Marketing Concept, Marketing Mix, And Effective Communication In Oxfam

Situation Analysis

1. Identify and explain the marketing concept, the marketing mix and the components of the marketing communications mix.

2. Explain the relationship between the marketing environment, its impact upon organisational decision making and consumer behaviour.

3. Discuss the factors that determine competitive advantage within organisations

4. Explain key theories, concepts and models underpinning business communication to create effective communications.

5. Examine and discuss organisational issues and challenges that impact on the effectiveness of business communication through the use of pre-defined criteria to assist in improving communication within the organisation.

6. Demonstrate an application of concepts and techniques related to business communication processes used within the workplace.

The marketing and communication both are considered as a fundamental aspect of the organization which helps the organization to conduct their organizational activity in a proper manner.  As stated by Rice and Atkin (2012), marketing is considered as a communication between the customers and the organization and the organization gets enough scope to increase their product sell or service. Oxford Committee for Famine Relief is an international confederation of 17 different organizations of approximately 95 different countries (Oxfam GB. 2016). The communication system of the organization helps the organization to work for the poverty and injustice.

The OXFAM is popular non government voluntary organization which works directly with the backward communities and believes that the poor people can improve their lives. As stated by Khang et al. (2012), the organization Oxfam is considered as a main influence for the global movement of millions of people. The organization takes the responsibility to remove the extreme poverty in between next 15 years (Khang et al. 2012). Therefore, tried to explain the marketing concept, marketing mix and express the relation among the marketing environment, organizational decision making process and customer behavior. After that the researcher as explained the key theories, concepts and models to find out the effective communication system for the organization.  

Halinen (2012) has described marketing concept of an organization as the business activities and in this part, marketing concept of Oxfam has been described. From the company profile, it can be found that the objective of this nonprofit organization is to fight against poverty and for human rights, specifically fighting against injustice in all over the world. In this part, it is significant to focus on situation analysis and to understand that, SWOT analysis has been done.

Strengths ·         Properly defining goals and values ·         Global network of affiliates and supporters (Halinen 2012) ·         History of successful programs (Chandon, and Wansink 2012)	Weakness ·         Lack of accountability ·         Concerns related to volunteer and safety ·         Stiff competition from other nonprofit organizations ·         Lack of crisis plans
Opportunities ·         Establishes consistent strategies aligning with requirements ·         Clear explanation of commitment to their mission	Threats ·         It operates in potentially dangerous environment ·         Less community support ·         Lack of commitment from both the volunteers and the employees (Halinen 2012)

Political Factors: The Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, The Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 and National Minimum Wage Act of 1998 have affected this organization in several ways. Oxfam follow all these regulations carefully in order to maintain equality in the society.

PEST Analysis

Economic Factors: Pay levels, the price of energy along with labor, supply and demand are some of the significant economic factors that leave impact on Oxfam. As this is one of the nonprofit organizations, it is obvious to say that that high pay level, rise in price of energies, lack of demand affect the activities of this charity organization (Chandon, and Wansink 2012).

Social Factors: It has been seen that social factors do not affect Oxfam largely as compared to other factors. As Oxfam is a charitable organization, it does not promote any sporting events, celebrity endorsement and thus social factors do not affect this corporation. Older population of the society is one major social factor to Oxfam, as they are kinder at the time of donating money for charitable purpose.

Technological factor: Internet, Television, radio are some of the strong mediums that help this charitable company in different ways. This company uses internet in their charity in order to request them to donate for the organization (Chandon, and Wansink 2012).

Halinen (2012) has said that when an organization is well aware of their target audience, it is obvious to say that they know about the target and it becomes easier for them to communicate with their target audience. As Oxfam is a nonprofit organization, the vulnerable population of the society is the target population. Age, income, types of services, arranged programs are some of the features that this organization keeps in mind at the time of targeting audience. Therefore, it can be said that the target market of Oxfam is the people who are in the poor condition and requires assistance from several areas like regions, religions in different parts of the world. Apart from that, the target market of this nonprofit organization is those people who are living under standard situation like injustice, especially the women and girls in both developed and developing nations.

In this part, it is highly important to discuss the objectives of Oxfam and these have been introduced here.

Help people to achieve their right to a better life:

It is necessary to mention that woman, young people as well as the poor population of the society must be well aware of their political and civil rights and the target of this organization is to make them well aware of their rights (Andzulis et al.2012).

Save lives at present and future as well

Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

At the time of some natural as well as man-made disasters, the organization is present to save lives, provides clean water, food, sanitation as well as some other fundamental requirements. Oxfam shed special importance on them who have been suffering from illness, insecurity as well as deprivation (Chandon and Wansink 2012).

Safeguarding global food supplies

This nonprofit organization has been working to protect food supplies, so that the populaces who have not enough sources to have food can get the minimum food security (De Vries et al.2012).

Increase money for the basic services

This nonprofit organization is pursuing for more as well as better targeted money to have basic enhancement like health and education. This is basically for men, girls as well as boys, so that they can participate entirely in the economic, social and democratic life   of their societies (Gustafsson et al. 2012).

Empowerment

Their approach towards empowerment focuses that all the staffs and the supporters who are associated with Oxfam must believe in changed nature. Moreover, they want to make them understand that proper activities can bring the desired changes in the society (Halinen 2012).

Accountability

One of the major objectives of this nonprofit organization is that their purpose-driven and result-oriented approach states that they must accept the responsibility for their own actions and hold one accountable for that (Hall et al. 2012).

Inclusiveness

The organization is open to everyone and cordially embraces diversity. The management of Oxfam believes that every people in the organization as well as societies have a contribution to make regardless of the fact that it is visible or invisible (Khang et al. 2012).

As stated by Rice and Atkin (2012), the organization selects their objectives based on their strength. The main strength of OXFAM are their supportiveness to the people who are affected by the natural calamities like Nepal earthquake, OXFAM donates three tones of clean and safe water to every person of South Sudan. Therefore, the objective of OXFAM should be “to develop a new fund for the emergency assistance for the natural disaster affected people” ( Khang et al. 2012).

It has been noticed that OXFAM is very popular for working from women’s right to water, earth quakes to education. Therefore the objective of this NGO will be “to provide the financial support and provide free scholarship to help poor rural villagers for their overall development.”

Market penetration

Clarification of the objectives

It has been seen that the target market for the marketing plan of the concerned organization sheds importance on some other organizational sectors that would be supplied by the increasing number of the international charities. Therefore, the organization would start partnership with diverse community organizations (Kim and Ko 2012).

Financial objectives

It can be stated that during the first year of the new plan, an increase of $6 million in the overall sales of the tickets and revenue of the company. Moreover, it is expected that it could also influence the entire coordination as well as popularity of the NGOs or the charitable institutions in diverse target markets (Makel et al. 2012).

In this part, it is essential to look at setting the strategies by Oxfam and this has been introduced here.

Communication method and approach

It has been seen that the communication method and approach concentrates on the entire correlation aspects of Oxfam towards their target market and this can be done through communication systems. This diversified system concentrates on communicating and relating with the target communities along with the local government and educational sector. The organization has been planning to use diverse communication method such as press, attractive advertisement, well-designed websites, online services and some other events that would justify the marketing target (Neiger, et al. 2012).

The responsible management has been planning to advertise through eye-catching video and at the same time has been planning to arrange seminars in different schools and educational institutions in order to make the students aware. Moreover, it can be said that presently Oxfam has been using the internet as the best medium tool to communicate (Rice and Atkin 2012).

Marketing budget based of strategy

It has been seen that the advertisement of the entire market planning for the selected organization focuses on TV, newspaper advertisement and flyers as the online market. Each TV advertisement costs $300 dollars per 30 seconds and the newspaper advertisement costs $350 per advertisement, wherever, flyers costs $80 where in $0.10 each (Shrum 2012).

Communication	Estimated Quantity	Estimated Cost/Unit	Estimated Subtotal
Sponsorship	3	$500	$1500
Flyers	3000	$0.10	$300
Television	10	$350	$3500
Website	1	$350	$350
Subtotal			$5650

This communication and the marketing budget will concentrate on the relationship of the organization towards the primary market.

Figure 1: Time program of Oxfam

(Source: Sigala et al. 2012)

It is important to mention that the marketing team of Oxfam would follow this time program.

Oxfam is one of the leading NGOs whose main vision is just a world that is without poverty and an earth in which people can easily influence decisions related the factors that affect their lives. Therefore, in this part, it is highly important to the 7Ps of marketing mix of Oxfam in this part.

Process:

As opined by Kim and Ko (2012), the main requirement of the NGOs are to raise their funds in order to implement their several projects like providing services in the rural areas, remove poverty  as well as improvement in health.  Therefore, the allocations of the money of OXFAM should be collected through the donation process.

Place and product:

It has been observed that the NGOs set up their office and main operate centers in the heart of the city and setup their stores for selling different products like hand crafted articles, art, greetings and drawings (Rice  and Atkin 2012). Therefore, OXFAM should open some stores in different cities in order to reach large number of people for accumulating money.

Promotion:

Popular NGOs like BRAC, Acumen Fund, Root Capital directed the marketing publicity, sponsorship and public relation for collecting money for their project (Wang et al. 2012). Therefore, the OXFAM need to engage a marketing consultant for their further marketing strategy.

Price and physical evidence:

It has been noticed that the nonprofit organizations often sell some products to improve their confident. The donors pay money for the development work and expect that their money is used for correct purpose (Gustafsson et al. 2012). Therefore, the correct physical evidence of expenses satisfies the donors. OXFAM is very conscious about the physical evidence so they will not face any issue regarding this segment.

People:

The main processes of the NGOs are to generate the fund from donors and apply the money for the project. As argued by Halinen (2012), the non government organizations are completely people oriented organization. Therefore, OXFAM need to engage some non paid volunteers help the organization in various projects.

After implementing strategies, it is important to measure the effectiveness of the implemented policies. It has already been mentioned that the organization has been planning to reach a wider section of the society through proper advertisement through both online and offline systems. Moreover, it has been found that Oxfam arranges seminars as well as some other activities in the schools and some educational centers. Feedback analysis is one of the major parts in this regards. If students want to join Oxfam both as volunteers and employees, effectiveness of promotion would be understood. Apart from that, the website of this organization has a clear option stating donation and the amount of received donation determines the success of advertisement and promotion. Moreover, response from the government as well is required to judge in this case, as any changes in legislation due to initiatives adopted by Oxfam is highly essential.

Conclusion:

In this assignment the researcher has developed the perfect marketing plan for OXFAM. It has been mentioned earlier that OXFAM is non profitable non government organization and maintained their activities in different segment such as support the people against poverty, support the affected people who lost everything in natural calamities, delivers the fresh water on South Sudan and fight against injustices. The researcher has observed that the good reputation of this firm help to gain the donors faith but the donation was limited. Therefore the perfect market segmentation and marketing plan is required to involve more people in their social work. The learner has recommended Black Box model for selecting the perfect marketing strategy and communication theory framework to develop the effective communication system to attract the new donors. The researcher has developed the marketing mix strategy for this popular NGO as a tactics to develop their social service. Finally the performance measurement system will help the organization to identify their improvement and future goal.

The marketing plan of any organization focused on the target market. However, the NGO has no such target market because they are not trading organization. The NGOs try to attract the donors through the promotional strategy. It has been noticed that the online promotion is an efficient way rather that the traditional posters or leaflet. Many NGOs already make the digital advertisements and published in the television and social media. The digital advertisement of the NGOs are short and heart touching like Osocio, SANCCOB, Opel developing a heart touching message like “Your typjng while drive is asbad as your drivimh whilr you typr” or “Makes your think twice about where your trash ends up”.

The NGO simply provide a picture and message in the advertisements. Some of the NGOs like UN Women and Harrison’s Fund have developed the video by those affected people to create an appeal for the donors. 

Those above techniques are considered as a main strategy to communicate with the interested donors. The decision making process of the NGOs is depending up on their aim and objectives. In order to take the critical decision about the unknown donors, the organization can follow the game theory strategies such as matching pennies and deadlock.

The particular choice has been made the researcher because the game theory applies between two individuals or two same type objects. Therefore the involvement of the donors or the donor organization may minimize the risk. The researcher tried to attach a sample of NGO advertisements to help OXFAM to develop new advertisement or brochure, poster or digital communication system.

Figure1: poster of OXFAM

(Source: author)

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