The Pixar Marketing Comparative Analysis - Essay Example

 Comparative Analysis Report Introduction Current comparative analysis report is a part of the creativity module. It will cite the case study of Pixar in terms of analysing the implications of organisational culture, innovation, management constitution and the strategies for developing a new product. In addition, a comparison will be made on the team structure, Pixar company structure and vulnerability of new product development in the global market. Selection process of Pixar, benchmarking, team performance and structures are discussed in the study. Feedback based improvements are cited to increase welfare of new product development process. The study will be citing comparative investigation of NPD process of Pixar and Employability Enhancing App (EEA) Team (Cox, Mowatt and Prevezer, 2003). Introducing Teams and Structures: Our team members are having different national backgrounds. Our teammates are from China, Turkey, India, and Thailand. From the research, it has been observed that the team is very successfully structured and controlled through the meetings. Accordingly, it has been observed that members of our team possess higher educational knowledge which is very helpful in developing strategies. On the other hand, diversified cultural background helps to identify the requirement of target markets of various nationalities (Annacchino, 2007). The team will be named as “Employability Enhancing App (EEA) Team”. Team members are having the expertise and knowledge regarding new product development. Key trends of market and consumer perceptions are met by the team members as they are having potential skills and knowledge. It is very much essential in developing NPD strategies for global target market (Loch and Kavadias, 2008). In addition, such skills and knowledge will be increasing competitive edge of firms. Efficient team members will concentrate on developing innovative product designing and refining ideas among other colleagues. Such idea comprehends key trends for developing new products or services. Moreover, the mission of our team helps in reinforcing innovative marketing strategies and model to attract the target customers towards new product or service (Lloyd and Payne, 2013). Case Study – Pixar Process of Selection It has been observed that the benchmarking policy will be more effective if comparative cases are used. Our team members are technologically sound and they are having expertise of developing marketing plans. In the current study, Pixar have been selected to gain insight on the new product development (Annacchino, 2007). The organisation is specialised in developing “animated shorts, feature films, animated logos for clients like IBM and Paramount and commercials for clients like Listerine and LifeSavers” (Kahn et al., 2013). “The Walt Disney Company” acquired Pixar and operated it as their subsidiary. The case study will help the team in emphasising on various factors of teamwork. Pixar is having three corresponding groups working simultaneously. Three main strategies are used by the employee groups like technical development, creative development and production (Cox, Mowatt and Prevezer, 2003). The firm is using high association strategies for the employees. Management of the firm is collecting insights and suggestions from the employees. Pixar also emphasises on the developing high collaboration between the employees and management, which helps in gaining creative ideas and increase technology efficiency among the employees. Management of Pixar adopted the approach “experiment and refine” in order to execute rapid and instant decisions. It reduces risk potentials as sharing of risk is easy. Finally, it can be said that case study will be aiding in making effective new product development strategies. Benchmarking Pixar is concentrating on developing new online candidatures website and they are planning to use market statistics. It has been observed that the employment rate is hiking rapidly since 2011- 2012. Reports are suggesting that almost 31.05 million individuals are employed in the UK area. In addition, it has been observed that almost 73.4% of individuals of 16 to 64 age groups are employed in any organisation (Pixar.com, 2015b). However, nearly 1.84 million candidates are unemployed in the UK during the years. It signifies that 5.6% of the UK population are jobless and searching for jobs. Pixar can target the UK regions like northern England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. These regions are reporting comparatively higher rate of joblessness among the people (Pixar.com, 2015b). Key drivers of the employment market can be used as benchmarking rates. Target market is seeking for more swiftness and easiness in information access. Pixar have to develop new domain of employment that are helping the job seekers in gathering specific information regarding the opportunities. The firm can use the statistics of the other existing online job portals. Pixar can use comparative benchmark with the strategic factors of portals like “cv-library.co.uk, reed.co.uk, monster.co.uk, and jobrapido.com” (Pixar.com, 2015a). Such benchmarking will help the firm and operational members in upgrading information regarding the UK based job openings very quickly (Olsthoorn, 2013). Analysis of Team Performance and Structure Employability Enhancing App (EEA) Team Our team concentrates on developing the performance level and contribution for better profitability. Job roles and responsibilities are disseminated among different team member according to their skills and knowledge. Such process helps in increasing feasibility of developing new product development (NPD) strategies. Our team have trend analyst who have the bachelor degree in marketing. The analyst is from China and able to make contribution for generating innovative ideas for the development of a new product or service (Thursfield, 2015). The team is having one marketing director having the educational qualification of bachelor degree in business management dimension. The person is from Turkey and imposed the role of analysing crucial trends regarding the newly developed ideas. He needs to deal with various aspects of the marketing domain like selecting consumer profile, segmentation of the market and determining target audience for the products or service. On the other hand, the team also includes a project manager who is a bachelor in computer science. The member is having Indian background. This member is responsible for initialising necessary foundation and hypothesis required in the new product development strategies (Trott, 2008). Improvements Based on the Feedback Initially, our team presentation faced certain imitation like study was least comparative. In addition, mind mapping was not used for defining the emerging trend in the industrial sectors of new product development. In addition, according to the teacher’s feedback, we have improved our trend funnel framework. Our team started to employ six stage trend funnel framework, which helped us to recognise the trends of the market and design feasible marketing strategies. Secondary research helped us to gain more comparative evidence for the new service. Modified funnel procedure helped us to design strategies for gaining sustainability and growth in the market. In addition, team members cans provide their valuable feedbacks in terms of selecting the research and development (R&D) strategies (Thursfield, 2015). Comparative Analysis with Pixar Team Performance and Structure In comparison to Pixar, Employability Enhancing App (EEA) Team have so many limitations. Pixar is a big company offering animated commercials or videos having their own well designed website. The portal is informative and user friendly. On the other hand, website of Employability Enhancing App is in the developing state so there is no such application based portal existing in the market for the organisation (Thursfield, 2015). This proves to be a great opportunity for the organisation to provide employment news related information. Pixar on the other hand, can use their existing websites to inform the potential customers. It is offering the customers highly customised information regarding job vacancies. Therefore, Employability Enhancing App needs to provide customised solution to the candidates. Such searches need to be filtered as per the “educational qualification, experience, interest and location of job seeker”. This will increase compatibility of the team (Pixar.com, 2015b). Analysis of NPD Process Employability Enhancing App (EEA) NPD Process Macro and micro trends 5.6% of active job seekers in the UK Drives Key trend Rate of unemployment is growing in the Northern England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales area. Target customers demographic, psychographic and geographic UK based job seekers Target segment of customer of 16 to 64 years age group Key target section: 18 to 28 years aged candidates Candidates from “lower medium class, medium class and higher medium class” Alternate service Job portals of reed.co.uk, cv-library.co.uk, monster.co.uk, jobrapido.com Trend affected by customers situation Educational qualification, experience, interest of the candidates and location of job Products or service concept Job searching portal having multiple number of searching filters with least possible charges Pixar’s NPD Process Macro and micro trends 1.84 million of the UK people are unemployed and searching for suitable jobs Drives Northern England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales area are facing huge challenges of unemployment Target customers demographic, psychographic and geographic High end companies who are seeking for animation and graphic designing professionals or entry-level fresher candidates Alternate service cv-library.co.uk, reed.co.uk, jobrapido.com and monster.co.uk, (Pixar.com, 2015a) Trend affected by customers situation Economic crisis and cross cultural traits are affecting individuals job search. Products concept Marionette, Ringmaster and RenderMan are helping the firms and individuals in gaining knowledge regarding Technical Development, Creative Development, and Production. Comparative Analysis of NPD Process Figure 1: NPD process (Source: Pixar.com, 2015b) From the comparison of the new products development strategy of Employability Enhancing App and Pixar, it is obtained that Pixar is planning to increase their market share and the other one is trying to develop market. New product development strategy of both units are combined with various strategies like market research, idea generation, concept development, prototype testing, market testing and product launch (Thursfield, 2015). Benchmarking of Creativity Pixar (out of 10) Employability Enhancing App (out of 10) Benchmarking Rubric HR management 8 6.25 Employees or team members performance as per obligated roles Efficiency of teams 7.75 7.25 External challenge oriented actions NPD concept 9 7.75 Growth and sustainability rate of products in the market Culture of teams 8.75 7.75 Workplace culture and productivity Solving the problems faced 9.10 7.10 Efficiency in taking problem solving strategies Understanding and relationship build up 7.75 7.5 Least possible workplace conflicts Creativity or inventiveness 9.5 8.25 Develop innovative products From the case study, it has been observed that the Pixar offers unique culture in their set up which motivates employees for providing best possible contribution. Pixar adopted so many strategies to develop their employee base and increase the vulnerability of developing a new product (Loch and Kavadias, 2008). The organisation is using the strategies like “pitching a story, writing a text treatment, drawing storyboards, recording voice talent, making editorial reels, creating the look and feel, sculpting and detailing models, dressing sets, laying out shots, animating the shots, shading of characters and sets, lighting the scenes, rendering data and final touches” (Pixar.com, 2015a). Such strategies are helping the Pixar to gain higher competitive advantage. Strategies Employability Enhancing App and Pixar are using the 4C approach to develop their marketing strategies for penetrating into the market. 4C depicts consumer, cost, convenience and communication are the key strategic factors marketing a new product. Client’s demands are fulfilled with high consideration. Different filters are offered to the users or the UK based job seekers. Both the organisations are targeting the students or unemployed, so pricing needs to be economical. It has been observed that job seekers are charged with least possible charges. Convenience part outlined that customers are offered with online payments and monthly or yearly subscription. The portals are informative and user friendly, both employer and candidates can interact easily (Cox, Mowatt and Prevezer, 2003). Conclusion From the current study, it has been observed that the Pixar is one of the best short time promotional or graphics designing firm. From the overall investigation, it can be said that the organisation is capable of developing new products or service as it is owned by the Walt Disney. On the other hand, Employability Enhancing App team is concentrating on innovative business idea which will be genuine, authentic, innovative and tradable. Such concepts help the team in selling their online employment searching portals. Comparative study helped in outlining that Pixar being a global organisation is capable of maintaining more authentic product development strategies. Reference list Annacchino, M., 2007. The pursuit of new product development. Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann. Cox, H., Mowatt, S. and Prevezer, M., 2003. New Product Development and Product Supply within a Network Setting: The Chilled Ready-meal Industry in the UK. Industry & Innovation, 10(2), pp.197-217. Kahn, K., Kay, S., Slotegraaf, R. and Uban, S., 2013. The PDMA handbook of new product development. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Lloyd, C. and Payne, J., 2013. Changing job roles in the Norwegian and UK fitness industry: in search of national institutional effects. Work, Employment & Society, 27(1), pp.3-20. Loch, C. and Kavadias, S., 2008. Handbook of new product development management. Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann. Olsthoorn, M., 2013. Beyond unemployment rates: measuring job quality. Work, Employment & Society, 27(4), pp.731-733. Pixar.com, 2015a. Pixar. [online] Available at: [Accessed 22 Jun. 2015]. Pixar.com, 2015b. Pixar. [online] Available at: [Accessed 22 June 2015]. Thursfield, D., 2015. Resistance to teamworking in a UK research and development laboratory. Work, Employment & Society. Trott, P., 2008. Innovation management and new product development. Harlow, England: Financial Times/Prentice Hall. Read More