The Customer Driven Marketing Strategy Marketing Essay

The Customer Driven Marketing Strategy Marketing Essay The marketing strategy explains the companys overall mission statement and future goals. Mostly marketing strategies are set with careful consideration by senior management. Marketing strategy must in cooperate the mission statement of the business. Shankar and Carpenter (2012, p.2) views marketing strategy as a broad plan of managerial initiatives and actions relating an organization to its customers and markets. Further states that there are three key aspects of marketing strategy as follows: Marketing strategy focuses on the strategic decisions necessary to allocate resources. It concerns managerial actions that have long-term effects. Decisions relating to marketing strategy are made by marketing executives in an organization and implemented by many others through the organization and beyond. Following are the four major activities involved in managing a customer-driven marketing strategy and the marketing mix are, i.e. Segmentation Targeting Differentiation Positioning Consumers are the centre of all marketing activity. The basic goals for all businesses are to create value for customers and build a strong profitable customer relationship. As stated by Kotler and Armstrong (2008, p.45) The marketing logic by which the company hopes to create this customer value and achieve these profitable relationships. Since the company owns the means of production it has the overall power to decide which customer to serve (segmentation and targeting) and how it will serve them (differentiation and Positioning). The business identifies the total market, then divides it into smaller segments, selects the most promising segments, and focuses on serving and satisfying customers in these segments in order to secure maximum profit. Using the market strategy the company then designs an integrated marketing mix made of factors under its control .i.e. Product , Place, Price, Promotion The four Ps. In order to find the best marketing strategy the company then uses market analysis, planning, implementation, and control. Through these activities fulfills the changes in demand from consumer behavior and adopts to the marketing environment. As stated by Mullins and Larreche (2006, p.3) IBMs competitive strategy was also quite consistent over the years, Given that the firm was never the lowest-cost producer in the industry, it did not try to compete with low prices. Instead, the firm pursued a quality differentiation strategy by offering superior products backed up by excellent technical service and selling them at premium prices. Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy In order to succeed in the modern competitive marketplace companies need to be customer centered, .i.e. they must fulfill the rapidly changing demands of the customer. Companies must draw the customer from competitor business, make them brand loyal and grow them by delivering greater value. Before anything a company must understand the needs and wants of its customers, only then it can fulfill by using the marketing strategy. Thus the company must use a careful market analysis. Market Segmentation The modern market is full of many types customers, products and needs. The company then determines which demand it can fulfill best and gain maximum benefits. Consumers are grouped in various ways geographic, demographic, psychographic, and products are made to fulfill their needs and wants. As stated by Kotler and Armstrong (2008, p.46) The process of dividing a market into distinct groups of buyers who have different needs, characteristics, or behaviors, who might require separate products or marketing programs is called market segmentation. Market segmentation consists of consumers who adopt in a similar way to different marketing efforts. In the car market for example wealthy consumers own the top notch cars but still make up only one segment of the market. Then we consumers who are price conscious and make up another market segment. It would difficult to fulfill needs of both segmentations so companies focus on the needs of one segment. Market Targeting After a company has defined one of its market segments it can target different segments of consumers. Market targeting involves information of each market segment and then selecting one or more segments to enter. The company must target segments in which it can best fulfill the needs of consumers. Wise companies enter into a segment from which they can achieve success in gaining customer loyalty and sustain it over time. A company might use the strategy niche marketing and target only a few segments from which the major competitor over looked. Alternatively companies might serve different kinds of customers but with the same wants, .i.e. Coca Cola. Multi nationals may serve the needs of all market segments. Most companies enter the market serving only segment of the market but as they gain success they grow and target a range of segments. Companies that attain the most success will eventually have the means necessary to serve all segments of the market; these leading companies have the different product design for each different market segment. Market Differentiation and Positioning After a company has chosen its market segment to enter, it must be decide how it will differentiate its market offering from competitors and must have unique way of serving its chosen target segment in order to secure maximum profits. A products position is the place it has in place of its competitor in the minds of consumers. The position of the product is one of the most crucial things in order to get consumers to buy it and attain brand loyalty from them. If products were similar consumers would have no way of differentiating between products and thus there would be no need to buy it. Positioning is the business securing a unique space in the minds of consumers in comparison to competitors products. When positioning its products the company identifies the plus points it has in that segment that provides competitive advantage over competitor. The company can give greater value to customers at low prices in comparison to competitors and attain a unique position in the market and win consumer brand loyalty. If a company promises greater value then it must differentiate its product from competitors and must deliver greater value in order for the product to maintain position in minds of the consumers. Thus effective positioning begins with differentiation, actually differentiating the product so that it gives consumers more value. When a company has achieved a successful position it must make strong steps to deliver and communicate that position to target consumers. The entire marketing program of a company appreciates the chosen position strategy. Developing an integrated Marketing Mix After developing the market strategy the company begins to plan the details of the marketing mix. The marketing mix a set of controllable marketing tools that the firm uses to produce the response it wants to get back from the target market. The marketing mix is whatever a firm has the power to do in order to influence demand on its product. The marketing mix consists of the four Ps Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Product means the goods and services combination the company the target market. Price is the amount of money customers would have to pay to obtain the product. Different companies target different range of customers i.e. luxury car makers target the wealthy consumers. Place includes the different locations the companys product is available to target consumers. Promotion means attract consumers and persuades them to buy the product. Ferrell and Hartline (2011, p.17) explains, The role of social responsibility and ethics in marketing strategy has come to the forefront of important business issues in todays economy. Our society still reverberates from the effects of corporate scandals at Enron, WorldCom, and ImClone, among others. Although these scandals make for interesting reading, many innocent individuals have suffered the consequences from these companies unethical behavior.

World War 1 as a Total War

In what ways can the First World War be seen as a Total War Total war is defined as the organisation of entire societies for war, using all Its economic, military and human resources to aim for complete victory. In addition there is less differentiation between combatants and civilians than In conventional warfare; civilians were affected as deliberate targets of war In their own right. It can be argued that the government of the Involved countries focused the economy on the war effort which in turn had an Impact on everyday life.The countries tried to make the maximum use out of their human and economic resources, which leaded to a entralization of power In hands of the government. The government started to control their countries In different aspects. Conscrlptlon was Introduced to control manpower better. Conscription Is defined by the compulsory enlistment In some kind of national service. In this case It was military service. In the united Kingdom, for example, it was introduced in 1916. In addition, governments started to exercise more control over industry, which leaded to nationalizing key industries like coal mining and shipping.They also had to control inflation, so that wages and prices were regulated. In order to pay for the war various countries increased taxes. Britain, for example, increased direct taxation. The governments also started to adopt tariffs on certain imported goods. The countries also borrowed money from other countries and also from their own people, what was done through ‘war loans' . ‘War loans' were credits issued by the population of a country to finance military operations and other expenditure in times of war, which the government would pay back with interests after the war ends.We can highlight that propaganda also made World War One a total war. After a big amount of time fighting some persons lose their otivation to fight a war and therefore they stop supporting their country. Propaganda was used to solve that problem by the governments. With propaganda the countries usually wanted to recruit new soldiers, motivate the population to support their country with work and money and to set on their population against the enemy. A poster made by the allies shows three anxious kids near by a shadow of a swastika and says: ‘Dont let the shadow touch them†¦ uy war bonds'. That poster was used to make the population hate Germany and to use that hate to make them support their country with money. Propaganda was an Important part of the war and Britain even created a Ministry of Information which made propaganda a key element of Its war policy. One of the points that make the First World War a total war Is the affect the war had on the life of civilians. The clvlllans were affected by military action and due to the new technology available there were many casualties.On the Eastern Front, due to the movement, clvlllans were Involved In violence, accidentally and deliberately. The Jews, for example, were attacked deliberately by the Russians. On the Western Front the civilians were able to keep away from the fighting, so that casualties were reduced to Inaccurate artillery fire. The First World War Is also the war that caused most casualties on civilians until that moment, due to military action or Oue to Tamlne, Olsease or accidents. A clvlllans oleo on Dotn sloes In total due to military action.The most shocking fact is that about 6,000,000 civilians died because of other reasons that were caused by the war and the life circumstances. As a result of the military casualties, in some countries conscription was introduced. Due to conscription a lot of men left their work and Joined the army. As a consequence a lot of pursuits weren't satisfied, like for example nutrition as a consequence of a lack to farmers. In addition both sides started to cut off supplies to their enemies. They tried to disrupt trade routes and to intercept the food and raw materials supplies.German y used submarines to create shortages which affected British civilians. As a result, the average calorie input of an adult civilian from the involved countries dropped from about 1500 in 1915 to 1000 in the winter of 1916-1917. In addition, due to the rapid growth of industry and men Joining the army and leaving their workplace, a lot of woman Joined the workforce. In spite of all to employ a woman was not the first choice of the employees. Women had to deal with isadvantages. One of them was the differentiation in wages compared with male workers.The wages of women remained low, despite their work increased. By 1917, one in four war workers was female. That shows how big the role women had in World War One was. In addition women had to deal with agreements made to let them work in ‘men's Jobs', as for example that these arrangements would Just be temporarily. By 1918 Woman formed 55% in Germany and in other countries the number of workers increased dramatically, for example i n Russia, with 20%, and in Austria-Hungary with 25%. All of the involved countries had ‘total' aims and they ere reluctant to give them up.Germany ‘s war aims were to expand their territory and to increase their economic strength to ensure security for Germany in west and in east ‘for all imaginable time'. As a consequence negotiated peace was difficult to achieve. Propaganda also made the peace difficult to achieve because it Justified the war and demonized the enemy. However, there were some tries to make peace by important persons. Some of them were the Pope Benedict XV and Lenin. They tried to develop peace without taking any personal benefits out of it. They principally called for a peace without annexations or financial demands.The affected countries, on the contrary, tried to make the maximum profit out of peace treaties. The First World War also affected the civil population of the involved countries and not only the soldiers. The on war effort focused econ omy led to changes in the life of the civilians what is basically what makes a war a ‘total war'. In the points above it is made clear that World War One was a ‘total war' because of the effect the war had on civilians and their lives, the growth of power of the government and how it was used to take advantages in war out of it and the attitude of the countries towards the implementation of their aims.

Founder-Ceo Succession at Wily Technology

Founder-CEO Succession at Wily Technology Lew Cirne sat stunned in his chair, digesting what Richard Williams had just proposed. As the founder, CEO, and chairman of Wily Technology, Cirne (pronounced â€Å"Ser-nee†) had worked hard to build the skills necessary to lead a start-up, had developed Wily’s early technology single-handedly, had hired 50 employees to help him build the company, and had successfully spearheaded a strategic transformation of the company.He had led the company to the point where he had convinced several important customers to buy WiIy’s flagship product and had successfully raised two rounds of financing from top investors. ?Cirne ,  · ,CEO, ,Cirne( â€Å"? -NEE†) , , , Wily , 50 , , , ,? WiIy , However, after the last round of financing, at the behest of Wily’s lead venture capitalist, Cirne had agreed to give up his CEO position and step down to CTO and had helped find and recruit Williams to take over the CEO position.N ow, as the last condition before he would accept the job as Wily’s CEO, Williams Wanted Cirne to also give up the chairman position that Cirne had held since Wily’s founding. As he stared out the window, Cirne wondered how he should react: â€Å"Just how much am I going to have to give up to make this thing a success? When is it too much? Is this step i going over the line? † As he thought back through Wily’s history, he also wondered what he could have done differently to avoid having to step down so soon as Wily’s CEO. , ,Cirne CEO , ,CTO, CEO ,Wily? CEO, , Cirne ,? Cirne Wily ,Cirne :â€Å" † , Wily , , Wily? CEO Early Years Lew Cirne grew up in rural southern Ontario, Canada, the only child of worIreminisced: †I played a lot of hockey when I was growing up. I was a goalie_l used to play way out of the net, taking obscene risks to get to the puck. It’s a very entrepreneurial position.When I wasn’t in the hockey rink or at music rehearsal, I was programming. My mom loves to say that she got me a Commodore PC when I was 12 and that she hasn't seen me since. † ? Cirne , worIreminisced? :â€Å" , goalie_l, , , , , Commodore PC? ,? 12? , , â€Å" Academically, Cirne was a high performer and set his sights on becoming the first from his extended family to go to college. He headed south to New Hampshire, where he attended Dartmouth and majored in computer science.All Dartmouth undergraduates were required to buy and use Apple Computers’ Macintosh PCs, and like many of them, Cirne became a fan of the Macintosh architecture. Each year, several graduates from the department went to work at Apple. One of those people was Jeff Cobb, who was a year ahead of Cirne and had served as a role model for him. After graduating in 1993, Cirne joined Apple, too. His first major project was developing one piece of the operating system for Apple’s Power Macintosh. He recalled: â€Å"That was the easiest project l’ve ever been able to explain to my mom.I was supposed to create the cursor for the Power Macintosh, make the cursor appear on the screen. I could tell her, ‘See that little thing moving around, Mom? I did that! † His next project was Copland, Apple's next-generation operating system. Copland was based on object-oriented technology, and Cirne was assigned to the team working on Copland’s object-oriented user interface. During this project, Cirne learned some technical truths that five years later would be part of the underpinning for the founding vision of his company. Cirne said: ,Cirne , Macintosh , ,Cirne Macintosh ,  · , Cirne, 1993 ,Cirne Power Macintosh :â€Å" L' , Power Macintosh, ,† ,! â€Å" , ,? Cirne ,Cirne ,5 , Cirne? : It was great to work with brilliant, technical people, learning from them how to solve tough technical problems.But even with the most brilliant technology team, no one could explain how the operati ng system as a Whole behaved. Each person knew their own little piece, but no one had the visibility to be able to see the big picture. Without adequate visibility, even the best systems are going to have problems. Part of the epiphany for me was, how can I make this complex, object-oriented software system visible, so we can see how the whole system will perform? I thought, there's an opportunity here to make the potential a reality. , , , , , , , , , , , Cirne loved the technical challenges and †the fact that people came to work excited every day,† but he felt restricted by the narrow specialization his role demanded in such a large company. In addition, he wanted to start building the skills he would need to play a central role in a start-up: †I wanted to learn how to be a founder or an early employee of a new company.I wanted to gain breadth, compared to my more focused role at Apple. † To do so, Cirne wanted to work for a smaller company for two years, after which he planned to leave to start his own company. That month, Cirne got a call from an executive recruiting firm that was trying to hire software engineers for Hummingbird Communications, a small public company. Cirne agreed to meet with Nick Gault, the vice president of corporate development at Hummingbird, who would be his boss there. Gault, who had engineering degrees from Stanford, had founded Common Ground Software.When he was 32 years old, Ga. it had sold his 30-person company to Humrningbird. Cirne said: Cirne â€Å" , , ,† , , , :â€Å" , , â€Å" ,Cirne , , , ,Cirne , , , â€Å" † Cirne ,  · ,? â€Å" †, , , 32 , , 30 Humrningbird? Cirne? : I met with Nick, and the job opportunity fit what I had in mind, between Hummingbirds size and Nick’s background.The company had just hit $100 million in revenues with 350 employees, and Nick would be a great mentor for me. He was a developer turned business-man, just like I wanted to be. I was ve ry up front with Nick, telling him, â€Å"You've had success at starting a company and selling it. I'd like to work for you and learn from you. † , , $100 350 , , , ,â€Å" , † Cirne joined Hummingbird as the lead engineer for its Macintosh product. Culturally, Cirne found Hummingbird quite different from Apple.Apple was a product-driven organization, Hummingbird was sales driven. Apple employees would talk about â€Å"shipping the product,† while Hummingbird employees would talk about †making our quarterly numbers. † Cirne â€Å" † Macintosh ,Cirne â€Å" † , â€Å", †,? â€Å" † â€Å" † Without informing Hummingbird’s headquarters, Gault created a â€Å"skunkworks† project to which he assigned Cirne, with the mandate to rewrite their viewer product in lava, an object-oriented language that was beginning to gain wide acceptance.As he started using the technology, Cirne became impressed. He came to b elieve that companies would start using Java to develop enterprise systems but that those companies would face the same problems Apple had faced in developing Copland: that it would be very hard to knit together all of the individual components into a coherent system that performed and scaled well. Cine said: â€Å" † , â€Å" † , Cirne, , , ,Cirne , Java , , : The more successful lava would be, the more the problems would abound for these companies. It was a belief that came from my personal experiences, both at Apple and at Hummingbird. As I was driving home through the mountains, on a curvy road on the way to Santa Cruz, 1 had a second epiphany: that if I could make the Iava prog. ram â€Å"self-diagnostic,† then I could help those companies solve that problem in a big way. I would solve the problem l had experienced myself. When it hit me, I almost drove off the road.When I got to Santa Cruz, I knew I'd start a company with this idea as a core foundational technology. , , , , , : IAVA prog. ramâ€Å" †, , , , During discussions with Gault, Cirne shared his vision of the potential opportunity he had perceived during his †epiphany,† and Gault helped Cirne understand how potential investors would view his venture, what types of people he should plan to hire to work with him, and a wide variety of other issues.By the time Cirne left Hummingbird, he was leading a team of half a dozen people, managing both the technical and managerial aspects of the effort to develop a ]ava version of Hurnrningbird’s viewer product. ,Cirne , â€Å" †? Gault Cirne , , , Cirne? , , , ] AVA Hurnrningbird Founding Wily

Pelagornis - Facts and Figures

Name: Pelagornis (Greek for pelagic bird); pronounced PELL-ah-GORE-niss Habitat: Skies worldwide Historical Epoch: Late Miocene (10-5 million years ago) Size and Weight: Wingspan of 15-20 feet and weight of 50-75 pounds Diet: Fish Distinguishing Characteristics: Large size; long, tooth-studded beak About Pelagornis One of the enduring mysteries of natural history is why the flying prehistoric birds of the Cenozoic Era never quite matched the size of the pterosaurs, or flying reptiles, of the preceding Mesozoic. The late Cretaceous Quetzalcoatlus, for example, attained wingspans of up to 35 feet, about the size of a small plane--so while the late Miocene Pelagornis, which lived about 55 million years later, was still impressive, its wingspan of only about 15 to 20 feet places it firmly in the runner-up category. Still, theres no overstating the size of Pelagornis compared to modern flying birds. This soaring predator was over twice the size of a modern albatross, and even more intimidating, considering that its long, pointed beak was studded with tooth-like appendages--which would have made it an easy matter to dive into the ocean at high speed and spear a large, wriggling prehistoric fish, or perhaps even a baby whale. As a testament to this birds evolutionary fitness, various species of Pelagornis have been found all over the world; a new fossil unearthed in Chile is the biggest yet. So why couldnt prehistoric birds match the size of the biggest pterosaurs? For one thing, feathers are fairly heavy, and covering a larger surface area might have made sustained flight a physical impossibility. And for another, bigger birds would have had to nurture their chicks for longer periods of time before their hatchlings achieved maturity, which may have put an evolutionary brake on avian gigantism after Pelagornis and its relatives (such as the comparably sized Osteodontornis) went extinct, probably as a result of global climate change.