BUS7B29 Integrated Communications Assignment Sample 2023
Introduction
Communication is an important tool for the organization to present the product and services in the market with several specifications for market acknowledgment and increase the accessibility of products and services to the people in the market. Organizations used to communicate through several media and channels to popularise the product and services in people’s consciousness where integration of the communication accelerates the market proposition of the company to gain reputation and growth through competitiveness. In this report, the details of Sainsbury’s integrated communication strategy to connect the overall business objectives with the business developments plan and progress to communicate and engage people will be discussed elaborately.
Company background
Sainsbury is one of the leading retail supermarkets based in the United Kingdom (UK) which was established in 1869 by John James and Mary Ann Sainsbury with the offerings of high-quality products at a low cost. It offers great quality food, vegetable, fruits and grocery products to the consumers through more than 600 supermarkets, over 800 convenience stores and an online retail website named Argos for convenient shopping with competitive prices. In addition to that, the company has diversified the business through the reputed brands of Argos, Nectar, Tu, Habitat and Sainsbury bank for non-contemporary products and services. More than 1,89,000 employees are collaboratively working in Sainsbury to support the daily business operatives successfully to earn positive confidence from the customer on a daily basis. The company has made an annual profit of around £371 million in the year 2021-22 before deducting tax which showed the growing market share of the company in the UK (Sainsburys.co.uk. 2022).
Practical application of Communication tools
Communication has great importance in an everyday business process where organizations used to communicate the product and services to the consumer for gaining market acknowledgment and confidence for the specific product and services. The social exchange and learning theory best describe the interaction of an organization with the market which amplifies the business opportunity and possibilities to grow and explore. It usually addresses several issues related to business and market competitiveness through communication or interaction with the people. The marketing mix allows the company to make effective decisions on behalf of the organization’s growth and prosperity to successfully gain sustainability. Moreover, the marketing communication of Sainsbury has focused on human behaviour through social exchange theory to focus on the market need as well as customer requirements and duly satisfy each aspect to gain the brand reputation. The communication emboldens the public relations of the company through enhanced trust and compatibility with exclusive communication on the product and service quality, social and financial dependency to largely satisfy the consumer on a daily basis. Further, Sainsbury has engaged with Comic relief as an integrated tool of corporate-non-Government organizations (NGO) partnership for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) communication as a supermarket promotional event to gain the confidence of the society more authentically (Rohwer and Topić, 2019).
On the other hand, social exchange theory has promised rational decision-making in the organizational business process and communicated the society to minimize the potential threats of business. It helps the company to align the market opportunities in the business process through cooperative actions of cross-functionality of marketing and retail departments. It also gave insights into building a professional relationship with the customer through communicating the needs and dependency which improve the relationship commitment between the customer and company. On the contrary, the social learning theory helps the organization to correlate the business process with rapidly changing consumer attitudes and market trend through attention, observation, retention, reproduction and motivation of individuals with frequent marketing communication. The mixed marketing communication usually helps to assess the customer needs and behavioural assumptions which is useful to contribute to the business plan for future opportunities and growth possibilities. The social learning theory engrosses the different factor of human characteristics which influences the decision-making of individuals through cognitive, behavioural and environmental factors. However, Sainsbury has emphasized on dynamic capability theory to enhances the efficiency in the business process to effectively engage the consumer in the business development process with economic growth through innovation and several windows of opportunity (Sainsbury, 2020).
It may be mentioned that the communication mix help the organization to maintain a cordial relationship with the consumer and target new audiences with thorough and robust strategic decision making. It allows Sainsbury to adopt and evolve as per the customer choices to get benefitted in the market share and profit making. The enhanced communication through the possible channels has given access to a large market with increased reliability and trust over the product and services for the consumer. The mixed communication strategy helps the organization to maintain the market competitiveness in the retail sector which helps to organize and contribute to the profit gain with market confidence. On a specific note, the availability to connect and interact in all channels has helped the consumer as well as organization to give real-time support and enhance the business quality respective to the market competitor. Advertising, personal marketing, direct selling, sales promotion, public relation, social media marketing is some of the important aspects of mixed communication which influence the business process of Sainsbury to a large extent to support the consumer in need and satisfy the market need. It provides the proper business framework to relate the business strategy with the market opportunities with better involvement of customer feedback and engagement for repeated transactions (Littlechild, 2021).
However, Sainsbury has applied the integrated method to communicate with the customer at various stages of the business plan and market distribution to accompany the market demand for generating a comprehensive cash flow operation. It enhances the decision-making process to gain market confidence with control, monitor and supervise the communication strategy which directly benefited the organizational need and business objectives. The marketing communication ensures the dynamic capability of the organization through make the business process flexible in accordance with consumer attitude and market trends. The integration of communication methods allows better decision-making through incorporating the strength and weaknesses in every segment to optimize the resources for economic growth.
Marketing communication plan
| Communication Plan | The benefit to the organization |
| To train and develop the employee skills | It will allow the organization to maintain public relation in respect to product and service knowledge with appropriate details of quality and source |
| To improve the communication with the stakeholders | It will improve the business strategy with collaboration and cooperation of stakeholders with fulfilling the stakeholder’s requirement |
| To enhance the marketing communication to reach the target audiences | It generalizes the offered product in the market with details to regularize the business transaction |
| To develop a price marketing mix | It will benefit the organization to attract the consumer attention through the offering of competitive price |
| To improve the promotional marketing mix | It will enhance the market confidence by building trust between consumers and companies and motivate them to direct the purchasing behaviour |
| To integrate the communication strategy for developing brand management | The integration of all stage communication will improve the business capability with sharing of information and build cross-functional channels to communicate and update the business objective for differentiation and meet the market demand |
Table 1: Marketing communication plan
(Source: Self-Created)
Marketing communication is a wide application where it allows an end-to-end communication within and outside the organization to rightfully secure the brand value in the market through compromising the stakeholder’s expectation. Sainsbury’s products included food and grocery product as well as clothing, homewares, electricals and a wide range of financial services through more than 15,000 own-brand products and services. The company is dedicatedly offering multi-product and multi-channel businesses with fast delivery networks to ensure the brand reputation with strategic market competitiveness. It needs to establish secure communication with the supply chain partners, investor and customer to redirect the business strategy as per the consumer choice to plan, resource, invest, manufacture and distribute with last-mile delivery efficiency. The target market of the company is mainly the family household especially mothers and women which contributed a large share in Sainsbury’s profit margin. More concisely, the company is creating communication content on the television, billboards, internet, social media to reach the potential consumer’s household coordinating with business objectives (Yordanov et al., 2019).
The marketing mix communication about price and promotion will help Sainsbury’s business strategy to gain market confidence through competitive price offering and motivate the consumer to get involved with the daily business of the company. Specifically, marketing communication will ensure the transparency and accountability of the organization’s dealing with the supply chain partners and investors. it will embolden the business attitude with trust in market operation to garner a positive brand image through flexible cross-functionality among the stakeholders (Kieu and Mogaji, 2018). It may be opined that, the integration of communication has enabled the organization to intervene at any stage of operational difficulties and timely resolution to continue the business operation in the market. It will allow to stimulate the business plan, budget allocation and set the marketing event in coordination with a business objective to grab the market opportunities to the fullest.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it may be concluded that the communication strategy of Sainsbury has offered several benefits to reach the target audiences and make advancements in competitiveness for successive growth and sustainability.
References
Kieu, T.A. and Mogaji, E., 2018. Marketing communication strategies of off-plan homes.
Littlechild, S., 2021. Exploring customer satisfaction in Great Britain’s retail energy sector part II: The increasing use of Trustpilot online reviews. Utilities Policy, 73, p.101297.
Rohwer, L. and Topić, M., 2019. The communication of Corporate–NGO Partnerships: analysis of Sainsbury’s collaboration with Comic Relief. Journal of Brand Management, 26(1), pp.35-48.
Sainsbury, D., 2020. Toward a dynamic capability theory of economic growth. Industrial and Corporate Change, 29(4), pp.1047-1065.
Sainsburys.co.uk. 2022. Investors. [online] Available at: <https://www.about.sainsburys.co.uk/investors> [Accessed 18 January 2022]
Yordanov, S.L., Valentinova, D.T. and Valkov, D.K., 2019. Planning and effectiveness evaluation of marketing communication. Балканско научно обозрение, 3(1 (3)).
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