Marketing Function free essay sample

Describe what you think has been the contribution of the marketing function, the product design function and the operations function to the success of Swatch?Marketing FunctionThe role of marketing function in the company is to help it identify and source potentially successful products for the marketplace and bring them to market successfully by differentiating it from similar products. For Swatch this was when Nicolas Hayek the company to invest its energy and resources on the new plastic cased watch that was being developed by one of its entities, this new watch used few, cheaper components which allowed a bulk of its manufacturing to be automated, its lowered resale price was its most distinguishing factor which made it accessible to most people.The typical marketing function types within a large business include, but not limited to; market research. This means Swatch had to research thoroughly on what made brands like Casio and Seiko win in this space. We will write a custom essay sample on Marketing Function or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Firstly they would have had to find out all their competitors market information; their pricing, their supply and demand situations, the social trends and technical difficulties that they would later manipulate to their advantage. Secondly investigate the market segmentation for their potential product; how old? what gender? Or what ethnicity demanded their product? They had to do this for each market and every market they wanted to enter, it might be evident though that they didnt fully research the USA market, as the extract says they somewhat failed there. Thirdly they would check what the market trends were; they knew they had only 25% of the market share and needed to grow drastically to not only stay alive but to win in this space, the research they did helped to catapult them to 50% within 10 years. Fourth and finally they had to run a SWOT analysis to check their strengths; this was a low cost, high volume, innovative and automated production product. Their weaknesses were Distribution and Marketing mistakes. Their Opportunities were continuing innovation, ever-increasing variety of product designs, market penetration and expansion. While their Threats included competitor reaction, tax, policy, ethics and social responsibilities change when you own 50% or more of the market.Swatchs marketing plan had to outline their marketing strategy and tactics for the next ten years to reach their goal of doubling their market share; they had a great innovative product at an aggressively competitive price all they had to sort out was place (d istribution) and the different kinds of promotions needed to communicate this product effectively to its consumers [1].Product design functionProduct design is the process of developing or creating new products to be sold to the market, it is normally referred to as new product development [2]. The product design process can be expressed by three main aspects according to Koberg and Bangnell which are;†¢ Analysis: Here we establish a problem and committee to an efficient solution by bringing together all the resources required including research, materials and costs. Their analysis was such that in the early 1980s the Swiss watch industry was nearly dead. Competition from cheap but often high-quality products from Far Eastern manufacturers such as Seiko and Casio had almost obliterated the traditional Swiss industry, they had committed to developing the new plastic-cased watch that had major benefits.†¢ Concept: This is where the condition of the problem becomes the objectives with limitations becoming the parameters of design. In the early 1980s it was expensive to produce watches using Swiss labour, the ability to create an encased watch allowed its manufacturing to be mostly automated and reduce production cost to just 7% of the total cost.†¢ Synthesis: t his is where we ideate, select, implement and evaluate.Operation FunctionThe operation function is a management function of the business is responsible for managing the process of creating products; it involves planning, organizing, coordinating and controlling the necessary resources required for production. There are four main sections, namely; Marketing, Operations, Finance and MIS that show on the organisational chart.†¢ Marketing: The innovative design, some creative marketing, but above all else the operations success at producing the watch cheaper than anyone else brought the company significant rewards [4].†¢ Finance: Through automation and rigid standardization of the internal mechanism of the watch, the company managed this increase in variety without it crippling its costs. It is the success of the companys operations managers in keeping their costs low (direct labour cost is less than 7 per cent of the total cost of production) that has allowed Swatch to succeed [4].Question 2.How do you think Swatch compares with most watch manufacturers? Use marketing environment analysis tools to execute your comparisonIntroductionMarketing Environmental Analysis is strategic analysis tool. It assistances to in categorizing internal and external elements of the environment which affect the organizations abilities to work efficiently. Although a business leader develops companys structure, culture and policies to give vivid guidelines to employees, the success of the business is dependent upon how it deals with external environmental effects [5]. These factors are largely outside your direct control, but you can adapt your business and marketing strategy to take advantage of the opportunities they present while minimizing the potential threats. A PESTLE analysis is the most common way of undertaking such a review; PESTLE stands for the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental factors you need to consider.Reference1. www.businessdictionary.com/definition/marketing-function. html2. Morris, R. (2009). The fundamentals of product design. AVA Publishing. ISBN 0-465-06710-7 p. 22. 3. BJ. Gibson, JB Hanna ; CC Defee. (2017). Definitive guide to integrated supply chain management. Pearson FT Press. ISBN 0-13-477806-5. P.34 -494. Marketing management assignment extract. (2018) Swatch Revolutionizes Watch Manufacturer. P 3.5. https://www. marketingtutor.net/marketing-environmental-analysis/6. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/prepare-marketing-environmental-analysis-57550.html7.