Assessing Growth Opportunities

Assessing growth opportunities involves planning new businesses, downsizing, or terminating older businesses.



Intensive growth -- corporate management's first course of action should be a review of opportunities for improving existing businesses.

Integrative growth -- a businesses sales and profits may be increased through backward, former, a horizontal integration within its industry.

Diversification growth -- several types of diversification are possible -- new products, new technology, marketing synergies with existing product lines, new groups of customers, etc.

downsizing and divesting older businesses -- week businesses require a disproportionate amount of managerial attention



Organization -- consists of its structures, policies, and corporate culture

corporate culture -- the shared experiences, stories, beliefs, and norms that characterize an organization

scenario analysis -- consists of developing plausible representations of the firm's possible future to make different assumptions about forces driving the market include different uncertainties



SWOT analysis -- the overall evaluation of a company strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It involves monitoring the external and internal marketing environment.



marketing opportunity -- an area of need or interest in which there is a high probability that a company can profitably satisfy that need.

There are three main sources of market opportunities:

1. supplying something that is in short supply
2. supplying an existing product or service in a new or superior way
3. creation of a totally new product or service

Opportunity examples:

• hybrid products
• buying process convenience
• meeting information needs
• product or service customization
• introducing new capabilities
• faster service or product delivery
• offering product at lower cost

Market opportunity analysis (MOA) -- an evaluation of opportunities to determine the attractiveness and probability of success:

• can the benefits involved in the opportunity be articulated convincingly to a defined target market?
• Can the target market be located in reached within cost effective media and trade channels?
• Does the company possessor have access to critical capabilities and resources needed to deliver the customer benefits?
• Can a company deliver the benefits better than any actual or potential competitors?
• Well the financial rate of return meet or exceed the companies required threshold for investment?

Environmental threat -- a challenge posed by an unfavorable trend or development that would lead, and the absence of defensive marketing action, to lower sales or profits



Goal Formulation

most business units pursue a mix of objectives including profitability, sales rose, market share improvement, risk containment, innovation, and reputation. The business unit sets these objectives and then manages by objectives (MBO).



For on MBO system to work, the unit's objectives must meet four criteria:

1. goals must be arranged hierarchically, from the most to the least important
2. objectives should be stated quantitatively whenever possible
3. goals should be realistic
4. objectives must be consistent

Other important trade-offs:

• short-term profit versus long-term growth
• deep penetration of existing markets versus developing new markets
• profit goals versus nonprofit goals
• high growth versus low risk

Strategy -- a game plan for achieving goals

strategic group -- firms pursuing the same strategy directed to the same target market



many strategic alliances take the form of marketing alliances. These fall into four major categories:

1. product or service alliances -- 1 company licenses another to produce its product, or two companies jointly market their complementary products or new product
2. promotional alliances -- 1 company agrees to Cary he promotion for another company's product or service
3. logistics alliances -- 1 company offers logistical services for another companies product
4. pricing collaborations -- 1 or more companies joined in a special pricing collaboration

Marketing plan -- a written document that summarizes what the marketer has learned about the marketplace and indicates how the firm plans to reach its marketing objectives



Contents of the Marketing Plan

• executive summary and table of contents
• situation analysis
• marketing strategy
• financial projections
• implementation controls

Marketing Plan criteria

• is the plan simple?
• Is the plan specific?
• It is the plan realistic?
• Is the plan complete?

powered by performancing firefox