Marketing Essentials (Vodafone and British Telecom)

Roles and Responsibilities of Marketing

Finding the Best Distribution Channels

Distribution is concerned with making goods available into the market for the prospective buyers. As Vodafone is a multinational company and operates in different countries to generate higher revenues it is difficult to establish an effective distribution system in an interconnected world so they have open up their own centres and shops to serve their products and services for their target customers and setting up an effective distribution process like this, it helps Vodafone to earn higher profits.

Financing an Enterprise

To make more money Vodafone is emphasizing on taking out the money through investments, loans or capital for innovation of new products and their promotion.

Market Research

Vodafone gathers information which concerns to their prospective buyers so that they can ensure them why choose them over their competitors and to come up with up that an analysis or research is needed to be done.

Setting Prices

Vodafone keeps a balance between price so that they don't charge more and loose customers and don't set their prices too low that they ran out of money.

Product and Service Management

After determination of prices the goal of Vodafone is to mange their services, listen and responds to their needs and wants of customers and keep their services up to date accordingly.

Promotional Channels

Vodafone is familiar with the importance of promotion. So Vodafone believes in advertising more to attract more customers and retain existing customers.

Matching Products to Customers

After determining and considering all the factors according to the needs and wants of customers they make their services according to them and then sell into the market.

Roles and Responsibilities of Marketing in Relation with Marketing Environment

In case of a wider organizational approach of Vodafone marketing has different roles and responsibilities. Gathering and analysis of market is the first role and responsibility of marketing as it helps in identifying the taste and preferences, their liking's and demand accordingly regarding advertisements. It helps in achieving organizational objectives and targets by creating different strategies.

When it comes to design or develop products and services. Thus they have introduced Vodafone doodle to introduce their services with them as it is a different idea to announce their services and plans and creates a different identity for the brand and increase its value and for this reason most of the people know about Vodafone.

Vodafone has various units which functions in departments like research and development, finance, customer service and many others. Finance department helps Vodafone in bringing profits and this department helps in setting target and objectives of the company for the coming year. (Kerr and Moloney, 2018)

Customer service helps the department to understand views and perceptions of the customers whereas department of Research and Development gives different reports to the team of marketing so that they can make strategies accordingly and on the basis of these reports given by these various departments and information provided by them marketing team set strategies to meet the required needs and complete the target of production whereas customer service is different from those units and leaves a small impact on the team of marketing.

Interrelationship between marketing and other units of an organization-

Marketing with HR

It is also known as Consumerization of HR. These two departments in Vodafone work together on the problems whether it concerns to internal or external matters of the company. Recruitment, selection and development are now controlled and monitored by both the HR and Marketing departments instead of just HR in order to create the brand of Vodafone. Marketing department of Vodafone spread the brand to the consumers whereas collaboration of Marketing and HR spread the importance of the brand to employees by using tools like social media. HR recruits the best to build and promote the company whereas Marketing department spread the awareness of the brand to employees.

Marketing in relation with finance

Vodafone integrates finance with marketing to meet the expected results for the future growth of the company. If they don't go hand in hand company will suffer from high losses. Finance includes all aspects relating to money like cost, profits, financial performance and growth in sales whereas Marketing includes sales in volume, sales in comparison with their competitors, targets completed or not. Without sales no profit will be there and without Marketing there will be no finance. Vodafone has strong finance because of successful marketing and that is how company set their goals, targets plans and strategies. Both the departments are interrelated and cannot be isolated. That's why Vodafone does not considers them as different departments. They focus on working together to achieve organizational goals. (Kose and et.al., 2016)

Marketing in relation with Research and Development

Vodafone gathers and understands information about the customers. Information is the purpose of research and development. They also test new products and services. Vodafone gathers information by testing of products, conducting surveys and taking immediate feedback from customers. They study on how to reach new customers, research is done to identify and resolve the problem under the budget funded by finance department. To increase awareness they build a list of customers and send email and special coupons. (Linton, 2017)

Difference between Vodafone and British Telecom on the basis of 7 P's-

Importance and value of Marketing Plan-

Mission- To enrich the lives of customers by power of mobile communication.(Niaz and Medina, 2018)

Vision- To be the leader in the market of communication in  this increasingly connected world.

Objectives-

To increase sales of new product by 10% till the end of year 2020

To increase the market share by 30% till the end of year 2022

To enhance consumer experience by 10% in upcoming 6 months

To increase the profitability by 20% till the end of year 2020.(Mogos, 2015)

SWOT analysis of Vodafone

Strength-

Vodafone has one of the largest coverage of market. Forbes has ranked Vodafone at 395^th rank among 2000 of them as it has a wide and network and distribution coverage and in India it has a second largest base of subscribers. (Sajid, 2016)

Weakness-

Vodafone is performing poor in Europe because of the poor economy in Europe it is not performing good in its home country. Most of the revenue that is around 40 per cent of revenue is generated from India.

Opportunities-

People rely more and more on smartphones and that increases the use of cellular network and that brings more profitability to the network operators. It is a potential segment which will always be in demand and challenge is to acquire or obtain more and more market share.(Singh, 2018)

Threats- 

Portability of a mobile number is a major threat for the company because whenever a competitor launches a new, better and cheaper scheme which is more affordable by the consumers, then the consumer won't think again even if he is loyal he will switch over to the competitor's network (Orlando, 2016)

4 P's of Marketing

Product- Vodafone is putting their emphasis on being the first one to come up with 5 G network in every market they operates they have done their research put a large amount of their funds and resources into this project so that they can obtain more share in the market (Baker, 2016)

Place- Currently Vodafone operates in 25 countries with their head office in UK but now they want to expand their business and get into more countries to set up and establish their brands there to generate a high no. of revenue. Also they want to introduce with 5 G their new service in the market to gain attention of the new consumers rapidly so that it would make it easy to enter into another markets.

Price-  Vodafone is launching 5 G service with affordable pricing to gain more customers and take over more competitors and gain the trust of people in the market. Poor or rich both won't mind services which are better and cheaper that is why they are adapting this strategy.

Promotion- To make their new service successful they have already announced it and conducting regular promotional schemes like sponsorship events, campaign or exhibition events to aware the prospective buyers of their schemes to create buzz among people before they have launched it.(Martin, 2017)

STP analysis of Vodafone

Segmentation-

Vodafone breaks the segment for its users on the basis of age, lifestyle of people, standard of living, income, usage of services by households and on the basis of geographical location (Kerin and Hartley, 2015)

Targeting-

They are adopting a approach which is multi segment. In every targeted market they are offering different schemes and different products for the market accordingly so that they don't loose the reputation in the eyes of prospective buyers.

Positioning-

Vodafone has positioned themselves as wherever you go you will be followed by our network and a more fun brand. Company will make a shift in the promotion strategies. (Davis, 2017)

Financial planning

Monitoring and Controlling

KPI of Vodafone-

The company uses key performance indicator to evaluate their success of the particular schemes and services introduced and they choose the right KPIs which helps in good understanding of what is important for the organization.

Cost and Sales analysis of Vodafone-

By doing this analysis company figure out how much the cost of their product is and how much sales is done of their products so that they can take out the exact figure of profit and can evaluate the investments according to the deviations or future growth prospects of the company and how much gap is there between them and their competitors. (Bailey and Ingram, 2017)

Conclusion

From the above study it has been summarized that marketing has helped company in promoting their products. It has helped firm in increasing their sales. Company like Vodafone has made use of various marketing tactics which has supported company in achieving their objectives. Firm has been able to do market research which has supported them in knowing about consumer demands and preferences. By knowing that company has created their growth opportunities. This has helped achieving their goals and objectives. Company has also brought new product which has helped them in creating goodwill in market. It has helped them in creating their brand value.

References

• Bailey, C. and Ingram, J., 2017. A Practical Guide to Marketing for Lawyers. Law Brief Publishing.
• Baker, M.J., 2016. What is marketing?. In The Marketing Book(pp. 25-42). Routledge.
• Davis, J., 2017. Measuring Marketing: The 100+ Essential Metrics Every Marketer Needs 3rd Edition. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
• Drucker, P., 2018. Essential Drucker. Routledge.
• Kerin, R. and Hartley, S., 2015. Marketing: the core. McGraw-Hill.
• Kerr, W.R. and Moloney, E., 2018. Vodafone: Managing Advanced Technologies and Artificial Intelligence.
• Kose, U. and et.al., 2016, December. A software system for intelligent mathematical optimization of content marketing. In Proceedings of the 4th Virtual Mulfidisciplinary Conference (pp. 12-16).
• Linton, I., 2017. Marketing training services. Routledge.
• Martin, G., 2017. The essential social media marketing handbook: a new roadmap for maximizing your brand, influence, and credibility. Red Wheel/Weiser.
• Niaz, H.M. and Medina, I.G., 2018. Vodafone: The relationship between brand image and online marketing strategies. IROCAMM-International Review Of Communication And Marketing Mix. (1). pp.7-31.

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