Ford Motor Company
FORD MOTOR COMPANY
Strategic Marketing Plan
Part A: Environmental Analysis and SWOT Analysis
Company Description
Describe the company you are designing the plan for. Include:
- Mission Statement
- Vision Statement
- Product line description
- Company information, such as the size of the company
Environmental Analysis
Analyze the forces that affect the company and marketing efforts.
Competitive Forces
Analyze the company’s key competitors. You may choose to use a BCG Matrix or attribute checklist to compare your company against its competitors. Describe any strategic moves the competition has recently made. Estimate your market share. Identify key competitive advantages against your competitors.
Economic Forces
Analyze the economic environment in the areas affecting your business. Consider differences within your industry and the economic impact on suppliers.
Political Forces
Analyze relevant political forces. Examples may include an election year or a law to drastically reduce or eliminate plastic waste in your county.
Legal, Regulatory, and Ethical Issues
Analyze the legal, regulatory, and ethical issues that may affect your business. Considerations may include local laws such as a ban on the use of plastic bags, the ability to post billboards, or a possible increased regulation on direct mail.
Technological Forces
Analyze whether your company will be affected by emerging technologies or trends in hardware and software industries
Social Forces
Analyze social trends and how they may affect your business. Considerations may include if your business will be affected by demographic trends, a growing dependence on computers, or whether interest in your product might be affected by growing preferences in the way things are done or changing social values.
Current Target Markets
Define the company’s current target markets. Describe the demographic, geographic, psychographic, and product usage of these targets.
Review Current Marketing
Review the company’s current marketing tactics. Consider how people find out about the product, how they get information about the product or service, what might be involved in the buying process, and what money is available for marketing. If your company is a start-up, describe your competitors’ current marketing.
SWOT Analysis
Assess your company’s strengths, weaknesses, threats, opportunities, and then evaluate how to address these in your marketing plan.
Strengths
Assess your company’s competitive advantage. Consider core competencies, assets, location, practices, etc. that are distinct in the way the organization meets the needs of its customers.
Weaknesses
Assess what limits the company may have in its current marketing strategy. Consider if there is a company weakness that needs to be addressed through Public Relations or Marketing.
Opportunities
Assess the opportunities you see based on trends or environmental conditions.
Threats
Assess the threats or limitations that may interfere with the company’s ability to meet its objectives or interfere with marketing plans.
Strengths to Opportunities & Converting Weaknesses and Threats
Convert weaknesses and threats to strengths, then strengths to opportunities in the marketing plan. Consider the implications for addressing supplier relationships, implementing new technologies, or changing the product line or addressing new markets.
Marketing Objectives
Establish marketing objectives based on the results from the SWOT analysis. Marketing objectives must align with corporate objectives, modified by the company’s resources. Objectives should include a date for the completion of the objective and the way in which success will be measured. For example: The company will expand its marketing efforts to include a new market segment of 21- to 29-year-olds. This will entail the development of a customized product by June 2020 that will address the specific psychographic and technological needs of this age group. This strategy is expected to attain a 20% growth in overall sales by January 2020. Customer loyalty (willingness to recommend the product) will increase by 30%.
Part B: Marketing Data Analysis
Internal Data
Evaluate internal sources of information available to you inside the organization and what information you will receive from each source. Identify 3-6 sources of internal data. Insert or remove rows as needed.
| Source | What it Measures | Data | Potential Usage |
| Example: Sales data | Monthly sales by specific product | Average sales that month in US dollars for each of 10 products. Data can be segmented by business and consumer markets. | Can be used for trend analysis, projections, and to measure effectiveness of promotions. |
Secondary Data
Evaluate secondary data sources and the specific information you need from each source. Insert or remove rows as needed.
| Source | What it Measures | Data | Potential Usage |
| Example: retail store analytics | Dollar value of sales by quarter by major product categories | Total sales of major players | Market Share Analysis
Seasonal patterns |
Primary Data
Evaluate primary data needs to create and evaluate the marketing plan. Insert or remove rows as needed.
| Source | What it Measures | Data
|
Potential Usage |
| Example: Focus group | Product usage, motives, identify group level satisfaction, decision process, etc. | Qualitative | Identify different reactions of market segments to product. Identify marketing opportunities, product/service flaws and opportunities |
Customer Relationship Management
Establish customer touchpoints and develop appropriate CRM events for customer acquisition, retention, and profitability. Insert or remove rows as needed.
| CRM Touchpoint | Purpose & CRM Objective | Data | Potential Data Usage |
| Example: Customer profile information on website | Starts the account for visitors: name, geography, email address (Customer acquisition)
|
Presale: geographic location; customer id, source of reference
Email address Post sales: address, product purchased, quantity, price. |
Track new and returning customer counts, total period purchases by customer ID, geographic sales data. Can be used for loyalty rewards, retention, and targeted marketing. |
Part C: Market Strategy, Marketing Channels, Implementation, and Monitoring
New Target Markets
Determine any new markets for your strategy and describe how you will provide value to each target market.
Marketing Mix for New Target Markets
Determine adaptions for each new target market.
- Products
- Price
- Distribution
- Traditional Promotion
- Online Promotion
Marketing Implementation
Create the implementation for your marketing plan. Describe how you will organize and implement the plan, such as whether it will be organized by market, geography, and who is responsible for marketing decisions.
Marketing Communication Channels
Evaluate the marketing communication channels you will use to reach selected audiences. Include Internet and traditional communication channels to convey key messages. Describe the advantages and disadvantages of each channel you select. Insert or remove rows as needed.
| Channel | Target Market | Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Example: Direct mail | Middle class residential | Can include coupons | Expense and low return rate for given product |
Strategic Actions
Develop specific activities required to implement the marketing plan. Identify the person or role who will be responsible for each action, when it will be complete, and what standard or metric indicate that the activity is complete. Insert or remove rows as needed.
| Action | Date for Completion | Person/Role Responsible | Standard/Metric |
| Example: Design flyer for direct mail campaign | 1/1/2021 | J. Smith, graphic designer | Approval by senior marketing team and legal |
Monitoring
Develop the measurement to identify how you know you have been successful for each strategic action. Specify the measures to track performance against goals. Identify standard reports from your online and traditional marketing efforts. Insert or remove rows as needed.
| Action | Target | Person Responsible | Inter-measurement |
| Example: Direct mail flyer | 1100 new inquiries | Western regional manager | 500 new inquiries first month of campaign |
ANSWER
Ford Motors Company Business Plan
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is the fifth largest motor company based in Michigan. The company was founded by Henry Ford in 1903 with other 12 co-founders. The largest family-controlled company has been in existence for over 110 years, encompassing two brands; Ford and Lincoln (Parreira, 2020). At the time of the great depression, a future projection indicated that the company would be the largest as survived the recession. The most profitable company survived the great depressions (a worldwide economic depression, which took place in the 1930s).
At the start of the company, the primary investors were Henry Ford and Malcomson, who retain 51% of the total shares. The other 12 investors owned 1000 shares in the company, which is 49% of the total shares (Langerud & Jordan, 2020). The growth of the company was primarily due to continuous innovations in the production line. However, these innovations were hard on employees, and while it was associated with high productivity and demand in the market. Since the innovations were hard on employees, the company resorted to double the salary to solve employee turnover. The great depression and world war II were some of the major challenges in the 20th century (Langerud & Jordan, 2020). However, the company was resilient enough to survive these challenges with the aid of innovations and restructuring. The paper provides further analysis of the company’s features to develop a business plan. The analysis is as follows;
Part A: Environmental and SWOT Analysis of Ford Company
Company description
The company’s mission statement revolves around mobility and affordability. Its mission statement implies making people’s lives better by increasing accessibility and affordability of mobility. On the other hand, the vision statement is to be the most trusted company in the world, designing good vehicles for good people (Lazdowski, 2020). For the production line, the company introduced an innovation in 1913, which reduced production time from 12 hours to less than two hours. Henry introduced a fast-moving assembly line for mass production within a short time.
Concerning the company size, Ford Motor is ranked as the fifth-largest motor company in the world with continuous growth. Additionally, the company once owned five other luxury brands; Rover, Martin, Jaguar Mercury, and Aston. However, the five brands were later discontinued, remaining with two brands; Ford and Lincoln. During the early years, the company designed models chronologically, from Ford model A to Ford model K. in 1908, Henry introduced model T with the first model built at Piquette Avenue Plant ((Langerud & Jordan, 2020). As demand grew higher, production was moved to a larger Highland Park Plant. Production and sales increased yearly with different innovations incorporated.
Environmental Analysis
Environmental analysis is another area of concern within the company environment that encompasses the competitive factors, economic factors, political factors, legal issues, technological forces, and social forces. The company’s key competitors in the market are General Motors, Toyota Motor, Chevrolet, Honda Motor, and Tesla Motors. The company’s first competitor was Chevrolet (Langerud & Jordan, 2020). For the past 20 years, Ford company focused on producing one model while Chevrolet would release a new model every year. An analysis of the three primary competitors is as follows.
| Ford | Chevrolet | General Motors | |
| Technology | Ford’s SYNC system is more advanced. | Chevrolet’s MyLink system is general. | The Covisint improves the highest efficiency. |
| Performance | More performing models | Good performing but does not beat Ford’s | General Motor’s models have the most performing. |
| Warranty | Five-year unlimited mile corrosion | Three-year unlimited mile corrosion | Three-year unlimited mile corrosion |
The economic forces include high growth rates of developing markets, the US general economy, and the strengthening of the US dollar. The three factors favor Ford Motors’ operations in the market. On the other hand, political factors include government support for innovations, rise in international trade agreements, and rising government effort for developments (Liu, 2012). The environment’s social factors include; rising demand for electric automobiles and average attitudes on customer service, and a high wealth gap. Concerning technology, there is a rising automobile computing which is an opportunity for the company. However, a threat in the technological sector is that there are limited fuel stations and alternatives.
Current Target Markets and Marketing Tactics
Ford company uses different markets to appease diverse groups of people and satisfy different needs such as sports, luxury, and many more. However, the latest model, Ford FIESTA, is mainly targeted to the youth and ladies. In this case, the young people within the category of 18-25 years old are teenagers and those in the early twenties (Liu, 2012). Ladies, in this case, are those who have average income and can afford the cars. For geographic segmentation, Ford is largely segmented in the UK, while smaller segments are in other parts of the world. Concerning the current marketing tactics, Ford uses a market-oriented approach in pricing strategy. This is whereby the prices are set based on the conditions of the market. Other factors considered include; demand, consumer patterns and perception, and other variables.
SWOT Analysis for Ford Motors
The analysis focuses on the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The company’s strengths can be attributed to its brand positioning, global operations, and research and development. Its strong brand image and global supply chain play a significant role in the strength of the company. The global supply chain supports global operations while the brand image maintains customer loyalty regardless of the stiff competition in the motor industry. Additionally, the innovations and effectiveness of the innovation processes are also part of its strengths (Lim, 2019). The company’s weaknesses are based on the limitations as compared to the competitors. Firstly, Ford has limited global production scope since It has most of its production facilities in Europe. Similarly, Ford has relatively high prices as compared to other brands such as Toyota. Ford’s innovation process is also slowing to respond to the emerging trends in the market and the industry.
Opportunities and threats are two other factors within the analysis that are linked to growth and expansions and competition and global prices, respectively. Ford can grow and penetrate the market due to the rising dealership and enhanced marketing. Financial standing can also be improved by expanding its global supply chain for higher economies of scale (Parreira, 2017). The strategic supply chain can also reduce costs, which will result in high-profit margins in the ultimate end. On the other hand, threats include competitive rivalry varying oil prices, and the possibility of new entrants into the market. General Motors and Chevrolet are a few examples of competitors in the market. Fluctuations in oil prices threaten the sales level since Ford brand vehicles have internal combustion Engines.
Marketing Objective
Based on the weaknesses and threats, the company should make some changes. Firstly, the company should increase its production scope in global markets. The company should also enhance research and development to keep track of the trending needs in the industry. Another objective is that the company should expand its production networks for higher economies of scale, which will reduce costs and prices charged. With reduced costs and prices, the company may beat its competitors, who charged relatively cheaply. Additionally, for should invest in the customers’ diverse needs by designing cars that can be used by different people rather than a few groups of people.
PART B: Marketing Data Analysis
Internal Data
Internal data comprises information that is generated within the business. Ford’s Internal Data is as follows;
| Source | What it measures | Data | Potential Usage |
| Marketing data | Marketing frequency | The frequency in which the customers interact with the marketing message | It can be used to understand the impact of marketing on company performance. |
| Internal research | Depth of research | Ford company has reasonable research practices and capacities. | It can be used to know the success of the company in different phases of the market. |
| Customer habits | The behavior of the customers | Social factors influence Ford customers. | It can be used to project future demands. |
Secondary data
| Source | What it measures | Potential use |
| Data on Vehicle Miles Traveled. | Risk exposure | It can be used in designing policies and investment decisions. |
| Research-based data Sheets | Driver behavior | It can be used in designing policies. |
| Proprietary data | Driver behavior and motor carrier | Estimating time and designing policies |
Primary data
| Source | What it measures | Potential use |
| Pilot project heads | Daily operations | Understanding the overall performance of the organization |
| Supervisors | Daily operations | Daily routines and existing market gaps |
Consumer relationship management
| CRM Touchpoint | CRM Objective | Potential usage | |
| 1 | Brand promise | To separate the brand from the present competitors | Creates appeal to the customers |
| 2 | Innovation | Building a product that remains at the forefront in all phases of technological trends | Allows Business continuity and company resilience |
| 3 | Brand History | To motivate the customers while establishing a suitable brand reputation | Aligning communication across the brand media platforms |
PART C: Market strategy, Marketing Channels, Implementation and monitoring
New Target markets and Marketing Implementation
Concerning the new target markets, Ford company can use its weaknesses to find new target markets. As seen in the SWOT analysis, it is evident that the company has few networks in the global markets and has a limited range of vehicles for the potential markets (Yang et al., 2021). Therefore, the company should consider establishing excellent networks in global markets and consider all the potential customers when designing their vehicles. However, there are some marketing mix adaptions which should be considered in the new markets. The products should be designed to accommodate the needs of diverse users, with relatively low prices. On the other hand, the distribution should be made efficient to ensure customer satisfaction. Lastly, both traditional and online promotions should be conducted to reach all the potential customers (Lim, 2019). For the case of marketing implementation, there should be appropriate strategies to implement the plan. Firstly, the plan should be implemented based on the market. A team should be selected and allocated resources according to the market features. Secondly, the right expectations should be set to avoid uncertainty.
Marketing Communication
This comprises of the ideal channels to be used to communicate to the foregone choice for the audience. The communication channels are analyzed as follows.
| Channel | Target Market | Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Sponsorship | The general public | Brand building
Increased return on Investment’s |
No guaranteed returns
Potential controversies |
| Social media | The youth | Can reach a large audience
High conversion rates |
Low returns
Difficult to assess the impact |
| Adverting | The general public | Market expansion
The increased volume of sales |
Increases price war
Possibility of deceptive advertising |
Strategic Actions and Monitoring
For the marketing implementation, there should be ideal actions and monitoring to enable achieving the desired goals. However, the senior executives are responsible people as far as Implementation is concerned. Since they take part in designing the strategies, they are also responsible for taking actions when needed. Similarly, monitoring is done by senior company executives. Alternatively, a monitoring team can be selected to measure the progress against the desired goals (Freyssenet, 2009). In case of errors, they are the immediate people who will report to other executives. Additionally, they give recommendations on the changes which should be made in the plan. Pilot project heads can also take part in monitoring the Implementation. Since they have a clear understanding of the executed pilot projects, they can make good monitors as far as marketing implementation is concerned.
From the analysis above, it can be deduced that Ford company is an American motor company that was established in 1903 by Henry Ford. The company has undergone e multiple series of transformations with different innovations. The company is also ranked as the fifth-largest company in the world motor industry. However, the company has weakness and threats which revolves around competition and expansions in global markets. On the other hand, the opportunities and strengths have kept the company in the industry’s current position. Additionally, its strengths allowed the company to survive the 1930 great depression.
References
Freyssenet, M. (Ed.). (2009). The second automobile revolution: trajectories of the world carmakers in the 21st century. Springer.
Langerud, D. H., & Jordan, P. J. (2020). Leadership and change at Ford Motor Company. In Case of Studies in Work, Employment and Human Resource Management. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Lazdowski, Y. J. (2020). The Inception of the Ford Motor Company. In Persistence and Vigilance: A View of Ford Motor Company’s Accounting over its First Fifty Years. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Lim, W. Y. (2019). Liquidity of General Motor Company due to their Internal and External factor.
Liu, P. (2012). The SWOT Analysis and Countermeasures Research on the Acquisition of Volvo by Geely. In Advanced Materials Research (Vol. 452, pp. 553-556). Trans Tech Publications Ltd.
Parreira, F. M. F. (2020). Equity Research-Ford Motor Company (Doctoral dissertation, Institute Superior de Economic e Gestão).
Pereira, P. J. G. (2017). Valuation of Ford Motor Company and a study of its industry (Doctoral dissertation).
Wang, Z., Li, W., Bian, K., & Yang, S. (2021). Analysis of Improving the Future Business Policy of Ford Motor Company. World Scientific Research Journal, 7(1), 51-55.
