1 Executive Summary 3
2 Introduction and situational analysis 3
2.1 External Analyis: PESTLE 4
2.2 Internal Analysis: Analysis of the company’s core competences. 8
2.3 SWOT analysis 9
3 Marketing objectives 10
3.1 Brand description 10
3.2 SMART Objectives 10
4 Flora pro.activ in Japan Marketing Plan 11
4.1 Market Segmentation 11
4.2 Target Market 12
4.3 Position and Differentiation 12
4.4 Marketing mix 13
4.4.1 Product: 13
4.4.2 Price: 14
4.4.3 Promotion: 14
4.4.4 Place 15
4.4.5 People 15
4.4.6 Process 15
4.4.7 Physical Evidence 15
4.5 Global and E-Business 16
4.5.1 B2B E-business solutions 16
5 Marketing Budget 17
6 Marketing Budget 18
7 Conclusion 18
8 Appendices 19
References 19
Appendix A 21
Appendix B – Japanese city and population 27

1 Executive Summary

Executive summary (10%)
This should not be an introduction and terms of reference. It should be a summarised account of the key issues and recommendations of the report.
Critically evaluate and analyse the resources available to a marketer and establish how different environments influence the resources mix.
Develop and implement marketing plans for a product or service and critically reflect on the appropriateness of these.

2 Situational analysis

This marketing proposal is for the introduction of Flora pro.activ Margarine into the Japanese market. Recent research indicates there is a growing number of adults in Japan with increasing cholesterol rates since the 1980’s when global comparative averages were relatively low. However, with economic growth and income, the cholesterol levels for the Japanese has steadily risen and in 2008, the levels were on par with those in Western Europe (Eurakalert, 2011).

Flora pro.activ contains plant sterols which are proven to significantly lower cholesterol. A daily consumption of 1.5 – 2.4g of plant sterols can lower cholesterol by 7-10% in 2 -3 weeks as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle. The margarine has an impressive range of natural ingredients including sunflower and omega oils. Two portions of Flora pro.activ can provide a significant amount of the recommended daily amount (Unilever.co.uk, 2014).

The Japanese are known to be very health conscious and research has established they are willing to spend on foods that are high quality, safe, have an emphasis on being natural products and safe to consume. Health and wellness sales are set to rocket to $1 trillion by 2017. Further, the population in Japan is living longer, so consumers are into promoting healthier lifestyles and as such, invest large amounts of money on health foods, exercise and supplements and the trend for functionally beneficial foods is set to continue. The Japanese strongly favour nutritional supplements to prescription drugs (agric.gov.ab.ca, 2013).

In February 2011, the World Health organisation (WHO(a), 2011) conducted the largest ever study involving 147 million people which highlighted that those with high cholesterol levels were often not getting the medical or social intervention to treat cholesterol and reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease such as heart attack and stroke. For example, in Japan, although 53% of adults were diagnosed with high cholesterol levels, they remained untreated. In a country of around 126.5 million people, that is an astonishing 67 million people who are affected (WHO(a), 2011).

A key focus of the continuing R&D work at Unilever is to devise products that improve health and well being on a global level (Unilever.com, 2014) and this fits well with the Japanese market. External and internal analysis were performed and SWOT analysis was derived from the findings, which can be accessed below.

2.1 External Analyis: PESTLE

Political Factors
Factors
Future direction
Impact on Proposal
Stability of country and government
Positive
High
Ease of doing business ranks 27th out of 189 countries worldwide
Positive
High
Policy Reform
Positive
Medium
International Relations
Positive
Very high