marketing, week3

Strategic drivers:

Strategic drivers are key factors that determine if a company’s organizational strategy will be a failure or a success; they shape organization’s strategies which are influenced by both external and internal drivers. External strategic drivers include markets, competition, taxes, laws, customer needs and technological change. Internal drivers are such as mission, profit goals and office politics. (http://business.simplicable.com/business/new/what-are-strategic-drivers)

An example of a company that has taken advantage of one strategic driver i.e. competitive forces is the Lamson & Sessions that manufacturers and markets industry products for electrical, telecommunication, consumer, construction, waste-water markets and power. The company ensures that its strategy prioritizes development and research so as to keep pace with the competition from other companies. (http://www.lamson-sessions.com/StrategicDrivers.html) To achieve these, the company ensures:

1. A high performance culture- it has come up with a set of norms and values that results to a company-wide culture.

2. It offers innovative products and services.

3. To operate an enterprise information technology to their competitive advantage.

4. It utilizes the competitive pricing practices to ensure a sustainable revenue and profits growth.

5. To concentrate all its associates to the concept of continuous process improvement hence operational access.

6. To meet customer satisfaction.

RFID technology:

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is an example of a wireless communication that utilizes radio waves to recognize and track objects. RFID technology can revolutionize the way organizations do business and can also protect and enhance the lives of consumers. As the most flexible auto-identification technology, RFID can be used to supervise and monitor the physical world automatically and with accuracy being the most supple auto-identification technology. (http://www.impinj.com/resources/about-rfid/)

RFID is enhancing a key innovation to supply chain management. Merchants loose lots in revenues because the track of goods was lost somewhere between the factory and the store-shelf. Apart from lost revenue, it’s also a concern to supply chain experts to improve productivity in goods transportation and to secure the source of goods. RFID is the perfect solution to these necessities. Locating and tracking is made easier and quicker by the technology. RFID was identified as a cost reduction technology by the Department of Defense (DOD) and Wal-Mart. It’s used to identify both outbound and inbound products. RFID is used in warehouses to locate and track products. RFID is used in processing and manufacturing industries to locate and track finished goods and Work In Progress.

A Journals article by Sixt Car Rental Company finds RFID technology is major to improving customer service (http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?12414). Sixt is one of the world's largest car rental agencies based in Germany. One of the company's greatest problems has been to keep the wait times down for those renting vehicles, and making sure customers can rent the cars of their choice. The amount of time essential to locate keys for a specific vehicle was frustrating to customers and employees.

The company’s solution was provided by Vilant Systems using keys embedded with RFID inlays and installation of readers on the sales counters, at the lock boxes I which customers can bring back the keys when the sales office is not open and at the bins where keys of cleaned vehicles are kept. The technology is now being used in most of its branches (over 200) to locate car keys hence saving on time as customers wait for the key to be found and also the technology has automated the collection of data related to when the cars are being brought back.

1. Direct marketing:

Direct marketing is a marketing instrument which contains activities such as mail order, telemarketing, direct mail, direct response advertising and email marketing. Direct marketing is very beneficial since it allows you to directly engage with your targets– whether they are prospects, end users, leads or existing customers. (https://www.selectabase.co.uk/blog/2013/04/what-are-the-advantages-of-direct-marketing)

Advantages of direct marketing are:

· Cheaper than mass market communication.

· Flexible targeting that allows you to communicate with your target markets in a well defined way.

· Easy to manage than other marketing methods.

· Swift and flexible in getting the results.

· It’s relationship building since you engage into a meaningful talk with your new customer.

· Enables the marketer to target different messages to different targets.

For a company to earn a customer’s loyalty, it takes them through very essential stages of increasing commitment:

Acquisition: after you have attained the attention of the people you intend to reach, the task is to attract and bring the people reached into the organization’s influence sphere. Growth at acquisition is a cheaper, quicker, and not risky proposition than the examined and true methods of expanded marketing and sales efforts. Further, acquisition offers a multitude of other advantages for instance instant economies of scale and easier financing. The competitive advantages are very formidable, you can catch up with your competition by getting them off guard, and even deep market penetration to weak point to the do away with competitors through its acquisition.

Conversion: The customers we reach and established concrete business relationship with, they are confident and have an interest to buy your product. The company benefit from being able to follow on the key points a client goes through before converting.

Retention: this is where you now intend and try very hard to keep the customers and sell them more (up-selling, cross-selling). Its far much easier to retain clients than to gain new clients. The company should work extra-hard to keep clients happy and determine a lifetime value of a client.

2. Four Is of internet marketing:

I was overwhelmed by the experience in FANDANGO.com.  It has advertisements that run across the top and sides of the website (most of the time movie trailers and/or banners).  If it catches your eye and you want to learn more about it you can click on it. Its tried to touch on all the four Is of internet marketing:

· Interactive: the site is very interactive.  The consumer is involved in the advertisement.  The site has been able to make the customer feel part of the advertisement. This has been made simple by the inclusion of a chat room, a game, survey, and other fun apps.

· Information-driven: the site has made it possible for the company to track consumer’s clicks on their websites.  The information can then is gathered and be used to prediction of consumer’s movements based on what others have done. It has also made it possible for the company to trace how the site is being accessed by the consumers in that, since they get more traffic from the site they can put more effort into the advertisements on that website.  It’s a more intelligent way to spend the money.

· Immediate: One of the challenges that on-line companies have had to bear with is immediate satisfaction by giving an essential answer.  To try curbing this problem, many companies have had to cut prices and give on-line discounts.  Though, some on-line companies have been able to get a more creative solution to this hurdle by giving much information about their products just instantly after a click. Use of interactive chat rooms has allowed the on-line company to have an immediate respond to a customer’s query. 

· Involving: it rounds up the other 3 Is. All having a common goal i.e. involving the customer so as to make them to take a step and involving them in the purchase. You should be wise on how you use it since it could become frustrating and back fire on you.  I personally get annoyed when adverts pop up everywhere covering the important stuff. This has made me close the website I wanted to make a purchase from.

3