Marketing Essay

On balance I feel that the marketing director of Solero should use the marketing model as a tool in deciding how to respond to the recent fall in sales as the many benefits far out way the few consequences, also most of the consequences wouldn’t be a problem if the marketing model was performed to a high standard and all stages were done properly and with relevant care.
The success does inevitably depend upon whether the consumer buying public are still in a position to be won back over or have they found a new ice cream that meets their needs better than Solero does, if this is the case then almost all of what Solero do in a marketing sense will be ignored as the people they are trying to win over have already moved on.
Also if Solero did win the customers back that they lost to other competitors, through the use of clever advertising the customers they have would be ones that are not repeat buyers but people who buy what they last saw on the TV, this would make it very hard for Solero to draw up any forecasts as a close competitor could launch a massive advertising campaign a week after and take all the buyers.

Another future problem could be in the fact that the marketing director, the man who will be controlling the operation has obviously never contemplated using the Marketing model so therefore will not be capable of using it to head a huge advertising campaign for a major UK brand for his first attempt. This could easily be avoided though by employing an expert in the field to come in to start the ball rolling and teach the people around him the finer details of the process so that next time they will be able to do it all themselves.
This does have a draw back though as when the expert is in employment the Marketing Director will also be so 2 salaries will be paid for one job, and it may not be a short time as with the testing and forming of hypothesises and reviewing it could be a long time before he leaves which could leave Solero with barely enough to put it into action when it’s finished.
Something which could also present a problem is the competitive nature of the market with every company fighting for every % of market share, the other companies are diversifying into different sectors like ‘take home’ and ‘scooping and soft mix’ this isn’t just a good move because the impulse market is currently shrinking by over 1/2 a million a year and the take home is growing an average of 1 million a year.
It is also a good move because as they move into different markets and stay in the ones they were in they increasing the awareness of their product so if a mum sees Magnum in the supermarket and gets it then when she goes into the newsagents for milk she may show a preference to Magnum as she knows it’s good, it’s not a risk she’s seen it in a big supermarket.
It also means that fans of a particular ice cream can go into any type of shop and buy it. To combat this Solero would have to do the same thing and make a move into the take home market although this could prove difficult as with new packaging, possibly a changed product as well as new distribution cost the start up cost may be to high for Solero at this point in time.
The final thing that may cause problems to their plans is the weather, if at the time when they release their advertising campaign to the public it rains solidly for 3 weeks sales will fall no matter how good the campaign especially as they are in the impulse sector of the ice cream market, perhaps if they were in the take home the sales figures wouldn’t show as much of a change.
On the other hand if when the campaign comes out its 3 weeks of record breaking temperatures sales would be likely to soar and possibly continue through the not so good weather as people remember sitting down having a Solero in the blissful sunshine and feel that getting a Solero will bring it all back. This could be planned quite accurately as weather forecasting is a very precise business so Solero could just find out when the next good spell of weather is and do it then. They could even release it at different times throughout the UK to time it with the weather to save the costs of TV advertising when no ones going to listen.