Marketing Audit
A marketing audit is a comprehensive evaluation of a company's marketing activities, strategies, and performance. It involves analyzing the effectiveness of marketing efforts, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and assessing opportunities and threats in the market. The goal of a marketing audit is to provide insights that can guide future marketing planning and decision-making.
8 Key excerpts on "Marketing Audit"
eBook - ePub- Richard M.S. Wilson(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...An audit is a systematic, critical and unbiased review and appraisal of the environment and of the company’s operations. A Marketing Audit is part of the larger management audit and is concerned (specifically) with the marketing environment and marketing operations. (emphasis in original) What is a Marketing Audit? The Marketing Audit is, in a number of ways, the true starting point for the strategic marketing planning process, since it is through the audit that the strategist arrives at a measure both of environmental opportunities and threats and of the organization’s marketing capability. The thinking that underpins the concept of the audit is therefore straightforward: it is that corporate objectives and strategy can only be developed effectively against the background of a detailed and objective understanding of both corporate capability and environmental opportunity. The audit is, therefore, the process through which the marketing planner identifies and evaluates the organization’s strengths and weaknesses against the background of the market and the opportunities and threats that exist. Having done this, the planner is then in a far stronger position to develop the strategy and decide upon a meaningful market position. Definitions of the audit have also been proposed by a variety of authors, all of whom highlight the need for the audit to be a systematic, critical, and impartial review of the total marketing operation. In essence, therefore, the audit must embrace the marketing environment in which the organization – or the business unit – is operating, together with the objectives, strategies and activities being pursued...
eBook - ePub- Sally Dibb, Lyndon Simkin(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...38: The Marketing Audit Key definitions The Marketing Audit is a systematic examination of the marketing function's objectives, strategies, organization and performance. Key issues The Marketing Audit is not designed to determine a business's market position. That is the function of the marketing plan and marketing analyses. The Marketing Audit is an implementation review process to assess how effectively the marketing department has performed its assigned functions. As with an accounting audit, the Marketing Audit should be performed regularly in order to track progress and to help remedy problems. The Marketing Audit may either focus on only one facet of a business's marketing activity (one campaign, brand or target market segment, for example) or it may be fully comprehensive, instead examining the entire marketing activity of the business. The results of the Marketing Audit can rectify staff and resource deficiencies, re-allocate marketing effort and help in re-examining marketing opportunities. Fundamentally, the Marketing Audit (popularized by US guru Philip Kotler) can assist in keeping marketing on track. The Marketing Audit may be conducted by senior managers, the whole marketing function or by external consultants. All core aspects of the marketing function should be examined. Conceptual overview In the 1970s marketing was still struggling to be widely accepted as a core management discipline. Various US marketing academics produced processes to enable companies to diagnose inherent problems and deficiencies in their marketing. One of the most widely adopted frameworks was Philip Kotler's Marketing Audit. This is primarily designed to review the operations of a marketing department rather than replicate the analyses central to a marketing plan, which does aim to determine a business's standing in its core target markets. The audit can tackle the entire activity of a marketing function or be focused on a single business unit, brand or target market...
eBook - ePubHow to Write a Marketing Plan
Define Your Strategy, Plan Effectively and Reach Your Marketing Goals
- John Westwood(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Kogan Page(Publisher)
...02 Situation analysis – the Marketing Audit The Marketing Audit is a detailed examination of the company’s marketing environment, specific marketing activities and its internal marketing system. In this chapter we will concentrate on the audit of the marketing environment. We will come back in more detail to the marketing mix and the marketing system in later chapters. The audit of the marketing environment This is an examination of the company’s markets, customers, competitors and the overall economic and political environment. It involves marketing research and the collecting of historical data about your company and its products. It is an iterative process. It is only when you start to analyse your own in-house data that you realize which market sectors you need to look at outside and once you look at the external data you may notice applications that are small for your company, but larger in a market context and therefore require further investigation. The audit of marketing activity This is a study of the company’s marketing mix – product, price, promotion and place. The audit of the marketing system This involves looking at the current structure of the marketing organization together with its systems. The marketing environment – market research At the same time that you consider historical sales data for your company, you need to collect information that will allow it to be put into perspective. This involves market research – collecting information about your markets and then analysing it in the context of the marketing of the products. Market research is used to: give a description of the market; monitor how the market changes; decide on actions to be taken by a company and evaluate the results of these actions. Market research data consists of primary data and secondary data. Primary data is data obtained from primary sources, ie directly in the marketplace...
- William Winston(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 4 Performing a Marketing Audit of the Health Organization's Environment INTRODUCTION TO Marketing AuditING Developing a Marketing Audit is similar to performing an environmental analysis, situational analysis, or marketing research. It is the collection of information about the health organization's external and internal environment. There are six main purposes for developing a Marketing Audit: 1. To collect general background information about the organization, its competitors, and its marketplace; 2. To identify key trends occurring in the external or internal environment; 3. To identify main strengths and weaknesses of the organization and its competitors; 4. To identify potential market opportunities for the organization to pursue and risks to avoid; 5. To provide a base from which to identify market segments and targets for the organization to potentially market to with a select and individualized marketing program; and 6. To provide a base from which to better understand the needs and behavior of the health consumer. The marketing missions, goals, and objectives decided upon in the prior steps of the marketing plan provide a guideline to the types of data which require collection. The Marketing Audit has to be consistent with the missions, goals, and objectives of the plan. For example, if the main thrust of the plan is to recruit physicians to the staff, the Marketing Audit information will be related to this particular requirement. This consistency is important because marketing research data typically becomes overwhelming. Usually excessive information is collected. Marketing and health administration education tends to instruct excellent data collection and surveying techniques but emphasizes an excess of data collection...
eBook - ePub- Colin Gilligan, Robin Lowe(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...It is this which, therefore, represents the real rationale for this chapter. The components of the audit The Marketing Audit involves looking in detail at six areas: The environment: how are environmental forces developing currently and how are they likely to change in the short-term and the long-term? The practice strategy: how well formulated are the objectives and the strategy and how well suited are they to the current and future environments? The organization: how capable is the practice of implementing any action plans that are developed? The systems: how appropriate and effective are the practice’s systems for planning and control? Productivity: how cost-effective are the different areas of the practice? Facilities and resources: how well suited are the practice’s facilities to what you are trying to achieve? Quite deliberately, the audit that we discuss here is not all embracing, but is instead designed to encourage you to think about specific aspects of the practice. Supplementary questions can therefore be added to make it more directly relevant to an individual practice. In working your way through the six sections above, you should therefore continually pose two fundamental questions: What are the implications of my answer for the practice? What are we/am I going to do about these implications? For the results of the audit to be worthwhile, a few simple rules need to be kept in mind, including: The process must be comprehensive and cover all parts of the practice rather than just a few known trouble spots; It must be systematic and follow an orderly sequence of steps; It must be independent and not influenced by personal feelings, relationships or preconceived notions. Who should conduct the audit? Of the several options open to you, the first, which is also the cheapest and often the fastest, involves the practice manager taking on the responsibility for conducting the audit...
eBook - ePubMarketing Plans for Services
A Complete Guide
- Malcolm McDonald, Pennie Frow, Adrian Payne(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
...To find answers to the external factors might result in the company using external market researchers. In some cases, the professionalism and unbiased viewpoint they bring ensures that the information they provide is superior to what might be gathered by the company’s own staff. When a Marketing Audit is undertaken by internal staff it is useful to have some guidelines, by way of example, to guide the audit process. As an example, a fairly comprehensive Marketing Audit checklist is shown in Figure 7.15. Figure 7.15 Marketing Audit checklist for services (expanded) Different service organizations from different service sectors will need to develop different guidelines and checklists appropriate to their own businesses. A list of key audit questions developed by an accounting firm is provided in Figure 7.16, as a contrast to the more general list in Figure 7.15. Figure 7.16 Marketing Audit checklist for an accounting firm Those wishing to review more detailed checklists are referred to Wilson. 8 Those interested in reading further on the Marketing Audit process should see McDonald and Leppard, and Parmerlee. 9 When the Marketing Audit is completed, it is possible to move on to the next stage of the planning process. Step 4 SWOT analyses If the previous stage could be likened to providing all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the SWOT analysis takes these and tries to make a picture which makes sense to all those within the company. The SWOT analysis is one of the most critical stages in marketing planning It must be stressed here that it is only the SWOT analyses that actually appear in the strategic marketing plan itself. This section is, therefore, extremely important and should be read in conjunction with Figure 4.5 in Chapter 4. These analyses should highlight internal differential strengths and weaknesses vis-à-vis competitors, together with key external opportunities and threats. A summary of reasons for good and bad performance should be included...
eBook - ePubMarketing Your Business
A Guide to Developing a Strategic Marketing Plan
- Robert E Stevens, David L Loudon, Ronald A Nykiel(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The complete Marketing Audit should be targeted at three major areas and multiple focal points within each of these three areas (see Exhibit 19.1). Exhibit 19.1 The Complete Marketing Audit Areas “Looking Ahead,” or the environmental analysis, is the part of the Marketing Audit that focuses on the macroenvironment and the task environment. Both of these areas are external in nature and provide the overall parameters of the environment in which the marketing effort takes place and will take place. The macroenvironment focal points encompass demographic, economic, environmental, technological, political, and cultural trends, which have a direct impact on current and planned (future) marketing activities (see Exhibit 19.2)...
eBook - ePub- Colin Gilligan, Robin Lowe, Peter Cattee(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...7 Using the Marketing Audit and the marketing effectiveness review to assess the true level of the pharmacy’s capability: revisiting your strengths and weaknesses Having read this chapter, you should: understand the nature and role of the Marketing Audit be aware of the audit’s components understand how to conduct a Marketing Audit. One of the biggest and most common problems faced by organizations, regardless of their type or size, is that plans all too often fail to come to fruition. There are several explanations for this, the most common being that the objectives set are too ambitious, too little thought is given to the activities needed to achieve the plan, and, faced with day-to-day pressures, staff lose sight of what they are trying to achieve. Because of this, and as we pointed out in Chapter 6, effective marketing planning must be based upon a clear statement of realistic objectives and a detailed understanding of what the pharmacy is really capable of achieving. Although there are several ways in which the pharmacy’s capability can be measured, one of the most useful and straightforward tools for this is the Marketing Audit, which requires you to focus upon a series of dimensions, such as the pharmacy’s strategy, its systems, the levels of productivity, and so on, with a view to identifying the real detail of the pharmacy’s strengths and weaknesses. The audit can then be taken a step further by conducting a review of marketing effectiveness (a framework for this appears in Box 7.2). Although the idea of looking at the pharmacy’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats was raised in Chapters 4 and 6, our experience has shown that professionals often produce better and more tightly focused SWOT analyses if they are faced with a framework of questions, rather than having to generate them themselves...
