Fundamentally, the risks in pursuing the Porters generic competitive strategies are two: first, failing to attain or sustain the strategy; second, for the value of the strategic advantage provided by the strategy to erode with industry evolution. More narrowly, the three strategies are predicated on erecting differing kinds of defenses against the competitive forces, and not surprisingly they involve differing types of risks. It is important to make these risks explicit in order to improve the firm’s choice among the three alternatives. Risks of Overall Cost Leadership Strategy Cost leadership imposes severe burdens on the firm to keep up its position, which means reinvesting in modern equipment, ruthlessly scrapping obsolete assets, avoiding product line proliferation and being alert for technological improvements. Cost declines with cumulative volume are by no means automatic, nor is reaping all available economies of scale achievable without significant attention. Cost leadership strategy is vulnerable to the Continue reading
Marketing Management
Marketing management combines the fields of marketing and management. Marketing consists of discovering consumer needs and wants, creating the goods and services that meet those needs and wants; and pricing, promoting, and delivering those goods and services. Doing so requires attention to six major areas – markets, products, prices, places, promotion, and people. Management is getting things done through other people. Managers engage in five key activities – planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. Marketing management implies the integration of these concepts.
Advertising Creativity – The Role of Creativity in Advertising
The creative part of advertising involves the process of selecting and presenting the messages. The business of conceiving, writing, designing and producing these messages is called advertising creativity and the key wordsmith is called a copywriter or copy chief or copy supervisor. The success of advertising depends to a great extent on the quality of the message or copy of advertisement rather than the money spent on advertising. The conventional theory of advertising includes the concept of AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action). Most of the advertisers believe that the message in advertisement copy must attract the attention and interest of the consumer if buying is to result. But they forget that only good advertisement copy or good message can attract the attention and interest of the receiver until and unless the much advertise product attributes have a strong impact on consumers. The consumers come to know the existence of Continue reading
Brand Building Process – Process of Building a Brand
The art of marketing is largely art of brand building. When something is not a brand, it will probably be viewed as a commodity. Then price is the thing that counts. When price is the only thing that counts then the low cost producer wins. But just having a brand is not enough. What does the brand name mean? What associations, performances and expectations does it evoke? What degree of preferences does it create? 1. Choosing a Brand Name A brand name first must be chosen then its various meanings and promises must be built up through brand identity work. In choosing a brand name, it must be consistent with the value positioning of the brand. In naming a product or service the company may face many possibilities: it could choose name of the person (Honda, Calvin Klein), location (American airlines), quality (Safety stores, Healthy choice), or an artificial name Continue reading
Meaning of End Product Advertising
There are many products that are rarely purchased direct by consumers. They are usually bought as part or ingredient in other products. For example, there is Teflon (DuPont product), Pentium (Intel Corporation’s computer processor chip), Athelon (Advanced Micro Devices computer processor chip) and many others. Advertising of such products is called end product advertising (also called branded ingredient advertising). This type of advertising is often undertaken by manufacturers whose branded parts or ingredients are used in producing usually other branded or unbranded consumer products. Successful end product advertising helps create demand for the ingredient that helps in the sale of another product, such as Intel promotes its Pentium processors. The sustained existence of consumer demand for such ingredients encourages companies to use them in their consumer products. It is not easy to build end-product demand. The manufacturer must have an ingredient that is widely recognized by manufacturers and consumers and Continue reading
Scope of Strategic Marketing
Strategic Marketing has been defined as the management function responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. Strategic Marketing is, therefore, both a philosophy and a set of techniques which address such matters as research, product design and development, pricing, packaging, sales and sales promotion, advertising, public relations, distribution and after-sales service. These activities define the broad scope of marketing and their balanced integration within a marketing plan is known as the marketing mix. A modification of a definition of strategic marketing suggests that marketing is the management process that seeks to maximize returns to shareholders by creating a competitive advantage in providing, communicating and delivering value to customers thereby developing a long-term relationship with them. This definition clearly defines the objectives of marketing and how its performance should be evaluated. The specific contribution of marketing in the organization lies in the formulation of strategies to choose the right Continue reading
Need for Creative Advertising
Most brands in the same category deliver more or less the same functional benefits and answer the same needs of the consumers. With so many products on the market having the same function, the only way to position a product, service, or company differently from anything else in the same category is through creative development in advertising. Today traditional advertising is losing its sheen. The biggest problem with traditional media is that consumers today have lots of choice for ad avoidance. The fragmentation is very high and there is very less scope of customized message for all. The Indian consumer has changed if we focus on this issue there is a lot more on the menu to choose from. Now the message unlike the past is no longer a one way process. But public opinion is far more mobilized, they have immediate platform for expression. The expert believes that the Continue reading