Marketing Communications - Marketing Insights from A to Z - Assignment Example

Running Head: Marketing Communications Marketing Communications Academia Academia Research 1a. The company P&O tried there level best in making a decision that would be in the favor of the company but made few of the wrong judgments, the decision of asking the people to stay on board cost them more than any other activity, though it was not quite authentic about judging people in a sense that they would be compensated some how if the company would invest in bringing famous entertainers and would allow them to have drinks and cocktails and all that fun stuff, the company failed to realize that they had so many other tasks to perform as well, what they could have done is that they would have just asked the people to stay in the cruise and use the normal facilities provided such as using the indoor games and swimming pool and other small facilities, in this way the hidden cost would be effective and not the direct overheads, what more they could have done is that after the problem was identified that the cruise would not move any further they should have returned the payments made by the customers previously what they exactly did but in order to attract them and maintaining a long term relationship they could have given a special discount for the next time, in which only the preliminary costs were recovered and the company's name and prestige would not have been endanger, the basic idea is to communicate this special feature to the clients in a way that sounds good, the company can advertise after sidelining all difficulties and after getting 100 percent surety that no new problems are about to occur and I am sure that the old customers would definitely get attracted toward this goodwill of the company as they are taking all the customers on no profit. 1b. The buyers are the people who are adventurous and who can really pay all they have in order to be on the voyage, you can see that there are numerous of people who have their life savings and also there life incentives on the line just to get the great feeling and pleasure of such a wonderful tour, each and everyone got attracted towards such a great luxurious service, they paid a big sum to be a part of it and still they did not get that all, though it is quite difficult to predict that they all are satisfied or dissatisfied but according to the research that was conducted by the researchers, most of the people ere found disappointed simply because it is not a product that you can use and get dissatisfied or satisfied, but it is exactly like playing with someone's emotions like you can see that most of the people who were young or not that old gave each and every thing they had just to be on the voyage but suddenly they heard about the incidence and they all got disappointed, it is not a kind of service that every cruising company would be providing but very few provide it and that even once in a blue moon and so you cannot ask the people to get on some other cruise providing such service and so you cannot really play with such people's emotions, the entire decision process was revolving around a wonderful dream, you cannot really find someone who is an ordinary person and willing to invest there entire savings at the same time, so all the company did was that they targeted people having adventurous thinking and they just simply did not make there dreams come true, so most of the dissatisfaction was caused in the segment they targeted, however there are few people who really think that the company handled the situation exceptionally well, but they should not be counted in the target as they are lot more experienced and cannot simply think that way a youngster can think, also the discount thing did not work for them as most of the people paid discounted amount earlier and got even more money than they paid this all did not worth as the primary objective of every buyer was go on voyage. 2a. The P&O and Ikea both have put just normal efforts in communicating about their services and products, it was certainly not something exceptional as you can see that the method they used are quite commonly used these days, but there were still so many things that the companies did not do. P&O used brochures and websites as there marketing communication tool which was quite normal and nothing extraordinary but there were various things to communicate as well and so you cannot really say that the tools were appropriate because in such cases the personal selling plays a vital role as the market is not wide spread and that they did not do, they should had informed the customers in person and also through telemarketing, except this they did not utilize the channels properly as they could have mentioned on the brochures and websites that in case of cancellation you would be returned your paid amount and related things, so this would have given customers a lot more comfort and also it might not have caused the company to over pay their customers which resulted in great loss. The furniture company "IKEA" did all their marketing communications through the newspapers and also through pamphlets which is not a good way for an established company such as IKEA to do marketing, more importantly in businesses of furniture you just have to call the audience once and there is no specific need of more advertising specially when the company has experienced disasters previously from other new openings, the best way to communicate in such business is to have a window display, people would naturally get interested in buying things and precious ones, one more disadvantage that can be seen is that the goods the company is selling do not remain precious and unique and it becomes so common, in other words you can say that supply is less while demand is much more and still the company is providing vouchers and similar stuff, so you can say that there was absolutely no appropriateness in the marketing communication tools as the company has been criticized severely for the similar work in the near past, they should have more concerns on the quality and not the quantity and because of it they would loose business steadily if not in near future. 2b. There are numerous companies who actually get failed at numerous times but still are in great business and are not really loosing any business, the reason is simple and that is due to brand loyalty, size of the firm and the level of competition, if a company is performing well in most of the areas of its concern and not performing well in one or two areas than it does not really mean that company is failed every where, but the brand name which is established has more concerns, P&O has been under attack due to some unexpected problem but they have a list of loyal customers and also it is a very old company having shown great services at numerous times and so you can see that they don't have anything to worry about as the loss they faced was just a small percent of all the profit they have, despite of this fact they have provided great services at numerous occasions and so the image is created in the mind of the target audience and also the way they took the customers on board at their expense due to the problem that arose, they have six ships and if one is not able to meet the needs than others have, also the people who love to avail such services are no ordinary ones they have to avail such services and the competition is not that big in the industry that is why the firm has survived. In the case of IKEA it is clearly shown that the company is not having any problems in making profitability as the company is having so many branches which indicate to the size of the firm which is very big, the target audience is another reason for the company's success as they don't have any particular target audience and they sell their products to any one who can buy their products and that is one of the biggest reasons for its success and another good reason for its success is the location, they were very well known for having stores in the out of town areas but now they have started opening with in the towns, another good reason for their success is the sales promotion that they keep on doing, you can see the big difference in the prices that they are providing however this point is good for customer's point of view but not company's point of view, the level of competition is another factor, as the company has been in business from years and thus they have really set a brand image in the mind of customers there is no way to replace that as they are holding a dominant position in the field of manufacturing furniture. So these were few of the reasons on behalf of which so many companies are working safely and without threat, P&O and IKEA are just two of them. 3. "Integrated marketing communications are far from reality in most companies." In the two case studies discussed with the names of P&O and IKEA there is not so much of integrated communication that has been used but that very effectively, the problem is that not all the communication mix is used with each other and you can see that only few of the components are in use. P&O used only couple of tools in communicating the message about their service, perhaps they never needed any other communication in order to let their customers know about their service, so not the entire communication mix or more importantly integrated marketing communication has not been used in reality for P&O because of various reasons one of which is the established image of the company and else the particular segment which they wanted to attract, which means that it is true that integrated marketing communications have less concern with reality. About the other company, which is IKEA, you can see that they also have only used couple of marketing tools and not the entire mix, which means that they might not have found it more useful to communicate according to the integrated marketing communications as there would be no need and also the profitability and the size of the firm is so high, so again the statement is found out to be quite true. When we are talking about the term "most of the companies" it means that those companies that are very much established and has set an image, which cannot be distorted as in the two cases we discussed, in the modern days there are numerous of such companies who struggled really hard to survive and now have created an image and found it useless to go for the entire marketing communication mix, so that is why the statement is true for all. Sources Kotler, Phillip, "Marketing insights from A to Z", New Jersey: John Wiley and sons, 2003. Read More