The Strategic Planning Process
The strategic planning process can be described as the technique of defining and documenting the direction of a business after the assessment of its current and future state. Among the strategic planning process’s key importance, it enables organizations to analyze their goals, targets, and objectives to ensure that they are within organizational reach. Employees must be involved in the strategic planning process to make it easier and faster to adopt new operating techniques. Therefore, employee-involved strategic planning automatically increases the productivity levels since people work towards meeting goals that they were involved in setting ( Globocnik, Faullant & Parastuty, 2020 ). Another importance of strategic planning is that it enables identifying weaknesses and strong points of a business which creates a good platform to improve. Lastly, it makes it possible to predict future challenges, making it possible to plan effective measures to overcome the limitations.
SWOT Analysis
A SWOT Analysis is a tool used in strategic planning to analyze strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities a business encounter. Strengths are the strong features of a business, likely to create a competitive advantage in the market. They are usually internal, and therefore a business can control their impacts. Weaknesses, also internal factors, are elements that give competitors an advantage over an organization. They are areas that a business has the power to improve and minimize its impacts. Both opportunities and threats are external factors, which a business has no control over, that affect the operations of an organization. Opportunities can include changing lifestyles and new government policies that are in line with an organization's functioning. Threats can include evolving technology and the emergence of new market preferences that are not in line with the products and services a government provides ( Hajizadeh, 2019 ). therefore, the SWOT analysis tool enables any business to be informed of their capabilities and dysfunctionalities. The information is then used as a guide to better performance through reinforcement of their strong points and finding remedies for weak points.
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Market Segmenting
Market segments can be defined as splitting a target market into smaller and more defined groups. The process is important as it enables the differentiation of brants, allows identification of more effective marketing techniques, and creates a strong marketing message. Market segmentation classifies customers based on their common features, such as demographics, location, interests, and needs. The key types of market segmentation are geographic segmentation, demographic segmentation, behavioral and psychographic segmentation. Marketing segmenting makes advertisement easier as organizations manage to identify consumers with their most preferred goods ( Feola et al., 2019 ). It makes it possible for businesses not to wander blindly in the markets with the hope of stumbling on consumers with the high demand for their products.
Target Marketing
Target marketing occurs after market segmentation. It involves focusing marketing efforts on a few or one key segment, where an organization’s products attract a broader customer base. One of the major importance of target marketing is that it enables an organization to focus its marketing budget, resources, and workforce on specific customers. It, therefore, makes promotion and advertising cheaper and less complicated since specific customers are targeted. Although it is a risky venture, target marketing, when done right, usually enables an organization to gain a competitive advantage in one particular field over other businesses that are trying to spread out in different markets.
Product Positioning
Product positioning occurs after target marketing and involves the technique applied by marketers to develop the best method of communicating their products' attributes to the targeted audience. Product positioning is a significant determinant of whether customers will purchase a good or not. It assists an organization to reason out with targeted clients, convincing them to purchase. The marketing technique involves discussing a product's benefits in the case that it is consumed by the target audience ( Moon & Kamakura, 2017 ). Product positioning occurs in different ways, including pricing, advertising techniques, and channels, provided it comes up as an important requirement to the customers.
Offerings: - Product, Price, and Service
A product can be described as an item offered for sale which satisfies a need. Products can be services or goods. Therefore, they are either tangible or intangible. Prices are the monetary value of services and goods; the amount customers are willing to pay for a particular product. Services are the satisfaction, benefits, and activities offered and the sales of goods or provided for sale. As stated above, services are intangible products ( Ferrell, 2017 ). Examples are barbershop services, banking, and medical services. Services cannot be stored, separated from the provider, and are unique with each delivery.
Product Assessment
An electric car is the selected product, which will be marketed by sharing its extraordinary characteristics and benefits to the targeted audience. In terms of the advantages, electric cars are environmentally friendly. For features, it has a unique design involving forward traffic monitors and electrically adjustable seats. Marketing of the car will occur on the above bases. The product will be marketed through social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and traditional media like billboards and television. The electric car is superior to its competitors in terms of design, technology, and features. It has a stylish look and a sleek design that makes it stand out compared to other vehicles. The touch screen information and entertainment system, forward traffic monitor, and electrically adjustable seats make it more efficient to own. Space and comfort also make essential for a family.
Marketing Segmenting
The market will be segmented on psychographic and demographic segmentation for the case of the new electric car. In terms of psychographic segmentation, the consumers will be targeted depending on their social classes and lifestyles. Social class will include upper and middle class while lifestyles will include succeeder, aspire, explorer and reformer. When demographic segmentation is considered, consumers will be targeted based on occupation, gender, and age. In terms of occupations, the targeted individuals will be the employees, professionals, senior managers, and executives. In terms of gender, both female and male will be a target. The targeted age of the target customers will range from 20 to 50 years.
Product Positioning
The electric car will be positioned as an advanced technology and affordable car, which is environmentally friendly and promotes family comfort to convince consumers to purchase the product. Its benefits in terms of convenience, extraordinary features, the incomparable, and latest technology will also be communicated to the target audience to shape people's perceptions of the vehicle. Through awareness programs and as an advertising technique, the customers will be educated about the vehicles. They will be convinced to use the cars because of their efficiency, more so in terms of saving the environment from pollution.
Security, Privacy, Ethical and Legal Issues related to the Digital Information World and Marketing
Through marketing, most organizations and companies gain access to a lot of information about their targeted customers. The information is usually organized and stored, mostly on electronic devices like computers, for future reference. Although customer information is usually crucial and requires maximum protection, electronic data on computers are usually vulnerable to theft by hackers. If critical customer data is stolen from organizations, individuals can put it to negative use, causing security issues for the targeted firm ( Moon & Kamakura, 2017 ). Some of the security issues likely to emerge in such scenarios are phishing attacks, viruses, malware, brute force, and botnet attacks.
The privacy issue stands out as the number one most experienced problem in the digital information and marketing world. Although different measures have been put in place to improve online privacy, hackers and cybercriminals always find a way to violate other people's privacy. Some of the advancements in information technology have also threatened online privacy by minimizing the control level that a person can exercise over personal data. Therefore, the technology has created a platform for the possibility of several adverse consequences as a result of illegal and unauthorized access to individuals' data.
Some of the information about customers that companies gain through digital marketing are phone numbers, emails, and home addresses. In most instances, clients are asked by companies to provide information that will help determine customer preferences, communication channels, and delivery locations. Most customers trust companies with their private information, data that organizations become morally responsible for protecting from misuse by online criminals. If a company shares a customer's information without the client's consent, an ethical issue emerges, where the company should be held responsible for a breach of trust ( Ferrell, 2017 ). The organization becomes ethically liable for the misconduct since the shared information can be negatively used to harm a person's identity or expose one to physical harm.
A company sharing the personal information of a client without permission can also lead to legal issues. Sharing a person's data makes the individual vulnerable since the information can harm the owner. For instance, sharing a person's email can create a leeway to online bullying where online bullies harass and threaten the individual by sending hateful emails. Sharing a person's home address exposes an individual to physical criminal attacks like theft and robbery since criminals find it possible to track the person to their homesteads ( Ferrell, 2017 ). Therefore, in such instances, the customer is legally allowed to file a lawsuit against the responsible company, which bears the legal consequences. There is enough evidence of situations where the consequences of such actions were severe on the responsible companies that they had to discontinue their functioning.
References
Feola, R., Vesci, M., Marinato, E., & Parente, R. (2019). Segmenting "digital investors": Evidence from the Italian equity crowdfunding market. Small Business Economics , 1-16.
Ferrell, O. C. (2017). Broadening marketing's contribution to data privacy. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science , 45 (2), 160-163.
Globocnik, D., Faullant, R., & Parastuty, Z. (2020). Bridging strategic planning and business model management–A formal control framework to manage business model portfolios and dynamics. European Management Journal , 38 (2), 231-243.
Hajizadeh, Y. (2019). Machine learning in oil and gas; a SWOT analysis approach. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering , 176 , 661-663.
Moon, S., & Kamakura, W. A. (2017). A picture is worth a thousand words: Translating product reviews into a product positioning map. International Journal of Research in Marketing , 34 (1), 265-285.
