Research Paper on:
Developing a Marketing Plan for P&O Ferries

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
the shipping sector. The ferry sector specialises in passenger transport and freight in roll on roll of ferries from English ports to Europe and Ireland but the company may be  seen as an international logistics and transport company. There are a number of sectors the company operates within. Marketing for a large company such as this may be complex, and  in formulating a marketing plan the company itself needs to be understood. Therefore, this report has the aim of formulating a three year marketing plan, by first looking that  the company and its position and then moving on to the way it can move forward and how this may be reflected in any marketing campaign. In this paper the  emphasis will be on the ferry businesses. However, this needs to be seen in the context of the group of companies being both a ship operator and port operators carrying  a great deal of cargo. 2. Financial Summary and Market overview Financially this is a strong company, with 2001 being a harder trading year that 2000 due to the way in  which transport become less favourable. The turnover for 2001 was ?2,476 million compared to the 2000 figure of ?2,563 million, and 1999 of ?2,366.7 million (P&O, 2001). However, although the  turnover fell only slightly there was a large drop in the profit, indicating the need to cut process in difficult trading conditions, the gross profit fell to ? 433.2m  from ?932 million the pervious year (P&O, 2001). Profit before tax was only ?44 million, still a 50% drop on the year before of ?88 million. The company sis still  string, there are good foundation and there is not a cause for concern in terms of company survival. However the performance is down and reflects the change in the environment,