The group project was one of the greatest experiences for me at Sauder so far. Analyzing a live business and finding ways to improve its services and operations was a practical experience for me. Choosing Best Buy as our company was a challenging choice. However, the group put all efforts into the assignments to come up with the best strategy possible.

The most challenging part of the project was definitely making the video because everyone was pretty picky about it. I personally wanted to make an absolutely creative video with no traditional aspects. However, time was a great constraint for our team. In the short period of time we had, we focused on making a video that shows an actual frequent case that happens to people and making the video in the context of one of best buy’s stores in Vancouver, which itself was quite challenging too due to store policies.

I believe the team put great effort in the project and in the end the video came out to be pretty funny and knowledgeable. The tasks were divided quite fairly and I edited the video after many years of not working with adobe premiere, which made me to remember everything over a night.

One thing that the group commonly concluded that was missing from our video was the fact that with did not cover the sales aspect of best buy entirely, such as the insurance plan. Though, we covered services such as the geek squad, the large pool of products that best buy has, and the unique customer service of them. in the end, team projects are my favorite aspect of studying at a business school and this project in particular was one the funniest, most informative projects I had.

It is no mystery that products are one the most important factors that define the identity of any company. Products can also show how the company is positioning in market according to its competitor. Consequently, it is of great importance to develop a product that is unique in order to help the company be distinguished in the market and also be competitive enough to survive in the long run.

The technological advances in the science world have been a great help for companies to develop new products. In fact, R&D in a company like P&G is a factor that makes them to be the giant power in the health and beauty market accounting for $2 billion dollars annually according to forbes magazine.

 

In addition, P&G started “connect and develop” program to engage with 100 international companies as partners in order to find new ways of developing products.

However, it is important for a company to know what kind of customers are they targeting in the sense that if their new product is going to be adapted by the consumers right away or is it going to go down the chain of diffusion of innovation. For a company like apple, this has been the case that during the early days of new macbook pro people who were willing to try a new pc platform started to use it despite its lack of compatibility with different software programs.

 

Essentially, due to the great services that apple provided to its customers through mac stores, fixing the compatibility of new macbooks with software programs and great marketing campaigns, a large portion of consumers gradually shifted towards apple to the point that the apple had the largest amount of cash right after federal reserve due to its product strength and great services. Therefore, products along with the company’s services, marketing and creating value propositions for the customers can make a organization unique enough to survive in the firece competition of today’s global market.

What is the key factor of the big companies like P&G, Coca Cola and etc that makes them to be successful over decades? The key answer would be significant innovation. In today’s world the market competition is fierce and companies should have a unique aspect in order to survive. Consequently, investing in R&D would give any company a great edge to always provide customers products that they value.

 

Proctor & Gamble is a great instance of a company that values innovation in a massive extent. According to Ken Favaro “[P & G invests US$2 billion in R&D annually, 50 percent more than its largest peer [Johnson and Johnson]. The article can be accessed here.

This innovation strategy has translated into the company’s core values as well as its shareholders’ trust. In fact, this one of P & G’s mottoes on their website is “P&G’s clear priority is value creation for consumers and shareholders.” However, strategy innovation is not just limited in R & D, but in every aspect of the business. This includes, sales, distribution, business system and model. It is clear that all these aspects are translated in to marketing strategies of such companies that leads to the correlation of marketing and innovation, which is an undeniable fact.

 

Four Seasons is another company that values innovation in a luxurious way. In an interview, Allen Smith, the CEO of the Four Seasons Resorts and Hotels talks about the importance of innovation for their business in toady’s’ competitive market. One of FS’s campaigns in Macao was “Walk on Water” that provided a luxurious and innovative platform for meetings, incentives, conferences and events. As mentioned in this article,  Julius Santos, the director of marketing of Four Seasons Macao, says “Continuous innovation is the key to success, that is the thinking behind Walk on Water”. As a result, event though product consistency and stability can help a business maintain its existence in the market, product innovation strategy can open new doors to the business and give it an advantageous edge in the competition if it is managed with precision as done by great companies like Four Seasons and P & G.

 

Companies have a great advantage if they are able to expand their product into different countries. This would provide them with a bigger pool of customers. However, it is easier said than to be done. The global market competition is fierce and a company should have unique aspects for its product to survive. In addition, entering international market is not easy because not every product is customization to meet each culture’s expectations and needs. Consequently, the idea of globalization arises to help companies have a better understanding of other cultures in order to provide people with products and services that aligns their needs and expectations.

Fortunately, internet is now playing a massive role in helping companies understand the trends of what is going on in other countries, so that they can react to the market behavior of the customers in different countries accordingly.

 

Chris Horton mentions five ways how pepsi is utilizing social media to target consumers with a “high-precision rifle rather than a shotgun”.  Article can be found in following link: http://goo.gl/l6Ot8R

These strategies as mentioned by Chris Horton are “consumer engagement, user-generated content, data aggregation, geo-local, and inbound marketing.” These strategies invite consumers to be more engaged with the pepsi products and also provide the company with great information that they can use for their marketing campaigns. As a result, today’s massive activity on internet and social media can provide companies great information in a cost effective way to learn different customers’ behaviors.

 

Hong Kong Disneyland was a case of international expansion that for many years was struggling, but it managed to survive and be super succussful. According to Bruce Einhorn on www.businessweek.com, HK Dinseyland made HK$4.9 billion year ending in september 2013. For many years, the HKDL lacked originality and did not differ from local theme parks pretty much. However, in recent years Disney pulled off some great marketing campagins and strategies in HK that helped them achieve the best marketer of the year award in 2013 in HK. Jennifer Chan in her article some of the strategies such as lets animate, which is a mobile “platform for users to create [customized] celebratory e-cardsadorned with iconic Disney characters, syncing with social media where users are encouraged to share their works on email, Facebook and Twitter.” http://goo.gl/UkiaZx

This is a great example of change of international marketing strategy and use of internet to target consumers in order to satisfy their expectations and needs.

 

 

 

Market always has price sensitive consumers that purchase items based on comparing prices and choosing a lower one. However, after the 2008 recession, the economic power of many consumers became weak. As a result, the number of price sensitive consumers increased by the shrinking of middle class.

So, how would a company attract price sensitive customers? after the 2008 recession that was the worst one in 50 years, P&G changed its market portfolio in order to target high end and low end market because there is a lot of growth opportunity in these two categories. According to Ellen Byron, “a wide swath of American companies is convinced that the consumer market is bifurcating into high and low ends and eroding in the middle.” http://goo.gl/wYvNFE

 

Based on the market segments P&G chose, products will also be divided into low end and high end that will satisfy the needs of these two market segments. Companies like Tiffany & Co have implemented such strategy as well. They eliminated the lower end products that used to attract the middle class and have focused only on high end consumers. As a result, they have reported increase in sales during the past holiday seasons.

Market segmentation plays an important role in marketing strategy. It will help the businesses focus on the customers’ needs better and cater its products according to their values; be it price sensitive or high end shoppers.