The Marketing Plan Task:

SPAR International is expanding rapidly in the Omani market and aims to build on its established reputation of ‘customer service excellence’.First launched in 2014, SPAR Supermarket at present has more than 22 stores across Oman. According to the CEO of SPAR international, “SPAR’s success story in Oman has been possible because of customers’ acceptance, which has been driven by the four core values of freshness, choice, value and excellent customer service”. In 2016, SPAR Oman opened its 10th SPAR Supermarket, which saw the brand entering Madinat Darsait for the first time. SPAR, Oman is keen on expanding its sales and achieving market growth.

As a Marketing Consultant, you have been approached by the CEO of the SPAR (Oman) to develop a Marketing Plan which will enable the company to achieve even better customer satisfaction and increase in sales over the next three years. Your focus should be on SPAR Supermarkets.

Note that you are expected to conduct further research on SPAR, Oman.

The Marketing Plan must include the following:

• Executive Summary
• Introduction and objectives – Your introduction should include relevant background information on SPAR, Oman
• Current market and company situational analysis, including the competition (apply Porter’s Five Forces model, and provide a comparative analysis of the competitors), consumer behaviour, SWOT and/or PEST analyses.
• Market Segmentation– this should emanate from your market situational analysis. You must identify current and possibly new market segments for SPAR, Oman
• Marketing Plan Objectives – must be specific and realistic. Apply the SMART Rule.
• Marketing mix strategy recommendations-Note that you will need to recommend your marketing mix strategy for SPAR, Oman. Your recommendations should stem from the market and company situational analysis. Your strategy recommendations must be relevant to the segments identified in your market situational analysis. Don’t just repeat the current strategies employed by SPAR, Oman. You are also expected to use relevant strategic marketing planning tools to inform your recommendations.
• Evaluation and Control – how would the plan be monitored? What tools would you employ? Consider the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
• Budget– provide a costing for each of your marketing mix strategy. The costing should be based on research. Hence, a brief explanation or justification of the figures provided in your budget.

Additional Guidance on the Marketing Plan Report

• Objectives – objectives need to be SMART but it is unnecessary to explain in detail how smart they are.
• The balance between market analysis and the actual planning/actions– ensure that your submissions are balanced with regards to analysis and planning. For example, do not use a lot of space summarising the analysis, at the expense of setting objectives and planning objective-specific marketing strategies and tactics.
• Vagueness – planning needs to be very specific; stating that you will use ‘social media’ for promotion because it is the ‘most efficient tool’ is not enough. You need to explain the social media tool (s) – what they are, why you are using them and how you would use them.
• Academic content – expected to apply models, and not just describe or define them. For example, the SWOT or PEST need to apply them and not describe them.
• Executive summary – an executive summary should be written in a way that allows the executive who reads it to have a good overview of the objectives, structure, indicative content, key findings and recommendations of your marketing plan. Essentially, it is a summary of your marketing plan.
• Secondary data use – Analysis should be supported with secondary data (from the literature). Should demonstrate wider reading and acknowledge the sources of the information, both in the main body and in bibliography. Avoid making very bold but not substantiated statements, such as ‘the only customer-oriented supermarket’ in Oman’ or ‘massive campaign’ or ‘massive customer segment’. Give numbers if you think the segment is large and compare it to other segments to give an idea of the size of it. Worth noting that your product offerings must relate to your chosen segments.
• Presentation and structure – to achieve an excellent grade, your presentation needs to be immaculate – this includes numbering tables, referencing correctly etc. Do not present a lot of data and information in tables as appendices. Data or statistics that refer directly to your discussion in the main body, should be presented in the main body. Tables and figures – tables and figures need to be numbered and each should have a title that is self-explanatory. Your analytical content must be high, demonstrating critical thinking and the ability to apply relevant marketing concepts.

*** Words count = 1600 words

*** In-Text Citations and References using Harvard style.

*** An attachment has been uploaded named “SPAR in Oman”