Marketing Audit Approach - IKEA
Marketing Audit Overview
“What is a marketing audit? Quite simply, it is a detailed analysis of the elements that constitute or influence a company’s efforts to profitably market its products- today and in future when both market and products may undergo radical change” ( John, Alexander, & Theodore, 1969). The marketing audit helps to understand the fundamentals of a company’s marketing planning process. Auditing is not only conducted not only at the planning stage and also conducted during various stages until the implementation of the marketing plan.
Organization
The selected organization for the marketing Audit is IKEA Group. As part Phoenix University marketing course, the author of this document (hereafter referred as “author”) will review the marketing process of IKEA and will provide an audit report at the end of the course.
Marketing Audit Approach
This document aims to provide an approach to the marketing audit process and will also detail out the steps that need to be performed to accomplish the same.
The final project document will have an executive summary, which provides a summary of the marketing audit purpose, key findings, major highlights, conclusions and recommendations. This is a high level summary and can be presented to the company’s top management. It is imperative that the author to ensure the summary has no conflicting information with the detail audit.
Company Overview
The first step of marketing audit is to understand the company’s vision, products and marketing strategy. In respect to IKEA Group, the information can be obtained from student info website provided by IKEA Group.
Marketing Environment Analysis
The next part of Audit process is to understand the business environmental aspects of the company. As part of the marketing audit project the author is going to analyze and provide detailed information on the following key environmental aspects
Customers
Demographics
Markets
Each category will be analyzed using IKEA student info website, IKEA group corporate website, resources from University of Phoenix library and articles from magazines. The key questions that the author will address are
Customers: Need to evaluate and understand the nature of IKEA’s customers such as
Customers need and how to satisfy them
The perception of IKEA brand
What customers “value” and how IKEA can provide the “value” to their customers
What is the “buyer decision process” and consumers behavior?
The nature of market’s segmentation, target and IKEA’s position.
Demographics: Need to evaluate and understand consumers’ average age, levels of population, and gender.
How have the technology played a part in marketing?
Ikea is a Swedish company that provides furnished products throughout the world. Ingvar Kamprad founded it in the year of 1943. Its furniture is self-assembled thus allowing the company to reduce its expenditures and offer customers low prices in return. When segmenting a market, IKEA usually focuses on age, income level, and lifestyle. It aims to attract young, underprivileged individuals who look to buy furniture for the first time. An example of this would be college students; they are often confused, doubtful, and looking for something cheap. IKEA currently operates in twenty-seven countries including Korea, China, Sweden, and Netherlands amongst many others (IKEA.com). Although it is
Armstrong, Gary, and Philip Kotler. Marketing: an introduction. 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2013. Print.
Young, D. (2012). Managing Marketing Implementation, Room 009, Block 17, Middlesex University Dubai. (1st April, 2012)
By the end of 1998 though, there was evidence of a crisis occurring. Customers and media pulled together to assist senior management partake in an internal audit to identify the problems and see if they could come to a solution. The purpose of this assignment is to construct a SWOT analysis, highlighting each of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that were highlighted in the internal audit. The SWOT analysis is contained within the marketing plan and is the third step in the marketing planning process, coming after the Marketing audit and before any assumptions. (Joisce, Ted (2002), Marketing Planning Lecture Notes – 14/10/02, Mission, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics)
1. What were the sources of IKEA’s successful entry in furniture retail business in Sweden?
In order to evaluate the website, the first aspect to be evaluated is in terms of the content. All the content intended appear in the website such as the details for each product. The product that being displayed on website is not slightly different than the real one; what you look is what you will see or get. The purpose of why this website is created had been stated in the IKEA Privacy Policy page. The IKEA website provides a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them. Even there are tonnes of pictures of product in some pages, but yet still can be considered that the content of the webpage is properly organized. People can just simply click on the item that they want to look out, as the image has been arranged in a grid and not jumbled up. Besides that, the customer also can download the IKEA catalogue and IKEA Home Planner software to view the product better. By using IKEA catalogue, it enables users to zoom in the product itself.
... P.H. (1988). Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control. (6th ed.). Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs.
Kotler, P. & Keller, K.L., (2009), A Framework for Marketing Management. 4th edition, Pearson Prentice Hall: USA
Armstrong G. & Kotler P. (2007) Marketing: An Introduction 8E Upper Saddle River, NJ Pearson Prentice Hall Publishers
This topic was selected among a series of topics of general interest in the area of strategic audit for a corporation, as a class requisite. The different aspects of development and research studies findings are discussed in detail or briefly. The subject of “Strategic Audit of a Corporation” is what this paper is about. Some of these topics are briefly discussed. Ford Motor Company
Kotler, J., & Keller, K. (2012). A framework for marketing management. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd.
The main aim of this discussion is to discuss the main aspects that are very important in planning and implementing the activities of marketing in the global context. Once all the issues have been addressed, the organisation then needs to plan out the global marketing strategy. Marketing research is the core area of marketing, as the entire marketing strategies depends on how well the organization has conducted the research of the market. Mar...
Marketing audit give a picture of where the company is, how did it get there and where is it heading. It goes through the through the strength, weakness, opportunities and threat of the company. This analysis is called the SWOT analysis. It is divided into two major parts:
IKEA is more than a furniture store they are a company driven by values (IKEA, 2014). The company seeks to make their consumers lives easier by providing them with modern, innovative, inexpensive products which they use to tackle daily home activities. IKEA Group has 298 stores in 26 different countries (IKEA, 2014). The company’s vision is “to create a better everyday life for the many people” (IKEA, 2014, para 1). Using innovative techniques for creating, producing, and marketing their products IKEA can provide consumers with durable products for reason...
Philip Kotler; Kevin Lane Keller (2009): “Marketing Management”, 13th edition, Pearson Prentice Hall, pg 61-62