Marketing Environment
Simon Isrif, 438344, DIM1VC
19-10-2016
Week 1.7 Marketing planning and forecasting sales
potential
(Oxford,
n.d.)
Estimate market potential and the sales potential for your
product in the Netherlands in the year 2015
To estimate market potential and
the sales potential for Sennheiser headphones in The Netherlands in the year
2015 I am going to use the break-down approach. The break-down approach is an
approach that derives a company’s sales potential from the general economic
forecast and the estimate of market potential (Dibb, Simkin, Pride, &
Ferrell, 2016).
The economic forecast for the year
of 2015, based on Sennheiser’s annual report of 2014, is that there will be a moderate
production growth of 1.5 percent and a high degree of uncertainty caused by the
weakened euro. The Sennheiser Group still anticipates moderate revenue growth
compared to the previous year despite this condition of the euro. A variety of
new, innovative products and technologies supports this prognosis.
Consequently, Sennheiser anticipates a positive revenue growth in the current
fiscal year (Sennheiser, 2014).
Arguments why the company should write a marketing plan for the Dutch
market for your product
Writing a marketing plan for the
Dutch market for Sennheiser headphones could be profitable for the company. A
better understanding of the current performance of the company in The
Netherlands could be achieved by writing a marketing plan. Are there yet
unfound opportunities in the Dutch market or is there need for a new marketing
strategy as a whole? All this information and more can be achieved by
analysing, which is the heart of a marketing plan. I can think of almost no
argument to not make a marketing plan, the only negative outcome that can come
out is that everything in the market already goes fluently, that the company is
already performing at its maximum and that there a just no more opportunities
to be found in the country. But these things are almost certainly not achieved
yet, there is always room for improvement.
If you were asked to develop a sales forecast for your product for the
years 2016, 2017 and 2018, which forecasting technique would you use?
To develop a sales forecast for
Sennheiser headphones I would use the Time series analysis, I think this is the
best forecasting technique to use for the company and the product itself.
Sennheiser has a long history and thus also a lot of available historical sales
data (for example the Annual Reports), which makes it easy and advantageous to
use this forecasting technique. This historical sales data can be used to
discover a pattern or patterns in the company’s sales over time. This
forecasting method is useful for the company to forecast future sales by
analysing these past patterns.
The disadvantages of using the
Time series analysis are that it is questionable if the technique will be
accurate for future years, the technique is mostly based on analysing the past.
Things could unexpectedly change in the future which could make the time series
analysis not very useful (Dibb, Simkin, Pride, & Ferrell, 2016). Another
disadvantage is that it lacks new relevant statistical data, information and
knowledge.
References
Dibb, S., Simkin, L., Pride, W.,
& Ferrell, O. (2016). 22. In Marketing Concepts and Strategies (7th ed.).
Hampshire, United Kingdom: Cengage Learning EMEA.
Oxford.Retrieved from
http://blog.oxfordcollegeofmarketing.com/2012/11/29/marketing-planning-the-importance-of-planning-and-the-planning-processes/
Sennheiser. (2014). Sennheiser
Annual Report 2014. Retrieved from https://en-us.sennheiser.com/annual-report
