Lifestyle > Train of Thought
Question for Business people/Marketers
Suga Foot:
I own a business. That just goes to show that any schmuck with some money can do it :)
Mo Z. Dizzle:
here it is; i made it as long as allowed; gimme your opinions, lol:
Grade Builder Assignment
A market-based company mainly wants to gain the most market share they can in the industry. In order to do this, the company must do market research on the different segments they are targeting, create a unique positioning strategy for each of those segments and then developing a marketing plan to use the positioning strategies they developed.
Before a company develops a unique positioning strategy, they must do market research. With market research, the company obtains market intelligence, consumer intelligence and competitive intelligence. Market intelligence is important to know as it helps a company comprehend information about the external market and also whether or not the company has a chance in succeeding1. Consumer intelligence is important to know as it aids a company in understanding consumer attitudes, lifestyles and values; this plays an important role in whether or not a product has a chance of succeeding. Competitive intelligence is also important to know as it keeps a company informed on what their competition is doing better and worse than they are. Once these are determined, the company can determine what positioning strategy to use for each market segment2.
After doing the market research, a company must create different positioning strategies for its different segments. This is because consumers in a market segment have needs, wants and demands that differ from other segments. Also, different market segments seek different benefits from one another. A company must present the product attributes and benefits that apply to the different segments to assist in making consumers aware of the product. This will help the company to create their marketing plan and also allow them to use their positioning strategies for the different segments.
Once a company develops unique positioning strategies for the target markets, they can develop a marketing plan. This will give the company an opportunity to apply the strategies they have developed. Consumers will have different cognitive responses (i.e. varied perceptions) on products which is why it is necessary for them to create unique positioning strategies3. Once the different positioning strategies are presented, it will gain the attention of consumers within the target markets and will also convince consumers to buy the product because they will know that the product can satisfy the needs, wants demands and/or benefits they require. The more the customers buy, the bigger the company's market share will become.
In order for a market-based company to gain as much of the market share they can in the industry, it is necessary for them to develop unique positioning strategies. Different types of consumers have different perceptions of products and also have different wants, needs and demands about products. It would not make sense for a company to use the same positioning strategy to all the different markets as consumers may feel that the product might not be what they require and therefore not buy the product.
1 "Market Intelligence." Wikipedia. 10 October 2006. 18 November 2006.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_Intelligence>
2"Vincent Barabba: Understanding the Enterprise as a System." University of Pennsylvania. 2000. 18 November 2006. <http://www.acasa.upenn.edu/VBinterview.pdf>
3"Positioning (marketing)." Wikipedia. 10 November 2006. 19 November 2006. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positioning_(marketing)>
Ant:
^^ It's humorous, but sad that so many people think that businesses talk in these terms. I don't fault you for writing that, I fault your professor for teaching nonsense.
Businesses can't run on vague concepts and theoretical babble. It's obnoxious, and I think the business world would be better off if they just tossed out all these assholes professors and shitty books.
There are some impressive business educators, but they are few and far between. Generally, the more theoretical their teachings the worse they are.
Here's some solid advice on the inadequacies of "business-speak":
From: http://plain-text.co.uk/a_to_z/business_speak.html
BUSINESS-SPEAK
Business-speak, corporate-ese, MBA-speak. Call it what you like, the language of the corporate world rarely makes rewarding reading. Why do businesses say things like: 'Our mission is to provide innovative solutions that drive value into our customers' businesses'? Here are several reasons:
* The truth just doesn't sound 'important' enough -- OK, so what you actually do is provide consulting services for the telecoms sector. Why not say so?
* If we don't use the latest jargon, everyone will laugh at us -- they'll laugh a lot more when you try and explain what 'envisioneering' is...
* We want to make our products sound as awesome as possible -- who doesn't? But describing them as an 'end-to-end turnkey solution' is not the best way. By the time the customer has worked out what you're talking about, it may be too late
* Baffling customers is what we do for a living -- there's no hiding the fact that a dense cloud of business-speak works for certain sectors. But in an era where business myths are being exploded daily, for how long will obfuscation keep working?
Business-speak has had its day. Customers and investors want plain speaking as much as they want good service and a good return on their money. The language you use will make a bigger impact if it makes good sense.
Don Rizzle:
--- Quote ---This is wrong in a few ways.
1) Managers and directors do not need to constantly review strategies. They don't even need explicit strategies. Again, if you study businesses you will find that most companies exist without doing what you are suggesting. So how can this be necessary?
It's also not always feasible. In most businesses strategic discussions are not even feasible. Lots of business people have no desire to talk "strategically." They prefer to talk plainly. They talk about how can they cut costs, how can they improve service, what should they being doing to improve, etc. But they don't sit down in a conference room, and edit their master strategy document once a year.
Instead, many companies improve through casual interaction. So and so say... let's try this. It seems to make sense. So they do it.
--- End quote ---
This is not what i was implying, they don't have to write down a strategy document or even have a board meeting to discuss it, it maybe something which is decided verbally but at some point in the product life cycle the main players are going to discuss what direction they want to take things and what are their top priorities, the outcome of which will be they're strategy.
About reviewing they won't be constantly writing strategy docoments they will be monitoring their key success factors, if they are not doing well then they may decide to change tactics or more drasticly change strategy entirely.
--- Quote ---2) Profit maximization is not the ultimate goal. I hate when people suggest it is. For some firms it is, but firms that care primarily about profit maximization are at a strategic disadvantage to firms that care passionately about other things. I think a much better objective is "value maximization." Meaning, businesses should focus on making their customers happy by doing things that are valuable.
But that's just my opinion. But many companies exist without a concern for "profit maximization." Google's initial passion was to be the best at search. That's why they existed and that's what drove them to be so successful. Their core objective is to "organize the world's information and make it univerally accessible."
The owner of a coffee shop might aspire to make amazing coffee. Restaurants owner's have a goal of being the trendiest restaurants... having the best tasting food.. etc. Clothing companies might be obsessed with having lots of people wear their clothes.
Tons of new internet companies are selling for millions of dollars, but they aren't even making money. Youtube sold for 1.7 billion, but they are losing money. They weren't concerned with profit maximization. They were concerned with being great at sharing videos, social networking, and whatever else made them tick.
Those guys weren't sitting around with some retarded strategic plan. They were just doing what they thought made sense.
--- End quote ---
profit maximisation is not the always the objective of every firm i agree, some firms don't even intend to make a profit, but for most firms while they may not be explicity trying to maximise profit by cutting quality or performance to improve margins in the short, because dooing business like that may have very negative impacts on your long term market share and revenues, what they will do i try and think of what is important to the their target market, think of ways to statisfy their desires in order to increase their total spend or to retain them as a customer an keep them coming back. This is why 10 years ago shops started giving out loyalty cards, as a way of retaining customers, by giving them incentives to make more purchases. Now what we are seeing is companies are using RFID tagging in the supply chain and also to see how cusomers react to their products in different positions, displays etc. also it can be used to find out when they buy their product or even use the product, this gives them a better understanding of how to sell their product.
--- Quote ---The worst thing about business literature is it tells everyone "You must do this." But that's never the case, and often the literature is dead wrong.
They tell people "if you want to start a business, you need a plan." That's retarded. Most mega companies started without a plan. Just a few people dicking around trying to do something cool. Google started with two guys screwing around with search algorithms.
They didn't even want to make money at first. The owners fought for months about adding Advertising to their site. They didn't want to because they thought it would make the site cluttered. And it would decrease the efficiency of search.
Eventually they changed their minds, and Google is now worth 130 billion. Not only didn't they have a "plan" but they didn't even want to do the thing that made them so rich. They cared about other things more than they did profit maximization.
--- End quote ---
I was never saying you must follow the litriture to a tee, I said each business is different, they will have a different business model and its unlikely there is a book out there that is written specifically for them, but they will be able to find something which is useful but there will be thousands out there which will be utterly useless.
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