Key Characteristics of Management of Olympics - Assignment Example

1. Select and discuss your preferred promotion type (i.e. advertising, sales promotion etc. or any combination) to access these s? Describe why you make this choice. (30%) NOTE: You should choose ONE target segment only of potential event spectators. You may segment by customer demographic, by nationality/ location, by event type (or any combination of these) but you must describe the segment and its key (differentiating) characteristics. Choosing the target market. The Olympics is watched by billions of people around the globe through media broadcasts. However, we have to limit our study by limiting our product to “Olympic tickets” which will be sold to spectators. With this in mind, we can better find the target market for the spectators who will attend the events in person. The first thing we should ask is “Who are likely to attend this event?” With this in mind, we know through deduction that most people would like to attend this event—people from all walks of life, of different nationalities, of different ages. To answer this question clearly, we may base our answer first with the location: those who are likely to attend this event, are the people who have most access to the location. We have segmented the market through location now. The most access, including locals of London, or locals of UK, residents of cities surrounding UK, say cities from Europe, and tourist from the international communities who have means to travel to London. But the population for our spectators would be too broad for that. Thus, we further limit our population by asking the question “Among these people who are likely to attend this event, or the Olympics, who will be ABLE to buy the tickets for this event?” Through deduction, we further limit the population by looking at the people who have the means to purchase the tickets for this event. These would include people who are earning a certain amount of money, that they can spare to buy tickets for the Olympics. With residents of UK and neighboring European cities, as well as the international communities—those who have spare from their income to cover for the costs of the tickets for the events, or who have high purchasing power as compared to our broader population defined above, will be part of our smaller market. But having money to spend—those who have the ability to buy, through their purchasing powers—does not necessarily attend Olympics. This brings us to ask the question “Who are willing to buy these Olympics tickets?” This question can be answered only through marketing research, in order to fully classify the total market for the Olympics tickets. Our last segmentation variable in this case, would be lifestyle. Those who are sports enthusiasts, as well as people who look forward to the Olympics as one of “the world events” that they can witness can be part of our lifestyle classifications. So to conclude our segmentation criteria: we first define those who are likely to attend the event, where our segmentation criteria is location and accessibility—this includes the locals of UK, residents of neighboring European cities, and people from abroad who have the means to travel to London. In order to further segment this population, we use purchasing power, or spare disposable income to determine who among these groups have the means to purchase the tickets for the Olympics. When income does not necessarily mean that tickets for the Olympics will be bought, our last segmentation variable would be psychographics or lifestyle. Our lifestyle variables come in two descriptions: those who are sports enthusiasts, and those who look at the Olympics as one of “THE world events” to witness. These lifestyle variables come in two because, through deduction, we know that it’s either those who are sports enthusiasts, those who look at Olympics as one of “the world events to witness”, or both (who fits in our earlier classification of our population) will likely be the people WILLING to purchase the tickets of Olympic events. Reaching the target consumers. We need to further look at the behavior of our consumers to further know how to best approach them. With a limited knowledge of these consumers, we know through deduction that the people who fit in the classification “UK locals, residents of neighboring European cities of London, and people from abroad who have the means to travel to London—who have considerate disposable income to afford the tickets, and either sports enthusiasts, world event enthusiasts, or both” on how to best reach them. We have a hypothesis, that people who belong to this classification are people who have active lifestyles and can less likely be reached through traditional advertising medium. To reach this people, we have to further develop communications objectives before we can decide. By looking at the Olympics ticket and the decision-making that takes place when people buy it—this is not a cognitive nor a habitual purchase, but an emotional one. We see that people would not buy Olympics tickets neither because of the functional benefits that it offers—showcasing sports events for the practicality of it—nor out of habitual purchase. To some people, Olympics is a world event that is important to be witnessed as part of our civilization as humans. The showcase of Olympics roots from our tradition that can be traced way back to our Greek ancestors. With this, we can use the AIDA framework to pattern our objectives. The AIDA framework or, awareness-interest-desire-action will give us a coherent framework on how the decision to buy Olympics tickets will be made by our target market. Using the AIDA framework, the marketing communications function of PR and advertising are used to gain awareness. The wide reach of traditional advertising medium such as the television, print, or radio provides economy in providing the message to media. We can also use the internet for advertising the Olympics. Also, the use of PR or public relations has also been considered in creating awareness among the target audience. Although traditional or above-the-line media have been used for advertising and PR purposes, the use of new media such as the internet has gained wide acceptance for the current. Because of the wide reach of the internet, with relatively lower costs for us to reach our diverse audience than advertising, the internet is a good medium to be utilized. Since the Olympics is an event that most of the people around the world are aware of, the focus could be more of on to attract interest to the audience. There are numerous studies that prove that public relations is one of the more effective medium to increase interest in the product. The publicity function of public relations is one to be regarded as the creator of buzz or word of mouth among the public. This word-of-mouth of buzz, through publicity stunts, generates excitement among the market. This accomplishes the objective of inciting interest among the target market. In order to shift the interest of the target market into desire, sales promotion is usually used. In this case, sales promotion is giving the consumers the incentive to desire the product through attractive promotional offers. This is designed to intensify the desire, in order to shift the decision-making into desired action, or purchase. In order to conclude the decision-making, usually personal selling is used to accommodate this. But in such huge sales operations, personal selling proves to be infeasible and very uneconomical since they have to deal with a number of people. Database marketing better accomplishes this task for a huge number of customers. This will require the use of the internet in order to coordinate the sales operations for the Olympics ticketing. 2. Describe how you would test the effectiveness of this approach using customer research. You must include draft questionnaires and/ or qualitative research topic guides which you would use in your research. The key hypotheses you would anticipate using to effect this test with this customer group should also be explained. (30%) Testing the effectiveness through marketing research. The first thing marketing research should address is to verify and quantify the target market that we have classified. Through sophisticated marketing research techniques and decreasing costs in attaining data about consumers with the help of technology, we can quantify as to how many this classification of customers will transform into numbers. This will result in a deeper customer research in order to probe in the behavior of the target market. A qualitative research should be done in order to see how these people view Olympics—their attitudes and beliefs about it, which can influence their decision-making, as well as behavior. Once their attitudes and beliefs are narrowed down, a quantitative research can be used to see the dispersion of these attitudes among the target consumers. Then, the strength of these attitudes that can be measured in relation to behavior can be quantified with techniques like semantics or Likert scale in marketing research. Questions like: What is their view about the Olympics? What do these consumers know about Olympics? What is their perception of Olympics? Why would they like/ or would not like to watch the Olympics? What language, associations, images and metaphors do they use when they talk about the Olympics? What events are they familiar with? How much do they know about the events? What can be the channels of distribution they would prefer to buy the ticket? If Olympics is just an extraordinary event, what are its indirect competitors as regards the benefits that it can offer? Once answers to these questions are quantified, further concerns about the strategy on selling Olympics as an idea will be considered. This will be matched to the profiles of the target market in order to see the big picture. This will include the strategic concerns as to how to position Olympics as an event, as well as tactical concerns such as what is the price range that can be offered as optimal and fit for the profile of this audience, the means of distribution that they prefer, the messages that are tailored for them to respond to marketing activities. Consumer research’s probing on how these target consumers spend their lives will enable a more effective reach for promotions. Meaning, given the marketing communications mix that we propose earlier, we can determine what ‘media mix’ that can best serve this marketing communications mix. Say, if consumer research finds that these consumers spend less time in front of the TV, and more with the internet, then the obvious choice would be to choose the internet medium as part of the media mix to serve the advertising or public relations function. This probing on how these consumers spend their lives will give options and alternate views on how responsive they will be to a choice of medium—say TV over radio, print over radio, etc. A relevant, original message with a great impact to strike a chord and lead our customers to a decision can be drafted with the use of insights though consumer research. 3. How would you design the operations processes to achieve effective ticket sales to your target customers? What implications would this have on the resources (people, accommodation, technology etc.) that would be needed to achieve cost effective service delivery? (30%) As mentioned earlier, the ‘action’ part of the AIDA sequence (awareness-interest-desire-action) framework to conclude the emotional decision-making path, some personal selling and direct-response marketing could be utilized. The distribution of Olympics tickets in the past has been through NOCs or National Olympic Committee of each country that takes part in the Olympics event. Personal selling could be utilized in order to convince the National Olympic Committee to carry on the tickets and distribute it to their residents who want to watch the Olympics as spectators of events. However, in order to distribute the tickets to prospective spectators in each country, direct-response marketing could be utilized through the use of information technology. Direct response marketing requires the use of computers, the internet and modern communication devices in order to facilitate an activity. Through this, customers can place orders through the internet (to be verified if this is the most preferred way of placing an order for tickets). The internet serves as the most cost-effective in reaching the consumer and getting immediate responses from them should they decide to buy the tickets. However, issues on security of payment, customers’ attitude toward internet purchase activities are some of the issues to also be addressed. The logistics part of making the purchase or ‘action’ part is well served by direct response marketing in order to elicit immediate action which is usually done with a website. Then after it, this is where the NOC in each country can enter as regards distribution to buyers. The NOC can also take advantage of other means, through technology, in terms of collection from the customers in the case that paying through the internet is the preferred way of customers for paying the tickets. The direct-response marketing through the use of a website can deliver more cost-effectively as its reach is wider. The use of manpower can be minimized and other less sophisticated form of distribution which can contribute to the rising costs of operation, in terms of distribution of resources such as money, time and human resources can be addressed through that. So, the placing of orders can be done through a centralized website that customers can access and place their orders; then these orders will be transferred to the respective NOCs in their countries. The NOCs would then be responsible as to how customers will claim their tickets, as well as the ticket collection, that will be sent back to the accounts of the Olympics committee. Ticket orders can then be verified through the central website of the Olympics committee in order to provide the response of the NOCs regarding the status of the orders of the people. That should speed up the process of the ordering time, less people needed to interact with the consumers in facilitating and accommodating them as they placed their orders, and more systematic way of tracking the orders and the costs associated through it in order to ensure effectiveness of delivery. Bibliography Bartol, K., Martin, D., Tein, M., & Matthews, G. 2001. Management: A Pacific Rim Focus. McGraw Hill Company, Australia. Burns, Alvin A. and Ronald Bush 2004. Marketing Research: Online Research Applications. Philippines: Pearson Education South Asia Pte. Ltd. Duncan, T. 2005. Principles of Advertising & IMC. International ed. Philippines: McGraw-Hill. International Olympic Committee. 2008. Olympic Marketing Profile. Report dated 2008. Available from World Wide Web: < http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_344.pdf> International Olympic Committee. 2008. Final Report on the XXVIIth Olympiad. Report dated 1997-2000. 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Sandomir, Richard, 2008 July 7. “Tracking the Olympics Audience across the NBC Media Universe.” Media Talk. New York Times online. Available from World Wide Web: Read More