Situational Analysis

Discuss about the marketing plan for an Australian beverage company named Nexba.

The marketing plan is the most essential tool that can help to increase the profitability, brand image, consumer satisfaction, customer base, potential buyers count, while launching a new product or services in the existing or a new market segment (Armstrong et al., 2015). In this paper the marketing plan for an Australian beverage company named Nexba has been made. Initially the situation analysis has been done including both internal and external analysis through PEST, SWOT, Porter’s 5 Force and others. The problem statement has been made with SMART objectives identification. The Segmentation Targeting and Positioning strategy has been identified for current market plan. After determining the financial objectives the Strategic plan has been made with the help of 7P Marketing Mix. Promotional mix with 5 components has been incorporated within the marketing strategy of Nexba. The action plan has been developed with effective timeline as per the organisational structure and resource allocation. The budget plan has been made in tabular form. After this implementation plan the most suitable control and evaluation strategy for this marketing plan has been identified and discussed.

In order to make a successful marketing plan for a beverage and processed drinks company named Nexba, both internal or micro and external or macro situational analysis are essential to find out the opportunities and threats in current situation (Berthon et al., 2012).

In production management Nexba focuses on the healthy soft drinks and sugar free beverages. To ensure the strong and quality of inbound logistics the company maintains very efficient partnership with their supply chain (Beverages, 2015). Similarly, Nexba beverage manufacturing department poses effective waste management system and eco friendly manufacturing system that reduces the overall cost of the manufacturing and improve the quality of the products. The company follows a matrix based organisational structure to gain both of the facilities of hierarchical and flat structure (Chen, 2012). However the outbound logistics of Nexba is not as strong as their inbounds logistics because of their comparatively weak distribution network.

Political-Being a manufacturing company of non-alcoholic drinks the company faces less political conflicts and complexities of regulations in accordance with national food and safety standard.

Economy- In last five years the income level especially in urban areas has increased 13% to 15% that make wider situation to make profit as a beverage company. Similarly the from 2006 the capital growth is making a incredible hike by increasing 36.6% to 42% (Ronit & Jensen, 2014).

Market Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning Strategy

Social- Currently, Australians are becoming more health conscious that increased the demand of the healthy beverage products. Despite that, in high pace lifestyle people prefer consuming various beverage products rather than solid foods.

Technology- Instead of using eco friendly equipments in manufacturing function other technological development like digital media increases the opportunities for promotional activities (Sacks e al., 2015).

Nexba has high competitive rivalry in food and beverage industry where international companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and others are the high profiled regulators. As a result the company faced high level of competition and threat from substitutes as well. Henceforth, Nexba also faces higher bargaining power from their consumers, because they have wider opportunities to choose the beverage products in Australian beverage industry (Berthon et al., 2012). However, in this higher competitive environment, there are several scops of suppliers with low bargaining power. The food and beverage industry of Australia has lots revelry while having strong boundaries of national food standard regulations. Therefore, threat from new entrance is in low to moderate level.      

After launching the healthy and sugar free products by Coca-Cola and Pepsi the market condition has been changed where the Australian consumers have sever substitutes from strong brands in beverage industry (Hutt & Speh, 2012). At the same time the weak distribution network and less cost effective channels to reach the end term consumers reducing the strength of current consumer base. Therefore Nexba is facing a highly competitive rivalry within the beverage industry of Australia while having weak outbound channel and declining consumer count.

Segmentation is one of the most essential strategies where Nexba has to divide the consumer groups into several segments with respect to their demographical individuality and financial background. Other international high branded company are producing their healthy beverage products specifically by targeting the middle age group (Järvinen et al., 2012). In current beverage market there is very low product verities in health drinks for older people. Apart from the due to higher competition and higher bargaining power of consumer the potential buyers are becoming more price-sensitive. Therefore, the segmentation strategy of Nexba’s new market plan should focus on the segmentation by age and by financial background.

After the segmentation of the market and potential consumer base Nexba has to select their most profitable consumer segment as their target. From the above analysis it clear that in a price sensitive market the most compatible targeting strategy will be the customers with low to medium purchasing power and behaviour (Kolios & Read, 2013). Therefore consumers with low to moderate economical condition will be the target customer. At the same time, people who are more than 60 years old will be the target consumer. Therefore, the market positioning of the new product of Nexba is relied on the consumers of 60plus age group with low to moderate purchasing power.    

Financial Objectives

The objective of the current marketing strategy of Nexba is described is SMART objective form: 

The financial goal of this marketing plan is to improve the total revenue growth without compromising the cost effectiveness of current production procedure and product quality (Australia, 2015). Apart from that, increasing the basic capital without the changing permanent assets value is another major goal of Nexba

In order to achieve the Financial Goals of Nexba through this market planning, the company need to accomplish some crucial objectives mentioned below:

• To additional revenue growth of 6 % in next 12 months
• To reduce the production cost by 13 % in next 6 month
• To enhance the market value of manufactured product by 13 %
• To build effective distribution channel by investing 45 % of total production expenditure.
• To increase the Return On Investment by 15 % in next 12 month
• To increase the permanent assets by 16 %
• To increase the basic capital by 20 % in next year

In order to identify and implement the effective and profitable marketing strategy the current market plan will focus on the 7P Marketing Mix for the new product of Nexba (Srdjevic, Bajcetic & Srdjevic, 2012).

Action plan

The action plan for the implementation of current market plan will start from the appropriate market research to have real time updated information of the market and the marketing process will be continued through next 5 months.

Budget:

Nexba will maintain a real time control measure while providing the real time updated information about the work functionality of the various departments along with the market condition (Taylor & Thrift, 2013). Close monitoring system is the key of this controlling policy where all the information source will provide accurate and transparent data and information. To implement this control measures Nexba has to incorporate the hierarchical base performance feedback system. In this system the immediate superior will report to the management board about the performance efficiency of their subordinates (Wilson & Gilligan, 2012). For this Nexba will follow the Tree Structure Monitoring system where the management will not be directly controlling the ground level employees of any department. The consumer helpline is the major controlling tool here the consumers can get pre-purchasing as well as post-purchasing help from the sales and consumer relation department. 

Evaluation is the core part of a successful market plan. After implementing the marketing plan and launching the initial product Nexba will collect consumer’s feedback from various source like online consumer forum, online survey, sales team reports and many other reliable sources. For correct evaluation Nexba will follow the traditional evaluation plan where the basic operation has to follow the Collecting feedback, data analysis, determination, designing and implementation in a cycling procedure (Guthrie, Cuganesan & Ward, (2012). This cyclic procedure will have a specific scheduling and resource allocation for effective execution. The operational and marketing manager will be the responsible persons of this evaluation process. The feedback will be collected from the online consumer forum of Nexba as well as from the post purchasing product reviews of the buyers. Along with the feedback process the prioritising the major changes and taking initiation are the major part where repeated internal meetings and conferences will be held.

7P Marketing Mix

In order to present the products to the target market with higher potentialities Nexba has to develop an effective promotional plan with the help of 5 divisions’ promotional mix. Through this promotional mix the company can identify the most appropriate promotional channels that can attract larger consumer base (Spowart & Wickramasekera, 2012).  

Conclusion

From the above analysis it can be stated that, the marketing plan is the most essential tool that can help to increase the profitability, brand image, consumer satisfaction, customer base, potential buyers count, while launching a new product or services in the existing or a new market segment. The marketing plan for the Australian beverage company named Nexba will help to introduce their new product to the target market with optimum potentialities. From the above discussion it can be identified that, the examining impact of the internal properties as well as the external environment is essential for making the marketing plan. From this analysis it can be said that, the weak distribution network and less cost effective channels to reach the end term consumers reducing the strength of current consumer base. The financial goal of this marketing plan is to improve the total revenue growth without compromising the cost effectiveness of current production procedure and product quality.

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