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Using Marketing in Management of a Small and Medium-Size Business
Smejkalová, Kateřina ; Hesková, Marie (advisor) ; Harantová, Monika (referee)
diploma thesis at hand is titled "The Use of Marketing in Strategic Management and Planning in Small and Medium-sized Companies". The objective of the thesis is to create a meaningful, causal, systematic, and practically usable analysis of the given topic; and, subsequently, apply such academic knowledge in drafting a marketing strategy for the purposes of the company named SkiServis Kunžak (SPORT2000 Smejkal). The company in question is a retail outlet selling ski, snowboard, and cross-country ski equipment. Alongside with this, it provides servicing and rentals of the goods mentioned above. The needs of the company are determined by the need to respond constantly to evolving society and, in correlation, to increasingly dynamic and more demanding variability of the environment. At the current time, the most outstanding role is especially played by the social economic crisis. Creating a strategic marketing plan was selected as a key strategic weapon for SkiServis Kunžak. The principal means of achieving the objectives then include a selection of specific marketing communication strategy. SkiServis Kunžak (SPORT2000 Smejkal), a small company, had not elaborated their marketing strategy before this thesis was produced. Marketing and its issues had been tackled intuitively and randomly. To the largest extent, SkiServis Kunžak used to rely on word-of-mouth promotion in which satisfied customers would spread awareness of the company's existence and its scope of business. Given the varying conditions of existing markets, changes in values in society instigated by changes in values in individuals, and with regard to new demands, dynamics of competitors, etc., the management at SkiServis Kunžak (SPORT2000 Smejkal) decided to pay proper attention to the marketing strategy. The diploma thesis is divided into four major sections. The introductory section defines the root cause and motivation behind the selection of the topic for this thesis. Key questions are asked concerning the process of creating company's marketing strategy, and these are gradually answered during the process of tackling the subject matter. The second section observes the theoretical and methodological framework as a support for the following practical (applied) section. Theoretical grounds for the diploma thesis have been mostly compiled from professional literature. Thus, the theoretical module is prevailingly of compilation nature. Theoretical and methodological section is further divided into two subchapters. The first subchapter defines, in the given context, currently frequently used terms related to successful existence of small and medium-sized businesses in competitive market environment. Attention is paid to the following terms: "strategy", "innovation", "twenty-first-century marketing", "specifics of small and medium-sized companies", "strategic alliances". The second subchapter of the theoretical module specifies the strategic marketing plan. The text is structured and delivered in a more or less bullet point format because essential descriptions and contextual references are explained in preceding chapters. The text defines the following terms: "company's visions and targets", "marketing research", "critical success factors", "strategic situation analysis", "SWOT analysis", etc. The chapter also defines partial corporate strategy, i.e. marketing strategy. It specifies marketing targets that stem from company's targets and from a completed situational analysis. Out of all marketing strategies, the "marketing communication strategy" is considered best for the purposes of the applied section. The practical (applied) section, and the third module, takes into account former and existing facts relating to SkiServis Kunžak (SPORT2000 Smejkal) with a view of future orientation. Subsequently, the thesis introduces an applied situational analysis made through SWOT analysis followed by the draft of the marketing strategy itself through communication mix. The emphasis is, among others, put on the effort to "survive" the current economic crisis and preserve existing customers, increase company's market share, increase awareness of SkiServis Kunžak, etc. The final section synthetically summarizes fundamental results of individual analytic chapters. Also, the reader can find here an outline of the issues to be explored in the future.
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