Role of Marketing in Business Environment

1) It is no brainer that all the department of business may it be finance, sales, technology, marketing, human resources have an important role to play in the business organization, however it has been argued by many experts in the past, that marketing is the function which is used to manage the market demand, and hence without marketing some of the verticals like accounts, finance and tech would have a relatively small role to play in the organization. Marketing help companies to come up with strong innovative products which would benefit the society, and hence the role of marketing in the business environment can be termed as invincible (Armstrong, Kotler, Harker & Brennan, 2015)

Marketing invokes Customer satisfaction, builds a brand loyalty and positions a certain image in the mind of the consumer; it also helps in gaining a competitive advantage over other firms and helps in business expansion. In the above product category, need of clean drinking water can be understood as a latent need, a need which is yet not been satisfied, hence the Water Purification System comes into existence(Charter, 2017). In a nutshell the importance of Marketing Management can be realized from the following points:

• Developing marketing strategies and plans
• Capture the marketing insights
• Build a connect with the customers
• Help in building stronger brands
• Delivering value to the customers
• Communicating the value of the product
• Creating long term growth.
• Predicting the role of Macro and Micro environment forces in the business(Amett & Wittmann, 2014)

After understanding the importance of Marketing in the business scenario, Analysing strategic marketing process and market environment is essential to understand the STP of the product and how the different Macro and Micro environmental forces will play a role in the adoption of the Water Purification System.

2) One of the quickest and most effective ways to introduce a product in the market is to create demand about the product, make people realize that they have been missing the product and launch the product with a fanfare. Apple has been using this strategy for its entire tenure in the business and has been proven very successful for it. Unlike Apple, Water purification system demand is already in the market, people need solutions which can solve the problem of unhealthy drinking water. Hence, the demand is already in the market, the aim of the Strategic marketing is to push the information regarding the availability, affordability and the quality of the product to the Target group (Hollensen, 2015)

Strategic marketing process can thereby be understood as a planning process which seeks to establish a clear direction and a unified purpose for all its marketing efforts. It can also be realized as a five step process (West, Ford & Ibrahim, 2015)

Strategic Marketing Process for Water Purification System

Based on the above mentioned Strategic Marketing Process a complete Marketing analysis with a detailed marketing plan and analysis of the marketing environment will be done.

3) Mission Statement 

A mission statement can be understood as defining the purpose of the organization, identifying the scope of the business activities In relation to the service or product the company is providing. Basically it encompasses the reason of existence for the company (Proctor, 2014)

On a mission to provide clean drinking water in every household of Australia.

4) This can be understood as the objectives or the goals identified by the company in its entire tenure of business operations.

• Do welfare of the community or the society.
• Reduce the packed water waste through recycling and help in the sustainability of the environment.
• Meet the needs and goals of the society to stay healthy.
• Keeping the price low in order to have a wider acceptance and reach.
• Reduction in diseases as an advantage to clean drinking water.

5) In simple words, it is a collection of methods managers use in order to analyse an organization’s internal and external environment to understand the capabilities of the organization, its customer’s base and the business environment (Chernev, 2014)

6) Australia is the driest continent on Earth and is one of the highest consumers of water. The government had announced earlier that it would be investing in far greater use of recycled water, water desalination and storm water thorough $1 Billion urban water infrastructure fund. Not only at the government level, at the state level too has water businesses led to management responsibilities vested in commercial utilities. Thus it was seen that government is helping companies who are coming up with innovative solutions to provide clean drinking water in the Household of Australia. The opportunity was quickly identified and picked up in the form of Water purification system.

7) It is one of the most important frameworks which are essential in understanding the internal and external environment of the business (Babbin & Harris, 2014) the 5C is actually an extension of 3C. It is one of the widely used models by the organizations.5C includes Company, customers, competitors, collaborators ad climate (Foxall, 2014)

Company: The Company is into providing water purification system which enables clean drinking water in the household of Australia.

Customers: Customers for Water purification system include the local community, traders in the nearby town, local population, business organization & Industrial plants.

Competitors:  Veolia, Rowater & MAK water are some of the competitors of Water purification station, but it is not exactly pure competition

Collaborators: Collaborators for Water purification station includes the Equipment fabricators from Virginia, Aeromix system from USA, State government, local bodies, NGO’s and other stakeholders working towards improvement of clean drinking water standards.

Mission Statement

Climate: The understanding of climate can be by analysing the Macro environmental factors of PESTLE.

Political

 Political force includes current legislation, future legislation, government policies, regulatory agencies, political changes, funding, grants and other initiatives.

The political environment of Australia is pretty stable under the leadership of PM Malcolm Turnbull; the country is open to new and innovative projects which help the development of the nation and its population (Hawthorne, 2016)

Economical

 Economical force includes the economic growth rate, the trends, local and state taxes, trade cycles, and the industry trend (Shahidi, 2015)

Australia has a very favourable economic growth and it has maintained the same for a long time. It had a GDP of 1.205 Trillion USD and the economic growth rate is growing at a rate of 1.1% YOY shows the healthy growth rate of its economy. Australia has an appetite for higher spending. Water purification system is priced at a very moderate price and hence the adoption of it should not be a big problem

Social

Consumer trends, their behaviour and attitudes, lifestyle trends, demographics etc. constitute social forces in PESTLE analysis.

There are three main classes, working class, middle class and the upper class, and the lifestyle of Australians is more towards junk eating and therefore the Water purification system can be a big advantage to their ruining health (Grant, 2016)

Technological

Innovation, R&D, Technology incentives, maturity of technology, digital economy, rate of technology change etc. fall under the purview of technological change. Technology is changing continuously and organization focus heavily on staying ahead of this curve. Moving the similar curve water purification system is a technologically enhanced product which will provide people with clean drinking water.

8) SWOT analysis is an internal analysis which helps the firm to identify its core strength and weaknesses and at the same time look forward to exciting business opportunities and threats. SWOT is one of the fundamental frameworks of internal analysis used by companies across the globe.

9) Marketing strategy is a long term, forward looking approach for planning with a fundamental goal of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. A company basically combines all of its marketing goals into a comprehensive plan (Solomon, 2014). A great marketing strategy is the one which is extracted after doing an extensive marketing research and focuses on its product mix to achieve maximum profit. In the similar manner marketing strategy of Water purification system is defined:

Objectives and Analysis of Company, Customers, Competitors, and Collaborators

10) In simple words marketing mix is the strategy or the tactic company employs in order to promote its product or services in the market. The same is done by defining the 4P or the 7P of the marketing for a company (Baker, 2014)

11) In the present era the landscape of the communication is changing, consumers are playing an active role in deciding what they want to consume and what they want to avoid, it is not like the earlier times when marketing communication in any way was bombarded onto the consumers assuming they would receive the marketing message. Hence the onus is on marketers to decide what they have to show and tell to their target audience, decide on a unified message and communicate it seamlessly across all its channels (Sheth & Sisiodia, 2015)

12) It comprises of 8 major modes of communication for the customers or the target audience

Advertising: It is a paid form of non -personal presentation and promotion of ideas via different channels of print, broadcast, electronic, digital and display media.

Sales Promotion: It is a short term incentive which encourages people to try out the product.

Events & Experiences: These are company designed and driven programs to create brand interactions with possible customers and create a buzz in the market.

Public relation & publicity: This is a direct communication to the consumers, govt, firms to promote or protect the image of the company.

Direct Marketing: Email, telesales, online sales etc. used to sell directly to the customers.

Interactive Marketing: One of the highly anticipated communication tools relevant in the present era, in this companies try to engage and drive conversation in and around the product and keep them interested (Todorova, 2015)

Word of Mouth Marketing: It is a communication between people to people or online reviews on the website, online portals on people recommending buying the product to their peer groups.

Personal Selling: As the name suggests, it is more like a face to face interaction, making presentation, handling objection and getting the order of sale (Andrews & Shimp, 2017)

Analysis of Macro Environmental Factors using PESTLE Framework

A Strategy combining all or some of the elements of the communication mix is used while devising a communication plan for the company. In the present scenario, traditional and online marketing channels makes more sense in the initial years and later the strategy can be revised.

Every marketing communication plan has certain objective attached to it, in this particular case, the objective of the marketing communication is:

Informative communication: The purpose of the communication here is to create brand awareness, awareness about the product and the new features of the product (Fill & Turnbull, 2016)

Persuasive Communication: The aim of this form of communication is to persuade liking for the product, increase conviction in people to buy the product and engage with the brand (Kitchen & Burgmann, 2015)

13) Australia has a total population of 24 Million according to the date of the year 2016 and its online population is of 20 Million. According to the target group defined earlier in the report, the communication has to reach to 40% of the population. Hence the reach of the online campaign can be calculated as 8 Million. Hence, the campaign has to reach 8 Million people in a year in Australia to achieve a penetration of 20% in Sales. Based on the above built up data the company is focussed on getting the numbers through Facebook, affiliates, mobile marketing, websites and online shopping channels

According to a study, Australians are spending an increasing amount of time online; hence it only makes sense to target them at the place they are most readily found. Australians use online as tool to collect information and socialising, and with the increasing penetration of Smartphones, mobile targeting has become increasingly popular as well (Barnes, 2015). Another advantage of digital marketing is that the audience has a control over the information they want to receive, this helps the companies in segmenting the audience and put across highly targeted content for its audience (Vu, 2014)

14) Some of the elements of the online platform to be used are:

Facebook: Australians are spending amazingly high time scrolling their news feeds and the feeds of the brands. A lot of data is available as to what kind of content they consume online and hence after analysing their online behaviour a segment can be built and based on the segment, further targeting to the audience is possible at ease.

Mobile Marketing: A user on an average interacts almost more than 100 times with his smartphone, and thus it makes more sense for the company to market the product or the information on the mobile. It can be done in a lot of ways, people don’t generally delete their applications, these application are good source of collecting data and this data can be used by marketers to filter their likes and preferences, their dislikes, choices, what media they consume, how much time they spend on their phones and accordingly content can be pushed on their mobile phones (Bosomworth, 2015)

SWOT Analysis

Internet: Internet is like a huge global online village, everything one needs in his life is already on the internet, but at the same time a lot of efforts are wasted if the consumer profiling is not done according to the target group of the company. Based on the understanding of the target group, their media consumption, highly targeted content and the product is pushed on the website they usually go, repeated showing of advertisement makes them notice the content, which in turns create a brand recall value when they are actually looking to purchase water purification system. AIDA model is used to induce the buying in the customers

A-Awareness regarding the product is created through different channels of marketing

I-Interest for the product is created by pushing on relevant information about the product and its advantages.

D-Desire to buy the product is created by posting in customer reviews and the people who have benefitted after using the product and promotes it highly (Hassan, NadZim & Shiratuddin, 2015)

A-Action to call is the last step where a consumer knows what he has to do in order to make a purchase.

15) It is a concept of marketing which has been in existence since long but it has been now, when companies are thinking about it before making a marketing campaign. It is a marketing philosophy which considers the society and its benefits for the society in short and long term (Bhattacharya, 2015) It is important for the companies to do responsible advertising because it makes the consumers and the media believe that the company cares for the society and is thinking about the community and the society in the longer perspective. It helps in creating a positive brand image and makes a better connect with the society. Water purification system is an innovative product which will do immensely good to the society; it won’t be any harm if it does responsible advertising for its customer audience (Charter, 2017)

Conclusion:

Water purification system is an innovative product which is on a mission to provide clean drinking water to the Australian people. The company identified an opportunity to do good for the society and the community and thus jumped into the market of providing water purification system. The product is very noble and hence it requires extensive marketing to make the people aware of the functionalities of the product and how it can prove beneficial to the people of Australia. A combination of traditional and conventional mode of marketing will be used to penetrate the product in the heartland of Australia. The strategy is adopted by the AIDA model and the same will be exploited by the tools of online media. The aim of the communication is to drive conversation in and around the product and engage the audience with the product; this will have a dual benefit of awareness and increase in sales. Water purification system is a noble product and with the right marketing strategy it will make a dent in the Australian market.

Marketing Strategy for Water Purification System

Water purification station is an innovative product with high aspiration and hopes to do good for the society. The product is conceptualized and designed on humanitarian ground and is made to keep people healthy. Almost 71% of Earth is covered by water, yet, the clean drinkable water is not even 10% of the entire water resources. Hence, the onus is on individuals, organization and the government to provide clean and safe water to the inhabitants. Hence, in order to fulfil the responsibility towards planet Earth and fellow citizens, water purification station is conceptualized to satiate the clean water requirement of people. Water purification is not just a socially viable product, but it also makes perfect business sense. The demand for clean drinking is increasing over the last decade and hence it is a profitable venture to foray in, clean water not only reduces water borne diseases, keeps the environment safe, but it accentuates the health of an individual.

Marketing has a very essential role to play in the business environment, as defined by some of the experts, marketing is used not only as a tool for communication or to do superfluous sales, it is the backbone of the entire product campaign and a good proportion of success of any product depends upon the marketing strategy deployed for the product category. Hence it is extremely important to understand the marketing ecosystem and analyse the marketing opportunities (McCole, 2004)

The purpose of the study here is to develop a comprehensive marketing communication plan using the conventional and contemporary ways of marketing, evaluate the plan, and define the Segmentation, Targeting & positioning of the product and the ways in which the marketing communication can be effective and efficient. Responsible marketing is an important concept when it comes to creating products which are viable and useful to the society and community, in the discussion later, responsible marketing will also be studied in the purview of the Water purification station.

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