Marketing Plan for Delta Carbonated Soft Drink - Essay Example

Marketing plan for Delta carbonated soft drink Executive Summary The essay is based on the discussion of the marketing plan for Delta, a carbonated soft drink brand of Semtex Plc in China. The discussion is focused on the marketing, sales and distribution process of delta within the urban market of China. The study has evaluated the macro and micro environment of the China market and the organisation. The study has detailed the objectives of the organisation that includes developing sustainable growth within the China market, increase consumer awareness and securing sufficient market share in china within the time span of eight months. The next section of the discussion illustrates the market segmentation targeting and positioning procedure of the organisation for the Delta brand. The segmentation and targeting process of the organisation has selected the high and medium population density locations of the urban market of China. The process has also targeted the busy professional, students and large family oriented populations within the age bracket of 12-30 years. The marketing plan has selected the cost leadership and market penetration strategy to ensure growth within the China market. The next section has detailed the marketing mix elements such as product, pricing, promotional process, placement, people management and customer service process. This section has recommended essential steps to create a strong and successful marketing plan. Finally, the study has illustrated the implementation procedure through Gantt chart. This Chart has detailed the eight month implantation plan of product marketing. It has also elaborated various tools to monitor and control the implementation process. Introduction The study is based on designing a marketing plan for a hypothetical soft drink manufacturing and retailing company in China. The discussion will evaluate the marketing plan for Delta carbonated soft drink in the China market. The product is planned to be manufactured and retail within China market by Semtex Plc, a medium sized fruit and soft drink manufacturing and retailing company. The marketing plan includes various essential actions such as situational analysis of the market and organisation, objectives setting, market segmentation and targeting, market strategy design, evaluation of marketing mix and resource allocation and budgeting. The discussion will further elaborate the implementation and monitoring plan for the proposed marketing strategies. Current Marketing Situation The situation analysis of market will detail the macro and micro environment of the organisation. The macro environmental analysis will discuss the effects of external factors on the business venture of the organisation. It will illustrate the market analysis along with the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation (Wilson and Gilligan, 2012). This discussion will briefly introduce the competitors and product of the organisation. PEST analysis Political factors: Within the past few years the Chinese government has expressed dissatisfaction regarding the food quality and safely for its population. The government regulation in China is focused on re-structuring and re-evaluating various manufacturing and production locations to ensure the quality of food and beverages. The health and safety regulation of China is also restricting the excess sweetener content on the soft drinks (Roberts, 2013). Economical factors: Over the last five years, the economy of China has witnessed exceptional growth (Appendix 1). This situation has elevated the disposable income and lifestyle of consumers. This economical growth has also increased the sales volume of different soft drinks and beverages. It has also increased the availability and demand of foreign soft drink brands in the local market (Reynolds, 2014). Social factors: The introduction of modern life style within the Chinese population has increased the pub culture and alcohol consumption. Near about 20% of the population consume alcoholic beverages 2 to 3 times a week. On the other hand, growth in carbonated soft drink consumption has witnessed limited growth (Appendix 2). By the end of 2012, the consumption of carbonated soft drink has increased 13.26% in comparison to 2009. The awareness regarding the effects of synthetic products and sugar content is hampering the consumption of carbonated soft drinks. The literacy rate of China population has reached 95% by the end of 2012. This situation ensures the availability of skilled workforce in the market (EU SME Centre, 2013). Technological factors: The technological development in China has introduced more cheaper and eco-friendly packaging and bottling procedure. This technological upgradation has minimized the time and cost of production for various organisations. This technological advancement in the production and packaging procedure has also allowed the organisations to attract more consumers to their brand (Wei, 2013). Market Analysis Market size and trend: 30% of the soft drink market of China has secured by the carbonated soft drink products. This includes various domestic and international brands. The carbonated soft drink market is developing at a rate of 20% every year (EU SME Centre, 2013). On the contrary, the production of carbonated soft drink in China has decreased from 15 million tons to 12 million tons by the end of 2014. The availability of different foreign brands within the local market has restricted the production growth of the domestic organisations. The technological advancement in the local production system has elevated the manufacturing capacity of local organisations to 23 million ton within the first two months of 2015 (Statista, 2015). Market growth driver: The increased level of urbanisation and rising income are the major factors influencing the market growth of soft drinks in China. According to market prediction, almost one billion of population will live in urban areas of China by 2030. Therefore, this population will be more inclined to the packaged drink and beverages. They will also be very interested in the imported product lines in term of soft drinks (Reynolds, 2014). Market competition and profitability: The discussion Porters five force will describe the attractiveness and profitability of the soft drink market in china. This analysis also allow organisation to assess the position of their potential competitors. (Source: Williams, 2015) Industry cost structure: The product cost structure in the soft drink industry mainly focused on competitive pricing strategy. Most of the organisation follows the best offered price range in the market of China. The organisations also follow the economic pricing strategy to attract wide range of consumers (Williams, 2015). Distribution channel: The soft drink industry of China mainly utilise different supermarket chains, convenience store, food retail outlets and hypermarkets to distribute their product range. They also distribute products through restaurants and food joints (EU SME Centre, 2013). SWOT analysis Objectives and Key success factors Objectives The corporate objectives of the organisation need to be specific and realistic. The corporate objective of Semtex Plc. is to develop a sustainable business that successfully manufacture and market innovative flavours of Delta within the urban market of China. The marketing objective needs to measurable and time bounded. The marketing objective of Delta brand is to enhance the consumer awareness regarding the offerings of the brand. The marketing objective of the organisation is focused on efficiently secure a good position within the urban market of China through the rapid manufacturing, distribution and promotional procedure. This process need to be completed within the span of eight months. Key success factors The key success factors of the organisation to achieve the objectives are the availability of skilled employees, technologically advanced production facility and local abundance of required raw material suppliers. Target Markets Segmentation The management need to consider the geographic, demographic and psychographic segmentation procedure to divide their potential market. The geographic market segmentation will divide the market as per the region and population density (Hollensen, 2015). The regions of China need to be segmented in terms of urban and rural locations. The segmentation process according to the population density will assist the management to segregate the urban market as per low, medium and high population density. The demographical segmentation will focus on age and family status of the population. The management need to segment the population according to their age (Hollensen, 2015). The management also need to assess the family value of the consumer such as single, married, small family and large family. The psychographic segmentation will allow the management to emphasis on the lifestyle of consumers (Hassan and Craft, 2012). Targeting The marketers need to target the medium and high population density areas of urban locations of China. The marketing department should target almost all the age categories but their prime target should be the population within 12-30 years old. The organisation also needs to target the busy professionals, students and family oriented population. Positioning The marketers need to position Delta as an easily available and refreshing soft drink brand within the China market. They also need to position the brand as a one stop solution for a wide range of flavours. The positioning procedure of Delta soft drink within the China market needs to focus on the distribution, promotional and pricing strategies. The organisation should evaluate all the available distribution sources to ensure the proper positioning of their product. The organisation should analyse the pricing strategies of the competitor brands within the local markets. Therefore, the marketers need to decide the pricing as per the consumer and industry preference. The positioning process of organisation also needs to utilize different media to effectively promote their products to the potential consumers. Positioning map According to the positioning map the organisation is able to secure the highest position within the domestic soft drink organisations due to its wide variety of flavour and packaging within lower pricing. On the other hand, the high value and wide ranges of product line of Coca-cola can hamper the market positioning of the organisation. Marketing Strategies After the segmentation and targeting of the market the organisation needs to consider different market strategies to ensure the proper growth of the organisation within the China market. The proper analysis of Ansoff’s matrix and Porter’s generic model will assist the management to establish a competitive position within the China market. Porter’s generic model The organisation needs to focus on the cost leadership strategy to secure a competitive position within the urban market of China. The cost leadership strategy will enable the marketers to analyse the pricing strategies of local brand. It will therefore, allow them to select a competitive pricing for their products (Manteghi and Zohrabi, 2011). The technologically advanced production facility and low cost raw materials will enable the organisation to set economic pricing for Delta that also enable them to secure a leading position within domestic organisations. The cost leadership will allow the organisation to serve a broad market. It will also assist the organisation to attract a huge traffic of consumers. Porter’s generic model (Source: Manteghi and Zohrabi, 2011). Ansoff’s matrix The analysis of Ansoff’s matrix will enable the marketers to utilize the market penetration strategy to secure the desired market share within a specified time frame. Market penetration is the least risky strategy for organisation during the entry phase of the product. In the growing market maintenance of market share will assist the marketers to achieve organisational growth (: Hussain et al., 2014). The marketers of Semtex Plc prefer to explore their local China market with the new product Delta. It enables the marketers to distribute and sell their product line within the established as well as new consumers of the existing market of China. The market penetration process will also assure higher market share for the organisation within the urban market of China. Ansoff’s Matrix (Source: Hussain et al., 2014) Marketing Programs The marketing program will evaluate the different elements of marketing mix of the organisation. These elements include product, price, place, promotion (Hanssens, et al., 2014). The customer services and internal marketing is another important element to be considered during the marketing plan of Delta. Product: Delta carbonated soft drink will be available in five different flavours such as cola, lemon, orange, cranberry and cherry cola. This will allow the organisation provide a huge range of choice to their consumers. Different flavours of Delta will consist of natural sweetener such as corn syrup. The branding strategy of the product will focus on the flavours of the products and it’s the food value. The small packaging (300ml) of Delta will utilize tetra pack for the ease of consumers in terms of carrying the product as well as disposing the bottle. The product will be packaged in eco-friendly plastic polymers to ensure easy degradation. Price: The organisation will follow the competitive pricing strategy to distribute their products within the targeted market place. The marketers need to analyse the price structure of the local players before assigning the price for their product. They also need to consider the purchasing tendency of the consumers. The selling price of the 300ml Delta needs to be set between 2.1 to 2.2 Yuan to compete the marketing price of the immediate competitor brand Future Cola (EU SME Centre, 2013). Delta is a new product in the market. The market should provide near about 5% discount to different distributors against bulk purchasing. Promotion: Promotional activities are the most important element for the organisation. The organisation needs to focus on different media of promotion and advertisement to increase the awareness of the consumer. The major promotion sources will be the print media. As a small organisation the management will not be capable to spend huge amount on the television advertising. Therefore, they will concentrate on the print advertising through newspaper and household magazines. The organisation should invest on designing attractive advertisement for their product line. The road side billboards, hoardings and hanging pamphlets within the food marts will also allow the organisation to grab the attention of consumer. The marketers need to arrange different promotional campaigns through fun activities within different leading and maximum visited supermarket chains. They also need to consider sponsoring different public events and sports events to introduce the brand to the potential consumers. One of the most effective promotional procedures is the social media advertising. The organisation should create new pages or site for the product within Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. This will assist the management to increase the product awareness within the desired consumers. People: The organisation need to allocate sufficient employees to provide consumer services in terms of complaint handling and prompt solving. The organisation also needs to train them to provide desired services to the consumers. Process: The internal marketing process will enable the marketers to enhance the efficiency of the workforce to serve the consumer in a better manner. Internal marketing process will also motivate the workforce to improve different operations to ensure satisfaction of consumers (Winston and Cahill, 2012). Resources and budgets The management of the organisation needs to allocate appropriate and sufficient resources to execute the marketing plan. Financial resource is the most important element for the organisation in the initial stage of product development. The organisation needs to attract investors through different promotional campaigns. The management also required to conduct frequent meeting with the potential investors. They need to generate and distribute periodic financial and interim report to educate the investors about the current activities and future growth of the organisation. Another important resource for the marketing plan is the human capital. The organisation needs to allocate highly skilled marketing and sales personnel for the promotional and distribution activities of the organisation. There should be separate departments for promotional activities and advertisement planning, sales and consumers and distributor services. Each department needs to be consisted with minimum 6-8 skilled employees. The management need to focus on availing and training sufficient employees for each of the departments. The budget of the organisation needs to be divided into different categories such as employee wages of employees, promotional procedure and process outsourcing. The market search for the competitive products and pricing should be outsourced to different research organisation to gather efficient and accurate data. The organisation needs to hire third party professionals to handle the social media marketing and content building processes. The organisation will also outsource the bottling procedure to third party eco-friendly packaging organisation. The organisation needs to allocate approximately 15 million Yuen for the advertisement and promotional procedure of Delta. Another 10 million Yuen should be allocated for the bottling facility of the organisation. 500,000 Yuen needs to be considered for the wages and benefits of the employees. The market research process will require a budget allocation of approximately 1.5 million Yuen (EU SME Centre, 2013; Reynolds, 2014). Implementation, monitoring and control The implementation procedure will be covered within the span of 8 months. The plan needs to be divided as per the scheduled months. The first month will be solely allocated to analyse the competitor products and their pricing. This process will enable the management to develop product and pricing strategy within the next three months. The market segmentation and targeting process will also be done along with setting up the pricing strategy. The selection of proper distribution channel will follow the segmentation and targeting process. After properly, segmenting the market and targeting the desired population the management need to initiate the promotional activities. These activities will be renewed in every alternate month. Customer relationship can be considered as one of the important element for marketing plan implementation. Strategic Plan/ Time April 15 May 15 June 15 July 15 August 15 September 15 October 15 November 15 Research on competitive product line                 Product manufacturing and bottling                 Setting up pricing strategy                 Segmenting the market and targeting right customers                 Advertisement through different print media and hoarding                 Social media advertisement                 Selecting distribution channel and distributing finished goods                 Customer relationship                 The implementation of the marketing plan needs to be monitored and measured frequently with the assistance of appropriate measuring tools. Market research procedure can be utilized after each market promotion activities to gauge the awareness and brand preference of the consumers. It will assist the marketers to analyse the changes in attitude of consumers towards the brand after the advertisement and promotional campaign. After the distribution of finished goods the marketers need to assess the profit margin and sales growth of the organisation to determine the increase in the market share of the organisation. This process need to be repeated after every three months to assess the significant changes. The customer relationship will allow the management to frequently analyse the enquiries and complaints. This will also allow them to modify their product and marketing activities as per consumer preferences. Conclusion The discussion of the study has evaluated the market situation of the soft drink industry in China. This analysis has provided assistance in the designing of the marketing plan for the carbonated soft drink brand, Delta, of Semtex Plc. The discussion has further evaluated the market segmentation, targeting and positioning procedure. It has also illustrated the required strategies for the market growth of the brand. The further discussion has illustrated the different elements of marketing mix of the organisation. It has also provided efficient implementation and monitoring procedure for the marketing plan. Appendices Appendix1: (Source: Trading Economics, 2015) Appendix 2: (Source: Pingali, 2015) Reference List EU SME Centre, 2013. The Food & Beverage Market in China. [pdf] EU SME Centre Available at [Accessed 14 April 2015]. Hanssens, D. M., Pauwels, K. H., Srinivasan, S., Vanhuele, M. and Yildirim, G., 2014. Consumer attitude metrics for guiding marketing mix decisions. Marketing Science, 33(4), pp. 534-550. Hassan, S. S. and Craft, S., 2012. Examining world market segmentation and brand positioning strategies. Journal of Consumer marketing, 29(5), pp. 344-356. Hollensen, S., 2015. Marketing management: A relationship approach. London: Pearson Education. Hussain, S., Khattak, J., Rizwan, A. and Latif, M. A., 2014. Interactive Effects Of Ansoff Growth Strategies And Market Environment On Firm’s Growth. British Journal of Business and Management Research, 1(2), pp. 68-78. Manteghi, N. and Zohrabi, A., 2011. A proposed comprehensive framework for formulating strategy: a Hybrid of balanced scorecard, SWOT analysis, porter‘s generic strategies and Fuzzy quality function deployment. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 15, pp. 2068-2073. Pingali, S., 2015. Economic Boom In China Sends Booze Market Skyrocketing. [online] Available at [Accessed 14 April 2015]. Reynolds, B. L. (Ed.)., 2014. Chinese economic reform: how far, how fast? Massachusetts: Academic Press. Roberts, D., 2013. China Sets Up a Food Safety Super-Regulator. 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