Marketing Research on Selected Two Major Competing Brands - Essay Example

?Marketing Research on Selected Two Major Competing Brands (By the Same Parent Corporation) That Have Visible Marketing Table of Contents Introduction 3 Literature Review 3 Marketing Programs of Google 3 Marketing Programs of Microsoft Bing 5 Analysis of Information 6 Conclusion and Recommendations 8 References 9 Introduction This research paper will concentrate on evaluation of marketing programs of two brands namely Google and Microsoft Bing. The aim of this paper is to assess the degree of similarities and differences between the marketing prospects of these two brands. The assessment process will take into consideration the certain aspects of the marketing traits of the brands. The traits would be globalization, segmentation, structure of purchasing decisions, distribution channels, advertising and promotion, pricing, ethics and relationship of the two brands with their respective different functions and brands of the parent organization. These are the most basic and also the most essential traits that any marketer has to consider for designing perfect marketing programs for any brands. Literature Review Marketing Programs of Google The marketing case study analysis of the Google Inc presented by Abt (2007) had demonstrated the marketing programs of Google precisely. Taking insights from his work, the most important facet of Google’s marketing program is that it aims to make its applications and products accepted by all the market segments. Another important aspect of Google is that it allows both private and non-profit organization to use this search engine at absolutely free of cost. It is of no surprise to mention that Google works on the marketing motto that information gathering is a phenomenon of individuals, non-profit organizations and small and large businesses (Abt, 2007). As published in the Experts Column by Malikanrs (2010), Google needs to be more concerned in designing their positioning strategies in the world market of internet search engines. Interactive appeal and societal values of the product (information) has to be effectively utilized by Google for better positioning itself. This is so because it is the intention of the consumers to relate the product quality with the brand. In this respect, Google follows four corporate strategies among which marketing strategies also play an important part for enabling the company to provide more satisfaction to the customers. Those corporate strategies exclusive for positioning itself are product and marketing strategy, growth strategy, competition strategy and financial strategy (Malikanrs, 2010). The external environment of Google is dynamic in nature and thus also provides opportunities and threats to the search engine. Google is on high demand and to remain competitive in this dynamic environment, it needs to predict the changes and accordingly adapt systems, cultures, strategies and also the process of alignment with the changes. In this respect, Google until now has undertaken several changes like that of the decision taken by Larry Page to step down from the role of Vice President and make Eric Schmidt the front man for Google (CEO). This indicates that Google follows dynamic strategies within its internal environment to cope up with the ever changing external environment (Docstoc, 2010). Google holds the top most position in the web and this position allows it to control any of the growth areas. Google has been so far applying marketing penetration strategies in the web industry for remaining on top. Free exposure and free benchmarking are some of the strategies that have been helping Google over the years. They always keep themselves aware of the competitive positioning and this trait of the company helps in achieving the competitive advantage over other competitors. The strongest element of Google’s marketing mix is their ‘universal search product’. This element always allows Google to either vote for or against any form of information and it is believed that this product type of Google is the ultimate generator of its competitive advantage in the web industry (SEO Book, 2011). Marketing Programs of Microsoft Bing As represented by Burrows (2009), the launching of Microsoft Bing has gone off to a great start. It has been reported that Microsoft Bing spent 80 to 100 million dollars on advertising initially during launching of the search engine in the year 2009. This indicates that the company has spent on a massive campaign of launching for making the product visible and ultimately accepted in the web industry. The greatest concern of the Microsoft Bing is on how it will be able to compete with Google which is the most popular search engine with respect to its quality. For this reason the company decided to make a strong entry into the industry with heavy promotion (Burrows, 2009). A report by Parr (2009) reveals that Microsoft Bing follows exclusive marketing strategies for effectively participating in its war with Google. The categories of the target audience that Bing concentrates upon are consumers, advertisers and developers or webmasters. The consumers are the information seekers, advertisers are those companies and organizations which take on internet marketing strategy for promoting their products and developers are those third party webmasters that makes a search engine more popular by driving various applications. Bing strives for learning traits from the prevailing scenario in this industry and the huge success of Facebook and Twitter has instigated this aspect (Parr, 2009). As revealed from the report of Fried (2009), the Microsoft Bing follows a ‘two-part strategy’ for wining its war with Google. The part 1 and part 2 strategies are ‘change perception’ and ‘drive trial’. The part 1 strategy is focused on changing consumers’ behavior. With this objective, it follows both top-down as well as bottom-up approach of reaching and enhancing its targeted audiences. This is done through advertising and community being used as marketing tools. The part 2 strategy is all about making the people more inclined towards this new search engine every time they uses it. Microsoft thus plans to follow this drive trial strategy primarily by two approaches, distribution and going to the people. Encouraging people, especially the developers to erect 3rd party apps and also to install the browser extensions on their mobile phones are all under their part 2 strategy. This is because they are well aware of the fact that the people would not go to Bing, rather Bing should go to the people (Fried, 2009). Analysis of Information From the various evidences reviewed in the previous section depicting marketing programs of Google and Microsoft Bing, it can be initially interpreted that Google is in fact operating in this industry since long with wide market reach and thus would naturally be the most successful one. But the success story speaks different. It shows that at present the success rate of Bing is at the top, above Google and Yahoo. Success factor of Bing in the month of January 2011 has been 82% while that of Google in the same period was 66%. The table below shows the figure and their respective positions in the market. Source: 406 Strategies: Internet Marketing for Small & Local Business, 2011 Google although allows various organizations to use it free of cost, the quality information contained in the search engine are mostly of paid listings. For this reason viewers get often distracted. Thus, Google would require concentrating more on its product element of the marketing mix. Despite the success rate of Bing, it has not been able to defeat Google when it comes to ranking. One reason of this fact can be the wide product mix that Google offers which Bing is unable to offer yet. The products or rather the web services like that of the Google Docs, Google News, Blog search and Google Maps and similar other offers are not that easy to be imitated by its rivals. But it is also noteworthy to mention that during the last a few years, search results of Bing has improved considerably and thus plays a major part in enhancing experience of search for a number of internet users. The promoter of Bing holds the vision that their valuable offerings to the web world could dominate this industry in the long run. But at the same time, it is also true that at present and probably for a longer period of time, there will be a huge leverage requirement for Bing if it directs its objective to tumble Google. Moreover, Bing has to be on top of its ethical issues at this particular point of time if it wants to beat Google in the web industry’s competition. During the end of the month January 2011, Bing was accused by Google of stealing Google’s search results. After several back and forth movement of the story, it was revealed that the patterns of search were tracked by Bing and they used those tracked patterns in their search engines. After this incident, it was divulged that Google considers Bing to be ‘dangerous’ and it was Google which admitted the existence of Bing and is a strong competitor of it (Soler, 2011). Conclusion and Recommendations It has been assessed from the evaluation of the two brands of the web industry that both the brands hold strong competitive positions in this industry. The most important findings from the entire research is that though Google so far has been successful in surviving in this industry, it might face strong survival competition from its evolving strongest competitor in the market, Microsoft Bing. Google is the biggest player in the web industry in terms of pricing, product mix and adaptable strategies. But in this competitive world, no company can enjoy monopoly power for long. Bing is not as experienced and strong as Google but it holds strong competing abilities about which Google has to be careful of. From the analysis in the earlier sections, it is however, clear that Bing can defeat Google in the long run but at the same time, it should be very careful about ethical and societal issues of its own operations and also about the dynamic moves of Google. References Abt, L., 2007. Google Inc. Marketing Case Study Analysis. Portfolio. Retrieved Online on May 14, 2011 from http://yealynne.com/portfolio/writing/lynne_abt_google_marketing_plan.pdf Burrows, P., 2009. The Marketing of Microsoft's Bing Search Engine. Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved Online on May 14, 2011 from http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/06/the_marketing_of_microsofts_bing_search_engine.html Docstoc, 2010. Google Marketing Strategy. Docs. Retrieved Online on May 14, 2011 from http://www.docstoc.com/docs/16954409/Google-marketing-strategy Fried, I., 2009. How Microsoft's Bing came to be. Cnet News. Retrieved Online on May 14, 2011 from http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10250614-56.html Malikanrs, 2010. Google’s Corporate , Product & Marketing Strategy. Experts Column. Retrieved Online on May 14, 2011 from http://expertscolumn.com/content/google%E2%80%99s-corporate-prodcut-marketing-strategy Parr, B., 2009. Search Showdown: Microsoft’s Plan to Win the Search War. Mashable. Retrieved Online on May 14, 2011 from http://mashable.com/2009/08/16/bing-microsoft-plan/ SEO Book, 2011. Are You Following Google's Marketing Strategy?. Home. Retrieved Online on May 14, 2011 from http://www.seobook.com/are-you-following-googles-strategy Soler, M., 2009. Google vs. Bing a PR Mistake. Google. Retrieved Online on May 14, 2011 from http://www.mirarmedia.com/google/google-vs-bing-a-pr-mistake/ 406 Strategies: Internet Marketing for Small & Local Business, 2011. Bing vs. Google: Comparative Effectiveness. 406 Strategies. Retrieved Online on May 14, 2011 from http://www.406strategies.com/2011/03/10/bing-vs-google-comparative-effectiveness/ Read More