Fortune Magazine Publishings - Essay Example

?Running Head: Fortune 500 Fortune 500 [Institute’s Fortune 500 Every year, Fortune magazine publishes a list of successful public corporations, indicating the five hundred companies with the highest gross revenues. The question on the mind of any business student who chooses to study this list would be, “How do they do it?” How does each of these companies manage to market their product so well that they are able to achieve top rank on a global scale? To answer this question, it is advisable to choose one such company and study it up close. Marriott Hotels, an international hospitality company operating in the service industry, is a good example to study, since it is a company, provides a valuable and quality service in several parts of the world. Studying the different locations in which Marriott operates, as well as the marketing strategies it employs, can give one a good idea about how it is able to achieve such tremendous success. Marriot Hotels has been operating since 1927, originally springing from the business idea of a place for drinks. Slowly it expanded to a chain of hotels and restaurants, which a few decades later, expanded into Marriott International. This company is famous throughout the world for providing excellent hospitality services throughout the world. It operates today in 68 different countries including the United States of America. It has locations in developed countries like the Unites States and England, as well as developing countries like Egypt and Pakistan (Marriott International, 2011). One remarkable characteristic of all these franchises is one common to most successful multinationals: the quality of the service they provide remains constant and impressive from country to country. To study the success of a company as successful as Marriott, we need to assess their marketing strategies. One way to do this is to consider the four P’s marketing mix. This approach to studying marketing states that there are four variables, which a company may manipulate while marketing, which will incidentally determine their success or failure in the market. These factors are the four P’s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. Through the manipulation of each of these factors, the company creates value in the market (Baker, & Hart, pp.463, 2007). The first of these factors is the product of the company. This factor encompasses the type of product, the diversification in the company’s product range as well as the quality and standardization of the product. In the case of Marriott, the company’s product is hospitality service. They provide a five star hotel service to their customers, and they are ranked as not only a fortune 500 company, but also one of the top hotel chains operating on an international scale. The product of this company is unlike that of a mere bed and breakfast inn. The international standards of hotel management, hygiene, courteous service, and food are amongst the several characteristics, which set its product apart from the rest. There prevails a high rate of customer satisfaction that correlates with the services that Marriott provides. A very important aspect of a company’s product is the brand name that it offers to the people who are choosing between different companies providing their desired service. The brand name of Marriott hotels is an internationally recognized one, which is a great contributing factor to the creation of value of this company in the hospitality market. The next factor in the marketing mix is the price, which the company charges for its product or service. This is a very important factor in any market, as it not only determines the number of customers a company has, but also the target market, which the company aims to serve. Marriott Hotels, for example, charge a heavy price for each night lodgings from their customer. Their hotel rates are similar to the rates of most five star hotels, which is therefore also an indicator of the status of the company in the hotel industry. The price that Marriott charges for its hospitality services is high enough to skim out most of the public from the potential customers. People who can afford to avail the services of this hotel are usually executives or others with a large salary, since there are several other hotels and inns that provide hospitality services at much lower prices. This means that the target market of Marriott Hotels is usually limited to the elite population of the country it is operating in. Consequently, the service these hotels provide is of high quality and not comparable to the services provided by less expensive hotels. This pricing done by the hotel is to establish in the market that the services provided by the hotel are expensive because they are of high quality, just as any reasonably expensive product is. Another aspect of the pricing done by the Marriott Hotels is the reward system they have; called Marriott rewards (Marriott International, 2011). This system rewards its regular customers with a loyalty bonus, by awarding them with discounts and airline miles after a certain number of stays or travels. This tweak in the pricing system helps them accomplish further customer loyalty, which is helpful in further increasing their value in the market. The remaining two factors of the marketing mix are the place and promotion. The place refers to the distribution channels through which the company delivers its products to the market and its customers. Being a hospitality company, Marriott carries out its distribution by situating different franchises in the locations where it wants to serve customers. Resultantly, as mentioned above, this company has hotels operating in sixty-eight countries all across the globe. This global exposure is coupled with a firmly maintained service standard, and results in a large creation of value in the world market for hotel services. Promotion, the final P in the product mix, mainly refers to the advertisement techniques that a company employs. The advertising techniques that Marriott employs are based on the diversified locations that the company caters to. This hotel chain prides itself upon providing services to such a vast array of cultures, and this is what they base their advertisements on. Most of Marriott’s advertisements are aired on channels like BBC or the in-flight entertainment systems of the airlines that are affiliated with the company (Thomas, 2007). This chosen angle from which to advertise their services has been helpful in further creating market value for the company in the hospitality industry. The services the Marriott hotels provide do not usually vary from country to country. Rather, they try to provide a standard quality product in whichever country in which they operate. There is perhaps, a small difference observable in their advertisement techniques, if Pakistan is compared to the US. While Marriott advertises through TV and airlines in the US, in Pakistan this company relies less on this sort of advertisement. It is one of the most reputable hotels in this developing country, and thus relies more on the world of mouth to receive promotion in the Pakistani market. Also, as far as distribution is concerned, in Pakistan, the Marriott hotels are all situated in areas where the elite lives, since that is the targeted market. This is not the case in more developed countries, since the upper middle class of the US would find this hotel more affordable than that of Pakistan. This proves that while quality and pricing remain similar, some factors in the marketing mix need tweaking from country to country, when trying to create value and success in an international market. It is thus important to consider to consider not only the company’s inherent characteristics (product and price), but also take other factors like location and local strategies in mind. References Baker, M, & Hart, S. (2007). The marketing book. Butterworth-Heinemann. Marriott International, Inc. (2011). Marriot. Retrieved on February 03, 2011: www.marriott.com Thomas, D. (2007). Marriott launches new global marketing campaign. Retrieved from http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/2007/12/17/317946/Marriott-launches-new-global-marketing-campaign.htm Read More