Understand how and why customer groups are targeted.

Aim and purpose

The aim and purpose of this unit is to give learners an understanding of how marketing, research and planning and the marketing mix are used by all organisations.

Learning outcome 1: Know the role of marketing in organisations

Learning outcome 2: Be able to use marketing research and marketing planning

Learning outcome 3: Understand how and why customer groups are targeted

Learning outcome 4: Be able to develop a coherent marketing mix.

Assessment
For most groups of learners, a staged approach to assessment would help them to achieve the unit. Most of the criteria need to be investigated in the context of one or more real organisations and learners may need support in selecting the organisations to use for their assignments.

For P1, learners should describe how the marketing techniques listed in the unit content are used in marketing products or services in two different organisations. It is sufficient to select one product/service or product/service range in each organisation. For P2, learners need to describe the limitations and constraints under which marketers operate; this should include legal requirements and the use of voluntary codes and constraints. Learners should relate these constraints to examples.

To achieve M1, learners need to demonstrate higher-level skills through comparing or finding the similarities and differences between the use of marketing techniques in marketing products or services in two organisations.

For D1, this will be developed further into an evaluation of the effectiveness of the use of marketing techniques in one organisation. Evaluation requires more than stating an opinion and should demonstrate higher-level skills such as researching and interpreting data and using logical judgements about the validity and reliability of the data used to evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing techniques.

For P3, learners should investigate the marketing research used by one organisation and link this to the development of the organisation`s marketing plans. This could be based on the school or college`s own marketing research and plans, as this would provide a good opportunity to obtain the information required for P4. Alternatively, this could be based on a link with a local commercial or not-for-profit organisation.

For M2, learners should identify and explain the limitations of the marketing research methods used in the selected organisation investigated.
To achieve D2, learners should make, and justify, recommendations for improving the validity of the marketing research used in the selected organisation. Three sound recommendations with justifications would be sufficient to achieve the criterion.