Contemporary Issues in Marketing Management - Assignment Example

Contemporary Issues in Marketing Management TASK 1 Knowledge management is an interdisciplinary model of business that focuses upon generation of knowledge and its subsequent exchange within an organization (KM World, 2014). Customer Interaction Management (CIM): Knowledge management in this context represents the knowledge acquired by a company to make marketing, sales and customer more efficient and effective, as the fundamental goal of CIM. This involves training and enabling every individual as well as system to access and utilize knowledge so as to understand the reasons that prompt customers to demand for a particular goods or service, the standard for choosing a specific brand and service provider. The access to this knowledge about clients is critical in order for companies to design goods and products that would enhance their level of satisfaction. Customer Experience Management (CEM): Knowledge management in this context refers to collection of information regarding customers expectations and elements that may cause customer dissatisfaction. This requires a thorough evaluation of significant customers as well as of margin customers. This knowledge can be used in order to design services and products that suit the need of clients and thus will help the company to establish a relationship with the clients that is based on trust in respect which in turn will enable a company to increase their customer retention level (Boljanović and Stanković, 2012). 1.2. Taking into account the case of Godiva Chocolatier, the ways in which ICT (information and communication technology) can support CRM are stated as follows: With the help of ICT, the company can complete and update orders as well as queries in digital form thereby minimizing the amount of errors and hence ensuring faster and more precise deliveries. ICT enables the company to improve logistics and inventory management. Order flow can be automated through the help of ICT thereby providing more time for employees to offer better service to customers. ICT produces real time customer feedback that helps the company to develop products in accordance with the need of customers. ICT is a reliable source for gathering market intelligence required to learn about customer expectations and perceptions regarding a product or service. ICT establishes a Convenient and faster line of communication between companies and customers thereby enabling both the parties to interact with each other directly. ICT enhances customer visibility by allowing companies to view all activities on each customers account (Herrenschmidt-Moller, 2006). 1.3. Benefits of CRM in Virgin trains Over the last decade or so Virgin trains have adopted strong and innovative CRM strategies that have enabled the organization to attain an enhanced level of customer satisfaction. The benefits as reported by the National Passenger Survey comes in the form a whopping 92% overall customer satisfaction rating attained by Virgin trains (Virgin trains, 2013a). The organization has been largely successful in influencing the purchase decision of their customers by reducing the price of their ticket by a huge margin in a number of routes (Virgin trains, 2013b). Although the prices of tickets were reduced but that did not affect the quality of service offered by the organization. These characteristics demonstrated by the organization in terms of executing a near perfect CRM strategy has enabled it to attain a higher level of repeat purchases customer loyalty, and customer retention rate (Ndubisi, Nataraajan and Lai, 2014). 1.4. Recommended CRM strategy to Virgin trains The organization should organize focus groups with loyal customers in order to gain a valuable insight regarding their expectations and demands. Not even a single customer should be taken for granted. Feedbacks from each of those customers should be applied while designing products and services accordingly (Miquel-Romero, Caplliure-Giner and Adame-Sánchez, 2013). The organization should make sure to stand up to the premises and commitments made to the customers. In that way they will able to establish a relationship that is based on trust and respect which in turn will allow the organization to win over their customers and thus attain a higher level of customer satisfaction. The organization should be very attentive about not making any false claims as it may tarnish their reputation (Hoots, 2004). Virgin trains should give a lot of emphasis on the complaints lodged by their customers as it will enable them to recognize the areas that need improvement and work on these area subsequently. By doing so, the organization can respect and value its customers and henceforth increase their level of satisfaction (Powell, 2011). TASK 2 Stakeholder Analysis of a public sector organization for Women’s and Children’s Health (WACH) project conducted in India: Stakeholders Roles Government Responsible for health delivery in collaboration with private health practitioners and NGOs. Define the responsibilities and tasks for government officials, private health practitioners and NGOs. Ensure supply of nutritional foods and medicines in a standardized manner. Non Governmental organizations Responsible for direct implementation of health delivery system. State the responsibilities and tasks for every NGO employees in order to avoid conflict and duplication of efforts. Private service providers Mostly includes pharmacies and other related organizations who are directly involved in delivery of health services. Support capacity building and training of other grass root level organizations. Government health institutions Responsible for working in collaboration with the government and NGOs to provide health services. Enact policies regarding health welfare. Community members They lie at the receiving end of this service delivery system. Stakeholder Analysis of a voluntary sector organization Stakeholders Roles Recipients They can also be referred to as the customers of the voluntary sector organization. they are at the receiving end of the services delivery system. Donors It can be an organization or an individual who donate voluntarily. These donations are thereafter used to pay for employees as well as for funding a project. Employees Responsible for conducting activities as stated by the organization. They participate voluntarily and are the key stakeholders of the entire service delivery system. 2.3. Marketing methods of a private and public sector bank Majority of the marketing methods adopted by private and public sector banks are by and large similar. The main marketing methods adopted by the banks include advertising, sales promotion, personal selling. The advertising methods adopted by private and public sector banks are quite similar. It suggests that marketing communication do not vary from banks to banks. Their main agenda is to grab the attention of as many audience as possible with the underlying intention of converting them into potential customers. There is huge difference in the way public and private sector banks does their sales promotion. While private sector banks adopts aggressive strategies in order to spread information regarding their products, change attitude of customers and enhance their brand image in front of the customers, public sectors banks are adopt a more conservative strategy. A similar pattern of marketing method can be observed in case of both the banks as far as personal selling is concerned (Manisha, 2012). Marketing methods of a voluntary sector organization The marketing methods adopted by voluntary sector organizations are contrasting different from the methods adopted by public and private sector organizations. The methods adopted are as follows. 2.4. Key issues in marketing in a particular organization Creating awareness and driving the traffic: Before a company is able to generate leads for its sales teams to convert them into potential customers, it is imperative for them to get the attention of audience towards products and services. Marketers often face a big challenge of having inadequate volume of interested audience whereas some marketers do not have the idea about the channels that needs to be focused upon in order to generate the highest return. Effective targeting: Marketers sometimes fail to comprehend the actual target market that needs to be targeted. As a consequence of which they end up formulating improper target strategies which in turn results in the development of inadequate products and services. Usage of social media to generate customers: Although marketers have increasingly resorted to the use of social media in order to generate customers but they often lack the scientific knowledge of targeting, engaging, and nurturing customer base with the help of social media (Goliger, 2012). Task 4 4.1 Marketing professionals who form the back bone of any organisation are often subjected to criticism because of certain issues relating to ethical and social concerns. In the contemporary world it is expected that the companies would not only aggressively run for profits but will also have a responsibility towards the society where they are earning from. But sometimes there is a lack of concern from the marketers they seem averse to paying the society back and indulge into unlawful practices to increase profitability. Some of which are: Deceptive Practices: These are the false practices adopted by companies in terms of pricing , promotion and packaging to mislead consumers by misrepresenting the company’s product or the competitors’ product through false statements. High Pressure Selling: Often the consumers are enticed and are talked into buying unwanted products which has no utility in real. For example Insurance, mutual funds and credit card selling. High Prices : This is the case when the companies incur high distribution cost due to increase in intermediaries also adding of advertising cost to the products and using high mark up strategy through which companies try to recover their cost in a short period (ITC, 2014). Shoddy/Unsafe Products: Companies sometimes become indifferent to the quality of the product thereby manufacturing shoddy products as most of the cost is incurred in advertising campaigns they pay less attention on quality control. The promotion of companies dealing with harmful products like alcohol and fast food products which lack nutritional value is a concern. 4.2 ITC Ltd. has one of the better crafted Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) policies as they believe that businesses exist to help further larger societal goals and their contribution is measured best by the societal value they create at large, giving beyond traditional profit and loss statements. ITC believes that a company’s performance must be measured by its Triple Bottom Line contribution in building social, economic and environmental capital. Table 1: CSR activities of ITC (Source: ITC, 2014) 4.3 Pressure groups are organisations which are set up with an intention to influence what we think about the business and its environment. Pressure groups are important in promoting debates, discussions and questioning on the practises adapted by a company. The green pressure group has influenced ITC’s ethical and social marketing policies. At times, green pressure groups can find the measures taken to be inadequate, and consequently take action in order to influence the parties involved in policy making to do more to deal with the issues. These pressure groups work in two different ways a) direct action b) indirect action. Aggressive direct action hogs the headlines and media coverage; there is also a great deal of things that can be done in order to conserve environmental conditions. Often the most effective and least controversial, and most popular form of action taken by green pressure groups is indirect. This often involves lobbying Governments and businesses by holding meetings with senior figures, or undertaking advertising programs in order to educate populations and increase awareness of any ongoing issue. ITC has constantly endeavoured to enlarge its positive carbon footprint. This is achieved through enhanced energy conservation, use of renewable energy sources and also expanding carbon sequestration through its large scale Social and Farm Forestry Programmes. Apart from severe efforts by the company to reduce energy consumption through strict audits and benchmarking, ITC is also expanding portfolio of its renewable energy. More than 38% of its energy consumption is now met from renewable sources, which is expected to touch 50% in the near future (ITC, 2014). 4.4The role played by the broadcast media in influencing the ethical and social marketing policies for an organisation is vital (ITC, 2014). In an Institute of Business Ethics Survey (IBE) of large companies most of the respondents has identified integrity risk as the main ethical challenge with regard to social media. Apart from ITC, Nestle is also a big name in the FMCG industry. The following case of Nestle would give an insight on how the companies are exposed to integrity risk. In March 2011 an employee who was managing content on the company’s Facebook fan page posted offensive comments in response to negative remarks by fans. This has violated the company’s business principles of integrity and their commitment to avoid any conduct that could damage or risk Nestle or its reputation and provoked a consumer backlash. People joined the fan page just to criticise Nestle. Therefore usage of social media in an irresponsible way by the employees of the company leads to attraction of bad name for the company, undermining the company’s commitment. Reference List Manisha, 2012. Marketing Communication Strategies of Public and Private Sector Banks- A Comparative Analysis. International Journal of Computational Engineering & Management, 15(6), pp, 16-22. Goliger, S., 2012. 5 Major Challenges Marketers Face (And How to Solve Them). [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 June 2014]. Miquel-Romero, M. J., Caplliure-Giner, E. M. and Adame-Sánchez, C., 2013. Relationship marketing management: Its importance in private label extension. Journal of Business Research, pp.1-6. Powell, S. M., 2011. The nexus between ethical corporate marketing, ethical corporate identity and corporate social responsibility: An internal organisational perspective. European Journal of Marketing, 45(9/10), pp. 1365-1379. Hoots, M., 2004. Customer relationship management for facility managers. Journal of Facilities Management, 3(4), pp. 346-361. Ndubisi, N. O., Nataraajan, R. and Lai, R., 2014. Customer perception and response to ethical norms in legal services marketing. Journal of Business Research, 67, pp. 369-377. Virgin Trains, 2013a. The National Passenger Survey. [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 June 2014]. Virgin Trains, 2013b. Select your travel date. [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 June 2014]. Koenig, M. E. D., 2012. What is KM? Knowledge Management Explained. [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 June 2014]. Boljanović, J. D. and Stanković, J., 2012. The role of knowledge management in building client relationships. Singidunum Journal, 9(1), pp. 16-28. Herrenschmidt-Moller, A., 2006. Case study: ICT in support of CRM at Godiva Chocolatier Europe. [pdf] e-business watch. Available at: [Accessed 16 June 2014]. ITC, 2014. ITC enduring value. [online] Available at: [Accessed 16 June 2014]. Read More