MARKETING AUDIT

Marketing Auditing

[Name of the institute]

Assignment One

Internal and External Marketing Auditing

Introduction

Today is the era of the latest technology and innovation. In this age, only those companies survive that are constantly thrive on innovative products and able to devise marketing policies and strategies that possess the capacity to attract customers and appeal to them in a powerful way. Devising marketing strategies and promotional strategies is not an easy task to do. It requires proper planning and systematic analysis. To devise marketing strategies in an effective and efficient way it is imperative for marketers to possess immense information about external environment as well as the internal situation of the organization. To get this information marketers perform internal and external marketing audit. The purpose of this essay is also to form a report suggesting an organization how they can conduct external and internal marketing audit.

Selected Organization

The organization that is selected for the purpose of this assignment is Cadbury. The following part of the paper makes an attempt to present the report to the marketing department of Cadbury suggesting how they should undertake their internal external marketing auditing as the first step in planning future marketing strategies.

Background

To support effective marketing, management personnel require sufficient information and proper allocation of resources to different territories, markets, products, competitions, promotions, and marketing tools (Kotler et al 2004, Pp. 44). A sign of having sufficient information is to have product information, sales potentials, customers, and territories, profitability of each segment, distribution channels, prices, and marketing expenditures. To get this immense amount of information the best way is to perform internal and external marketing audit (Wilson 2002, pp. 16).

Marketing Audit

A marketing audit is a systematic and organized analysis of all aspects related directly or indirectly to the marketing activities of an organization to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of each component to achieve the objectives of the company. Marketing audit can achieve the objectives of identifying problems in the functioning of marketing, leading to loss of efficiency (McDonald and Leppard 2001, Pp. 16). This process can also identify opportunities and allow marketers to devise strategies to exploit these opportunities. Marketing audit is an important part of the process of marketing management. As a result of the audit and on the basis of the data gathered through this process of auditing overall marketing strategy can be corrected, ensuring long-term survival and profitability of the firm. For strategic decision making and the development of a successful strategy marketers must have comprehensive view of the situation. Therefore, an audit is necessary to receive marketing information from various sources (Loudon, Stevens and Wrenn 2004, Pp. 36).

How Cadbury Should Undertake Internal and External Marketing Audit

Audit of marketing or marketing audit is a revision and the discovery of weaknesses in the concept of marketing strategies and plans, the results of their implementation, as well as a comprehensive, systematic, independent and periodic examination of the external environment of marketing, goals, and strategies. Based on the audit of marketing, activities are developed based on the efficiency ...