GGI: Strategic Marketing Plan - Essay Example

GGI: Strategic Marketing Plan Introduction: Branding is a very essential element of every business. The marketing of the business along with branding play a very important role in the success of every company. Branding plays a very essential role in every business. Management of products and brand play a very essential role in the marketing success. A brand helps the consumers differentiate between two competitors and the name, packaging and design of the products becomes the brand of the product.

Creating a brand image and name for a company ensures that customers are able to differentiate the products and recognise the product that satisfies their needs the most and thus improving the customer loyalty. In simple word branding is the process of creating a different image from that of the competitors (Jobber, 2004). This study is aimed at understanding how the society and the firms as well. This study will also include how the marketing decisions are affected. The following sections will deal with the outline of GGI’s business and this will help form a basis for the most beneficial types of marketing for the business.

GGI: A Brief Introduction: The company mainly deals with importing of gift items and home décor. This is mainly imported from the Asian manufactures and is sold in the local markets. GGI also deals with a number of other items which it has well spread across its stores in the three state regions. Being a part of this industry for almost two decades and it has built as many as ten stores in these regions. However the company does lack on a few of the aspects of the business of which one of the major aspects in the brand building.

For the past two decades the company has only dealt with importing of the gift items and home décor however the company now aims at including a number of other items as well. There are huge efforts that the company is now making to help increase the brand awareness and also the products of the company. As mentioned earlier, the company lacks a lot over the brand awareness and also the little brand awareness that the company has created is on a decline. Also the company has been using brown bags as the packaging material and this has created a lack of attention to the company.

This has led to a lack of company’s brand image. Although the customers buy the product the awareness is yet quite low and it shows the lack of brand awareness. This also does not provide if the company has any reputation in the market at all. Global Gadget Imports is also aiming at moving into a new product line which is mainly house ware. Since the company already suffers from a lack of brand creation and with the new product line being introduced the lack of brand awareness becomes a majorly serious issue for GGI.

GGI has also noted a decline in the sales of the wholesale business and to an extent the store business has also remained quite flat. This is clearly an effect of the lack of marketing of the business. The business can however still make up for the losses by increasing and improving the brand awareness. This however requires a basic knowledge of the role of marketing in the business and the society as a whole. The following section will deal with this aspect. Marketing Decision Making: Marketing decisions play a very important role in every business.

The factors that affect the decision are normally based on two very essential aspects, i.e. cause and the effect. Firms are affected by a number of different factors of which some the firm can control and others that cannot be controlled by the firms. The marketing mix, i.e. the four P’s is the factors which are internal and thus can be controlled by the firm. However aspects like the demand, competition, economic climate, technological factors, government regulations, legal and political factors, are a few of the external factors and thus these form the uncontrollable factors (Jobber, 2004).

Considering GGI, the company is affected by the external factors to a great extent and these form a very important role while developing the marketing plan. Effects of Marketing: The above discussion has highlighted the importance of marketing and the role it plays in every business. Firms market themselves using various tools like advertising, branding, direct marketing, publicity etc. It is a process of identifying, anticipating and satisfying the customer requirements. There is an important aspect that requires to be understood, markets require the society, and however the society can do without marketing as well.

There have been a number of arguments and the relationship of marketing and society has been challenged quite a lot in the past. There have been a number of arguments as too why people buy things they do not need, or live a lifestyle which is completely different from their own, or even buy things excessively, and the underlying answer to this has been marketing. Marketing in many a ways has been known as a method to increase the income of the company by making people buy things which might not even do any justice to their culture or even their values.

Despite this, marketing has its own positives, and this however is in terms of the firms alone. Marketing provides the customers with detailed understanding of the various products that are available in the markets. These are not compulsive in any way and they only act as information for the potential customers, i.e. educating the customers (Dasgupta, et.al, 2007). Branding for GGI: As discussed earlier, GGI is affected a lot by the external factors and this result in the company needing a good combination of the various styles of marketing.

This is mainly to assist the company perform better and is based entirely on the current performance of the company. For a company like GGI, the best bet for marketing would be a combined effort of branding, CRM and also database marketing (Evans and Moutinho, 1999). The company could use the CRM and the database marketing as an opportunity to target the right customers and to reach out to the potential customers. The branding will provide the company with a chance to improve the brand awareness.

Also the newer product profile will lead to a high customer database and the customers will gain more information as to the company’s main business. Conclusions: Since GGI has been known for the quality of goods and service, stronger customer relations will lead to higher marketing by word of mouth (Foley, et. al, 1997). GGI has a strong database and a number of customers; hence the brand awareness can also easily be increased making this one of the biggest strengths of the company and is also an underlying factor for higher revenues.

Bibliography Dasgupta, N., Cherian , C., and Doreswamy,A.G., 2007 , ‘Effects of Marketing on Society’, 7 December 2008, < http://dspace.iimk.ac.in/bitstream/2259/320/1/657-663.pdf> Evans, M. and Moutinho, L., 1999, Contemporary Issues in Marketing, Palgrave Macmillan, New York Foley, D., Gordon, C.G., Spellmon, L. and Schoenbachler, D.D., 1997, ‘Understanding Consumer Database Marketing’, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 14, p5-19 Jobber, D., 2004, Principles and Practice of Marketing, 4th Edition, McGraw – Hill, Berkshire