Custom «Marketing Strategy: the Challenge of the External Environment» Essay Paper Sample

            After focusing at the skyrocketing demand of information technology (IT) services not only by the United Kingdom and the United States but also by the rest of the world, it was seen important to set up a company that would cater for these services.  The company would offer efficient and reliable services to the customers and at a lower price affordable to all. The company, which is to be established under the name Global Executive Technology (GET), unlike many others will be international and it will not be restricted to serving a limited number of customers. GET will be bent to increasing access to the technological services to all people irrespective of their age, nationality, economic background, race and all other parameters that sometimes cause discrimination among customers.

            This business plan gives a feasible direction to the way. It states the company’s vision as well as the strategic focus which is adding significance to the target market segment, growing businesses and the even the home and office users all over the world. In addition to this, it provides ways on how establishment and improvement of sales, profitability and gross margin will be achieved. In this plan, several areas related to the business are featured. These include: objectives of the company, its products and services, the management plan, market focus, financial plan, as well as action plans and forecasts.

Objectives of the company

            The main aim of the company is to ensure that many people can have access to IT services as close as possible and at the same time solve the problem of conning by educating masses on how to distinguish counterfeit IT gadgets from the original ones. Another objective of the company is to entirely transform the IT arena by providing products that are durable, reliable and with a lengthy warranty period of about 24 months. It is also supposed that after a short while, the company will be offering distant tutorials to its customers which will help improve their skills in computer usage. Additionally, the company aspires to provide employment to a greater number of people and especially the young generation (Heerden & Cant 2005).

Mission

            GMT is to be established on the assumption that the execution of information technology for business is likened to the accounting, legal advice, graphic arts and other bodies of acquaintance. As such, it is not intrinsically a do-it-yourself viewpoint. Intelligent business people who are not computer hobbyists should have quality vendors of dependable software, hardware, services and support. They require these vendors as they use the rest of their service suppliers, as reliable allies. GET will be such a vendor. It will be serving its customers as a dependable ally by providing them with the trustworthiness of a business partner. The company will ensure that its customers run their businesses as well as possible through the provision of all that will be required by the clients with the highest level of reliability and efficiency. Most of the company’s information applications will be mission critical and hence a guaranteed assurance is given that engineers will ever be available whenever they are needed by the clients (Heerden & Cant 2005).

The enterprise

The company

            Global Executive Technology will be headquartered in London and will be serving clients across the globe. It will be a progressive company ensuring that all the clients gets a personal attention as they deserve throughout all levels in the certification processes. The organization will uphold quality as its chief value and enhance a client-focused devotion to brilliance and service. If need be, the company will also partner with other leading technological companies to ensure responsive performance, quality services and fair competitive prices to all its clients.

To attain stress-free value added audits, the company will make use of certified auditors who will be selected for their experience as well as customer-friendly methods. The company will ensure that all the certification activities conform to the international official approval standards ensuring credible and consistent certification processes. By fostering teamwork, cooperation, transparency and open communication, the company will earn a reputation of honesty that will consequently help in creation of an environment of respect and reliability by clients and all the other stakeholders that will be helping to support the certification objectives.

Products and services

            As it is an information technology company, GET will be selling personal computer technologies for upcoming businesses including personal computer hardware, networks, peripherals, support, software, training and service. At the end of the day, the company will be selling information technology itself, confidence and reliability. This will offer assurance to small businesses individuals guaranteeing them that their businesses will not collapse due to the information technology disasters. GET will be serving its clients with the loyalty of an honest ally, offering the faithfulness of a business partner and the cost-effectiveness of an outside merchant.

Competitive advantage

Due to the obvious notion that information technology is at a higher demand in the modern society because it is the sole source of many types of development, GET will offer excellent products and services to its clients to ensure that it outshines its competitors. To achieve this, it will ensure that all its products are available in many different regions around the globe. Additionally, the company will be offering training programs to its clients which will not only lure customers to the company’s products but will also catch and sustain their esteemed loyalty. Another advantage that the company has over other information technology companies is that it will be serving its customers from all lifestyles irrespective of their economic status by delivering its products at a cheap and an affordable price. In order to cope with other challenges that are likely to put the company in jeopardy, endless efforts will be made to ensure that company prevails.

Market

Porter’s Five Forces

Porter’s Five Forces Model focuses on all the ambient conditions that affect any business. The model creates an ample opportunity for the organization to adopt the most appropriate strategies to combat with all emerging risks (Wilde & Hax 2001). It will be prudent of GET to integrate this model in its marketing since it will enable it overcome many challenges which it may be prone to. The company will be totally aware of the stiff competition by existing competitors, emergence of new players in the market, suppliers’ power, consumers’ power and threat of substitute goods. Although this is brought to the awareness of not only GET but also other companies, more adjustments on its marketing strategies are necessary to enable it completely outshine its competitors.

Being one of the companies that will be dealing with technological devices, GET is likely to be subjected to very stiff competition from other companies of its kind. Despite the fact that competition is healthy in the business arena because it grants the customers capacity to choose goods over a wide variety of suppliers, it is risky in the field of electronics because it is likely to drive profits to the zero mark. For GET to skyrocket above its opponents, it should strive to attain a competitive advantage over them (Jones & Hill 2009). This would consequently require the company to have a cost advantage, low cost, when compared to its competitors.

It will be recommendable for the company to lower the prices of its products mainly by providing discounts to middle men who will, in some way, lower the price of the very products before they get to the end consumers and in the long run a lower cost will be achieved. The company will also strive to invent creative channels of distributing goods that are not as costly as those used by its rivals. This will ensure that the company’s goods reach the consumers before the other companies have delivered theirs. Another way of fixing this problem is by creating very strong relationships with the suppliers to ensure that they supply the company with the appropriate raw materials on time which would consequently increase the reliability of the company.

Just like any other company, GET is likely to be faced by the challenge of its customers turning to other substitutes (Snow, MacKenzie, & Kurtz 2009). Though many people make assumptions that electronics companies are not affected by this challenge, it should be understood that they are the most affected because technology is growing day after the other. This challenge become intense because there are many other companies of this kind which raise or lower the prices of their products at wish. When this happens, the loyalty of many customers is distorted and they end up switching to the goods sold by the other companies.

Since it is completely unpredictable when rival companies will lower the price of their goods, GET will always maintain the price of all its goods as low as possible in order to sustain its customers. Although the company is not likely to be affected by this challenge immensely since it deals with virtually all the alternatives that customers are likely to turn to if the price of one item rises, the company will strive to clear with a stock a few days after its arrival. This is because when more advanced items are invented, customers abandon the old ones. In such a case, if the previous stock had not been cleared, a great loss is likely to be incurred.

Customers’ power is another challenging factor that is likely to exert much pressure on GET (Jones & Hill 2009). Buyers get so sensitive about the fixed prices of the company’s products and this somehow affects the way they purchase good. Because IT companies deal with items that are abundant in the market, their customers make comparison of item prices and turn to those that are cheap. The company just like many others in the UK and around the western community is affected by customer shortage. It has been observed in the last few years that UK is running short of customers due to the irrational ratio of companies to the total consumers. This situation has consequently led to a condition whereby the number of suppliers is much higher than the number of consumers.

GET is also likely to be faced by the threat of new entrants. The entry barriers into this industry are low suggesting that anyone who wishes to establish his own company to sell items such as those of GET is all welcome to the platform. Additionally, the establishment of retail stores such as GET requires less technological skills. It is therefore very easy for other new competitors to come up hence posing threats to GET. Government interference in protecting such companies against external forces is very minimal and this grants other entrants the freedom to compete stiffly to the company (Jones & Hill 2009). Since it is guaranteed that GET will be in constant growth, new entrants are likely to become more evident and there are also threats of other big companies forming alliances to compete with GET. Due to the nature of the GET’s products it is very hard, if not completely impossible, for it to keep new entrants off because these items cannot be certified. A sense of security can only be achieved if the company can win the loyalty a huge number of customers.

Although GET is likely to be faced by many challenges, there is still hope because most of its aspired suppliers offer cheap items, something that will enable it sell the same cheaply to its customers. Most of the assemblies supplied by these suppliers are of higher quality than those of the competitors thus giving the warranty that the company is likely to dominate the market. The company will therefore take advantage of this fact to reform other areas that are likely to affect its smooth running because it already has more advantages as compared to its potential competitors. As mentioned earlier on, GET is expected to capitalize on the few advantages it has over its customers and outshine them.

Marketing strategies

This refers to all the processes that will allow a company to get its limited resources concentrated in such a way that its sales increase and enable the company skyrocket and achieve a competitive advantage over the other companies of its kind (Dobney 2011). To ensure that marketing of the company’s products, strategic marketing techniques will be embraced.  This will be achieved by considering both the internal as well as the external environments of the company. Internal factors are those cat affect the running of a business from the interior and which the company can be able to control solely through its efforts. This is contrasted with the external environment which involves all the factors that affect the business from the exterior and the company has less or totally no control over them. While the marketing mix includes one of the major examples of the internal environmental factors, target market analysis and competitor analysis are examples of the external environmental factors that affect the smooth running of the business (Handlechner 2008).

Through the integration of the marketing mix, the company will be guaranteed a successful selling of its products (Hartline & Ferrell 2010). The four P’s, which are the major constituents of the marketing mix, will be professionally infused through proper use of marketing techniques. The 4Ps, price, promotion, product and place. Following the simplified definition of a product, something that satisfies the needs of customers and can either be tangible like a good or intangible like a service, the marketer will strive to expand the product mix by mounting the product line’s depth or the number of product lines. Marketers will also be bent to exploit the brand, the company’s resources as well as configure the product mix in such a way that it can complement the rest.

Price is the amount a client pays for the product. It is important since it determines the profit and consequently the company’s survival. GET’s marketers will set a favourable price that favours all customers and complements the other elements of the mix. Promotion as the third P refers to all the communication methods used by the marketer to relay info to various parties regarding the product (Mercer 1998). GET will embrace all forms of promotions including advertising, personal selling, public relations and sales promotions. All forms of advertising will be utilized. Place as the final P refers to ensuring that products are available for clients to access. To ensure that all the customers have an easier access to the company’s products, intensive distribution will be put in place.

Operations

All the operations within GET will be monitored and coordinated through strategic management. This will be achieved by establishing a group of potential managers who will be in charge of all the activities taking place within the company. Strategic management will be used to establish the mission, vision, objectives, values, goals, roles, timelines and responsibilities among many others (Craig & Sadler 2003). The operations managers will ensure that all the employees are working towards the same goal and adjust the company accordingly in reply to the changing environment. Additionally, the operation managers will ensure that all the employees are abiding to the preset code of behaviour within the company to avoid misconducts that might maim the company.

Managerial staffing will also be done in an effective manner to ensure that all the people hired are those that are qualified to perform specific responsibilities for which they are hired for (Jones & Hill 2007). With respect to technology, qualified IT engineers will be required to fill the gaps and be recruited as the new workers. This follows the obvious notion that computer technologies require expert who have capacities to handle as well as manipulate them. It is as such the responsibility of the managers to ensure that they carry out the staffing process as well as possible to prevent problems of unnecessary inconveniences (Staffing.Org 2012).

Key risks

Global Management Technologies may experience plan overruns in software and product development caused by factors such a unavailability of development-related hardware, software, materials, components or technologies. When developing products, the organization’s schedule may sometimes get altered due to discovery of performance problems or changes in customer demand, something that may cause delay in product’s competition. To curb this monstrous challenge, GET aspires to anticipate rapid growth in the number of its workers as well as the outlook of its operations, resulting to a more conducive environment for the company. To cater for growth, GET will continue to improve its functioning, management and financial systems and will also hire, motivate, train and manage its employees.

Financial Projections

To start with, the company will be economical in whatever it does and some of the initial expenses are shown below.