Marketing Management Assignment: Operational Strategy Analysis of Planet Organic

Question

Task: Marketing Management Assignment Instructions:
Use a portfolio approach to critically evaluate how the company:

• Has used at least four of the seven marketing mix elements in their UK operations, to reinforce its positioning within the last three years.
• Reflects strategic decisions and relevant taught theories in its marketing efforts.
• Does/ can evaluate the effectiveness of its marketing efforts.

Answer

Introduction
As illustrated in the current case of marketing management assignment, marketing strategy is the key to success in today's competitive market. Every company has to form its marketing plan to minimise the risk of operation and also to maintain proper customer relations. This is too much important to have a good customer relationship for a company. Planet organic is a company that operates its business in the food and hospitality industry. Their main motto is to provide organic food to their potential customer. Also, they want to provide a one-stop-shop destination for their customer. In this report, their marketing strategy and level of success will be analysed. Current challenges that they are dealing with are also discussed herein brief and probable resolution for them will also be discussed here.

Four Marketing mix element
The marketing mix is an important marketing strategy to a company by which the entire process of marketing can be done compactly. The marketing mix is marketing techniques that include shaping a product and up to its final consumption level. The main factors of the marketing strategy are product development, price fixation, placing of the product to their customer using a convenient supply chain management, and at the end promote the product to their potential customer to assure the revenue of the product (Akgun, et al., 2017). The entire process is called four marketing mix elements. Planet organic is also a company that can use the marketing mix to their company to improve its financial and operational performance. The company is a product-based company who operate its business in the UK market since 1995.

Figure 1: Marketing mix
Source: Food Product Development, (2021)

Applicability of marketing mix element to the company
Product
Since the starting of their journey the company operate as a product manufacturing company. Their main product domain is organic food. Food that should be authentic, smooth, tasty and processed using an ethical plan. Therefore, the company's main motto is to provide food that is produced using ethical values. Later the company start making products, such as clothes, beauty products, and household items. They decide to declare them as a one-stop-shop destiny for their customer (Vologdina, 2018). The product can be any type, such as visible or invisible. Plant organic is a company whose products are visible and exist in real life. The company can design their product as per the demand of their customer. A company should be customer-oriented, as the customer is the main factor of a business. It is important to design their product as per the demand of their customer. Then the chances of sales will increase as well as the chances of profitability to the company will also increase (Asdi and Putra, 2020).

The product has some salient features that create some differences from another element. These are

• The product can be visible or invisible
• The product can fulfil the needs of their customer
• Product has some contribution or some exchange value.

As per the data of the company, all the products generated by the company have a 98% chance of sales. Personally, the company has to execute some market analysis and have to take feedback from their customer to design their product.

Price
Price is the amount of money charged to a customer as a contribution to the product. Price is also a factor of marketing strategy or a part of the marketing element. Product price has a deep impact on the revenue of a company (Chen et al., 2019). Therefore, the chances of sales will increase when the price of the product has been fixed by the company reasonably. Some of the products have high prices as per the brand image and preciousness.

A company can acquire several pricing strategies to stimulate sales. Some of the pricing strategies are value-based pricing strategy, competitive pricing strategy, cost-plus pricing, penetration pricing strategy and so on.

Value-based pricing t is the pricing strategy where a company fix their product price as per the opinion or the perception of the product. If a company follow the pricing strategy then they have to analyse their customer’s feedback and ratings. Competitive pricing is the type of pricing, where a company fix their product price as per the competitive market (Ghosh, 2018).Cost-plus pricing is the type of pricing where a company fix their product price as per the cost of production. With the production price, they add some percentage of profit and total sales price generated.

Planet organic has incorporated its chosen pricing strategy. As per the company research data, the company shows, when the price of organic food has fixed at a lower rate than the chances of sales has increased (Dogu and Albayrak, 2018). Again, high price strategy has proved to be an effective strategy. This has successfully boosted the company revenue and profitability.

The company has incorporated both types of pricing for the different product ranges of their company. the company use the lower pricing strategy to increase repeat purchase. However, the pricing strategy requires high market analysis and efficient operational functionality. Planet organic has fixed lower price for some range of product that uses a lower cost of production. The company is also able to maintain the product pricing low as the company proceeds with a bulk quantity of production.

A medium price range for an organic product is also acceptable for the company. as per the company decision, they have a high-priced product range. Their strategy is to provide a range of products that are premium. This type of pricing strategy can be implemented to a company when the company has very high popularity in the market and their customer has a special corner for their product (Hallberg, 2017).

Place
A company design their product as per the requirement of their product. At the time of production, they can assume the range of production but no accurate data can be given. Even their customers also have no idea of the product. Thus, the company has to produce the product and have to prepare a strong supply chain to reach their customer easily (Bocken, Morales and Lehner, 2020). If the company is successfully able to reach their customer, then they will accept it.

Planet organic is a company that has proper supply chain management to support its marketing system. Lockdown 2.0 is one of the best examples of it. These 90 days the company has operated their journey too much efficiently. To accomplish and mitigate the challenge, the company has made the entire stage into two-part. As in Lockdown 1.0, they are unable to meet the demand due to lower human resources. In the next stage, they made their system more optimised to meet each of the demands. Here the company incorporate the loyalty programme, contactless checkout, In the first stage (1st to 4th week) the entire team manage the operation team and find all the drawback and allow the team to change all the factor that is creating a hazard to the progress.

In the second phase (5th to 12th), a team of developers, designers and architects work simultaneously with the marketing and operation team (Profound. digital, 2021). Also, the company engaged themselves with any SEO agencies to find the response of their customer to the web page.

When a company willbeable to meet each of the demands of their potential customer then they can manage to get a higher market share. Thus, placing is the vital tool that should be acquired by the marketing team of a company to reach their customer as well as to keep a higher market share in the competitive market.

Promotion
Promotion is also a tool of marketing that has a high impact on the revenue and success of a company. The company produce products in a place and their customer is a different entity that does not know the product. Promotion is the bridge that allows a customer to know about their product (Ciesla, 2019). If a customer has proper knowledge about their product then they will show interest to accept the product.

Promotion can be of different types. A company can use paid or unpaid promotions. Also, they can use a virtual promotion or real-world promotion. Planet organic has its promotional channel through which it can be able to reach their customer about their product details. Mainly the company depends upon virtual media to reach their customer. Email marketing, social media advertising, pop up an advertisement to their websites and also some paid promotion has been done by the company as a marketing channel (Planet Organic, 2021). The company offers special discounts each month and these are promoted through their official website and advertisement. Even the company share the email with their potential customer.

Strategic decision and linked theories in marketing efforts Current Strategies
At the time when Planet Organic was founded, the vision was to provide the broadestvariety of organic products. The goalwassimple. Food should be delicious authentic, and ethical. Various influencing and decision-making consulting firms have partnered withcompany to be the ultimate solution selling not onlygroceries but also clothing,hygienic, personal and home products (Childers et al., 2019). Marketing and consulting have been in collaboration with the company for over 50 years. In the last5 years, they haveplanned, designed, and implemented over countlesseffectiveeCommerce and email marketing operations. These helped the company becoming an award-winning company with targeted marketing campaigns.With the increase in consumersbeginning to question where they buy from, Planet Organic has worked to become a market leader in sustainable sourcing and sustainable shopping, both offline and online. Withcomposing, creating emails weekly, including aneditorial and a monthly newsletter, the company wassuccessful in solving their customers'desires and requirement by ensuring thehealthy organic products, latest cosmetics products, and tips forattainingan eco-friendly and green lifestyle (Banerjee, 2017).

Challenges and goals
Planet Organic faced some key challenges during the past few years when accounting for sustainable and organic growth. As organic and ethical products grow in popularity, competition increases. An e-commerce website and a physical store with 11 addresses - oftentimes they can't guarantee that they'll have to do business for both, not one. Therefore, challenges arise when considering these issues for a longer time horizon. One of the goals of the company is to promote the health of its societies and maintainmoralstandards for people and the planet (Kitchens et al., 2018). Organic farming is about respecting the soil that cannot be fed. The goals arealso toincrease biodiversity, retain soil health, protect wildlife,ensuringquality food, and avoid harmful pesticides that impede these goals and subsequently improve their market share. The company must follow and adapt to a specific model to target their consumers in the UK market and should ensure that the marketing efforts and decision-making strategy are intact for the future.

Rational decision-making model
The model is also known as the "rational decision-making" model, the model is builton the well-known economic method in which the ultimate goal of any action or change is to select the best option to maximise the effectiveness of a particular criterion (Koechlin, 2020). This model is usually divided into six specific steps.

• Defining Goals
• Recognising Alternatives
• Reviewing the Results of Each Alternative
• Making Decisions Based on Specific Criteria
• Monitoring Implementation
• Changing Initial Decisions Based on Feedback

This model is primarily used by consultants due to the fact of its charm and minimal approach. This modelhelpsconsultantsmake effective decisions byproviding a structured method to resolving a problem or opportunity. This modelis best suited for well-structured and minimal in expectable businesses anddoes not account for uncertainty (Bhuiet al., 2021). By their nature, the main implementation of this model is in technology environments where visions are clearly defined and there is consensus on the criteria and measures of the goals. For example, Planet Organic uses rational models because engineering elements, procedures, and goals are relatively clear and less ambiguous. This model is difficult to apply to organisations operating in a dynamic political environment. The challenges and opportunities in a dynamic environment are complex, so one should consider an unmanageable number of options before making a decision using this approach. Additionally, the existing complexity and uncertainty of the dynamic environment will reduce the confidence of decision-makers in evaluating various alternatives.

Figure 2: Rational decision-making model
(Source: Akimovet al., 2021)

ECommerce Management
Through a six-year partnership, the marketing efforts and decision making have provided Planet Organic with a wide range of e-commerce management services to help businesses create and grow e-commerce. Their efforts have sustained massive growth in sales and overall target of customersevery year. The components of the service are:

Digital marketing management
They provide complete digital marketing solutions and helps managing the marketingusingsocial media,SEO, influence marketing, affiliate marketing through celebrities, email marketing, and writing content in the blogs.

Tech management
In addition, the company were responsible for developing a technology roadmap, working with external technology organisations to prioritize development work to take advantage of key opportunities (Svatosova, 2020). With the website transitionto Shopify from Magento framework, they have ensured that both the platforms are supported over the next few years and also ensured that thecompany website is well-optimised for conversions. Management of other technology vendors is also in the vision and pipeline of the Planet Organic website with their customers to improve, develop, and maintainthe functionality of their services.

Custom reporting
In the development ofthe company’s e-commerce and marketing strategy, custom reporting played a major role. Basic custom reports were createdby using dedicatedconsoles that aggregated real-time statistics from multiple sources into one clear view.

Merchandising
To maximise year-round sales, merchandising included the delivery and implementation of website promotions and affiliations based on current inventory levels and seasonal sales of the products.

Email Marketing Strategy
Planet Organic has developed a robust email marketing strategy in order toorganicallycontroland increase performance, thatcomprises the subsequentactions:

A/B Testing
Departments deployedwidespread A/B testing in a beta stage to reinforcethe company’s email marketing strategy, which includes the subsequent stages:

• Theme line optimisation
• Day and time triggers
• Testing content before deploying

To help determine the optimal date and time, Widespread A/B testing benefits email marketing teams (Huang, 2021). To maximise engagement by sending emails to the company targeted customer base helpscustomers comparing open rates and CTRs.The marketers and consultants used their analysis to personalise content for Planet Organic's customer base by providing blog contentand additional relevant topicsfor "value-added" mails.

Customer segmentation and retargeting campaigns
Using MailChimp's personalised recommendations, customers selected products of interest based on their purchase history. By identifying target audiences through segmentation, consultants were able to personalise emails built on key elements such as interests, gender, and location. By segmentations, ithas enabled consultants to draw attention to physical addresses, store promotions, and locally branded products. The strategy is towithout disrupting the database and remain relevant to the target audience (Huang, 2021). This approach allows the company to maintain a low unsubscribe rate and a high open rate.

Automation Emails
Sending a new or prospective customer an automatic welcome email when they create a Planet Organic account had an open rate of 34.15% and a click-through rate of 3.8%. Special offers and discounts are also offered to regular customers. However, because getting lost customers back is as significant as gaining new customers, the company has introduced automated emails after 30, 60, and 90 days of inactivity. The result washigher than the average e-commerce brands of 15.66% and 2.07% with an open rate of 24.1% and a click-through rate of 2.3%.

Effectiveness of marketing effort
Marketing effectiveness comprises all the means, methods, procedures, tools and strategies that help to increase the revenue of the company and decrease its cost of production and initiation. All the aforesaid, to augment customer acquisition. And the reputation of the company. Naturally, the proficient measurement of a company's marketing effectiveness is the company's revenue curve which is represented by the following metrics (Mintz et al., 2021):

• Customer retention rates (CRR) – It is the measurement of the number of customers the company keeps in respect of the number of customers the company had at the start of a business. It is mathematically calculated in the following manner;

CRR = (CE – CN) x 100
CS
Where CE = Number of customers at the end of an interval
CN = Number of new customers obtained during that same interval
CS = Number of customers at the start of the marketing period
• Customer Acquisition (CA) – The process and total cost of attracting new customers from brand awareness to purchasing a product or service are called customer acquisition and happen through the following metres:

o Leads generation
o Closing Rate
o Revenue generated per new customer
o Average Number of days to close
o Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC) =

Total money spent on attracting new customers Total number of customers obtained
o Marketing percentage of CAC = CAC x 100
• The ratio of Customer Life-time value (CLTV) to CAC

For the customers that make a repeat purchase, the said ratio gives an account of the revenue obtained from the customer to the amount of money spent to acquire a new customer.
CLTV = (Revenue obtained from customers over some time – Gross Profit Margin) / (Cancellation rate or Churn percentage).

• Brand Awareness measurement by counting the following: Brand Awareness should be measured by the following counts of metres and they are (Mintz et al., 2021);
o The Traffic to the company website
o Number of Earned Media Credentials
o Number of External Links Generated
o Number of Blog shares
o The total amount of social engagement returns
o Community reach and returns
o Search Volume

Based on all the above-mentioned effectivity in marketing and their mathematical measurements, a company's disposition can be found out. The categories in which the effectiveness of marketing effort of a company like; Plant Organic, the UK with their data are provided from the company source as follows (Planet Organic. 2021):

Parameters of effective marketing effort in Planet Organic Prevalent Result

Chart: A representation of marketing efficacy and efforts by Planet Organic, UK
Source: Author

With the aforesaid parameters and key performance indicators, the company generates annual revenue of $52.36 million in (USD) (Tufa and Melese, 2021).

Conclusion
Company Planet Organic is a very renowned company in the UK with a very good reputation in the market for its brand value. On that note, the company has reputed investors and a significant amount of brand reach via its events. To augment the customer acquisition through their prevalent strategies, the company must also strive to attain suitable collaborative relations with its competitors than competitive ones. The company can acquire more physical stores in different parts of the UK and add products to their ongoing list that are; ethically valued and aesthetically grown. The company can focus on means to improve on their ecological way of packaging, refurbishment on pricing structure, community outreach and waste disposal. Apart from the aforesaid, the company can cater to special requirements like; vegan products and so on. All these aforesaid measures can add up to the company's marketing strategies and more customers to the prevalent customer list.

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