UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH WALES

Student Name: Chansa Musanshi

Course Module: Strategic Marketing

Assignment: 2

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Contents
Introduction 3

Expectations 3

What I Learned 3

Challenges 5

Overcoming Challenges 5

Actions and Next Steps 5

What I Will Do Differently Going Forward 6

Conclusion 6

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Introduction

This work is a reflective piece of work that focuses on the academic knowledge gained from
the module ‘Strategic Marketing’ as well as any skills acquired in the analysis of Amazon’s
marketing strategies in the completion of Assignment 1.

The Strategic Marketing Module aims to equip students with the skills and ability to evaluate
the key concepts associated with Strategic Marketing in the overall business strategy and to
critically evaluate the difference between a good practice strategic marketing and short
professional practice.

Marketing is a field that I have never touched upon; however, I found it fascinating to learn
about the different marketing strategies that have a huge impact on the success of a business.
In Assignment 1, Amazon was used as a case study in order to understand the rewards of
marketing. Its main focus was customer-centric marketing strategy.

Expectations

Before I enrolled on the Strategic Marketing Module, I expected to learn about marketing,
how to conduct market research, how to sell products or services and conduct advertisements.
I have never worked or studied any form of marketing, but it was interesting to learn the
dynamics of marketing, the strategies involved in marketing and how, as a business,
marketing plays a huge role in rendering the success of an organization. I expected to know
how to communicate and find out ways of advertising products and services in order to
promote the business.

What I learned

Despite my expectations for this module, I learned that strategic marketing is simply a long-
term approach that is applied to organizations or any business that has goals of achieving a
sustainable competitive advantage by understanding the wants and the needs of customers. I
learned that if an organization’s marketing strategy is customer-centric, with its focus deeply
engrained in the needs and wants of customers, it will be successful, and this can be seen in
Amazon, which was used as a case study in Assignment 1.

Additionally, through reflection, I learned that marketing is the responsibility of the business
as a whole, not just a department which deals specifically with advertising to customers and
promoting products and/or services to its customers, ensuring they pay for products and

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services rendered. I learned that it is important for marketing to align with an organization’s
goals; therefore it is also imperative that all departments in an organization work to meet the
customers’ wants and needs.

Because of this module, I now know that effective marketing needs employees to work
collectively in order for the strategy to be successful. As someone who works in the private
sector, I now understand the need for a close working relationship between different
departments.

Therefore, since the best marketing strategy is based on the customers’ needs and wants, it is
essential for marketing departments to cooperate with the rest of the departments in an
organization.

For example, if the HR department employ workers who are committed to marketing
products that customers would choose, working hand in hand with the marketing department,
the process becomes more successful, therefore departments need to be interdependent,
working together to effectively meet the needs and wants of their customers or clients.
Instead of trying to convince customers to buy products, I learned through this module that
marketing is successful when there is cross-functional cooperation within an organization,
focusing on the customers’ needs and wants.

Additionally, through Amazon’s case, I came to understand the impact that technology has to
the changing conditions of business. In today’s world, offline companies are now going
digital. Paula (2020) states that marketing should be a two-way interaction where companies
leverage the wisdom of their customers to get a better product, service, relationships and
brand loyalty as well as increased sales. She further states that marketers are now using
marketing based on a two-way communication by actively listening to their customers’ wants
and needs, responding to their expectations with a clever design of products. They are now
customizing products based on the target segment of customers and using new channels for
promoting and delivering their products.

According to Amazon, Corporate Social Responsibility is an imperative part of any business’

reputation and overall performance (Du and Bhattacharya, 2010).

Amazon has been able to become a global internet company as it has taken advantage of
technology in collecting a large amount of data on its customers. This data was clearly
valuable because they were then able to determine their customers’ behaviour.

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After learning about Amazon’s use of internet marketing tools, such as social media
marketing and banner advertisements, I was able to understand how advantageous each tool
was in promoting Amazon’s products.

Challenges

I faced a few challenges during this module. Firstly, I felt that the weekly assessments gave
me limited time to read through and prepare for Assignment 1, and as the weeks went on, I
found myself writing summarised notes in order to help me understand the work for those
weeks. In addition, despite the fact that the material was quite overwhelming, I found the
module to be very helpful with information readily available on the internet.

Another challenge for me personally was the group work. I found that the group I was in was
not very accommodating as some were very busy and would only attend to the group work
the day we were supposed to submit the group assessments. However, communication was
not a problem as we used WhatsApp as a collective way of communication as a group.

Overcoming Challenges

In overcoming the challenges above, I made sure that I communicated with my peers through
WhatsApp and they were able to help me with any issues I had, and they were able to bring
new ideas to the group. Additionally, I learned how to prioritize my assessments; applying
the research skills I gained in the Research Methods module.

Actions and Next Steps

- Be more involved in the marketing of the business

- As an organization, we have a website. I believe that, due to this course, I can network
online while focussing on the collective goals and objectives of our school
- I can now conduct market research using the marketing strategies I have learned
about.

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What I will Do Differently Going Forward

I think, going forward, I will make use of the social media platform. This platform will be
very useful, especially at this time with the current pandemic. As we are unaware of when
schools are likely to open in Zambia, social media will be a great platform to market our
school; especially because children are more likely to learn online or through an e-learning
platform.

Conclusion

Assignment 1 dealt with marketing, focussing primarily on internet market using Amazon as
a case study. I now better understand the various strategies used by online organizations
promoting internet marketing and this developed my understanding on the use of marketing
tools, as well as the development of internet marketing strategies and plans.

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References

Du and Bhattacharya. (2010).Maximizing Business Returns to Corporate Social

Responsibility (CSR): The Role of CSR Communication. Available online at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228118694_Maximizing_Business_Returns_to_Cor
porate_Social_Responsibility_CSR_The_Role_of_CSR_Communication [Accessed on 27th
August 2020]

Fischer, D (2018). Marketing in 2019: What You Need to Do Differently. Available online
at: https://solutionsforgrowthllc.com/2018/12/marketing-in-2019-what-you-need-to-%EF
%BB%BFdo-differently/. [Accessed on 27th August 2020]

Paula, S. (2020). Strategic Marketing MK4S34: The Future of Marketing Strategy. Available
online at: https://vle-usw.unicaf.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=195857. [Accessed:27th
August 2020].

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