American College of Technology

Group Project Work on Marketing Management Course

For MBA Students
Instruction: Perform the following questions as per each question instruction
and follow-standard paper writing format.
1. Assess the marketing philosophy of commercial bank of Ethiopia. Which of the philosophy
discussed, do you think, is adopted by the bank. Substitute your arguments with clear
evidence. What should the company do to appeal to the customers? (10pts)

A marketing philosophy is a foundational idea that becomes a part of all of the work that a
marketing department accomplishes for a company or organization. In general terms, most
marketing philosophies center on finding new customers to view their products and services,
so a marketing department or firm aims toward that end.

A marketing philosophy defines the mission of a company using the satisfaction and benefits
that using that company offers; it focuses on a two-way system of communication with the
customer, so that the marketing department understands the customer needs more clearly.
Even though short-term sales increases are helpful, a marketing philosophy looks both at
changes for today as well as changes down the road.

Five elements are crucial to every successful marketing philosophy: the product concept,
production concept, marketing concept, selling concept and societal marketing concept. The
product concept asserts that clients prefer a particular service or product when it is clearly
superior to the competition. Production concept claims that sales increase when distribution
and production capacity increases. The selling concept centers on the fact that no one is
going to buy a product from a company that lacks the commitment to market it. The
marketing concept includes the idea that organizational goals have to center around the needs
and wants of the target niche. The selling concept starts with production and ends with profit.
In total, a solid marketing philosophy starts with a clearly defined market for a product and
ends when a long-term connection exists between the company and the customers.

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 Marketing concept is a kind of producing or giving service based on the customers need and
want. Therefore, commercial bank of Ethiopia uses marketing concept because of:
 Customers of commercial bank of Ethiopia need a quality service, therefor the bank
continually work on better hospitability and speed for the customers. For example- loan and
foreign currency process. The bank tries to serve the customer with in a shorter period of
time and document all the process appropriately.
 Based on the customers comment the bank also open new branches to make service available
to all customers and further more use different kind of technologies. Like ATM, mobile
banking and so on.
 To maximize the size of its customers, providing different promotional systems like women
saving, younger saving and children savings are some of the methods.
2. Identify and briefly describe four trends in the macro/ market environment that will have or
recently had an influence on the selected industry. For each of the trends you have to: (15pts)
A) Briefly explain the trend
B) Describe the impact of the trend on the industry
C) Highlight the implication that the trend has on the marketers in the chosen industry.

Macro-Environment
The macro-environment refers to all forces that are part of the larger society and affect the
micro-environment. It includes concepts such as demography, economy, natural forces,
technology, politics, and culture.
Typical Groups for Macro Trends
Demographics - population groups, life spans, family composition, disposable incomes
Economics - capital, business processes, productivity, work patterns, management
Environment - raw resources, ecosystems, transportation channels, habitat
Government - world events, politics, laws, public and economic policy, regulation
Society - lifestyles, values, religion, leisure, culture, education, public-health
Technology - innovations, scientific discoveries, economies of scale, production and project
management tools
For this question WA Edible Oil Factory taken. There are many macro environmental
factors which affect WA edible oil factory positively or negatively. Among the factors which
affect positively:-

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a. Population size

As the organization is planted in Ethiopia it becomes beneficial for hiring employees by a cheap
cost. Therefor the organization hire trained employees whom graduated from universities and
colleges. After the organization hires then trend them within the organization by senior
employees without encoring training cost. They practically trend daily, until they become
matured. Therefore this kind of train makes the organization successful and profitable. If the
population size s large we can easily sale large volumes of the product.

Among the factors which affect negatively

a) Natural factor

The natural environment involves the natural resources that are needed as inputs by marketers or
they are affected by marketing activities. Marketers should be aware of several trends in the
natural environment. Raw materials /manufactured product like sesame and nug (“ሰሊጥ” “ኑግ”)
are not available. The factor for lack of availability is, by their nature from huge production we
can find a low amount of useful manufactured product for production purpose most of them are
waste. Because of this scarce resource the organization tries to purchase continually whenever
the row materials available, to accumulate in the warehouse for making the edible oil available to
the customers. Cost of the scarce resources become increase from time to time this also has
negative impact.

b) Government policy

The government gives the opportunity for edible oil importers free from any kind of importing
tax. Therefor after they import the product they sell it with a low cost than the domestic
producers. Therefore the government policy affect WA edible oil factory. Because of this the
organization use to compute with those competitors by a product concept, which means
computing by a better quality than their product. Most of the competitors product melted
(“ይረጋል”) these affect users health. Because of this loyal customers and most of new customers
whom hear the organizations product quality use WA edible oil factories product.

c) Technological factor

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 The technological environment is perhaps the most dramatic forces now shopping own destiny.
Technological environment involves forces that create new technologist creating new product
and marketing opportunities. As we know technologies are daily improved in the world.
Therefore it makes difficult for the organization improved its technology continuously because
of capital.

3. Assume you are producing and selling Ethiopian cultural clothes. Customers complain the
lack of creativity and quality in your product. (15pts)
a) Explain how you segment, target the market and position the product.
b) Develop the marketing mix strategies (include product, pricing, place, and promotion
strategy)
A. Explain how you segment, target the market and position the product.
A company that decides to operate in a broad market recognizes that it normally cannot serve
all customers in that market. The customers are too numerous and diverse in their buying
requirements. Instead of competing everywhere, the company needs to identify the market
segments that it can serve most effectively.
To choose its markets and serve them well, many companies are embracing target market. In
target marketing, sellers distinguish major market segments, target one or more of those
segments, and develop products and marketing programs tailored to each segment. Instead of
scattering their marketing effort they can focus on the buyers whom they have the greatest
chance of satisfying. Therefore, in order to achieve their objective marketers are required to
take three major steps (see from the following figure).

Market Segmentation Market Targeting Market Positioning

1. Identify segmentation 5. Identify possible positioning

variables and segment the 3. Evaluate the attractiveness of concepts for each target segment.
market. each segment. 6. Select, develop and
2. Develop profiles of resulting 4. Select the target segment(s) communicate the chosen
segments. positioning concept.

Steps in market segmentation, Targeting and positioning

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a) Market segmentation: - dividing a market in to distinct groups of buyers with different needs,
characteristics or behavior who might require separate products or marketing mixes.
b) Market targeting: - is the process of evaluating each market segment’s attractiveness and selecting
one or more segments to enter.
c) Market positioning: - is formulating competitive positioning for a product and a detailed marketing
mix.
Segmentation involves finding out what kinds of consumers with different needs exist. When
the customers rise complain about my product. First I will think about three major things.
Those are my customers, my competitors and internal production system.

About the customers

First I make a deep research about my customers for answering the question.

 Who can be my customers mostly?

 Where do they live?
 What type of style they are interested for?
 What do they expect from my product?
 When do they use my product?
 By what price they are willing to buy?
 What kind of additional thing satisfy my customers and increase the size of the customer?
And so on.
After I can understand and answer the questions it is easy for my firm to communicate with the
customers.
The second thing which I have to answer is that about my competitors.

 What makes my competitors product differ from my products?

 What kind of resources they are using if there is a different one?
 How do they communicate with their customers?
 What kind of complains raise about their product?
 What kind of mechanisms they use to produce their product different from mine? And so
on I ask and try to get the answers which give me strength to compute by knowing my

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 competitors SWOT. This makes my way easy for satisfy my customers better than
competitors as well as shifting their customers to my product.

The third one I have to answer my organizations SWOT and answer until when the customers are
making complain about my product.

To explain it briefly, knowing my strength and opportunity it makes me to keep up doing a

better job and can try to cover/ready to eliminate my weakness and treat side.

And the other core thing to answer is that until when my customers are making complain about
my product quality answering this gives me something to take a measure. For example – before
the customers complain about my product quality who were my row material supplier or eels
what changes appear on the row materials by the supplier answering this question may give why
lack of quality appears? Because of the row materials if it is or eels looking the manufacturing
system difference before and now. It may also make a change about the product quality.
After I understand and answer the questions it becomes easy to segment, target and position the
product on the market.
I can segment the customers based on geographic variables, demographic variables, and
psychographic variables and so on.
After I segment the customers then I move to targeting
Targeting the customers- which segment has a high size of demand for Ethiopian cultural cloths.
 How many competitors are computing on that target market and what is their SWOT?
 Do I have a better opportunity and strength than competitors?
 Am I able to communicating with the segment?
After all I start to position by improving the quality and creativity as my customers want and
compute by cost leadership or differentiation and continue follow up the customers comment and
then I will take a position on the customers mind and trust.
B. A marketing strategy is the strategy; a company employs to market its products or services.
Each company’s marketing strategy is unique to the company and should be tailored to the
company’s clientele for optimum results.

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Answering all the questions asked on the above gives an opportunity to use marketing mix at an
easy way. This means all the answers we have already collected from the customers lead as to
use which marketing mix can be possible, let say
Product - what kind of product, at what quality, at what color, design, style, size and so on
makes my customer satisfy and then produce as the customer want.
Price – at what price do the customers expect to buy my product and how can I maximize my
profit by satisfying my customers. Where can I find quality row materials at minimum cost for
price minimization?
Place – where can I find potential customers and how can I reach there. How can my product be
available for my customers?
Promotion – after I am sure about my product that can satisfy my customer, then I used different
type of promotions. Like
 Personal selling.
 I used different festivals to promote my product. Like, exhibition
 I am going to make a relation with some of décor artists. When they need décor by
Ethiopian cultural closes to make them choose my product.
 I make a relation with those who works tourism to make the tourists come and visit my
product.
 I give some of my products for famous people to advertise my product on Medias.

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