Effective Marketing Strategies for Improved Performance of Manufacturing Company in Aba Metropolis (a Case Study of Lever Brothers Plc, Aba)
Chapter One
OBJECTIVES OF THESTUDY:
Most texts, studies, and write-ups have in the past dwelled solely on the marketing concept and 4ps of marketing with little or no attention given to marketing strategies. As a result of this disregard, this study focuses attention on the following:
- To find out the major causes of poor sales of Lever Brothers products in the market
- To identify, marketing strategies to be used in order to increase the sales and profitability of the
- To determine whether the qualities of different products sold by LBN has helped to increase its
- To determine whether the pricing strategies used by Lever Brothers Plc have helped to increase the sales of its products in the market
- To ascertain whether the chain of distribution strategy adopted by LBN has helped to increase the sales of its
- To find out if the promotional strategies used by LBN have contributed to an increase in the sales of its products in the market
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW:
DEFINITIONS OF MARKETING STRATEGIES:
Suffice it to say that there are many definitions of marketing strategies, below are the various definitions given by some renowned authors: According to KOTLER (1995: 43), marketing strategy is seen as the marketing logic by which the business will hope to achieve its marketing objectives. It consists of specific strategies for target markets, marketing mix and marketing budget.
KOTLER (1997: 223) also sees marketing strategy as a consistent, appropriate, and feasible set of principles through which a particular company hopes to achieve its long run customer satisfaction and profitability objectives in a particular competitive environment.
In the view of ADIRIKA et al (1997: 1) marketing strategy is defined as a set of determination that guides or directs the managers of an enterprise to reach their desired long-term market position.
BERKOWITZ (1990: 49), sees strategy as a management process involving the step taken at an organization’s corporate and divisional levels to develop long-run master plan for survival and growth.
While LUCK (1989: 56) sees marketing strategy as the broad principle or comprehensive plan of action by which the business unit expects to achieve its marketing objectives in a target market. These articulate a plan for the best use of management/organizational resource and tactics to meet its objectives.
ALLVINE (1990: 50-51), sees marketing strategy as a process of setting a firm on a course that offers better opportunities for long-run growth in sales and profits.
IMPORTANCE OF MARKETING STRATEGIES:
ALLVINE (1990: 50) notes that strategic plan is a process of setting a firm on a course that offer better opportunity for long- run
growth in sales and profits. From this definition, one can simply say that marketing strategies enable a firm to prepare itself towards offering better opportunity for its long – run profit making through sales.
Association of Ibadan Polytechnic, in its publication (1989: 10) made an emphasis on the importance of marketing strategies to any existing firm. Some of these are enumerated as follows:
To Increase Sales/Profitability: Marketing strategies have helped to improve sales – profitability of a firm in the sense that mappingout and appropriate strategies for a product in the market will eventually increase the sales of the product and allows the company to generate more profits.
Attracting New Market/Customers from existing Market:
In mapping out an accurate strategies for a product or service, like improving on new packaging system, the quality and quantity and make a profitable target, price will attract a new market or customer to patronize their product from the existing market and create a good direct contact with outside customers.
To maintain a Good Market Share: Marketing strategies help to maintain market share, since the firm has made a good penetration and applying a good marketing concept (identifying the needs and wants of the target market before going into production). This will allow the firm to gain total control of the
To Create Good Image of the Organization: Modern marketing companies are increasingly realizing the need for effective marketing strategies in order to ensure a good corporate image and identity. Marketing strategies help towards creating a good image for an organization in the sense that allowing the customer to know the existence of the company and allowing the company to maintain a mutual relationship with its target
To Satisfy Customers: The motive of any organization is to satisfy their customers. Marketing strategies have help towards customer satisfaction, in the sense of knowing the complaints of their potential buyers towards their product’s existence, price, promotion, and distribution network and making an appropriate strategies towards customer
PROBLEMS OF MARKETING STRATEGIES:
LUCK (1992:56-57) points out that marketing strategies as a broad principle – or comprehensive plan of action by which the business unit expects to achieve its marketing objective in a target market still poses some problems. He went further to mention some of these problems encountered in marketing strategies as:
- Geographical Expansion: In the process of expanding sales by extending the physical activities, it is always the problem of the marketers to select a suitable place for their market, and also encounter the problem of competitors who in one way or the other put off your interest in the mind of the
- Additional Cost: Additional cost incurred in promoting the product might have a great damage for the
- Customer Restriction: Customers are sometimes restricted from buying .for reasons such as cost or price reduction. Company has to be watchful in the process of entering new – market by reducing the price of the products because the customers can take the advantage of that to consider the quality of
- Competitive Activities: This is a major problem of the marketing strategies, because the market entering might be highly competitive and some companies will be producing different adulterated products, which can make a consumer to “have wrong impression about their products and create a bad image for the
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter deals with the design of the study. It looks specifically at the sources of data, population of the study, sample size, and sampling technique, instrument for data collection, questionnaire allocation and administration, method of data treatment and analysis.
SOURCES OF DATA COLLECTION
The researcher .made use of both primary and secondary data. Primary data which are referred to as original data were collected from respondents comprising of consumers, distributors and personnel of Lever Brothers Nigeria PLc.
Secondary data were collected from relevant marketing textbooks, journals, LBN annual report, magazines and libraries.
POPULATION OF THE STUDY
The population .of this study is made up of all the consumers of Lever Brothers Nigeria Plc products in Aba, Abia State. The population constituted the target market for her company’s products.
The researcher also collected data from the distributors and relevant staff in marketing of Lever Brothers Nigeria Plc.
DETERMINATION OF SAMPLE SIZE
It is not possible to study the entire population of potential consumers of Lever Brothers Nigeria Plc as a result of time constraints and other academic commitments. The researcher therefore determined the sample size to be used from the population of potential customers, which is not known. Based on this, the researcher conducted a pilot survey to obtain the rate at which potential customers use the LBN’s products.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA
The research collected useful data from respondents comprising of consumers, distributors, and the company’s personnel to evaluate the effective of marketing strategies for improved performance in a manufacturing company, using Lever Brothers Plc as a case study. The relevant data collected are hereby presented in tables, frequencies and percentages. The statistical technique used in testing the hypothesis is chi-square at 5% level of significance.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION
This research was carried out on effective marketing strategies for improved performance in a manufacturing company in Aba, Abia State using Lever Brother Operations Plc as our case study. Both primary and secondary data were collected by the researcher. The analysis of the data collected and test of the various hypotheses gave the following findings:
SUMMARY OFFINDINGS
3 percent of consumers believe that the quality of Lever Brothers Plc’s product in the market is strategic to its continued success in Nigeria.
5 percent of consumers generally agreed that the prices of LBN’s products are alsomoderate.
Most consumers, given the percentage of 85.8% satisfied with the availability of LBN’s products in the
Personnel of LBN generally agreed that the promotional campaigns used by the company have helped to increase the sales of their products in the
Consumers will continue to buy the company’s products since they are satisfied with both their quality and
Distributors of LBN agreed that their products have been well accepted in the market as a result of the products good
The company’s personnel rating on the performance of their products indicated that they are satisfied with the products performance in line with their
The impact of LBN’s promotional programmes on consumers purchase action has been very good and this has made consumes to continue making repeat-purchase of their products in the market.
About 93.7 percent of the company’s personnel agreed that the channels used by their company have ensured its products availability in the market
The overall marketing strategies adopted by Lever Brothers have helped to increase its products sales and profitability
RECOMMENDATIONS
The researcher made the following recommendations to ensure that the marketing of Lever Brother Nigeria Plc’s will continue to succeed.
- Lever Brothers should continue to maintain its products high quality to ensure continued brand loyalty, consumer patronage, repeat-purchase action and the attraction of new
- The company should engage in periodic market research to add more value to its products and ascertain whether its products performance in the market is up to consumer’s
- In addition, the company should improve more on its overall promotional programmes through the advertising of its products to stimulate consumers through the advertising of its products to stimulate consumers buying action and create more awareness, sales promotion thereby increasing its products sales above its existing level. Personal selling should be employed to counter consumers’ cognitive dissonance, and public relations/publicity used to create good image and public
- The company should also set-up a body that will keep on monitoring its competitive environment and will continue to give feedback information that will enable the management to deal with its weakness and threats and use its strengths to reap available
- The company should continue to motivate its distribution as well as ensuring that they always stock its products so that consumers demand will be
- Having observed that the overall marketing strategies adopted by LBNhave helped to increase its products sales and profitability, more effort should be geared towards maintaining this level of performance to ensure the company’s growth and survival.
CONCLUSION
Lever Brothers products are some of the leading products in Aba, Abia State and are doing well in the market. The effective marketing strategies used by the company have made a great impact on the success of their products. The research findings indicated that consumers will continue to buy these products as a result of their good quality and moderate prices. The company should endeavour to adopt efficient and effective marketing strategies to ensure that the successes of their products are maintained.
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