INTRODUCTION
Hospitality marketing essentials can be considered as those requirements which business industries needed in order to promote products and services in market. Marketing technique is generally adopted to achieve the main objective of the organisation i.e. maximum profit generation and can be achieved by influencing the purchasing power of consumers. This study will be based on the marketing strategies of different hospitality enterprises in order to improve the overall performance for attainment of overall objectives. This report will focus in describing the interrelationship of different functional unit's effect on the marketing policies of company. The study will mainly focus towards the function of McDonald's and KFC which influence the large number of people by their marketing strategies. It will also determine the optimum utilisation of marketing mix elements that can be helpful in achieving the overall goal. The report will also provide a marketing plan of Travelogue for the successful growth and development of hospitality industries.
LO1
P1 Roles and responsibilities of marketing function within hospitality industries
McDonald's is a widely accepted brand which is an American Fast food company that deals with wide variety of Eatables such as burger French fries, beverages etc. Its headquarters are mainly located at United states, Chicago, Illinois etc. This company has achieved its positions in the world which provides employment to almost 1.9 million people across the different regions of the world. Marketing can be referred as one of the powerful key element which plays important role in maximising the overall sales of the products and services (Roos and Pike, 2018). It might adopt different functions which help in promoting the commodity to the large number of people. McDonald's generally adopts various promotional techniques to influence the taste and making strong relationship with the customers by satisfying their needs. Marketing may performed by adopting various methods or functions such as Advertising, promotional campaigns, hoardings, newspaper, television etc.
Marketing in McDonald's plays an important role in embracing the customer relationship with the organisation which involve various tasks such as brand, publicity and a strong interaction with consumers in order to collect the feedback etc (Dzhandzhugazova And et.al., 2016). All these marketing functions are implemented in the company using different techniques such executions of different functionalities in the organisation i.e. described below in a given table:
Roles and responsibilities of different units |
Execution of different functions in McDonald's |
Managing brand and its positioning |
McDonald's adopts customer friendly branding strategy which helps company to establish a great connection with public in order to increase the sales of the firm. This influences the mind of the people and maximises the purchasing power of the consumer (Dopson and Hayes, 2016). For example, nowadays McDonald's promote its products by adopting the concept of 50 pricing policy. This avails the burgers in just $50 which attracts large number of customers. |
Marketing initiatives and planning |
This organisation generally plans to promote its services through various methods. Roles and responsibilities of effective team members help in achieving the main objectives of the company so this company adopts cost effective strategy. This firm provides the quality of services to people so management never compromises its manufacturing and production department with quality of goods and services. If managers plan to develop a new product then key area of their focus never get distracted from the important element which links customers to the McDonald's organisation. |
Conducting customers and market research |
Innovative ideas and marketing research helps in implementing the strategies to achieve business goals. Operational functions can be executed by the effective efforts of employees and proper availability of resources help in developing the customer demanded products. This research can be done by knowing the preferences of the people living in a particular region. Planning the tastes and preference of products according to requirement of consumers leads to customer satisfaction and thus it maximises the sales of the commodity (Pike, 2015). |
Monitor competition |
For any popular organisation, it is very important to analyse the competitor's firm in the area which helps the managers in developing the products accordingly. McDonald's usually promotes its services to the targetted audience in order to attract large number of people but in this, highly competitive world, it is hard to differentiate same type of products with other companies. In order to increase the brand value, company adopts various techniques like participation in charity and cultural programmes, contribution in corporate social responsibilities etc. |
Inter-relationship of the roles and responsibilities of marketing in terms of marketing environment
Roles and responsibilities of different functional areas of McDonald's includes various factors such as marketing department, sales team, customer service, innovation and product development. Management and operation department of the company have to consider environment factors which are depended on locations and places of industry.
For instance, development and innovation of a new product in the company directly impacts on the main objectives of the McDonald's which is profit generation (Brown, 2017). Before the company plans a new product or innovative concept so along with its benefits, risk factor also need to be critically analysed. Managers have to also consider negative sides of the newly designed product as various risk is involved such as customer satisfaction, design and taste of product, prices etc.
Marketing and sales can be considered as source which helps in exploring and understanding the requirements of the customer and this analysis results in the introduction of new product in market. So concerning these factors, responsibilities and roles of the several functions are interrelated with environment of the market. If sales and promotion team can be able to perform its effective responsibilities then it directly impacts on the sales target of the McDonald's (Wood, 2018). Environmental factors such as technology, political environment and legal factors affect the marketing functions. If tax policy of the country rises then it may effects the cost of the product and due to alteration in prices of the commodity, it will be not possible to sustain the customer for longer run.
P2 Relation of marketing roles and responsibilities in a wider business context
McDonald's is one of the popular hospitality industry among different regions of world and main outlets of this company is available at different places. At broad level, organisation is distributed in various different parts of the world such as various states of United nations, Asia Africa, America etc. so the McDonald's corporation is situated in different areas with multiple segments consists of different departments. These departments are then further divided into various team to perform roles and responsibilities of a particular task (Guilding, 2014). In order to deliver effective marketing strategy, one needs to consider different units. These units are categorised into sub-departments such as marketing, sales and production departments. For achieving the effective strategies, market research need to be carefully analysed. Formulation of roles and responsibilities of different sectors may be depend on the efforts of labour availability of resources.
Other functional departments may effect the marketing functions of different department such as production sales marketing which comprehensively effects manufacturing of the product in McDonald's may be achieved by analysing the demands of the customer which are generally controlled by sales and marketing departments. It might be depend on the products which are currently available in the recent menu structure of the company as this strategy is also helpful in identifying the main choices and food preferences of public.
Technological division is also considered as one of the important feature which helps in generating and producing the commodities in the firm. Efficiency of the work is completely depended on the technological equipments which company provides in order to perform the operations. Marketing function includes various key elements including planning, research, strategy and tactics development (Bowie and et. al., 2016). Effective involvement of all these element turns the strategies and marketing plan into the maximum sales. Customer relation can also be achieved by providing timely discounts which is inter-related to the other functional department of marketing.
Human resource department of the company helps in selecting the skilled human resources to the company. Functions of HR unit is to manage the efforts of employees so that resources are properly utilised which results in effective productivity. Functions of HR help in achieving the top quality products and which may result in satisfied customer. This can help in achieving the marketing objectives of the company.
Production department can be considered as one of the important unit which helps in operations of the firm that allows the manufacturing or conversion of raw material into finished products. This unit is responsible for production of goods and services which directly impacts the marketing strategies of the company.
Analysing the roles and responsibilities of marketing with its environment
Marketing manager of hospitality industry have to identify the general needs of the customers and this helps them to establish the healthy customer relationship of McDonald's with consumers. Planning of marketing strategies can be considered as the important managerial process which helps in maintaining the balance between resources, efforts of employees and its changing marketing opportunities. Marketing manager analyse different aspects before capturing the appropriate market place. Such tasks are as follows:
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Marketing information system- Managers of McDonald's mainly focus in gathering the information about the requirement of products. Expanses require developing particular product and what benefit does the product provide to company. It help in estimating the appropriate information about marketing.
- Monitoring environment- As this brand is available at various regions so this plays and important role change in the environment can effect marketing strategies of the product. Environmental factors which may get impacted along with the functioning of different units such as technology, social aspects which deals with taste and preferences of the consumer etc.
- Marketing research- This research needs to be performed in order to get the complete information about marketing and competitor firms available in the market (Davis and et. al., 2018).
- Creating customer value, satisfaction and loyalty- This function helps in aiding the customer value in the commodities that helps in customer satisfaction and this will be helpful in generating maximum profits.
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P3 Comparing the different ways in which Hospitality organisation uses different marketing mix elements
In the hospitality organisation, companies are generally adopting different marketing factors which help in achieving the sales target of the company (Diffley, McCole and Carvajal-Trujillo, 2018). In Hospitality industries, promotion of the products and service can be considered as very important aspect which deals with the production and sales of goods and services. Managers mainly focus towards creating awareness among the minds of people inspiring the targeted audience who will be interested enough to purchase the goods and services. Marketing mix plan is developed to achieve the main objectives so below provided table will describe the comparison of different P's of marketing mix between McDonald's and Hilton Hotel . There are 7 p's of the marketing mix which helps in creating the effective marketing strategies for the hospitality organisations. Such are as follows:
Elements |
McDonald's |
Hilton hotel |
Product |
This organisation provides wide variety of eatable products. This company provides various key products such as burgers, fries, soft drink, etc. This company mainly focus in providing the quality based products by availing the facilities of home delivery to consumers and online payment. These facilities are provided to grab the attention of the public towards products and services of McDonald's (Harrington, Ottenbacherand Fauser, 2017). Customer reviews and feedbacks are given huge importance while developing the new products. |
This company offers different services such as taking orders for wedding and banquet facilities, food services in special events and providing the full lounge bookings which avails swimming pool facilities also. Above all of this, core product of Hilton hotel is providing the staying facilities to public in the form of hotel rooms. Recently, the firm have introduced as distribution of mobile phones to business customers (Katou, 2016). This strategies attract large number of customers. |
Price |
Prices of McDonald's are lower as compared to Hilton hotel because it deals with limited variety of products. Prices of MC'd products are generally very from 5 to 10 $ and this is easily affordable by people. This company provides nominal prices goods and services which is in between $1 to $9. |
Hilton Hotel mainly deals with wide concept like booking of restaurants availing the lounge facilities that costs somewhat higher than McDonald's industry. Cost of the rooms and parties are charged at $45 to$50. |
Place |
The company is located in various parts of the world but generally its outlets are situated at many prime locations such as complexes, malls etc. |
Hilton Hotels are also located at worldwide countries which covers the areas of several UK states such as Argentina, Austria, Azerbaijan etc. (Hospitality marketing , 2018). |
Promotion |
This is a global brand which is largely popular among youngsters and even people of all age group. So this company generally adopts different ways of promotion like Television, newspaper, advertisement and social media promotion which gets quick response of customers within a very short time period. |
This company generally promotes its products and services by various different ways. Because the core product of the Hilton hotel is room services so this company generally attracts large businessman's and travellers in order to attract the customers. It uses various promotional campaigns such as hoardings, newspapers etc. |
People |
McDonald's products are available for all age groups people such as children, teenage, youngsters etc. this organisation manages its workforce by providing the proper trainings in order to use high technology equipments for production of goods. |
Hotel is generally preferred by high class people that can be a businessman, travellers etc. organisation focus in organising and managing the skilled labour which produce high quality services to customers such as proper room services which includes proper availability of things to the customers and healthy environment. |
Physical evidence |
It can be referred as lowest payable job which involves lot of skilled labours with less opportunities in this hospitality industry. But services and products which this company provides are generally open to all as these industry uses open kitchen for manufacturing goods and services so people are allowed to see the process of production anytime. It result in the satisfied customers. |
Hilton Hotel provide hospitality services, thus, people are not interested in their production process but notice their service delivery and quality (Ali, Amin and Cobanoglu, 2016). Physical appearance of the products determine presence of Hilton Hotel. This hotel usually provides the products surrounded by its logo which describes written big lettered 'H' along with great ambience. |
Process |
Under this procedure, the procedure of production and distribution of products/service is considered. McDonald's is popular for its transparent and hygiene food production procedure. Organisation also allow their customer to examine the ingredients optimised by McDonald's in food which strengthen their credibility and loyalty. |
Hilton Hotel provide more cleanliness, quick process of deliver services along with delivering advancement in technologies. This vary the preference of consumer as they prefer more conveyance and better services. |
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded from the above study that marketing strategies play an important role in increasing the sales of the product. It has also been clear that attainment of sales target can also helps in obtaining the main goals of the firm. The research has provided a complete understanding about different ways in which hospitality industries uses its marketing mix elements to achieve the main objectives. It has also found that considering seven elements in marketing helps in creating the effective planning which leads to the maximum profit generation in the company. It had also been clear that establishment of different marketing units helped in achieving all operations in McDonald company effectively. It was also discovered that provided a complete understanding about effective strategies of marketing that aimed at generating large profits along with the sustainability and growth of the firm.