Question1.
Marketing Management Assignment help on : Ways to generate Sales
Introduction:
As per Ambler, Tim, Kokkinaki, and Puntoni, (2004) any business organization if it has to successful has to generate sales and they shall have to find better ways and means to generate the sales. The organization shall have to look into the various things that are tying them down and those that shall help them to have a better future. Such things are often referred to as the performance measures. The measures have to carefully selected and have then with equal care have to implied to make sure that the organization has a safe and secure present and in accordance a better future.
There can be many kinds of performance measures or indicators, they can range from being financial in nature to being non financial, they can be leading indicators that is indicators that allow the organization to change in accordance with the times and then there are lagging indicators that show the required changes after a particular time period to make sure that the organization does not make the same mistakes as they have made in the past years.
Data Gathering:
As per Ambler, Tim, Kokkinaki, and Puntoni, (2004) there has to be certain set of information that has to be gathered to make sure that these measures are aptly supplied with the required data to make them as accurate as possible. For a computer wholesaler and retailer there have to be a certain set of data available that can be acquired through thru following ways of data gathering.
The data has to be obtained in such a manner that the organization does not dilute its focus but at the same time they do not create such a large focus area that the result is completely useless to the future of the organization. Thus this is one of the most important things that an organization has to keep in mind while deciding their marketing metrics data collection tools and sources.
The financial data can be attained from the financial records of the firm that they should keep to understand their progress. The set of sales data can be obtained from the sales and marketing department. The operations data can be attained from the operations team who must keep a day to day record of the happenings of the firm to make sure that they are on track with the set targets.
Indicators:
A few of these performance measures have been defined below and they include the following:
Financials measures:
The financial performance of an organization is of utmost importance. As if an organization is not creating value for their shareholders than such an organization can be of no use to them and they can wish to exit from such a business venture. The main measures of the performance measure from the perspective of the financial stability of the organization include:
Sales growth:
According to Farris, Paul and Reibstein (2005) any organization when they start measure themselves they shall have to look into the sales of the organization. The first thing that any organization should look at is the sales figure for the past few years and the growth or decline that they have shown. The changes in the sales of the organization can help them to ascertain wither or not they have had the required results in the past few years to maintain a healthy record of an organization that can sustain in the future.
A decline in the sales of the organization can be very alarming signs of increased competition or reduction in the customer base. Both or any such reason that can affect the sales of the organization should be looked into in an efficient and fast manner.
Return on investment:
According to Farris, Paul and Reibstein (2005) another financial measure of the marketing metrics is the return on the investment that the organization has done. This includes the return of the marketing investment that the organization has done in the past few years for increasing the sales of the organization. This indicator can help the organization to realize wither or not there has been any improvements in the sales due to the marketing effort that has been undertaken. Cause if there is not a lot of improvement in the sales then the organization shall have to change the way they are investing in the marketing strategy and shall have to look into new ways to increase the return on the investment for the organization.
Non Financial Measures:
Overall response rate to the media:
As per Forrester (1965) another part of the measurement of the organization performance when it comes to the measures is the non financials measures that have to be understood. A major non financial measure understands the response that the general public gives to the marketing campaign. Do they approve of it or do they ignore, or they are completely against it. These measures have to be understood to make sure that the organization is on track with their goals.
The response rate can be ascertained from feedbacks and sometimes even a separate market survey to understand the impact of the marketing effort of the organization. Such steps can help the organization to understand wither or not there has been an impact in the general public after the marketing campaign and wither or not a change in required in the campaign.
Hits on Website:
As per Forrester (1965) another non financial indicator for the organization as it is completely web based selling is the number of hits that the website receives. A website hit is the number of times someone accesses the website or the number of times that there is an access from another website where there was an advertisement of the website of the organization.
This indicator is useful in determining wither the target of the advertising campaign is correct or not or wither changes have to be made to the same.
Lagging indicators:
Lagging indicators are those indicators that tell the performance of the organization after a particular event has happened. They do not allow the organization to change the current end result but are helpful in the avoidance of such results in the future. Although many of the indicators that have been discussed till now are lagging indicators but there are a few other indicators that can be included in the lagging indicators list.
Net sales billed:
According to March , Sproul and Tamuz (1991) although this can be a part of the financial indicators but net sales billed includes the number of bills that the organization has charged over the past few days or months. This indicator allows the organization to ascertain the exact number of customers that have purchased the products of the organization. This allows them to understand if there has been any improvement in the total customers of the organization by means of the marketing effort t or not
The reason why this indicator is part of the lagging indicators is because they when an organization can understand the number of bills that have been charged they have been charged in the past and this can only help in understanding the changes for the future and not for the present cycle. Thus net sales billed form a part of the lagging indicators.
Cost of the effort:
According to McGovern, Gail, Court, Quelch and Crawford, (2004) another marketing metric that can be very helpful to the organization is the cost that has been incurred on the marketing plan. Although this can be a part leading indicator as well but it’s mostly a lagging indicator. The cost involved can be decisive factor in the success or failure of the marketing plan and strategy. An organization has to be very careful when they decide on the costing of the marketing plan. If they under plan the whole thing then there is still a possibility that they shall be able to get away with the failure of such thing. However if they end up spending a very large amount on the plan and it fails then they can end up being in a very difficult position. Hence this is another metric that has to be considered while measuring the performance of the organization.
It forms a part of the lagging indicators as this is something that has happened and cannot be changed. Although if the organization takes care of the fact to keep on checking with the changes in the cost then this particular indictor can form part of the leading indicators for the organization.
Leading indicators:
This category of indicators are probably the most difficult to finalize for an organization but they are also the most important. Leading indicators as the name suggests are the indicators that usually allow the organization to take action before the current scenarios reaches its climax. They allow the organization to change the flow midway to divert it in such a manner that it is favorable to the organization. For a computer retailer and wholesaler there are only a few leading indicators but they shall have o be such that they are not to taxing on the organizations data collection policies and neither are they incorrect in their predictions.
The leading indicators include the following:
Number of product pre booking registrations:
As per Reibstein and Joshi (2005) in today’s advancing technology age big organizations are launching new and better products every few months. Be it the example of the Iphone 5 from Apple or the Galaxy Note II from the Samsung stable. All of these products have had a long run of marketing campaigns that have been backed by the pre orders that these organizations have opened up from months before the actual release of these products to the general public. This is another opportunity for the organization to realize its actual leading indicator. The pre bookings will confirm how many people know of the organization and how many would like to order from them based upon their marketing and the price that they are offering to the customers.
The pre bookings form a part of the leading indicators as they are opened well before product launch and this gives the organization time to change its plan of action, both for the pre bookings and the actual launch of the product. It allows the organization to create a scenario where they can penetrate the required segments of the target market with time remaining for the actual sales to occur.
Thus the number of product pre booking registrations is an important leading indicator for the organization.
Market Share:
As per Wind, Yoram and Mahajan (2002) probably the most important indicator in marketing perspective is the market share that an organization has. Any organization works to attain more and more customers for themselves in the highly competitive markets in the current business world. The market share is an important indicator for all organizations.
Market share is usually measured based upon the total number of customers that are present in an market and then the number of customer to whom the organization can sell to or has sold to be taken into consideration and then the market share for any organization is ascertained. As the computer hardware provider is based only out of Australia and that to in only a limited number of cities then the organization shall not have a lot of issues in determining their market share. For the organization they have to understand the impact of the marketing plan based upon the changes in the market share before and after the implementation.
Market share is a leading indicator as usually market share data is available on a regular basis and changes in the market share of the organizations can be ascertained on a fairly regular manner. This allows the organization to understand the changes and then change the strategy accordingly.
Conclusion:
Thus these are few of the indicators that the organization can use to understand the performance of the organization both in terms of the marketing plan and the general strategy of the organization as well. These indicators are useful for the organization as they shall allow it to be on track to achieve the future targets that have been set.
Question2:
Digital evolution:
As per Bakker and Dass (2012), there has been constant improvement in the ways and means by which the technology has been advancing in the past few years and there remain a certain level of speed in the digital revolution which can lead to a more advanced form of data collection that can provide results in a much faster manner and in a much more efficient manner. The data collection technologies can move the focus from the changes in the customer perspective to the changes in the market dynamics in general as data collection will become easier and there can be decisions made on a much quicker and larger scale than ever before.
There are a few developments in the fields of data collection, data analysis and data presentation which are discussed below:
Data collection:
According to Bethlehem and Stoop (2007) there has been a continuous change in the manner in which the various data collection activities have been undertaken. The technology to collect data has improved vastly in the past few years. The development from large computers to small handheld high power devices has been swift. The focus has shifted from data being collected at specific centers to data being collected from the handheld devices of the customer. The attention spans of consumers too have dipped and hence there has been a change in the data collection techniques as well. Major focus group studies have been replaced by small questioners that can have as little as ten questions. This shows that the organizations and various data collection agencies are too getting the jist of the changes in the technologies and are changing with time.
As per Sarndal (2011) this trend of continuous improvement in has been such that it shall be going on for the next decade or so and not just the five years.
Data analysis:
As per Biemer and Lyberg (2003) the changes have not only come in the way that data is to be collected. There have been changes in the way the data is processed as well. The changes have been such that they have increased the speed and the amount of data that a single computer or processing system can process. The computers today are capable of processing data ranging in terabytes in a few minutes and in some cases even a few seconds. This shows that there is a vast improvement in the data analysis sector and this growth is something which like data collection is going to be continuous.
As per Daas, Ossen, and Tennekes (2010) data analysis has not just improved in the forms of the quantity but also in the way of quality. There has been a change also in the basic algorithms that the computes follow that if they are provided with the correct data they can also link the various data streams together and provide the users with results that can help the organization sin making decisions that can have been termed as near impossible in the near past. Thus the quality too has improved rather than just the quantity and this is a trend which shall most definitely go on for the next five years.
Data presentation:
According to Daas, Roos, et al. (2011) the last major improvement in the data presentation sector is the way today reports have become more and more interactive and the aim of these reports is not to only present the data but to present it in such a manner that the individual who studies these reports is able to create a link between the data in the reports and the current scenario. The data presentations have been made much more user friendly with the advances in the technologies. And this has allowed the marketers to present their findings in such manner that the users of the data find it interactive and easy to understand and thus there is a clear cut understanding of the data.
This trend too is ever evolving and has a very bright future of growth in the coming five years.
Acceptance from target markets:
B2B
As per Eurostat (2011b) the changes in the technology and the means of data collection and analysis shall have different reactions from the various target markets that an organization caters to. The B2B market is one such market. This market shall be among the few areas where an organization should not have to worry about the changing in the technology as they shall be among the first to accept it in their organizations as well. The customers in the B2B market shall have only one major concern and that shall be the legal ramifications of any kind of data leakage that may happen due to the technological change and if the organization can overcome that particular hurdle then there a lot of scope in this market for such a change.
B2C:
According to Eurostat (2011a) this is one market where there can be a lot of varied reactions, and they can be both good and bad. The reactions can be both encouraging and discouraging for the organization. The customers in such a market can be very apprehensive to such a change in the data collection and analysis technology and can be very resistant to such a change. However they can have the opposite reaction as well.
Thus it can be very difficult to judge the reactions for this target market both due to the size of the market and due to the variance in the market. And it can be said safely that any change for this market has to be applied after a lot of thinking has gone into it.
Boomers:
As per Haraldsen (2012) boomers are the ones who were born during the years of 1946 to 1964 .They mainly contributed to the population growth. The population in this target market was resistant to the change in technology for the new data collection. They were not comfortable with the new changes being brought in the technology and thus did not favor any change. This resistance of their towards the acceptance of new technology for the data to be collected created many hindrance in the path of growth and also as a development on the whole. As we all know change is the need of an hour and to make things better we should readily accept change and moreover when the change is in regard to the new technology because things like technology become obsolete with every passing minute.
Generation X:
As per Haraldsen (2012) generation X comprises of the population born during the years of 1964-1979. The population in this target market group was partial resistant towards the change in technology or in other words we can say that this generation was not very comfortable with the changing technology for the forms of new data collection but to some extent they welcomed change in technology. This group of population basically comprised of people who was not very clear with their mindsets that are o some extent they were agreeing to the change to the new change in technology but on the other hand they used to show some or the other kind of resistance towards the change in technology for the new data collection. It could be said that they were “semi-resistant “
Generation Y:
As per Haraldsen (2012) generation Y consists of the people who were born during the years of 1979 to early 1990. The people who belong to this target market group are considered to be the most technology friendly generation. The population in this group has welcomed the change in technology or in other words the new technology for data collection with both their hands open and has actually played a good role in the advancement of the technology and has also given way for the development. As we know that in today’s fast moving world technology plays a very important role and to be in the lead one has to be technology friendly so that he can prove his metal. This generation has also shown their curiosity and interest to join the digital revolution.
Digital Natives:
As per Haraldsen (2012) the most modern of all the target market groups is the Digital Natives. The people belonging to this target market group are the population which comprises both the Generation X and the Generation Y. The people in this group are highly brand friendly and also to be noted are extremely brand conscious. They are ready to accept the changes in the technology for the data collection by not showing any resistances towards the changes to be brought in but for this to take place they need a decent proof which describes that the changes which are to be brought are for the good of all. Thus because of the above mentioned reasons its is stated that the people belonging to this target market group include traces of both the generation X as well as the Generation Y.
Conclusion:
Thus it can be said that there has been a lot improvement in the way that data is being collected, analyzed and presented and this improvement and development has made way for a much clearer picture for the data processing for marketing metrics. Lastly it can be said that the improvements in the technology have not only helped in the improvement of the general life but have also created new forms of opportunities for the marketers and have made them more potent than ever before.
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