to success.

PESTLE and TOWS were used to find the major strength, weakness, and other aspects of business.

Company Profile

Sixt is a car rental company established in 1912 by Martin Sixt in Munich. It has been expanding branches all over the world it has expanded its branch in over 100 countries and 4000 location and still expanding. Because of its well-known service provided by it, it is well known as the 5^th largest car rental company. On today’s context sixt is actually owned by number of people where 57% of it owned by the SiXT family. It currently the largest BMW car rental in the world as they have collaborated with BMW

Stakeholders

Stakeholders are referred to the factors that are directly and indirectly related with the business

Internal Stakeholder

Internal stakeholders are referred to the ones that are within the organization and can be controlled, influenced by the organization.

-Employee

An employee is referred to a person who works for an organization as per designated area. It can also be described as a person who provides services to an organization on regular basis in exchange for money.

-Manager

Manager is generally referred as a person who looks after a huge department of an organization. In other words it is described as an individual who is responsible for looking after the department if any problem occurs it is reported to him\her and is rectified accordingly.

External Stakeholder

External stakeholder are referred to ones that aren’t controlled cannot be controlled by an organization.

-Customer

Customer is a term used for an individual / business that buys products from an organization. Businesses are mostly trying to get more customers by advertisement, contracts and others to attract more customers.

-Supplier

Supplier refers to a business which sells product and services to other businesses. They may also be called contractors.

-Shareholder

Shareholders are referred to person, company, others who owns a share of a company. They finance an organization, It depends on how the company runs that decides the value of shares of a company.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Stakeholders

Advantages

Stake holders are directly and indirectly related to the business however it plays huge role in making decision to a business. They help the business to make decision, know the risks, make better strategies, better managed relationships, others. They help the business in many ways increase transparency and lead to a decision making.

Disadvantages

It is often time consuming for the stakeholders to meet all their interest at once. It is hard to focus on one particular important stakeholders group which might lead loss of important inputs. Not all stakeholders have good decision making abilities which might lead to indecisive situations.

Six Market Module

1. Customer Market

This market is usually filled with buyers, wholesalers, intermediates, retailers and final customers. They are most important part of the business without customers there are no business to run, retaining them will be quite vital for the business. Market changes directly influences the customer result in business transaction.

2. Influence Market

This market includes stakeholders such as third party customers which are influenced by the customers, advertisement and others. They could be anyone of any profession influenced from anyone even from the rival group you are competing against. It may add more customer or decline the sales.

3 Referral Market

This market is generally consists of referred person by friends, customers , others. It is very common to find referred customers come to visit.

4 Supplier Market

Suppliers market generally referred where business come to collect the goods, services , other from the suppliers in order to resale the goods. This market usually ends with a good relation between the buyer and seller as they have to work with each for a long time.

5 Employee/ Recruitment Market

This market generally consists of talented, well educated, skilled people as they are chosen by the organization to work for them. Generally skilled people are chosen by the organization as they generally search for innovative ideas to take their organization to a higher place.

6 Internal Market

This type of market generally applies to customers and employees within the organization. They are forced to have good harmony among each other so they can work together and achieve mission together.

7 “P”s of marketing

Price

Price refers to the amount money that the customer is willing to exchange it goods and service that he desires. Price should be always be seen as a good value for money which most of people go for lesser priced good that is fair enough to be paid for the good that he thinks it’s worth the value. Customers are always happy to pay less for any good that gives good utility that is derived from consuming the commodity. Sixt should be providing better prices than its customers and there should be no hidden prices

Place

Place refers to the location where the good/services are made available to the consumers. The location must be carefully selected as the type of product that they are trying to sell. They should be choosing locations where the target market finds it easier to access the products. For car rental companies they should place their service station near airports, car repair centers and places where people are more likely to rent cars for their needs.

Product

Product refers to the commodity that a consumer uses to get/consume the utility contained in it. Product should meet the consumers’ expectations or if it fail then consumer will not tend use the same product again so they will try find a substitute for it. Product in car rental refers to different types of cars as older people will tend to hire luxuries cars where young people will try hire fast sports cars and people with less money will get small fuel efficient cars.

Promotion

Promotion refers to the awareness campaign that the company uses to let the people know about the products. Promotion uses techniques such as Advertising. PR, Sales, Promotion, Personal Selling, others that are used to increase the sales of a product. It is also a medium to give a message to the public that they would use to attract people by giving information to urge them to use / buy the commodity.

People

People refer to the persons that the organization is reliant on such as employees, managing director and etc. All the work cannot be done by one person, therefore they need to hire provide jobs to people who are able to perform the work that needs to be done, They are a part of the organization, performing as an organ of a body to keep the firm in good profitable condition.

Process

Process refers to the service of an organization that done to delivering the product to the customer and is a part of what the customer pays for. The process of what a product goes through before it delivered to the customer. How the good is presented/ delivered to the customer also gives the background of the firm where the products are manufactured, sold.

Physical Evidence

Generally physical evidence consists of the evidence of an organization where they have performed / given their service to. It relies on physical evidence to show the customers about the service.

Recommendation

Sixt has been doing a very good job in car rental services. There are few areas of the industry specially the customer service. Most the people complain about their rented cars being expensive and sometimes cancelling the reservation at the last moment. This looks to be a serious problem in the organization as they need to strict with rules and regulations. They should use updated information in order to avoid long traffic jams, as many had to wait for a long time for them to be picked up. The prices of the rental cars charged should be straight as there are a lot of hidden charges while hiring the car.

References

BusinessDictionary.com, (2014). What is a manager? definition and meaning. [online] Available at: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/manager.html#ixzz39LnS1Gux [Accessed 3 Aug. 2014].

Investorwords.com, (2014). What is Employee? definition and meaning. [online] Available at: http://www.investorwords.com/1696/employee.html#ixzz39Lec6Uom [Accessed 3 Aug. 2014].

Karkhanis, S. (2014). Advantages and disadvantages of Stakeholder Analysis. [online] Business Transformation and SAP Guide. Available at: http://www.karkhanisgroup.com/consulting/management/project-management/stakeholder-management/163-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-stakeholder-analysis.html [Accessed 3 Aug. 2014].

Review Centre, (2014). Sixt Car Hire www.sixt.co.uk. [online] Available at: http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews76707.html#Reviews [Accessed 3 Aug. 2014].

Small Business - Chron.com, (2014). Advantages and Disadvantages of Stakeholders. [online] Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-stakeholders-32179.html [Accessed 3 Aug. 2014].

Macro And Micro Analysis Of SiXT car rental

Executive Summary

PESTLE and TOWS were used to find the major strength, weakness, and other aspects of business.

Macro Analysis of SiXT:

PESTLE analysis for Car Rental

PESTLE analysis is a tools used by marketers in order to analyze the micro and macro environmental factor that make an impact on an organization. PESTLE stands for Political Economic Social Technology Legal and Environment.

Political

Political factors includes laws, regulations, security, others that impact the car rental industry. Political trouble will directly affect the business linked with tourism. Tourist mostly do not bring their vehicle along with them so they mostly rely on renting/hire a car to take them around. Changes in tax, law, others play a major role in determining the profit generated by the organization. They should meet the employment and vehicle standards to operate. The foreign policies will also be critical for deciding the success rate for car rental industry.

Economic

Economic factors play an important role in determining profitability of an organization as interest rate, inflation rate, economic growth rate, growth in disposable income, others play a key determining factor in car rental business. In car rental business decline in economy means decline of luxury and leisure time, is linked directly with vehicle renting. It will have a hard time meeting the competitive prices during an economic downturn. Resulting in sales volume and decreasing fee generation. It may even be highly effected as fuel prices, exchange rates, environment regulation, others all have a negative impact.

Social

Social factor includes education, impression of work, population sex distribution career, imported goods and service, lifestyle and others. People who drive nice cars are thought to be wealthy among people and is thought to have higher living standard, income, others. So people most of them try to drive better cars as the hiring luxurious cars has increased over the years

Technology

Technology refers to research & development, technology, communication infrastructure, access to newest technology, Internet infrastructure and penetration. Customers these days are demanding broader and faster way to access information. Technological advancement could an edge to the industry, as it allows information to be viewed from the world.

Legal

Legal factor includes trust laws, copyright, patents, consumer protection, employment law, data protection, others affecting the car rental industry. Car rental companies will be under copyright laws by the car dealers which may force them use most the cars under a same brand and give less priority to cars of other brands. They must also ensure the cars safety before they rent the car protect the customer information.

Environment

Environmental factors refers to the physical and geographic conditions affecting to use the vehicles. It involves infrastructures such as driving roads, desert, road and etc. People going to places where there are very harsh road will need jeeps having 4 wheel drive whereas people travelling on highway will need fast and fuel efficient cars.

Micro Analysis of SiXT

Suppliers

Suppliers refers to the organization which gives the product to an organization they mostly known as wholesalers. They sell their in bulk with a very low profit margin. Car rental companies buy cars in a huge amount in order to meet their demand. There could be a serious issue if the suppliers aren’t able to supply cars to the car rental companies in time.

Customers

Customers are known as the final consumer of commodity. It is not necessary for the customer to be a consumer, they might have purchased it from someone else to consume. Car rental services majority of the customer are tourists, people with having car repairs done, etc.

Competitors

Competitors refers to the rival group which they are trying to overtake one another. Competition is very common in people where they are providing / selling service which are similar to each other. As for sixt being a car rental company

TOWS

TOWS is tool used by marketers similar to SWOT the only difference between them is that threats opportunities weakness are analyzed before strength.

TOWS Strategic Alternatives Matrix

	External Opportunities (O) 1.Collaboration with Agencies 2.Huge recall of vehicles 3.	External Threats (T) 1.Political Instability 2.Tax Changes 3.Change in Rules 4.
Internal Strengths (S) 1.Good Service 2.Competative Price 3.24/7 Available 4.	SO Strategies that use strengths to maximize opportunities.	ST Strategies that use strengths to minimize threats.
Internal Weaknesses (W) 1.Huge Debts 2.Lack of Organization 3. 4.	WO Strategies that minimize weaknesses by taking advantage of opportunities.	WT Strategies that minimize weaknesses and avoid threats.

SO (Strength Opportunities) - Sixt car rental has been in the market for a long time. They are well known car rental companies throughout the world. The customers has been well satisfied and reasonably prices in comparison to other rental companies. They can increase their share in the market as the rental industry is expected to boom in the coming years.

ST (Strength Threats)- They been in the rental industry for a long time , also having a high number of loyal customers. It can start a campaign to be known as reliable car rental company. As it has set a number of branches all over the world, having branches all over the world encourages customer to trust more.

WO(Weakness Opportunities)- Car rental companies has been under a huge debt as the cars that they buy are mostly bought under finance companies. If anything goes wrong in the marketing area the debt will be huge burden for the company. As the car rental industries is expected to boom, it can start an adverting campaign to attract more customers.

WT(Weakness Threats)- Threats are usually a huge problem for every company as it could lead to closure of any company. Car rental companies are usually prone to closure due to huge debts for buying cars with finances. They must be quick enough to replace the old cars before depreciation goes down to a point where it might be difficult to sell the cars.

Threats

The companies has a huge amount of capital as they buy vehicle in bulk mostly are purchased through financing companies. The expense that is huge is the vehicles depreciation combined all will be quite a huge expense. It will have to replace the old cars with new ones at a right time. If economic recession takes place soon then it might be hard for them to run properly as the interest rate may skyrocket depending on the economic situation.

Opportunities

It could collaborate with a car manufacturer and use the only brand which could help enhance company get better car at lower price rates and even perhaps with better finances at lower rates. It can help associate the local and international travel agencies to encourage the travelers to use their cars, giving them to increase their transaction, profitability, publicity and etc.

Weakness

The market is very competitive on the current state. There are a number of competitors such as avis, europcar, hertz, others have made it difficult to make profits good enough. Manufacturing of strong cars, as most of them rent a car when their cars break down or is given for servicing, repairs. Political instability which may contribute for lesser tourist visits.

Strength

Sixt is over a century year old is highly recognized Brand around the globe in car rental business. It has branches in the country giving people a reliable access from anywhere and has nationwide expansion. It connected with respected travel companies like Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, others including other offline travel agencies.

Critical Success Factor

Sixt has had a very good management from the day of opening, the employees has been extensive training program from the site or one –to one training centers. The training programs is also accessible for the employees through the internet. Maintained a very strong base line with loyal customers from around the globe. Sixt has provided very innovative series for car reservation and rental transaction at affordable prices. The call centers are available 24/7 making the company reliable at any time of the day. It has partnered with 90 of the popular airlines so that the loyalty program can reach even wider places. The interactive website makes booking possible for under 30 sec making it faster easier for the customers.

Reference:

References

Autorentalnews.com, (2014). How to Make Money in the Car Rental Business - Fleet Acquisition - Auto Rental News. [online] Available at: http://www.autorentalnews.com/channel/fleet-acquisition/article/story/2003/01/how-to-make-money-in-the-car-rental-business.aspx [Accessed 3 Aug. 2014].

Ekomi.co.uk, (2014). Sixt rent a car customer reviews - Rating: 3.7 from 6605 customer reviews and experiences for sixt.com. [online] Available at: https://www.ekomi.co.uk/review-sixt-rent-a-car-llc.html [Accessed 3 Aug. 2014].

Small Business - Chron.com, (2014). Difference Between SWOT & TOWS Analysis. [online] Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-swot-tows-analysis-23169.html [Accessed 3 Aug. 2014].

Thebalancedentrepreneur.com, (2014). Perform a SWOT Analysis: A Startup's Best Method | The Balanced Entrepreneur. [online] Available at: http://www.thebalancedentrepreneur.com/Startup_Perform_a_SWOT_analysis [Accessed 3 Aug. 2014].

Marketing Audit

Marketing Audit is generally referred as comprehensive, systematic , critical analysis of marketing operation that is performed. It evaluates all the goals, policies and strategies that carries the marketing function. It is usually performed by independent company to improve its marketing performance also to establish new plans. A key benefit of the audit process is the deep, objective and planning process it can generate

Marketing Audit can be divided into two parts:-

Internal Marketing Audit

It interferes with the internal environment of the organization. It studies the organizations marketing team and its effectiveness as it is performed. To analyze its effectiveness SWOT analysis is used to examine the marketing effectiveness. Internal marketing audit is generally used to answer these types’ questions.

- How organized is our marketing team?

- Is the marketing team efficient enough?

- How effective is the marketing teams work?

- In what ways does the team effect other organizations and the functions?

SWOT analysis

SWOT stands for strength, weakness, opportunities and threats is a tool that is used by the marketing team to identify and rectify the organizations problems.

Strength

Strength describes the positive aspects of organization. It includes success factors, good facts and others about an organization

Weakness

Weakness describes the negative aspects of the business. It includes factors such as why isn’t it progressing, reduction of sales. It basically focuses on the negative aspects of the organization.

Opportunities

Opportunities describes the area where it could have success it could have a go there. Opportunities contains the untouched areas of the business, success area if it manages to reach there.

Threats

Threats generally describes the rivalry points and negative aspects to the future of the business

External Marketing Audit

PESTLE refers to the external factor of the organization which cannot be controlled by the organization. PESTLE stands for Political, Environment, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental aspects of the organization.

Political

Political refers to the areas which and how it can be effected by government rules and regulations to the business

Environmental

Environmental factors deals with the geographic location, climate, weather, other Factors that affect the business.

Social

Social factor deals with the culture, people view, locality and others aspects of the business which may or may be favorable for a business to be established.

Technological
It refers to the technological factor that effect the business as the newer cars are more preferred by the customers

Legal
It refers to the laws, legal entities and etc.

Environment

It refers tot the environmental law as planet earth is under threat from Global warming as it has created a huge problem from use of cars.

Importance of Marketing Audit

-Adapt to the New Changes

In the old days there hardly any information technology changes. Today globally there is internet, and many other information all over the globe. Marketing goes through a brief about the campaign goals and how it changes in current situation.

- Increase sales and market shares

Attract more customers and increase volume of sales. Introducing new marketing strategies and etc.