Full case study in Jobber, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2012)Principles

Full in Jobber, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2012)Principles and Practice of Marketing(7thed). London, McGraw-Hil - Case Study Example This would reveal the extent to which the company followed the formal process of marketing planning. Dixons was a product oriented company when it stated its journey in electrical retail segment. Their followed the strategy â€Å"stack-em high – sell-em cheap in brightly coloured stores.† This strategy validated the fact that Dixons focused more towards selling good product in well-designed stores, but customer satisfaction was overlooked and it did not occupy centre position in the strategic approach of the company. A general formal marketing planning process is segregated into four parts that is goal setting, analysing present situations, create marketing strategies and allocate the marketing monitoring system and resources. In the goal setting segment companies set their mission and objectives. Dixons also established its mission to stock products and sell them in brightly coloured stores. Their objective was to offer variety of products and generate lucrative return s. However, the company missed customer service, which its competitors took advantage of. So it can be said that Dixons followed the first step of marketing planning process. The second step is to analyse current situation. The company came to know about its drawbacks during the economic crisis in 2006. It identified that there were major threats of recession in the global market and its competitors Best Buy started grabbing market share by providing better services to customers. At this juncture, Dixons revolutionised its move towards customers. This proves that the company followed the second step of marketing planning process too. The third step is to create marketing strategies, which Dixons rolled out in order to face the intense competition. It can be also called a transformation strategy of the company because it changed the focus of the company from being product oriented to customer oriented. The new business model also re-defined five specific objectives for the company. T he fourth and final stage was to allocate resources and monitor the plan. The major focus was now on after-sales and support and customer choice, value and service was the major function in the new business model. This discussion proves how Dixons followed and applied marketing planning process for devising the strategies (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Answer 2 Business functions are those operations that are performed in a routine manner to achieve the business objectives of the organisation. In retail chains like Dixons, there are various business functions that they perform such as selling, which include sales, marketing, distribution or logistics, research and development. In supporting functions, activities like purchasing, human resource management, etc are performed. However, these are the internal functions, while the external business function in relation to these functions are advertising, market research, recruitment among others. In this part of the report will throw light on the business functions that supported the marketing plan of Dixons to become a success (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Before the transformation strategy came into existence, Dixons specifically focused on distribution, supply, purchase and sales. However, after implementing the transformation strategy marketing strategies were enhanced and objectives were altered to develop competitive advantage. According to the new business