Market-Led Strategic Change at Tesco plc - Research Paper Example

The second applies the analysis to Tesco plc, providing relevant examples. Companies develop marketing plans to know how it should direct its efforts towards bringing a particular product or brand to market. The plan acts as a roadmap, a set of guidelines to ensure success, and contains an analysis of the target market, the marketing objectives, and the marketing mix, which explains in detail the selected strategy for the product, its promotion, distribution, and price (Cohen, 1995). The quality of a marketing plan depends on the assumptions it makes about the customers and the basis for those assumptions, how the marketing objectives are defined, and how the marketing mix are analysed; above all, how it is put into action (Shark, 1994).

Traditional literature on marketing programmes and actions such as by Wind and Claycamp (1976) identified the development of product policies (brand, quality, and value) as the most critical element of a marketing plan because this is how companies can engage customers and meet their needs. As Peter and Donnelly (1997, p. 127) observed: "developing new products is the lifeblood of successful business firms". Crawford (1994, p.9-11) categorised "new products" as follows: new to the world (inventions), new for the firm, additions to product lines, product improvements, and repositioning (retargeting for new use or application).

Major changes in the marketplace, media and communications, . elopment of product policies (brand, quality, and value) as the most critical element of a marketing plan because this is how companies can engage customers and meet their needs.As Peter and Donnelly (1997, p. 127) observed: "developing new products is the lifeblood of successful business firms". Crawford (1994, p.9-11) categorised "new products" as follows: new to the world (inventions), new for the firm, additions to product lines, product improvements, and repositioning (retargeting for new use or application).

Total IntegrationMajor changes in the marketplace, media and communications, and in consumers were the key drivers in the development of integrated marketing communications or IMC as a new paradigm for marketing professionals for the 21st century (Schultz and Schultz, 1998). Schultz and Kitchen (2000, p.3) identified four elements that pushed these changes in the practice of marketing: digitalisation, information technology, intellectual property, and communication systems, with the result that consumers have become more fragmented and converged into smaller, more targeted and specialised groups.

Levitt (1975, p.10) was amongst the first to note the need for changes in the traditional methods, practices, and ways of thinking prevalent in the era of mass marketing and communications in the 1960s and 1970s, arguing that "management should not see itself as merely producing products but as providing customer-creating value satisfaction and pushing this idea to every nook and cranny of the organisationcontinuously, and with enough flair to excite employees". He warned that if this is not done, the company would have no consolidating sense of purpose or direction.

The earliest formal definition of integrated marketing was formulated in 1989 by the American