BUS 600 Week 2 Assignment 1

Assignment 1
Chapter 1 - Marketing summary and blogging.

Marketing is important and will help the organization to focus on the target market and to find new opportunities. A good Marketing involves measurement of the business/ organization progress (health card). This will provide benefit of gaining customer confidence and market segment in order to achieve the organization business goals/ objectives as well as future plan.

I would like to touch base on the following 4 points that is rather important:

1) Product Involvement

1. Defining the product importance to consumer is critical.
2. We will know whether the product is a must owned items or nice to have items for consumers.
3. Doing market research or study on the prototype of a new product will help to get response from consumers.
4. Also, need to consider others factor of fashion/ trend/ technology and etc.
5. It is one of the primary question that the organization need to consider before even consider developing/ investing the products/ projects.

Example:

• Consumer will consider buying USB thumb drives over outdated optical device (CD/ DVD) for convenience of data storage.
• There are consumer that prefer Micro SDRAM card (rather expensive) than USB thumb drives(cheaper) as.
• There are also consumers that prefer a larger data storage device like External hard drives as more and more memory space required.

In summary, we are able to observe that Optical device product no longer relevant and lost its touch to new technology of Solid state memory. Meanwhile, consumers have the choice of getting a Micro SDRAM card over USB thumb drives (difference on cost and also the physical advance of the product) Large memory product is still relevant as the demand of data storage is expanding higher day to day.


2) Segmentation

1. After defining the product involvement, we can also look into Segmentation.
2. With reference to above example of USB thumb drives – we are able to determine that the market segment are targeting on below consumer criteria:
1. new generation to 60 years old
2. Low income.
3. Growing countries.
4. Computer user
3. Mean while, the market segment difference compare to External hard drives product:
1. Mid income
2. Also, Home appliances users (movie/ audio download)
4. Segmentation got to be strategically measurable and able to research the market behavior of the consumer in order to control production and also react according to market demand.

3) Product Life Cycle

1. Technology influenced products (as per above example) is really volatile to new technology and new product.
2. Therefore, the organization must be able to study market trend and demand very well.
3. For instance, Product Life Cycle of memory storage can be determine by the consumer demand or growth of higher capacity.
4. Products that have limited memory capacity will soon be gone.

Example:
- Floopy disk manufacturer EOL (end of line) the products.


4) SWOT Analysis

1. I first come to hear about SWOT from my ex-boss in Malaysia.
2. SWOT is important for the whole organization structure from employee skills to product ability to sell in the market.
3. This competitive analysis will help us to define:
1. Strengths of the product or organization
2. Weakness or challenges faced.
3. Opportunities to launch a product at the right market time.
4. Threats from competitor
4. By identifying SWOT will definitely a good strategic planning model for any company.