Importance of Marketing - KFC

LO 1

Key roles and Responsibilities of marketing function in context of marketing environment

Marketing is known as the strategy which defines every scope involved in delivery of goods and services to consumers. It coordinates elements such as place, price, product specifications and promotion. Customer satisfaction and retention are the major factors which contribute to success of organization. The marketing concept will allow KFC to guide business and operational activities in direction such that it maximizes the profitability and long term business objectives can be achieved.

Introduction to current marketing trends

The marketing strategy of KFC is highly effective. It has helped organization to explore its business activities all over the world which has great cultural diversity and variations in preferences of consumers.

• The organization follows the most influencing digital media tools for promotion. Social media interaction, online bookings and digital payments facilities make it easy for the consumers to recognize and connect with brand (Ambat and et.al., 2017). To connect emotionally with consumers it uses various tag lines and gives discounts on various occasions.
• To provide high quality services, KFC always gives priority to complain and feedbacks of customers. It keeps introducing changes in its services to bring innovations without affecting the quality of products and services.
• The current marketing trends are mainly focused on customizing the strategies as per the requirements of each customer segment.
• Organization operates in various countries but it ensures that its promotional strategy meets the cultural diversities and can have significant impact on consumers.

Future marketing trends: For sustaining the growth and to expand its restaurants KFC can use following marketing trends in the future:

• The organization can make more efforts to connect emotionally with consumers. It will help organization to maintain brand loyalty.
• KFC can use its high brand value to develop consumer segment in different parts of world. The online food delivery and expansion of product range can also serve as effective strategy for KFC to meet its future goals.
• With advent of digital technology organization can use highly advance techniques such as mobile applications for managing orders and highly secure platform for payments. It will attract more consumers.
• These practices will be effective for KFC to sustain its successful performance and to give tough competition to other companies such as McDonalds.

The marketing process of KFC is described as follows:

KFC use various approaches for marketing. The organization first identifies the target audience and segment and develops products and services which can meet their requirements. According to the interest of targeted audience, the promotional strategies are prepared (Chernev, 2015). For example; it encourages the uses of vouchers and coupons so that organization is always a well known name among consumers. The mouth word publicity is one of the most influential marketing processes. Thus, KFC always make attempts that queries and issues of consumers are resolved at the earliest so that they can promote organization themselves. The organisation is using influential advertisement programs and loyalty rewards to influence consumers. The regular innovation in products is also appreciated by the people.

To develop emotional connectivity with customers, the company gives attractive discount offers on festival seasons and special occasions. Considering the interests of technological dependence the company is also giving preference to internet marketing. Along with the publicity in magazines and hoardings the company regularly interacts with customers through social media and its website. The company also considers the price factors. Though price and product quality are as per KFC brand value but they follow the purchasing nature of consumers as well.

Functions performed by marketing manager of an organization

Managing tasks and operational activities: The marketing manager of KFC plays crucial role in achieving the success goals of company. It is the responsibility of manager to identify and understand the needs of market and consumers. This assessment helps organization to develop marketing plan as per the requirements. Marketing managers ensure that all necessary resources are available and effectively used by the team members so that they can efficiently achieve the operational goals.

Understanding marketing trends and needs of organisation: Within marketing scope, if managers are not able to understand the purchasing behaviour of consumers then it is almost impossible for the company to meet its profit goals (Fine, 2017). For example: if in any particular country KFC does not perform well then it will be the duty of manager to evaluate the situation. It will give description of all factors that what are the possible causes which leads to f failure. If consumers are not happy with price, quality or they are unknown to the organization then manager will assess these reasons. Marketing managers frames new guidelines and strategies which are essential for the long term success of company and for sustaining the strong position within market. These managers also assess the needs of skills which can improve the performance of company so that its training can be provided to the team members.

Analysing competitive positions of organisation: Marketing manager plays a significant role in analysing the position of company among its strong competitors. This analysis will always encourage the marketing team members to bring innovations so that company is always able to receive competitive advantage. These professionals also evaluate the innovative and quality aspects of the company performance which can maximize the benefits with minimum operational costs. Managers make every attempt to ensure that only advance marketing practices are adopted which must achieve profit and business goals of the company. The analysis of strategies and actions of other competitive companies as well as the self evaluation of the company is one of the necessity for the success. Marketing managers use sales statistics and other approaches to evaluate this aspect so that effective improvements can be introduced to the marketing operations.

Monitoring and control: Marketing managers also regulate the performance of marketing team members. These managers prepare strategies for promoting the services and products of organization. In order to implement these strategies marketing managers evaluate the performance of their team members so that marketing strategies can be accomplished and desired results can be obtained. The regular monitoring and controlling of marketing activities by marketing managers helps to gain desired goals in the fixed time frame.

Motivating employees and developing team members: Marketing managers motivates the other members so that marketing goals can be achieved. Another important function of marketing managers is that they formulate the marketing plans in alignment with the market trends, business objectives and consumer needs. Marketing managers motivates the other members by rewards and appreciation so that they can put more efforts in quality of work.

Significance and evaluation of interrelationship between marketing and other functional departments

Marketing not only influence the performance of organization but it also affects different departments of the company. It creates an interrelation and dependencies between these departments.

Marketing and finance department: The promotional strategies must be according to budget consideration of the company. If marketing team will start any promotional campaign which involves huge investment then it is necessary for the financial team to ensure that the necessary profit is also obtained from the outputs of marketing (Yakimchuk and Kochetkova, 2016).

Marketing and human resources: Human resources are the key elements for ensuring the functionality of organization. The human resource development must coordinate with marketing team so that suitable marketing team must be created. For example for digital marketing the teams requires individuals who are innovative and technical as well. Thus marketing team must have interrelations with other functional sections of company.

Information technology and marketing department: The current marketing strategies are mainly based on internet. Thus, information technology team must be involved in some decisions because if consumers will face difficulty during online payment and order booking then KFC may fail to achieve its marketing objectives.

Operational & production department and marketing: Before promoting any product specification the marketing team must consult with the operational team to ensure that if it is possible or not. In case if there will be discrepancy then wrong message will be given to the consumers that KFC fails to meet product value.

Significance of marketing role on performance of KFC

The performance of organization largely depends upon the marketing role. The marketing functions analyses the market and develops suitable marketing campaign. To evaluate the effectiveness of these campaigns these professionals monitors the sales records and brand value of the company. The marketing functions gives guidelines to KFC that how organization is performing and what measures can be adopted to improve its performance. The marketing approaches also monitor the competitive performance and self evaluation of organization through tools like SWOT analysis and PESTLE analysis. There are companies which are performing better than KFC. Without effective marketing strategy KFC may fail to recognise the needs of its target audience and marketing trends. It will have an adverse impact on overall performance of the organisation.

The marketing department of company regularly makes researches and finds the risk and barriers which prevents company from achieving these goals (Lusch and Vargo, 2014). It also encourages KFC to implement innovations and improvements according to changing technology and consumer behavior. These marketing strategies are important for organization to achieve its profit goals in regularly changing and competitive environment. Marketing functions always aims at improving the performance of KFC by effective planning and market analysis.

Read also:
Marketing Plan of McDonald's

Importance and effect of interrelationships between various functional departments

For effective accomplishment of operational activities with minimum cost and optimized benefits it is essential that all functional departments of KFC are interrelated with each other. The interrelationships between all functional units of KFC will help company to avoid errors and loss. For instance when marketing department defines products without coordinating with other departments then it is possible that it become impossible for the KFC to implement it practically (Paley, 2017). The interrelationships are essential between various departments so that there is an alignment in functional activities and desired profits can be obtained.

On the other hand when strategies are developed with discussion from all functional units then it makes the practical implementation of the suggested plans. It also helps company to analyze the possible barriers in implementing plan before directly exposing plan among customers or competitors.

LO 2

Marketing mix and its elements (7 Ps)

The marketing strategies can be made successful and productive with continuous evaluation. It helps to assess the drawbacks and performance of the business. Marketing mix is defined as the concept which uses various elements for performance evaluation of business. It will help KFC to implement its operational activities which can maximize the profits. The marketing mix has following elements which are known as the 7 Ps of marketing.

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