Marketing Objectives

Marketing is the process of identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer needs profitably.

Objectives are statements of specific outcomes that are to be achieved.

Marketing objectives must be consistent with corporate objectives.

For example, if the corporate objective is to reach a market share of 10%, the marketing objectives may be to reach sales of £100 per customer.

When you set an objective, it provides a focus and a purpose to the people involved.

Marketing Maths

Key measures:

• Market Size
• Market Growth
• Market Share

Market Size

The total size of the market, the number of sales in the specific industry (ie, how many smartphones are sold).

Usually measured in either volume or sales (revenue).

Not usually a marketing objective, as you can’t easily influence in the size of a market.

Market segments can also be measured.

Year	Market Size (£)	Index Number (2014 = 100)
2014	5000000	100
2015	5250000	105
2016	5600000	112
2017	6250000	125

Market Growth

• A key indicator for existing and potential market entrants
• Growth rate can be calculated using either value (eg market sales) or volume (units sold)

Year	Units Sold [A]	Change (Units) [B]	Growth Rate (%) [B/A (from prev yr] x 100
2014	1000000	-	-
2015	1100000	100000	10.0
2016	1350000	250000	22.7
2017	1475000	125000	9.3

Market Share

• Explains how the overall market is split between the existing competitors
• Tends to be calculated based on market value, but volume can also be used
• Good indicator of competitive advantage
• Key is to look for significant increases or decreases in this value

Business	Sales in 2018 (£)	Cumulative Market Sales (£)	Market Share (%) in 2018
A	250000	250000	12.5
B	400000	650000	20
C	900000	1550000	45
D	175000	1725000	8.75
E	275000	2000000	13.75

Problems with setting market objectives

• Fast-changing external environment
  • new competitors or legislature
• Potential conflict between marketing objectives
  • trying to increase market share by cutting prices may damage brand perception
• Easy to be too ambitious with marketing objectives
  • growing market share without putting necessary resources in place to achieve it

Example of marketing objectives

Maintaining or increasing market share (corporate objective) ⇒ Achieve revenue growth of 20% per year for the next four years. Increase our market share in the UK by 5% by 2017. Add 1,000 new customer accounts generating at least £100,000 per account within four years. (marketing objective)

Internal influences on marketing objectives

• Employees
• Skills
• Finance
• Motivated workforce
• No conflict with corporate objectives

External influences on marketing objectives

• Legislation
• Competition
• The market
• Economic changes
• Social changes

PESTLE is important here (or whenever looking at external influences/factors).

Worksheet

1. Percentage change in market size. Year 1: £22,000 Year 2: £25,300 15% change

2. 35,700 + 30 % = £46410 25 + 20% = 30

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1. Greater brand loyalty will result in more returning customers and word of mouth publicity, leading to higher sales and customer numbers.
2. Higher interest rates will impact the amount people are willing to borrow, so for a high value product such as a car, higher interest rates may require more affordable finance options to be made available or lower prices overall.
3. Lower profitability means that the business needs to take action to increase the amount of profit that it is making to prevent it from becoming unprofitable and to appease shareholders and increase stability of jobs.

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3 internal influences:

• employees
• finances
• target market

3 external influences:

• market changes
• government legislature
• social changes

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c

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Sampling

Sampling involves the gathering of data from a sample of respondents, the results of which should be representative of the population (eg, target market) as a whole.

Sampling Techniques

• Simple Random Samples
  • a sample is elected for study from a population where everyone is chosen entirely by chance and has an equal chance of being selected, such as the electoral register.
• Quota sample
  • the population is first segmented into subgroups (strata) before a judgement is made in selecting respondents that are representative of that subgroup. (male or female, income, education)
    • Example: 60% of people who shop at a shopping centre are female. Sample size is 400, so 240 females and 160 males.
    • Women are aged 30-40
• Stratified Sample
  • Stratified sampling is used to select a sample that is representative of different groups. If the groups are of different sizes, the number of items selected from each group will be proportional to the number of items in that group. People are selected randomly.

**Highly geared—thee business is financed by loans

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