Marketing Essential

Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 4
LO 1 ................................................................................................................................ 5
1.1 Key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function ........................................ 5
M1 Roles and responsibilities of marketing in the context of marketing environment .. 6
1.2 Marketing and its relation to the wider organisational context ............................... 7
Production ................................................................................................................ 7
Finance .................................................................................................................... 7
HRM ......................................................................................................................... 7
IT .............................................................................................................................. 8
R&D ......................................................................................................................... 8
M2 Significance of interrelationship between marketing and other functional units of
the organization ........................................................................................................... 8
LO 2 ................................................................................................................................ 9
2.1 Marketing mix and its application in different organisation ..................................... 9
Marketing mix of McDonald’s ................................................................................... 9
Marketing mix of Burger King ................................................................................. 11
M3 Evaluating different tactics applied by organizations to fulfil organizational
objectives ................................................................................................................... 12
LO 3 .............................................................................................................................. 13
3.1 Basic marketing plan for McDonald’s (M4) .......................................................... 13
Executive summary ................................................................................................ 13
Company overview................................................................................................. 13
Mission Statement:................................................................................................. 13
Vision Statement: ................................................................................................... 13
Marketing objectives .............................................................................................. 13
4P analysis ............................................................................................................. 13
Current market analysis ......................................................................................... 14
Objectives .............................................................................................................. 15
Segmentation ......................................................................................................... 15
Targeting ................................................................................................................ 15
Positioning ............................................................................................................. 15
Budgeting ............................................................................................................... 15
Implementation and control .................................................................................... 15
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 16
References .................................................................................................................... 17
Introduction
Marketing is one of the most important business functions which literally deal with
activities regarding promoting and selling of products or services. Marketing is most
effective when applied strategically and this report will focus on explaining the role of
marketing and how it interrelates with other functional units of an organisation,
comparing marketing mix of different organisations and developing a basic marketing
plan. Marketing functions are one of the most basic and essential functions for a
company and especially successful companies like McDonald have to keep for many
reasons. Major roles and responsibilities of marketing functions are mentioned here.
McDonald's is one of the world's most popular fast food chain especially for hamburgers
that will be used as the model organisation for this report. In 1948 Dick and Mac
McDonald started their business in California and after its huge success, they started to
go global in 1967 by opening restaurants in Canada and Puerto Rico. Today
McDonald's has more than 36000 restaurants in over 100 countries and after opening
its first store in the UK in 1974, the company now has more than 1250 stores all around
the country. McDonald's is currently a world-leading fast food business operating in
more than 100 countries. To prepare a marketing plan for McDonald’s we have to
accumulate all the necessary information from the market and continue with the
implementation. This marketing plan will include a current market analysis using SWOT
analysis, goals and objectives for the plan, strategy, implementation of the 7Ps,
segmentation, training & positioning, budgeting and controlling operations.
LO 1
1.1 Key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function
Marketing functions are one of the most basic and essential functions for a company
and especially successful companies like McDonald have to keep for many reasons.
Major roles and responsibilities of marketing functions are mentioned below.
Defining marketing strategy
Strategies for all types of functions in a business are crucial for survival and marketing
is one of the most influential functions in the business. Strategy can be of different sorts
but the most effective strategies are those that are set for long term results for the
organisation. An effective strategy will consider the competition, market, strengths of the
organisation all together for a flexible plan to survive in this dynamic world. McDonald's
is one of the most successful companies in the world and defining proper marketing
strategies will need to cover all the target markets better than their competitors to stay
on top (Emerald Group Publishing., 2016).
Improving brand values
One of the most important roles of the marketing function is to improve the brand value
among the customers. Advertisement is one of the most common ways to improve
brand value if created in innovative ways. The brand value of McDonald's is already
pretty high because of its service and quality of the product and intelligent advertising.
The company has some CSR activities as well to prove its brand value.
Tracking recent trends
This is the era of technology and globalization and the market generates different kinds
of trends in different ways. Customers are more attracted to products that match with
the current trends and technology. For example, McDonald’s introduced touch screen
kiosks in their outlets to provide a different self-service which is the current
technological trend in the food and beverage industries.
Monitoring competition
The most threatening element of a business market is the competitors and their way of
product and service offering. Different companies take different strategies to make their
product stand on top and to track all the strategies of competitors to take cautious steps
is a marketing function. The strategies used by Burger King, KFC, etc. fast food chains
like McDonald’s are monitored thoroughly to overcome any lacking from their
competitors (Kotler and Armstrong, 2012).
Improving sales processes
The marketing department of a company always looks for ways to improve their sales
process and knowing the customer demand is vital for that to happen. For example, the
touchscreen kiosks of MacDonald's were a way to improve the sales process by
introducing new technologies and trends before their competitors. The sales process
could also be improved by good service, rich menu, adopting different food service
styles, etc.
Listening to what customer demands
The customers are the elements and sources of finance as well as advertisement
resources. Because they will not only provide the money and profit for the company but
also can influence the reputation of the company. McDonald's uses internal and external
channels like waiters, social networks, complain box, etc. to know what the customer
needs. The companies are now using software to understand the demand patterns of
customers for different circumstances to increase their sales and value.
Coordinating efforts with marketing partners of the company
Coordinating with other partners who can influence the company's marketing functions
is another important responsibility of marketing functions. Designers, journalists,
consultants, etc. are some of the most important marketing partners of a company and
for McDonald's tends to have a good relationship with them. Coordinating efforts with
these external marketing elements will add nothing but extra support and provide
valuable information about the trends, markets, and competitors.
Communicating with other departments of the company
Except marketing, there are other departments in an organisation such as finance,
operation, and accounting, HRM, R&D, etc. whose roles and responsibilities are as vital
as of marketing. To conduct seamless marketing functions communication with other
departments has to be coordinated (Gök and Hacioglu, 2017).
Innovation
Research and development might be a different department than marketing in some
organisations but nonetheless, it has derived from marketing in the first place and the
main objective of R&D department is to innovate new products, service, technology by
following the current trend and market structure. McDonald’s over the years showed
some innovative ways to serve design the outlet and most importantly their menu is the
richest fast food menu in compared to the competitors.
Managing marketing budgets
Marketing as a different department receives a budget to manage its functions. To
complete all the roles and responsibilities required by the marketing department within a
given budget needs strategy and planning. From McDonald's perspective, it can be said
that their marketing functions are one of the most impressive and effective marketing
functions which are a clear indication that they are managing their marketing budgets
effectively.

M1 Roles and responsibilities of marketing in the context of marketing

environment
Marketing environment consists of internal and external factors that affect the marketing
activities of the organization. The roles and responsibilities from environmental context
are,
 Marketing strategies are prepared within the political regulations of the country.
  Marketing tracks recent trends in the society which is closely related to the social
and cultural condition of the country.
 Being one of the most influential internal factors of McDonald’s, the competitors
are closely watched by marketing department.
 Technological environment is analysed while looking for new innovations in
marketing sector of the company.
 Marketing department of McDonald’s analyses the market to have clear picture of
the current economic condition of the country.

1.2 Marketing and its relation to the wider organisational context

As one of the major and important departments of business marketing is not completely
independent from other departments at all and has a very close relationship with other
departments as well by relying upon them as well as influencing them. McDonald’s as
being one of the most successful business organisations in the world have the following
functional department s as most of the companies which are interrelated with
marketing.
Production
Production functions are the primary functions of the organisation the objective of which
is to produce the best quality, cost-effective and covering the demand products for the
organisation. For producing products with all the standard requirements market
research is necessary which is the job of marketing and without marketing, production is
lost for direction. From another perspective, marketing can do all its research and
operation but without the product it's functions are useless, so both the department is
related to each other closely and by using this correlation McDonald’s has been able to
provide products that get hit in an instant among the customers (Garbarski, 2014).
Finance
The oil of a company is its finance department which allocates and provides for all the
other business functions such as marketing. As it is clear from marketing functions the
department costs a significant amount of financial resources and without proper initial
budgeting and allocation of resources done by the finance department, the marketing
department is well and truly dependent on the finance department. Then again without
proper instruction and structure from marketing department finance is also without
direction in terms of budgeting, allocation, and management which makes finance to
depend on marketing. This relationship between marketing and finance is so smoothly
managed in the McDonald’s that they stay flawless in both the sector (Abdullah Saif,
2015).
HRM
Human Resource Management is shortly known as HRM usually deals with the
employees of an organisation in the form of recruitment, selection, training, motivating,
firing, etc. Its link with marketing is also significant as the department provides eligible
employees as well as trains them to conduct the marketing functions smoothly. The
marketing also helps HRM by providing market information to recruit and select the
most suitable type of employees, ways to train them and set out the standard and
expectation as well as competitors' HRM information. HRM and marketing of
McDonald's are closely linked where one manages the external market and the other
deals with internal elements.
IT
IT or information and technology is one of the most recent additions to business
functional departments and it is one of the most effective departments of a business that
deals with the most dynamic aspects of the business world. Information technology is
becoming the brain behind all the other functions of the business including Marketing to
provide necessary information and modern technological support to smoothly conduct
their functions. The touchscreen kiosk of McDonald’s was one of the IT department’s
innovations to market and sell their products with a more updated fashion. The role of
marketing for IT is they provide information about market demand and trends to give
direction to IT what kind of innovation will boost the company’s promotion and sales.
R&D
R&D or research and development were part of production functions initially but
because of its workload and a different focus, it became a separate organisation that
develops new products and improve the current ones for more promotion and sales.
Marketing provides information about the new trend and demand for a product,
competitor's products' variation, where to look for new methods, etc. R&D prepares
initial trial products to give marketing elements for advertisement and measure market
response and thus these two departments are linked with each other. McDonald’s R&D
is pretty popular to introduce new technologies and products to meet with the latest
market demand (Hastings, 2015).

M2 Significance of interrelationship between marketing and other

functional units of the organization
Marketing is one of the most important functional units of business organizations like
McDonald’s. The fact is the functions of marketing will have no use until it is correlated
with the other functional units of a business. For example if market research results is
not provided to production department then the research will have no use and similarly if
production unit does not have the market research data from marketing unit then they
will not be able to produce what the market demands. So the interrelation between
marketing and other functional units of the organization has utmost significance for the
betterment of the whole company.
LO 2
2.1 Marketing mix and its application in different organisation
The doctrine of the marketing mix is simple which is to put the right product or service in
the right place with appropriate promotional activities with strategic pricing. Initial
marketing mix was a set of tactical marketing tools including place, product, price and
promotion which was called 4Ps of marketing mix which later extended into 7Ps for
service-oriented business-like McDonald's and Burger King including process, people
and physical evidence with the 4Ps (Van der Westhuizen and Van der Merwe, 2012).

Figure: 7Ps Marketing Mix

Source: Own
By providing a competitive discussion of the marketing mix between McDonald's and
Burger King will provide how various elements of the 7Ps marketing mix in the
marketing planning process used to achieve business objectives and goals.
Marketing mix of McDonald’s
Product
The most important element for any business is their product or service and since
started McDonald’s has been satisfying its customers with their product. Although the
most popular product of McDonald's is their hamburgers, they sell fries, sandwiches,
drinks, etc. as well and surprisingly unlike America in the UK the most sold product of
McDonald's has been the medium fries. To stay on par with the competitors like Burger
King and KFC, McDonald’s has some unique product offerings as well such as
Hotcakes, Hash Browns, Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Vanilla Shake, Vanilla Cone,
Hot Fudge Sundae etc. with regularly updated and developed research so that
customers taste and excitement to go to McDonald’s continues.
Price
Companies like McDonald's usually apply a wide range of pricing techniques to sell their
products. The most common pricing techniques of McDonald's are value pricing, going
rate, cost-plus pricing, price discrimination, loss leader, etc. The pricing techniques of
McDonald's aims is to provide food at a competitive value-driven price for the customers
so that they may not feel overpriced and go to the competitors. Sometimes because of
certain factors like raw meat's availability, transportation, competition, etc. prices vary
slightly between different McDonald's restaurants.
Place
Place is the source and ways of distribution of the products. McDonald's restaurants are
mostly in central places where customers' availability is dense. The company offers
home delivery in some countries as well, in some countries the shops stay open 24
hours and McDonald's is very effective in distributing the maximum amount of products
by any means (Yelkur, 2014).
Promotion
McDonald’s promotional techniques are always spot on with an attractive
advertisement, CSR activities, campaigns, etc. The restaurants use a number of media
advertisements including TV, magazines, and social networking sites. The company
uses different sales promotions like discounts, coupons, Freebies, etc. It sponsors
certain events as promotional activities as well.
Process
The process is the steps via which the service of the company reaches to its customers.
McDonald's is very strategic to describe and conduct its processes, for example, the
food preparation methods are transparent and McDonald's kitchens can be seen by the
customers easily. The other processes are as well pretty standard for customer's liking.
People
Currently, more than 85000 people are working for McDonald's in the UK and more than
1 million worldwide. Most of the restaurants in the UK are owned by local businessmen.
The restaurants invest £40million every year for employee training and development.
Extensive care for McDonald’s people helps the company to provide the best possible
customer service.
Physical evidence
The physical evidence of the marketing mix refers to the physical environment of the
company. In this case, McDonald's has a very iconic interior and exterior design that
creates a unique experience for the customers and the establishments maintained to
keep the environment-friendly and healthy (Yelkur, 2014).
Marketing mix of Burger King
Product
As a fast food chain, Burger King produces, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, salads,
hash browns, onion rings, etc. It uses a unique "has it your way” strategy to allow
customers to individualize orders to their liking. The company is also partnering with
Starbucks and ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston to add variation in the menu.
Price
The competition between McDonald's and Burger King regarding the pricing policy is
pretty intense as they both have a $1 double cheeseburger. The pricing strategy of
Burger King is currently to match and better of what McDonald's is offering and they
also introduced slushy drinks for $1 against McDonald’s $1 summer drink.
Place
Burger king usually operates its business by adding franchise under a contract where
Burger King provides lands and buildings by buying or leasing and the franchise will
provide exterior, interior, equipment. The distribution process is also spread through
online as well as the restaurant is using technology to its business. The company is
targeting to spread through countries to have better brand value and sales.
Promotion
Burger King’s promotional activities are pretty unique compared to its competitors. They
arrange $1 Talent Show to invite customers to show their different talents to win a menu
item. The company is arranging promotional tours across the globe which is linked with
social networking websites to boost their advertisement (THE MARKETING MIX: A
REVIEW, 2014).
Process
The process of the restaurant's cooking to distribution is nature-friendly and customers
can even watch the cooking process through the transparent glass. The company
focuses on using the most advanced equipment to use in its operation and try to add
varieties while packaging and distributing.
People
The Burger King has more than 300,000 employees working worldwide in more than
15000 outlets. The employees receive regular training and awarded ratings depending
on their performance. The employees are promoted based on their performance and
receive various types of bonuses for additional contributions (Burgerking.co.uk, 2019).
Physical evidence
In UK Burger King has more than 500 stores that have their own individual decor and
nature-friendly environment. The company is planning to revise its stores' design all
across the world by using modern building materials and methods and using box-like
architectural lines. The company has an internet presence as well called bk.com
(Yelkur, 2014).

M3 Evaluating different tactics applied by organizations to fulfil

organizational objectives
The marketing mix applied by McDonald’s and Burger king discussed in the previous
task of the report is nothing but business tactics that have multiple purpose from
organizational point of view and one of those purposes is to achieve the organizational
objectives set by the organization in the planning process. Because the objectives are
based on gaining a targeted profit and brand recognition at the end of the year and the
tactics are focused on that. Different tactics applied by organizations like McDonald’s
and Burger King are focused on customer demand, competitor’s offerings, market
condition, cost effectiveness, etc. are all basically to increase the profit level and brand
recognition of those organizations which are the fundamental objectives of these
organizations.
LO 3
3.1 Basic marketing plan for McDonald’s (M4)
Executive summary
McDonald's is currently a world-leading fast food business operating in more than 100
countries. To prepare a marketing plan for McDonald’s we have to accumulate all the
necessary information from the market and continue with the implementation. This
marketing plan will include a current market analysis using SWOT analysis, goals and
objectives for the plan, strategy, implementation of the 7Ps, segmentation, training &
positioning, budgeting and controlling operations.
Company overview
McDonald's is one of the world's most popular fast food chain especially for hamburgers
that was originated in 1948. Today McDonald’s has more than 36000 restaurants in
over 100 countries and after opening its first store in the UK in 1974, the company now
has more than 1250 stores all around the country. The marketing functions of
McDonald's are pretty effective and versatile in terms of market analysis and
anticipating future trends and threats. The direct competitors of McDonald's are like
KFC and Burger King and the local restaurants, street shops as substitute competitors.
Mission Statement:
To be the customers' favourite place to eat and drink. The worldwide operations are
aligned around a certain global strategy called the Plan to Win, which centre on an
exceptional customer experience – People, Products, Place, Price and Promotion.
Vision Statement:
It strives for providing a superior service experience to the customers all over the world.
Marketing objectives
 Increase company sales by 30% by next year.
 Achieve a market share of 30% for new meal items within 2 years of launch.
 Increase the percentage of customers who rate service as "excellent" from 75%
to 85% within the next 15 months.
4P analysis
Product
McDonald’s is planning to launch new meal items for kids and adults which needs
proper quality that can help to achieve company objective of increasing sales rate by
25% and the competitors’ product must be tracked.
Price
Pricing strategy for new products should be on par with the quality and customers must
feel they got the value for money that will help to achieve the objective of improved
customer satisfaction.
Place
Place or placement has to do with how the product will be provided to the customer and
distribution is a key element of placement. The placement strategy will help the
company to assess what channel is the most suited to a product to achieve the
objective of increasing sales.
Promotion
Promotion can be done in many ways and McDonald’s must choose the most effective
promotional strategies like sponsoring events, advertising in the social media of new
products.
Current market analysis
To analyse the current market the most effective tool would be a SWOT analysis of
McDonald's which will state the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of
McDonald's to prepare a more effective marketing plan (Quester, 2015).
Strengths
 Huge brand equity all over the world
 Innovation in product development
 Offers good value for money
 Large capital
 Loyal and strong management
Weaknesses
 Products have a health risk
 Focuses on one line of product which is fast food
 Quality issues across franchises
Opportunities
 Partnership with retail businesses
 Corporate social activities
 Using database marketing to understand the pattern
 Free Wi-Fi in outlets
Threats
 Social change focusing on healthy meal
 Government policies regarding unhealthy ingredients
 Competitive pressure from direct and substitute competitors
 Economic downfall
Objectives
Basic goals and objectives of this marketing plan are
 To increase market value for constant growth.
 To focus more on segmented customer groups as well as individual needs
 To improve the brand value of McDonald’s.
 To maximize sales and profit.
 To control the business with better monitoring.
 To control the weaknesses and threats and increase market share.
Segmentation
The first step of marketing strategy is to segment the market into various groups
depending on age, gender, culture, place, etc. The segmentation process has to be
done with the help of different software to get the most accurate results.
Targeting
After the segmentation of the population, certain groups have to be targeted depending
on their income, eating patterns, taste, etc. Like the segmentation program using
technology is also recommended to get a more systematic result.
Positioning
The next job after segmentation and targeting is to position the brand value to the
targeted customers via using different strategies like freebies, bonuses, rewards,
discounts, free internet, etc. (Stewart and Myers, 2012).
Budgeting
The next most important thing is to set a budget for the plan and for a company as huge
as McDonald's a normal marketing plan in the UK might cost around £10 million with £4-
5 million for an emergency.
Implementation and control
Depending on the market analysis with a strategic plan for activities and budget the plan
has to be implemented in the targeted areas. The implementation should be carried out
by expert marketers. After the implementation, there could be issues to be arising in the
outlets which need to be controlled accordingly. There should be another market
analysis to measure the plan’s effectiveness and lacking elements for the next plan
(Goetsch, 2013).
Conclusion
Marketing is the ultimate sector that can determine a company's brand value and public
acceptance at large and from this report, it can be stated that without marketing the
other business functions cannot be operated as smoothly and successfully. The
marketing elements are dynamic as well for different companies for a different time and
places. From the recent market analysis, it is obvious that McDonald's is starting to lose
its brand's past recognition as a popular stop for a happy meal. People are getting more
concerned with their health issues and competition is rising. So McDonald's must follow
a proper marketing plan to take cautious steps to prevent the brand name to be
diminished. As one of the major and important departments of business marketing is not
completely independent from other departments at all and has a very close relationship
with other departments as well by relying upon them as well as influencing them.
McDonald’s as being one of the most successful business organisations in the world
have the following functional department s as most of the companies which are
interrelated with marketing.
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