Proposed Strategy

Guard's current approach is adequate, but there are many other tactics that it should use to boost. Guard is currently experiencing difficulties in gaining business in the Ontario sector. This is due to the fact that the company's name is well-known in Canada. When a buyer purchases this deodorant from Guard, they are well aware of its high degree of scent, which is its key selling point. Many consumers who have purchased the Guard brand are expected to purchase it for the second or third time. The disadvantage of this product is stiff competition from other companies, particularly in the Ontario region. Notably, Guard lacks aggressive tactics in promotion as compared to other competitive brand. The present marketing/promotion budget is at approximately 20% of the Guard’s sales. Both Sung and King have a well outlines strategy that they want to use to help the company. The key areas that need to be addressed are evaluating the threats and opportunities, developing marketing strategies, setting advertising and promotion budget and setting sales objectives. Sung focuses on the aspects of advertising and promotion budget plan. He feels that Ontario should given much prominence in terms of spending. Nonetheless, King thinks that finding opportunities and strengths can help to increase the sales of the brand. King suggests that spending on the product promotion should be proportional to the sales of the product, instead of the regional populations.

How to allocate the promotion money

Guard experienced 36% of the budget set aside for Ontario last year, which was only 12% of the sales. Basically, there is not much business action in the region, thus allocating much budget in this area could bring more harm than good. Therefore, the promotion money could be allocated going by the belief of King. King is of the opinion that money should be distributed regionally in order to support the stronger regions. Her argument is premised on the ground that there are more business actions in the strong areas of the brand. Instead of putting more stress on the areas which do poorly, it could be crucial that a focus be put on areas with better sales.

Do an investment spending test?

Yes, it is important to run investment spending market tests first. Even if the product management of the Lever Group, the manufacturer of Guard Deodorant Soap believes that their product is a guarantee winner in the market, doing investment spending market tests is important because it helps in evaluating several aspects of the business strategy before their can commit the entire budget. Investment spending market test will help the company to confirm their unique selling benefit. Notably, consumers look for the remedies to their problems, only then seeking products that will address their problems. Market testing might reveal to the company a feature of the product that consumers do not like, thus it can drop it and save money. Furthermore, the company might find that it needs to lower the price or focus to a different audience from the one that it thought.

Moreover, the company needs to first-of-all run an investment spending market tests because it helps to provide unsolicited feedback. Besides testing the assumption that the company has about the product, it can generate new ideas with market testing from potential consumers.

Similarly, doing Investment spending market test can let the company to test its brand assumptions. There are certain consumers who buy products because they carry status, thus test marketing of a product will allow the marketing manager to ask consumers about the feelings they relate to the soap so as to determine whether the brand message appropriately connect to the company’s consumers.

Following a number of advantages of carrying out Investment spending market test, it is crucial that the company do such test for a year in the high population and key market areas so as to determine if the increment spending can result to higher sales to justify the need to allocate higher spending on those areas.