Product Smartphone Application for Charity - Essay Example

| Word Limit:1519 21st April Assignment Topic: Charity with Technology Candi ment I hereby declare that this assignment is my own work and any use of materials from other sources has been referenced accordingly. Candidate Signature: Date: Tutor Statement I hereby confirm that this assignment, to the best of my knowledge, is the candidates own work and they have not collaborated in the production of this assignment with any other person. I also confirm that I have a record of this candidate’s progress tutorial/s. Tutor Signature: Date: Table of Content Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..4 CRY……………………………………………………………………………………………….4 Product Smartphone application…………………………………………………………………..4 Marketing Plan……………………………………………………………………………………5 4P’s of Marketing…………………………………………………………………………………5 STP Process……………………………………………………………………………………….6 Investment Recommendation……………………………………………………………………...7 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………...8 References…………………………………………………………………………………………9 Appendices……………………………………………………………………………………….10 Introduction The following paper includes the discussion about the preparation of Smartphone application for the purpose of raising funds for a charity named CRY (Child Rights and You). The paper includes the description of the smart phone application and the description of its functionalities. The paper also discusses about the marketing mix and the marketing process that will be used in order to promote the product or application for raising more and more funds for the Charity. The paper also includes the STP process to be applied for the application and the environmental analysis for the evaluation of existing environment. CRY CRY is a nongovernmental organizations working for the development and rights of poor children who are the victim of illiteracy, malnutrition, and social menace and so on. The main objective of CRY is to bring the attention of society towards these suffering children and gather funds to help them financially and provide them food and shelter and also work towards eradicating this condition of poor children. Product Smartphone application The Smartphone application to be prepared by the programmer will be related to the communication platform which will provide quick access to different social networking websites and allow individuals to use the application for chatting on these websites using the Smartphone. Due to the wide popularity of the social networking websites and high trend of people accessing them on their Smartphone’s, the application will be highly used by people around the globe. The application once used will pay some amount of funds for the charity from the individual registering for the application. It will also pay some part of the monthly charges that the user will pay for using the application. There will also be an option for direct donations to the charity (Harty 2009). The application will also include the video chat feature which will help to popularise the application. The application will also include direct links related to the charity CRY, and on every start up of the application an advertisement of the charity will be flashed in order to promote individuals for giving donations to the charity. The Smartphone application will also include the feature of direct access to the CRY website and different videos and pictures will be flashed on the application when it is in use from time to time (Andreessen 2011). Marketing Plan Smartphone Application can certainly be measured as successful through the number of downloads made by the customers. If more and more users are updating an application, it is presume that application is relevant and useful. It provides ongoing value to the users and has even become the integral part of mobile life (Pride and Ferrell 2011). For targeting the users and different promotional strategies a marketing plan is prepared that analyze the whole internal and external environment along with the different marketing strategies and investment recommendations that defines the exact procedure for investing the capital into the development of application. 4P’s of Marketing Product Smartphone application has become part of daily life. Through an array, of applications present in market users can communicate and conduct their business activities effectively. In the current market Smart, phone hardware devices along with processors are capable of running the heavy applications. Smartphone application could be easily reached by the mobile internet market with advanced features. Presently there are 200,000 applications in Apple iTunes Stores and around 100,000 applications present in Google Android Market. Applications turn the Smartphone into the powerful handheld comfort that includes, video player, eBook reader, games, and sat nav device.  Price Pricing strategies used for Smartphone application is carefully reviewed for making it more affordable; Review of good pricing strategy is more vital for the success of the application. There are mix pricing strategies, as most of the application could be downloaded for Smartphone free of cost, but there are many paid for applications for the Smartphone operating systems. Application downloaded on one Smartphone cannot be used in other Smartphone.  Place Target market for Smartphone Application si UK where in the year 2010 more than 860 million applications were downloaded in which 105 million users downloaded the paid applications. Therefore, revenue reached £280 million for paid application downloaded. UK is the biggest market for Smartphone due to the present of mainly big Smartphone players present in the market (Martin 2011).  Promotion Smartphone owners have increased to 55%, and that increased use of Smart phone application. As there are many competitors present in the market, companies are launching different promotional strategies like Amazon has launched the new application in which the company is providing 5% rebate on Amazon price when customer buy application from there Smartphone.  In UK, mobile companies are promoting Smartphone application through interactive ads that are contained within other iPhone applications. Ads shown on other application has a high level of engagement that covers click to video, click to app stores, and click to call, through this way, companies can target audiences.  STP process Segmentation Smartphone application market is divided into two segments, which are demographic and geographical segmentation. The demographic segmentation focused over the different customers according to their age, income, and lifestyle. Customers having high income, young generation of age group 20-50, and customers who follows luxurious lifestyle are targeted in the demographic segmentation. In the geographical segmentation, places where demand of Smartphone is high like America, UK, India, etc are targeted, as the Smartphone user’s rate is high. Due to the high user rate in these areas Smartphone application users are increasing (Hughes 2011). Targeting For promoting the product, the market of UK is targeted where Smartphone users are high, because of the major mobile players are present. According to the UK Smartphone App Market overview both male and female customers are increasing in UK in the year 2010. As per the growth rate in UK female Smartphone will catch up with their male counterparts within the next year. Average numbers of application downloaded in UK are increasing, and active Smartphone users are using one application per day. Due to the high income group demand for Smartphone and Smartphone applications is increasing.  Positioning Smartphone applications have become part of everyone’s life due to its advanced features that make life much easier. Smartphone application is extremely fast and can deliver the quality. Application has many features like ALIS Scanner, Site Plan through which user can contact to data and products of the company, users can even browse the news or use the social networking sites. All the application features can be easily access by the mobile internet. Companies can position their application through different promotional strategies like advertising over the television or over the internet, which is the best place to advertise products. Investment Recommendation From the marketing plan an investment in the Smartphone applications and in the marketing activities is recommended in order to make it more and more popular in order to maximize its use by the Smartphone users and, which will reap high results in the form of high amount of donations. It is advised to increase the investment in making the application more and more popular by aggressive marketing and using different advertising techniques in order to target the segmented customers and position the application in the market as a high end social networking application which is made with a noble cause i.e. helping suffering children. CRY has been recommended to make an investment in the marketing activities by properly segmenting the market and targeting the appropriate individuals who can make contribution to the charity. The investment will reap high amount of returns as the application will be positioned as an application to bring people together by the way of social networking and helping suffering children and bring more and more welfare to the community (Phan, Montanari and Zerfos 2010). From the investment it can be said that the returns on investment will be in the form of increased number of users which will bring regular charity with the increased use of the application. The return on investment will be high as the investment will just be for a time being after the popularity of the application it will generate charity and revenue for long term and making the investment profitable with high return on the investment. Conclusion From the above discussion and the making of marketing plan for popularising the application it can be concluded that the making of application as a means to bring in the charity or donations is an excellent idea which will reap high amount of profits from the application. The application will be a huge success because there is high demand for the applications, which can provide people with a platform to be connected with their social circle. People also find easy ways to contribute for the social cause and this application will help them to do charity within a few clicks of their smart phone. The anticipated return on investments will be around more than 15 % as the marketing plan will reap high results and will bring in high amount of charity and funds in the form of charges being charged to use the application. References Harty, J. 2009. A Practical Guide to Testing Wireless Smartphone Applications. Morgan & Claypool Publishers. Andreessen, L.A. 2011. Giving 2.0: Transform Your Giving and Our World. John Wiley and Sons. Phan, T., Montanari,R. and Zerfos, P. 2010. Mobile Computing, Applications, and Services: First International ICST Conference, MobiCase 2009, San Diego, CA, USA, October 26-29, 2009, Revised Selected Papers. Springer. Pride, W. M and Ferrell, O. C. 2011. Marketing. USA: Cengage Learning. Martin, C. 2011. The Third Screen: Marketing to Your Customers in a World Gone Mobile. Boston: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Hughes, J. 2011. IPhone and IPad Apps Marketing: Secrets to Selling Your IPhone and IPad Apps. USA: Que Publishing. Appendices Appendix1: Environmental analysis Environmental analysis of the Smartphone application is vital as the environmental factors may have an impact on the working and collection of charity from the application. Environmental analysis includes the PEST analysis. Political factors- Political factors include the analysis of the pending legislation with respect to the charity by the electronic means. It also includes the limits on the amount of charity by this means prescribed by the government. Economic Factors- Economic factors include targeting the customers who have high net worth or are in the conditions who can donate to charity. Social Factors- The social factors include the consumer’s opinion and buying pattern of the applications in the Smartphone market place. The factors related to ethics like the proper use of the money gathered for the purpose of charity for CRY. Technological factors- The technological factors includes the use of Smartphone technology by the number of people and the expected changes in the technology which will support the application is also needed to be evaluated before launching the Smartphone application. Read More