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Marketing Strategy: Media Plan

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Look at the marketing for your favorite department store. Write an analysis describing the media plan it uses and how it achieves the marketing strategy for the store. Discuss what works effectively and what you would do differently. Describe the techniques you would use to benchmark and monitor the media plan. Search for business reports (news items in Forbes, Fortune or other mass media publication) or university case studies that discuss the department store's marketing initiatives for support or additional information about the store. Use specific examples to support your analysis.

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Marketing for department stores is analyzed. The response address the queries posted in 3308 words with references.

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In this paper we will discusses about the 'Role of Media Plan' in implementation of the marketing strategy. We will also understand the use of various strategies used for developing and implementing a media plan for Wal- Mart departmental store under the heading "Introduction".

Introduction

A media plan is an essential component of the marketing strategy of an organization and it has great significance in attaining goals and objectives of the marketing department. A media plan includes the relation between the organization and various media resources. A media plan involves the courses of action for the development of a business by promoting the products of the organization in the market. All kinds of expenses and time duration for the promotion of products and services of an organization are an important part of media plan.

For the preparation of media plan, different strategies can be utilized by an organization. Business organizations utilize different techniques for the benchmarking and monitoring of a media plan. A media plan with an effective benchmarking strategy will assist an organization in attaining expected benefits from the market. A media plan is an effective marketing tool, which assists an organization in increasing the customer base in the target market. The organization selected for the study is Wal-Mart departmental stores.

Wal-Mart is among the world's biggest departmental store chain and it has more than 7,500 departmental stores all over the world (Wal-Mart Stores, 2008). According to the business survey of 2008 Fortune Global 500, Wal-Mart is among the world's biggest public corporation by revenue. It is US based public corporation, which operates its department stores for serving its customers worldwide (Wal-Mart, 2008). Since Wal-Mart has global presence, the organization utilizes market research for decision making regarding the media planning and analyzing market.

Wal-Mart utilizes advance technologies for serving its customers in an effective manner. The company takes into consideration the FMCG products in the departmental stores, which fulfills the basic requirements of the customers. The company offers quality products at affordable prices to the customers for satisfying the customers effectively. The media plan utilized by the company assists it in attracting the customers of a particular geographical region. The company also provides e-shopping facility to the customers, so as to facilitate customers. With the assistance of an effective marketing strategy including a media plan, Wal-Mart has become able to satisfy its customers and become superior to the competitors.

Now, we will discuss the concept of 'Media Planning' and its 'importance' to an organization and its customers. We will also study the various traditional and modern media channels used, along with the media process.

Media Planning

Media planning is the process of developing a step by step course of action that defines the proper usage of advertising space and time. Media planning primarily answers the question of communicating the message to the customers: how and when the message should be communicated using proper use of any particular or combination of media vehicles. With this, it focuses on communicating the message to the target customers with a proper selection of media channel(s), timing and placement of advertisement.

Media planning is very important for all the organization because today, it is very necessary for the organizations to communicate their message to their existing and prospective customers so that they can maintain their existing market and explore new opportunities. Wal-Mart is also involved in using different kind of media vehicles for its promotional activities (Kotler, 2002). The present era is a marketing era and almost every organization has some planning for its marketing and promotional activities.

Nowadays, there are a number of media options available for the organizations. The traditional media vehicles include radio, television, print media, direct mail, etc. But with the development of non-traditional media channels that include product placement, Internet, in-store advertising, movie advertisements and multimedia kiosks, organizations have got a variety of media channels. But these increased media options have created a challenge of media selection to the organization.

Many organizations, such as Wal-Mart and others, use different types of media for particular customer segment. They have to design and implement an effective media plan that leads the company to transfer their message exactly which they want to communicate to the right target audience. Apart from selecting the media, the price of media also plays an important role and the organization should properly identify the productivity of the selected media.

As it is already mentioned that media planning is a complex procedure, selecting the right offering that would meet the media needs of the company and lead the company towards achieving its goal and objectives is quite important. The process of media planning involves the following steps:

Analysis of Environment: Wal-Mart is a company that analyses the current marketing situation so that it can be able to identify the problems and opportunities that exist in the market and take advantage of it. An adequate analysis of external and internal environment enables Wal-Mart to evaluate its target customer segments, company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats, industrial analysis, ...

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