Marketing Mix, Marketing Channels and Understanding of the Consumer Behavior - Assignment Example

Marketing Relationships Contents Introduction 3 Answer Emerging as great relationship management organization 3 Answer 2: Importance of the different stake holders and Mendelow’s priority matrix 5 Answer 3 7 Customer’s Ladder of loyalty 7 Marketing mix, marketing channels and understanding of the consumer and industrial behaviour 9 Conclusion 10 References 12 Introduction Relationship marketing is a modern concept of the marketing functionality. The world of marketing is changing each and every day. It is very important to change according to the demand of market. In the present era of marketing keeping an existing customer is more important than to acquiring new one. It is the common practise that measuring a company’s value is done on the basis of company’s success and on the basis of its tangible assets. Recently Managements of different organization have able to understand the intangible part of it. It is the customer value creation; maintain relationship with all vendors, suppliers and all the stakeholders related with the organization. It is clear to the management that all the stakeholders are the pillars of the organization. They are the base without which organization can face serious sustainable problems. In this commutative world of marketing change in the strategy should be the only constant thing. This research will give a clear picture about the different practises of “star bucks” in relationship marketing. Answer 1: Emerging as great relationship management organization Star bucks have able to recognize the importance of relationship management very well. It has been an exemplary organization in maintaining relationship with all its customers. Company have able to recognise the problems of the market very well so they have adapted this strategy very well. Starbucks maintains relationship marketing with the help of text SMS, website, and direct mails with the help of its own application. The company is having a very good and modern application to maintain relationship marketing with the customers (Smith, 2011, p. 47). Company maintains a strong customer profile. Starbucks follows a strategy which is called as 5 R’s that are Reward, Redeem, Relevant offer, Reveal and Recognize. This strategy helps the company to attach its customer in such a way that customer feels a brand attachment with the organization. Company rewards its customer with some lucrative discounts after certain purchases. This kind of rewards is very attractive for customers. Customer feels that they are getting extra bit than their normal expectations. Redeeming of customer is also done in a very suitable way. Here company gives great amount of importance to the existing customers. Starbucks always keep repetitive contact with its existing customers (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2010, pp. 134-135). Company is having a huge customer profile which they maintain very carefully. Launching relevant offer in proper time is also a great strength. All the offers throughout the year are not productive. Like different offers in New Year and in Easter. The way Starbucks reveals its offers are very much attractive and create and unique image in the mind of customer. Like special offer on any customer’s birthday. This kind of elements of surprises is also very important. Proper recognition is the other way in which Starbucks maintains its relationship marketing with customers. It sends different mail which says that all the customers are the integral part of the organization. Answer 2: Importance of the different stake holders and Mendelow’s priority matrix Here importance of the different stake holders is going to be discussed. Mend low’s priority matrix will be used during the research. This matrix is being done on the two bases of the stake holders. Level of Interest and power of the stakeholders would be consider during the course of this research. This matrix is very effective for prioritizing different stakeholders related with the company (Schmitt, 2000, pp. 41-43). This mapping will help the organization to maintain relationship with different stakeholders. The matrix has four quadrants. All quadrants have its different meaning. In the below the picture of the matrix is given below. This matrix will give a clear picture. Quadrant “A” shows less effort. Here stakeholders are having low level of interest and power. Quadrant “B” Here stake holders are having high level of interest but they are having low power. They are informed group. Quadrant “C” Here stake holders are with high power but low level of interest. Here stakeholder’s satisfaction is very important. Quadrant “D” stakeholder’s with high power and high level of interest (Bowman and Gatignon, 2010, pp. 75-78). These stake holders are key players. There are lots of stakeholders are related with Starbucks but in this research four important stakeholders i.e. Customers, Suppliers, Staffs and Local Community are taken into consideration. Here Quadrant “D” is Customers. Customers of the Starbucks are the ultimate key factor stakeholders with high power and high level of interest. Customer satisfaction must be the ultimate priority of the company. It should maintain a higher level of strategic relationship with the customer. It is the customer who is going to make differences in the market. Customers are the main source of earning revenue. Generally level of interest regarding different products among the customer is very high (Belohlavek, 2008, pp. 69-70). They always look for information regarding their beloved company. Customer has the power of making any products hit or flop. Customers are the most important stakeholders of the company. Customers are the external stakeholders of the company. Customers are external but integral stakeholders of the Starbucks. Here Quadrant “C” is suppliers. Suppliers of the Starbucks are having high power but their interest level is less than the dedicated customers. Suppliers supply all the raw materials for different products. Company has to depend on its suppliers. Every company depends on its suppliers. Starbucks also depends on its suppliers. Suppliers are more concern with their profitability with the company. These stakeholders are always needed to be satisfied. Suppliers are the backbone of Starbucks (David, Botten and McColl, 2008, pp. 123-132). They are the internal stakeholders of the company. Here Quadrant “B” is staffs. Staffs are having great level of interest about they are company but power to change anything is very less. Staffs are always very interested about different policies of the company but to most of the policy making are done by highest level of management. Power of changing anything is less with the staffs. They are more of a follower than decision maker (Richter, 2012, pp.149-151). Staffs are recruited for providing services stipulated for the customers. Staffs are the internal stakeholders of company. Staffs are very important internal stakeholders. Company should care for them. Here Quadrant “c” local community. This stakeholder is having both things low. Community doesn’t have any power to change anything in the company. Community don’t show that much level of interest like customers, suppliers and staffs. Community is consisting of different people having different sectors for interest. It is an external stakeholder of company. Company must look after the interest of local community also (Doole and Lowe, 2005, pp. 84-86). It should not disturb the balance of local community. Company should maintain good relationship with local community. (Source: Norton and Hughes, 2009, p. 39) Answer 3 Customer’s Ladder of loyalty Here among the above four stakeholders, customers ladder of loyalty is going to be discussed. It is a model used for long term relationship management. This model gives a clear how Starbucks can maintain long term relationship management with its customers. This ladder is having five steps suspects, prospects, customers, clients, Advocates. Each step is having different stages of customer relationships. Suspects are the first step where customers are become familiar with the products and services of the organization. Here they come to know about the different products of the company. It is the basic step. Here people get idea about the products and services of the Starbucks. It can be taken as a sea of opportunity. As all the suspects can be prospects. Then in the second step where that suspect feels attracted about the promotion, product and services of the organization. Then that suspects become prospect for the Starbucks. In the mind of the prospects a latent affinity about the product is there. It is very obvious that number of prospects will be lower than number of suspects (Sekhar, 2009, pp. 251-253). Third step is customer. Here prospect, for the first time purchasing any product or service of the organization. In this step that latent affinity is being transferred into reality by the prospect. In the fourth step customer who shows its interest repeatedly. In this step customers become clients. This step shows a fair liking of customer about the company. This step shows a consistent relationship between the Starbucks and its client. In the fifth and final step customer it promotes the business. In this step they feel strong liking about the company. This should be the final desired step for Starbucks. It acts as an advocate fighting battle for its own company. Company should go for more and more this kind of customers. (Source: Schieferdecker and Hartman, 2008, p. 241) Marketing mix, marketing channels and understanding of the consumer and industrial behaviour Marketing mix for any company is very important. Starbucks has made it marketing mix in a very professional way. Marketing mix is basically being done with the combination of Product, price, place, promotion. Products are the important part of any marketing mix. There are many different products are there with Starbucks (Witcher and Chau, 2010, pp. 132-134). Its specialities are coffee and other beverages. Company also sells different gears related with coffee and beverages. Company is also having one tea which is called Tazo Tea. It shows that it has designed it product mix in such a way that it can meet the demand of different customers. Starbucks has designed its pricing model very carefully. Their prices of coffee is fixed upon the size of the coffee whereas prices of the teas are on basis of number of tea bags are used. This shows that they have designed their pricing very scientifically. Starbucks has kept its global footprint very carefully. It has placed its products very well. It has opened its counter very carefully around the world (Khan, 2011, pp. 162-163). They opened their counters in an intelligent manner. They choose places in right way for their products. Promotion is very important for any modern day product. Starbucks has given it a great priority. It introduces Starbucks card. It also started a community website. It created own Starbucks application. Starbucks has used social media marketing as a promotional tool. Starbucks also joined in CSR activities. Starbucks used different channels for its marketing. They have chosen social media like Face Book (Anderson, 2013, pp. 65-78). They created their own application for promotion purposes. It also uses regular mails as a promotional tool for its customers (Witcher and Chau, 2010). Starbucks maintain a huge database of their customers and, it uses that for the promotion purposes. Hoarding and billboards in the happening places of the market is also a very successful promotional strategy for Starbucks. Starbucks has able to understand the consumer and industrial behaviour very well. That is why they have come up with different products for different customers (Gledhill, 2012, pp121-125). They have able to understand the changing pattern of the behaviour of the industry very well (Singh, 2010, pp. 59-60). Starbucks realized that it is a consumer driven society so it has taken calculated steps for maintaining sustainability in this ever evolving industry. Starbucks has realised that there is very little alternative than keeping a strong relationship between the customers and the company. Conclusion In this world of cutthroat competition relationship marketing is the need of the hour. It will play a very important role for maintain long term relationship. Long term relationship is the secret of success for any company. Starbucks has kept very calculated and measured steps towards it. Relationship management builds bridges among all the stake holders related with the organization. It creates an intangible sense of bonding in the mind of the customers. As the day Progresses Company is improving relationship marketing strategies. It is certainly giving an extra bit of edge for the organization. References Anderson, V. 2013. Research methods in Human Resource Management: London: CIPD. Belohlavek, P. 2008. Unicist Marketing Mix: USA: Blue Eagle Group. Bowman, D. and Gatignon, H. 2010. Market Response and Marketing Mix Models: Trends and Research Opportunities: Hannover : Now Publishers Inc. David, R. Botten,N. and McColl, J. 2008. 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