Marketing planning and forecasting sales potential
In order
to set the right goals, marketers must be able to forecast future sales and
market size trends.
According to Euromonitor, the market size (and
therefore the potential) for soft drinks in the Netherlands will continue to
increase in the next four years. This can be seen in the graph to the left. In
order to estimate the sales potential then, the break down approach will be
used – which is based on market potential and general economic data. 
The
table above shows the brand share of Coca-Cola in the Netherlands. It has been
stable at almost 8%. To estimate the sales for the year 2017, it can be assumed
that the brand share will remain the same. Therefore sales potential = share *
market potential (0.08 * 2800 mln litres) = 224 mln litres. (I was a bit
confused with this question, as it asks for potential – but shouldn’t potential
mean in the future?, so I have chosen 2017 instead)
A
marketing plan should be written for the Dutch market for Coca-Cola because it
is essential to have a ‘road map’ for implementing strategies and achieving
objectives in this market. Additionally, a marketing plan makes participants
aware of problems, opportunities, and threats in this market. Lastly, it
assists in ensuring that the Coca-Cola Company is customer focused, conscious
of market and competitive movements, realistic in its expectations, and prudent
in its use of resources. More benefits of producing a marketing plan are to
serve the ‘best’ target customers, beat competition, maximizing returns, and
minimizing threats. (Dibb, Ferrell, Simkin, &
Pride, 2012)
If I
were asked to develop a sales forecast for Coca-Cola for the years 2016, 2017,
and 2018, I would use trend analysis – which is a form of time-series analysis.
This is suitable as it is based on historical sales data over a period of many
years, and is done in an unbiased, scientific way (unlike executive judgements
or surveys). The disadvantage though, is that historical data may not give a
true picture of an underlying trend. Another disadvantage is that there is a
risk in assuming that factors that caused demand in the past will persist into
the future. Also, the further out the forecast is, the greater the possibility
of error is.
References
Dibb, S., Ferrell, O., Simkin, L.,
& Pride, M. (2012). Marketing Concepts & Strategies (6th ed.).
Cengage Learning EMEA.
Euromonitor International. (2016). Brand
Shares (Global - Historical Owner) | Historical | % breakdown. Retrieved
October 12, 2016, from Euromonitor International database:
http://www.portal.euromonitor.com.saxion.idm.oclc.org/portal/statistics/tab
Euromonitor International. (2016). Market
Sizes. Retrieved October 12, 2016, from Euromonitor International database:
http://www.portal.euromonitor.com.saxion.idm.oclc.org/portal/statistics/tab
No comments:
Post a Comment