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COMPANY MISSION STATEMENT

Blackberry’s mission is to offer secure and advanced technology for medical records and professional care to healthcare providers to meet the specific and ever-changing way patients and doctors interact within hospital and medical center settings.

TARGET AUDIENCE PROFILE

According to the Mintel report on Mobile Phones in the US, the target audience for Blackberry should be for consumers in between the ages of 35 and 44. While there are still opportunities for Blackberry in first-time smartphone buyers, Blackberry should focus more on targeting healthcare providers with new software that will allow them to provide patients with a secure data network to manage patient files, statistics and medical care.

NEW OFFERING DESCRIPTION

According to the CEO of Blackberry, John Chen, consumers tend to want to buy from companies that they believe will be around for a long time. Blackberry should start specifically marketing towards companies that need phones specializing in private and secure data transfer. Instead of offering a wider variety of phones, Blackberry should offer one new, state-of-the-art phone, and make sure that it is the best phone they could possibly make. According to a MarketLine Advantage SWOT analysis of the Blackberry company profile, the strengths of the company include product design and R&D capabilities. This shows that it the process of designing a new, state of the art phone for the company to stand behind is something that can be done easily. Consumers compare battery life, camera quality, screen size, and processing speed when choosing their new phone, so Blackberry should offer a phone that is competitive in all of those categories, at a mid-tier price range (Mintel). Chen also mentioned in a Fox News interview that Blackberry is “not leaving the consumer but instead focusing on enterprise customers” like healthcare agencies and government institutions. Data and identity security is a big opportunity for Blackberry, so they should completely focus on those institutions and be a company that only sells phones to enterprise customers. Healthcare is a sector that relies heavily on patient privacy, so Blackberry should focus on that sector because of its vast array of networks that can manage and secure data on mobile devices (Rocha). If Blackberry were to develop technology that made patient’s records and statistics able to be easily accessed by doctors and nurse practitioners without jeopardizing security or confidentiality, Blackberry would be able to increase its market share and revive the company from its recent downfalls.

NEW OFFERING FEATURES

The characteristics of this offering cater to the needs of enterprises that need secure and manageable phones for their employees. Blackberry has an opportunity to cater to the needs of large clients like banks, law firms, government agencies and healthcare providers (Reuters). This offering works for Blackberry because they are in a position where they can be the only company to market strictly to corporations with a state-of-the-art phone that can provide data and identity security.

OFFERING BENEFITS

The benefits for the targeted audience are a desirable phone that is secure, competitive and specifically intended for them. Competitors are not able to offer the same level of data security as Blackberry, so the proposed offering will open up opportunities for Blackberry to provide corporations with the phones that they need. In addition to this, an opportunity for Blackberry comes in the form of the rising numbers in the smartphone market that show that the demand for smartphones is going to keep going up, which will increase company sales. While the threats towards the company are that “intense competition could impact that company’s market position,” Blackberry could use the strategy of only marketing towards corporations to remain in a competitive spot in the market.

PRICE

Blackberry phones should be in the mid-tier price reach, which is still competitive but not necessarily focused on being affordable to every customer. In Chen’s interview on CNNMoney, “Blackberry’s Turnaround Strategy”, he mentioned that there is a different market for smartphones that are made as inexpensive as possible for consumers, and stated that Blackberry’s prices were “competitive” and in the “mid-tier.” Consumers will pay a bit more for a phone of better quality, and Blackberry’s focus will not be on providing affordable phones so much as it will be on providing a phone that has everything the targeted consumer needs. In addition to this, by marketing specifically towards healthcare companies, the importance of the phone being affordable drops significantly considering the wealth and vast amount of resources these companies hold.

i. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Cassandra

I EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (see p. 342-343) – .5 pages recommended with appropriate citations

Section Outcome: Convince the reader clearly and concisely that you have addressed market considerations, product/service offered, and strategy behind the plan. This should be the final element of the marketing plan to complete. At a minimum, this section should clearly and concisely include the following items.

·   Brief description of the market

·   Product to be offered

·   Strategy behind the plan

ii. BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Section Outcome: Convince the reader that the offering is a good fit for the company and can help achieve business goals.

·   Define the type of offering and describe in detail the offering features and why there is an opportunity/demand for this product.

·   How does the offering support the company’s mission? Include the company mission statement first and then follow it with your discussion for this section.

·   How does the offering fit in with what the company is already doing and further its business goals?

·   Support this section with quality secondary resources (in-text citations and complete citations in the Reference section)

iii. THEMARKET (http://www.strategicmanagementinsight.com/swot-analyses/blackberry-swot-analysis.html)

http://www.mbaskool.com/brandguide/mobile-handsets/446-apple-iphone.html

For the market we are testing our new product the VitalBerry in Boston, Mass General Hospital. The hospital and VitalBerry are working as one as delivering HealthCare services to the doctors and nurses. The typical age for this device is someone who is 30 years old to about 65 years of age.This is because by the time you graduate college you will be about 28 with a degree and by age 30 you will be able to find a job and work in the same field for many years until you retire which could vary. This product is for anyone working within the hospital to get and deliver information quick and easy while on the go. Mass General Hospital has a very diverse number of people who are employed for them. ( http://www.massgeneral.org/careers/commitmenttodiversity/ )

The customers for this will be existing employees for the Mass General Hospital. This is because the current employees for the hospital want to be very secure with the information they are withholding. So for this they will be using the VitalBerry to deliver their information to patients securely. They will be current customers who already have a smartphone in the industry. The hospitals will use and buy our VitalBerry because it is very secure and has all the features that any other phone has. The VitalBerry includes: longer battery life, camera quality, screen size, and processing speed, Healthcare services, and start of the art security software. They will be purchasing them because the hospital information will all be linked towards it and having all the data of patients information in one convenient device will make them more efficient. They will also be using our product to deliver the patients X-rays for them and  delivering them their medical records via the VitalBerry. The competition for the market is any other smartphone: Iphone, Android, Samsung, or LG.

·   Discuss the competition and the uncontrollable environmental factors so that you convince the reader that your product/service is superior to the competition.

·   Are there other organizations you are partnering with to deliver your new offering (product/service)?

iv. THE NEW OFFERING LAUNCH STRATEGIES

v. PROMOTIONAL MIX

REFERENCES

"BlackBerry's Turnaround Strategy." CNNMoney. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.

MarketLine. (2014, February 21). Blackberry Limited (Formerly Research In Motion Limited: Company profile. Retrieved from MarketLine Advantage database.

Mintel. (2014, February). Mobile Phones - US. Retrieved from Mintel Oxygen database.

Rocha, E. (2014, April 15). BlackBerry buys minority stake in healthcare IT firm. Retrieved from http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/04/15/us-nanthealth-blackberry-idINBREA3E0SE20140415