Principles of marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Principles of marketing - Essay Example Goal setting phase sets the overall goals of the business. It requires outlining a mission and corporate objectives for the business (Egan & Thomas 2012). Newham College has a mission ?to expand and improve lifelong learning? (Newham 2007). To achieve this mission, Newham believes in ‘open access provision, relevant to the diverse range of needs in its local communities’ (Newham 2007). Its corporate goals include continuous capital investment to increase facilities for learning and enhance access to education. Over the last ten years it has invested ?15 million capital (Newham 2007)  to meet its goals directing its way towards mission attainment.   Situation review follows the goal setting phase. McDonald (2008) explained that the situation review is a sort of market analysis in which marketing audit needs to be performed, SWOT analysis is to be conducted and key assumptions are to be outlined. Jobber (2004) described five steps in completing a marketing audit as def ining the market, determining performance differentials, knowing the competitors, competitor analysis, and designing a strategic planning structure. Defining the market requires target market identification and segmentation to ease positioning. Pride and Ferrell (2008) regarded target market selection as one of the major areas in developing a marketing strategy. Initially, Newham College will target those secondary schools within 2 miles of Stratford, Inner London that have high or medium suitability. Appendix – II shares the list of schools in and around Stratford that form suitable target market for Newham College; the list is prepared based on the data made available by Guardian (2013) showing the data supplied by Department for Education 2010-13. The list shares number of pupils in the school, their gender, their age group, location of the school and its suitability as the target. Criterion for suitability is set to be the number of students regardless of the gender; the more the number of students in the school the more suitable it will be regarded as a target market as more number of students can be approached in a single go. Looking at the specifications of this target market positioning of Newham College can be decided and it should be more lively and career-oriented in which students do find a reason to study; SWOT analysis will further elaborate on which strengths Newham can focus on to get maximum enrolments from local schools. Next step in marketing audit is to determine the performance differentials; Botten (2009) explained that this step requires identifying submarkets offering entry point for the firm. For Newham those schools identified in Appendix-II list that have low suitability may offer subsector where Newham can position its products. Nonetheless the positioning will be based on the same points that are discussed later in the SWOT. Third and fourth step in marketing audit is ‘knowing the competitors’ and ‘competi tor’s analysis’. Competition in Stratford area is high when we see the number of colleges available for the students for further education because all the colleges are striving for the same students. There are colleges such as Whitechapel College, The Building Crafts College, University of East London, Interlink College of Technology, NewVic – Newham Sixth Form College, Tower Hamlets College, and Stratford-upon-Avon College. Now based on the courses offered by these colleges some