Understanding Marketing Objectives

Question 1

What are objectives?

Answer 1

• Goals or targets set by the firm to achieve. Provide focus for decision making and for devising strategy.
• Short term targets with defined measurable achievement.
• Objectives must be definable and quantifiable so that there is an achievable target to aim for.
• Defined in a way that performance can be compared with the objective.

Question 2

What are marketing objectives?

Answer 2

• Goals or targets achieved by the marketing department to achieve overall corporate objectives.
• Marketing objectives are the aims set out for the organisation’s marketing programme.
• Marketing objectives are about products, sales and marketing only.
• Marketing objectives are ant products, sales and marketing only.

Question 3

What is the role of marketing?

Answer 3

“The process of identifying, anticipating, and satisfying customer needs profitably.”

Question 4

What are the roles of marketing objectives?

Answer 4

• Enable a business to control a marketing plan.
• Help motivate individuals.
• To provide a common goal.
• To provide focus for all functions of an organisation.

Question 5

What are marketing objectives and strategy?

Answer 5

• Objectives provide the starting point for marketing plans and marketing strategy.
• Strategy concerns methods devised to achieve the objectives.

Question 6

What determines the success of marketing strategy?

Answer 6

Success of strategy should be evaluated in terms of the extent to which objectives were achieved.

Question 7

Hierarchy of Marketing objectives

Answer 7

Corporate obj
Marketing obj
Marketing strategy
Marketing tactics

Question 8

What is a smart objective?

Answer 8

Specific 
Measurable
Agreed
Realistic
Time related

Question 9

Marketing objectives refer to which specific objectives?

Answer 9

-Sales
-Market share
-Market standing
-Customer satisfaction
-Customer awareness
-Customer retention
-Distribution penetration
-Product launches
-

Question 10

What are some internal influences on marketing objectives?

Answer 10

• Corporate objectives shouldn’t conflict with marketing ones. Corporate objectives are always more important.
• Financial position of the business (profitability, cash flow, liquidity) directly affects the scope and scale of marketing obj’s.
• For a services business in particular, the quality and capacity of the workforce is key.
• Operations enables the business to compete on cost (efficiency/ productivity) and quality. (Also includes effective capacity management).
• Business culture, e.g. marketing orientated business constantly looks for ways to meet customer needs.

Question 11

What are some external influences on marketing objectives?

Answer 11

• Economic environment is the key factor in determining demand. Also exchange rates might impact objectives concerned with international demand.
• Competitor actions
• Market dynamics are market size, growth and segmentation. E.g. A market who’s growth slows is less likely to support an objective of significant revenue growth or new product development.
• Technological change shortens product life cycles and creating opportunities for innovation.
• Social and political change like to legislation may create or prevent making opportunities.