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Marketing Essentials Assignment

LO2: Develop and evaluate a basic marketing plan

P4: Produce and evaluate a basic marketing plan for an organisation.

Executive Summary

The marketing plan of Costa Coffee has been discussed, whereby situational, SWOT, marketing objectives, marketing strategies, and their implementation & control have been talked about.

Company Overview

Costa Coffee is one of the significant international coffeehouse enterprises as it is world�s 2^nd biggest coffeehouse chain. The company has more than 3400 stores in more than 31 countries. Being the largest coffeehouse chain of the UK, it has 2121 restaurants and 1289 overseas outlets.

Situation Analysis

The marketing plan consists of auditing business�s current scenario and position (situation analysis), conducting and analysing marketing research, critically scrutinising the coffeehouse industry and the opportunities for Costa Coffee in the market.

Market Analysis: It requires the investigation of both external and internal business environment of Costa Coffee.Studying them is crucial as they relate to the Costa�s success and survival in the beverage industry.

Internal Business Environment: It influences the business control. The main attributes comprise production efficiency, management skills and strategies, and effective communication media (Karunakaran&Vadivelu, 2016). To control and manage the internal business environment, Costa Coffeeshould carry out regular business�s operations appraisal and immediately take measures to discard the factor causing inefficiencies.

External Business Environment: These factors can influence the whole business economy. Factors affecting the external business environment can create threats or opportunities in the business world. Changing customers� needs, attitude, behaviour, etc., highly influence the marketing conditions of Costa Coffee.

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SWOT Analysis

Strength

Known for its quality and good taste.

Largest coffeehouse chain in the UK.

It has a premium image around the world.

Weakness

Weak marketing and advertising campaigns.

Lack of aggression in the growth as it is operating in only 31 countries while Starbucks operates in 70 countries.

Higher prices than the no. 1 Starbucks.

Strategies are more UK-centric instead of global-centric.

Opportunities

Expansion in other countries

Merge or acquire local coffeehouse chains

Set up strategic alliances with restaurants

Use of pull strategies and innovative ideas to attract youths.

Threats

Dominance of global competitor- Starbucks in the market.

Indirect competition from substitutes like Tea can also affect the sales.

The dropping brand value due to ill marketing strategies.

Marketing Objective

The objectives of marketing plan of Costa Coffee is to trigger the sales of the coffee and increase the market share of the organisation globally while keeping the quality and brand image eternal.

Marketing Strategies

The marketing plan of Costa Coffee focuses on college students. The strategy is to increase the consumption of Costa Coffee products among the students. So to serve this objective, discounts to college-goers can be provided.
To increase the market share and outlets, effective utilisation of advertising, marketing, and promotional strategies can be done.
To reach out more to the target audience in an effective way, the company can provide access to information about the business can be made available to the customers. This would help in building the brand, trust, and increase the sales,
To achieve the goals of the marketing plan, types of communication media, such as internet, advertisement, telephonic conversation, etc., can be brought into use.

Implementation and Control

Implementation of the marketing strategies of Costa Coffee can be done through three processes described below.

Segmentation: Costa Coffee can bifurcate the target audience based on their interest, age, income, etc. Company can provide products and services after segmenting the market.
Targeting: Costa Coffee is targeting the college-goers for increasing the market share.
Positioning: Costa Coffee is concreting its position by building trust among the customers by providing access to business related information.

Conclusion

It was seen in this section that Cost Coffee has the potential to expand and with the aforementioned marketing plan it can improve its market share.

Various strategies can be used in order to achieve the marketing plan objectives. These are discussed below:

Contacting the researcher: This helps in figuring out new tactics and changes in market situation (Khan, 2014).

Social advertisement: Since the target market include the youth population, company should use social media marketing as its prime media.

To position the Costa Coffee services, the main emphasis is put on the quality of the product rather than the prices. Costa Coffee is known for its high standards and quality. The promotional strategy includes the use of personal selling, advertisements, public relations, and sales promotion (Ferrelland Hartline, 2012).. This could be really helpful in building the brand image. The creative strategy consider the consumers opinion, integrate the trust with honesty. The company uses three forms of strategies, such as market segmentation, targeting, and positioning.

D2 Design a strategic marketing plan that tactically applies the use of the 7Ps to achieve overall marketing

The 7P�s used by the Costa Coffee in order to accomplish the marketing goals are discussed below:

7P�s	Marketing Planning
Product	The product is designed in accordance with the demands of customers.
Place	The outlets of Costa Coffee should be on the major routes of a town or at a shopping place so as to be in the reach of the customers.
Promotion	The Costa Coffee company can make the famous celebrities of every country as their brand ambassador for their promotion. This can be useful in making less effort in branding and advertisement.
Pricing	Once the segmentation of the market is achieved, the price of the product can be set according to the specific segment (Loo and Leung, 2016).
People	The stakeholders must be considered in the planning for development. The managers should develop strategies according to that.
Process	The processes and operations can help in getting an edge over the competitors. Lean thinking can be the best option for the same.
Physical evidence	For future planning, evidence of the organization can help in launching the new services.

References

Ferrell, O.C. and Hartline, M., 2012. Marketing strategy, text and cases. Nelson Education.
Karunakaran, A.S.J. and Vadivelu, T., 2016. A review on the relationship variables to customer satisfaction. Global Journal of Management And Business Research.
Khan, M.T., 2014. The concept of'marketingmix'and its elements (a conceptual review paper). International journal of information, business and management, 6(2), p.95.
Leff, A., Bay, D., Dawley, P. and Ferro, M., Reach Pros, Inc., 2014. Online marketing, monitoring and control for merchants. U.S. Patent 8,818,839.
Loo, P.T. and Leung, R., 2016. A service failure framework of hotels in Taiwan: Adaptation of 7Ps marketing mix elements. Journal of Vacation Marketing, p.1356766716682555.