Marketing Strategy of Marina Bay Sands - Essay Example

?Marketing Strategy Introduction Marina Bay Sands like any other organisation is continually seeking new and better ways to obtain, maintain and expand business. It is because the cost of losing customers is constantly on the rise. Marina Bay Sands as a service oriented organisation needs to improve on their competitiveness through sharpening their marketing strategies in order to retain customers. When the demand is created, the hotel now needs to handle this demand as well as its capability to deliver to customer satisfaction (Kim and Oh, 2004:65-71). This paper covers the marketing strategies that the hotel can put into place to gain a competitive edge and attract a sustainable market while offering and delivering services to the customer expectation and satisfaction. Marina Bay Sands targeted the ‘Meetings, incentives, conventions and events’ and business travellers as their major markets but the hotel is now aiming at the family and leisure markets as well. The hotel appears to be entirely matching with regard to their products, experience offered and their facilities. For this reason, they appear to be attracting and containing quite distinguishable market segments. Therefore, for future markets, the economic growth and population growth in China implies that China is no longer a huge and poor market. Marina Bay Sands like many other companies should now try to locate and target the most outstanding market for them (Jauhari and Rishi, 2012). This is because previous studies of China economy have not entirely acknowledged the remarkable growth of the middle class. Research done using data from Asia Pacific and MasterCard Worldwide showed that middle class reached 87 million by 2005 from just about zero ten years ago, and is expected to rise to 340 million by 2016. This means that the middle class will occupy the 60 percent of China’s urban households by 2016 which already clocked 39% by 2006. The other markets that constitute notable target include Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam (Cui and Song, 2009:38-41). Over the years brand positioning has also been an essential part of marketing strategy and thus, the hotel industry has accepted and embraced its value in marketing and in particular when there is extensive brand segmentation. Just like several others Marina Bay Sands has developed multiple brands in order to serve multiple market segments (Burkard, 2011). This strategy of segmentation involves the idea that the brand name is a component of the process of illustrating tangibility to what basically appears intangible. This provides a shorthand way of setting up a particular property’s value when a customer is given significant information about the service or product. With respect to this, the brand’s quality is based on the awareness of the potential quests, their perception of the quality and the overall satisfaction of the customers. This concept that brand positioning provides added value to both the hotel and quests, is what a reasonable growth of brand positioning relies on. When hotel brand is managed well, the hotel tends to get a rising market share from a corporate strategy point of view. Cai and Hobson (2004) say that a brand can create a distinguishable identity by establishing a given set of promises to its customers where functional features of the products are not considerably differentiated. A personality that a brand creates may be relevant reason for a consumer to select one brand over the other. A brilliant brand personality is likely to make the brand more tangible thus reducing the intangibility associated with the hotel industry. Since there is the idea that brand positioning creates a personality for an intangible unit it is, therefore, related to the consumer emotions. Burkard (2011) explains that these emotional connections to a brand come about in part from the promises mentioned above. This means that the customers rely on brand names so that they can minimise the risk that is associated with unknown brands. Therefore, the hotel’s brand is supposed to make customers feel safe about thus, successful branding of companies results in self-promotion (Chung, 2006). According to Ponchione (2012), when education is given to consumers on how to find excellent deals it helps to determine the pricing plan. This is because consumers have the ability to shop around much easily and thus the charge reliability can be elastic. Consumers have the expectation that there will be high prices during the peak periods as opposed to the off-peak periods. In this industry, business has a cyclical nature and for this reason, hoteliers should never alienate their customers through offering restrictive services. Hotel consumers often tend to prefer fixed prices, and thus, if you have a repeat group market, keeping the business that you currently have, becomes much easier than getting a fresh business (Ponchione, 2012). Understanding segment mix to categorise customers and using “what if” kind of scenarios supported by segment strategies is important part in pricing strategy. If there is movement from one segment to another, it should be supported by some information on previous trends. Optimal mix is important in that, it can help accomplish higher revenue (Ponchione, 2012). However, a good plan involves leveraging high rated low cost channels and thus, it should not be only third party channels. This implies that the hotel should have their own internal segmentation which is marketable and definable approach to track their customers (Chung, 2006:241-45). The main objective of distribution hospitality industry is to make use of a variety of channels to look for consumers or more significantly to enable customers find the hotel or company to book or purchase services in an easy way possible (Russell, 2005). Internet has brought new ways that the hotel can communicate directly with the customers. This is through websites, where customers can make direct reservations via the hotel site. This can also be through the use of Computerised Reservation Systems (CRS) where the customer can call or visit the hotel site to make reservations to any of the chain’s hotel from anywhere on the planet. Network referral is also an additional cost efficient distribution channel whereby hotels in the same chain market one another. Additionally, the hotel can also use intermediaries such as travel agents and tour operators which imply that, the communication is not directly from point to point with the customers but there is another company in between. A travel agent represents the customer in all aspects of travelling and is paid the commission when the customer visits the hotel. This is quite different from using a tour operator who acquires bulk accommodation from the hotel and then charges the customer more to cater for his revenue (Jauhari and Rishi, 2012). There is also the emergence of online intermediaries who get paid commissions by the hotel upon the visitation of customers through them. This provides a way to expand the hotel’s distribution channel. According to Gronroos (2007), people constitute the most critical elements in every experience and service. Variability and inseparability result to consumer experience (which is aspects of anticipated performance) that is frequently changed to satisfy the individual needs of customers (Moriarty, Jones, Rowley and Kupiec-Teaha, 2008). Employees can add value to an experience through training to acquire a high value of personal service, creative skill and hard work, and customer service whereby there is a team that provides technical support, customer interfaces and other expertise (Lockyer, 2007:56). In the hotel industry or service business, process is described as the element of marketing that appreciates consumer experience (Gronroos, 2007). It is perceived as something that involves customer participation at different points. This raises again the importance of hotel-customer interaction (Shoemaker, Lewis and Yesawich, 2007:322). This requires suitable encounter, communication and appropriate action and resolution. A process involves input progression, throughput and output where marketing quality is added. Process can be described to be the course of accomplishment between people and consumer, who are the fundamental root that associates with the customer. A process involves Attracting, Benefits, Closed, Decision and Eternity sectors that precisely reflect the process of service and variety of customers in terms of psychology. However, it is critical to realise that service values by themselves do not determine the kind of service a customer may be looking for or from whom they want to get it (Enz, 2009:456-78). Service supplier can produce an adequate solution with sufficient support to suit the consumers’ expectations. Customers also have wishes relating to how they want to be taken care of and it is related to the value system that determines the variety of services that are considered acceptable. Finally, the creation of standardised open computer system will allow the hotel to access all its distribution channels around the globe. Through network control, communication and real-time information flow, the hotel will have efficient direction-finding and controlled implementation of sales and marketing policy. Daily arbitrations at every level are also significant for consistency between strategies thus making it possible for assets to be properly reallocated (Bowie and Buttle, 2012:220). The Sands brand that appears in every distribution channel that the hotel uses can ensure improved visibility and offer the required impetus to the hotel’s marketing system. References Bowie, D. & Buttle, F. (2012) Hospitality marketing, CRC Press. Burkard, N. (2011) Market segmentation and branding in the hotel industry with special references to hilton cooperation, GRIN Verlag. Cai, L.A. & Hobson, J.S.P. (2004) ‘Making hotel brands work in a competitive environment’, Journal of Vacation Marketing, vol. 10 Chung, C. (2006) ‘Quality bias in price elasticity,’ Applied Economics Letters, vol. 13. Cui, A., & Song, K. (2009) ‘Understanding China's middle class’ The China Business Review, vol. 36. Enz, C.A. (2009) Hospitality strategic management: concepts and cases, John Wiley and Sons. Gronroos, C. (2007) Service management and marketing, John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Jauhari, V. & Rishi, M. (2012) ‘Challenges faced by the hospitality industry in India: an introduction’ Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, vol. 4, no. 2. Kim, B.Y. & Oh, H. (2004) ‘How do hotel firms obtain a competitive advantage?’ International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, vol. 16. Lockyer, T.L.G. (2007) The international hotel industry: sustainable management, Routledge. Moriarty, J., Jones, R., Rowley, J. & Kupiec-Teaha, B. (2008) ‘Marketing in small hotels: a qualitative study’ Marketing Intelligence & Planning, vol. 26, no. 3. Ponchione, A. (2012) Savvy pricing strategies mitigate risks, viewed 17 January 2013 from . Porter, M.E. (2004) Competitive strategy: techniques for analysing industries and competitors, New York: Free Press. Russell, M. (2005) ‘Marketing education: A review of service quality perceptions among international students’ International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, vol. 17 no. 1. Shoemaker , S., Lewis, R.C. & Yesawich, P.C. (2007) Marketing leadership in hospitality and tourism: strategies and tactics for competitive advantage, Prentice Hall. Read More