Marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Marketing - Essay Example 8).† The engagement This engagement relates to the period during the second half of the last year, when a distant relation of mine wanted me to help him in designing the marketing department and developing the marketing aspects of his start-up family restaurant. This relation of mine took retirement from the Royal Navy as a Chief Petty Officer. He approached me to help him in designing and developing the marketing aspects of his business. I being a student of business studies, he thought I would be in a better position to help him in guiding on the marketing aspects. According to him, the navy taught him everything about cooking and gave him enough exposure on the culinary skills, managing the production facilities and managing men, but he lacked seriously on marketing knowledge. Although he believed if he starts a restaurant, with his culinary skills and personnel management as the chief cook in a frigate, he would be able to do good business. On the flipside, he was sceptical that the different and highly competitive environment may make it very difficult for him in the formative days. He felt that some help in marketing would make him more confident. He was undecided about to how to go about the whole thing about marketing. For me this was an opportunity to make application of my lessons in marketing. Defining Marketing To gauge his understanding on marketing, I asked him to tell me what he knows about marketing. According to him, marketing includes such activities as selling, advertising, marketing research and so on. I explained him that marketing is a way of doing business which starts with a focus on customer needs and expectations. I quoted the definition of UK Chartered Institute of Marketing which states: Marketing is the management process which identifies, anticipates, and supplies customer requirements efficiently and profitably. (Blythe, 2001, p. 11; cited by Schaefer, 2010, p.8) I explained him that to begin with we have to understand what he visualises about his would be customers, their likings and dislikes in respect to their food habits and decor and ambience. I continued that in addition to these factors, we need to know about their level of income to gauge about their affordability, so that we can plan to meet their requirements both efficiently and profitability. With this information, we would have to apply the marketing concepts. Setting the orientation I discussed with him about the four types of orientations a business can have, namely the (1) product orientation, (2) the production orientation, (3) selling orientation and (4) the marketing orientation. I advised that we develop a marketing orientation of the business, which in reality is an ‘outside-in’ approach in contrast to the other three approaches of inside-out approaches. Here, we had to start with a thorough assessment of the needs and expectations of buyers and then trying to fulfil those needs and expectations in order to attract cus tomers. I explained that in this perspective, he not only have to assume what its potential customers may want, but also he has to find out what his customers would actually want. Accordingly, the business offering have to be