旅游英语课件 Marketing Planning1

Unit9 Marketing Planning(1) 1 Unit9 Marketing Planning (1) What is Marketing Planning? All tourism organizations, however small and whether consciously or not, engage in marketing activity. The local travel agent, for example, has to make decisions about which services to offer, which brochures to rack and how they will be displayed. The choice of brochures, level of service, type of décor and furnishings, all reflect the market segment the agent has decided to cater for and the ways in chich the needs of that market will be met. Advertising the products; drawing attention to special opportunities; perhaps providing free coach travel to the local airport as an incentive to book with that agent; checking past records to see who the regular clients are, and undertaking mail shots with details of holidays that may appeal to them are all examples of marketing activity. There is, however, an important distinction between so called „seat of the pants‟ marketing, where decisions are taken on the spur of the moment, and a carefully thought out and coordinated approach to marketing. This latter process in known as the marketing planning process. Expressed simply, planning is designed to link an organization‟s goals and resources to its marketing opportunities, and in doing so to make the best use of its resources. Clearly then, we must first know what our goals and resources are, as well as what opportunities exist for us to exploit. If a maket is growing fast, as was the case with foreign holidays from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, opportunities may be comparatively simple to identify, and in these circumstances even relatively inefficient and poorly managed companies may be able to survive and prosper. But the marketing environment is subject to constant chane and if demand stabilizes or falls (as happened in the case of package holidays in the early 1990s), the failure to develop a strategic marketing plan which responds to that change may result in the collapse of less efficiently managed organizations. Planning is simply a means of survivl in a competitive and quickly changing environment. Planning for What? Planning is needed to meet short-term and long-term objectives. At its most basic, short-term planning is required simply in order to identify where the company is now, and where it will be next week, or next month. Manaers need to be able to judge their cach flow position, since without knowing how much money will be flowing into a company, it will not be possible to predict whether funds will be adequate to pay the organization‟s runnign costs, such as salaries. The marketing plan determines what needs to be sold in a given period, at a given price, and how this is to be achieved, in order to meet operating costs. Beyond this, the company must plan to achieve its longer-term objectives. This could mean finding additional sources of capital for future investment. No banker is likely to look favourably at a request for further funds unless the organisation‟s aims and strategies are clearly defined. The marketing plan is, of course, only one aspect of a company‟‟ overall planning, and must be coordinated with the financial plans, organizational plans, purchasing plans and other aspects of the organization‟s total business activity. Marketing is simply a tool by which an organization achieves its objective, by identifying new product and market opportunities, evaluating them and taking action to develop them. In diagrammatic form, a company‟s Marketing Action Plan will look like that shown in Fig. 9.1. Setting Objectives Unit9 Marketing Planning(1) 2 Typical objectives likely to be sought by the company will include:  achieving a certain level of sales growth within a given period of time,  increasing the profitability of the organization by a given percentage within an agreed time scale,

Fig. 9.1 A Marketing Action Plan  obtainig a given percentage share of the market within a given period of time (new product), or increasing current market share by X% within the period (existing product),  reducing business risk by diversifying the product range,  obtaining a measured increase in the return on capital employed by the company. The marketing plan will be designed to achieve one or more of these objectives by the ue of a selected choice of strateies. There is a danger in trying to achieve too many objectives simulta-neously within a markeing plan, since this can result in conflicting strategies. If asked. Most managers would declare their aims would be to satisfy all of the objectives listed above; but, as tour operators and other travel firms have learned to their cost, the achievement of increases in market share, or a policy of long-term growth may be at the expanse of short-term profits. A marketing manager is faced with many alternative strategies form which to choose when drawing up a marketing plan. To achieve an increase in the return on capital invested, for example, the tour operator might choose to raise prices, to find ways of reducing costs, to seek higher productivity form present resources, to push for increased sales to present markets served, or to introduce producs to new markets. Which of these is adopted will depend upon an analysis of the current market situation in which the business is operating. A major company such as Owners Abroad, for example, which has several operating divisions-among them Falcon Holidays, Twenties, Small World and Flairfares-may set quite distinct objectives, involving different strategic plans, for each of these divisions.