Marketing Management - Case Study Example

MARKTING MANAGEMENT By Table of Contents Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………………….3 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………….4 Literature Review………………………………………………………………………………….4 Case Study………………………………………………………………………………………...6 Methodology………………………………………………………………………………………7 Data Analysis & Conclusion………………………………………………………………………8 Recommendations…………………………………………………………………………………9 References………………………………………………………………………………………..10 Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………………11 Executive Summary This is an executive paper exploring the marketing techniques and strategies applied by the Tata Motors after its purchase of the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) brand from Ford Motors stationed in the United Kingdom. The Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) brand is among the leading luxury brands across the world, providing its customers with a wide range of luxurious automobile products such as Range Rover, Land Rover, and Jaguar saloon cars. This paper is important because it evaluates the critical marketing mix strategies employed by the Tata Motors after it purchased the JLR brand from Ford Motors in 2007, after the former owner relinquished its rights and ownership of the brand in order to concentrate in its local market within the United States. This change in ownership of the brand swayed consumer’s perceptions and ideas towards the brand, and as such, required an executive move from the Tata Motors Limited in order to win back the support of its customers. Most of the research conducted for this study was through an online platform, as well as using various secondary data material with critical information on the company’s marketing strategy. In addition, the researchers also collected raw data from the field by involving ground participants, such as active leaders and managers at both Ford Motors and Tata motors Limited. The research established that Tata Motors Limited, the leading automobile manufacturer in India, employed Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) strategies in order to redeem its position within the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) brand. This also enables the company to ensure that its customers across the world that the change in management guaranteed better and higher quality products as opposed to lower quality products from JLR (Carpenter, Farley & Shankar, 2012) Marketing Management a) Introduction Ford Motors, a leading automobiles manufacturer in the United States was the original owner of the Jaguar Land Rover brand. However, the Ford Motors limited operated this branch of its automobile manufacturing unit from the United Kingdom. As such, this provides the key reason why most of the available vehicles of the JLR brand are from the United Kingdom. In fact, most consumers unaware of the ownership of the company still believe that the JLR brand is a UK brand. However, when Ford Motors started facing stiff competition from other industry players within its local market in the United States, it decided to sell off its international interests including Jaguar land Rover brand in order to concentrate and consolidate its local market. Tata Motors Limited bought the JLR brand in 2007 (Paley, 2006). Tata Motors is a leading automobiles manufacturer based in India. It manufacturers a wide range of vehicles including cars, SUVs, Trucks, Busses, and Trailers. As such, its acquisition of the JLR luxury brand empowered the company to enter into the global platform of a competitive automobiles industry, especially the luxury niche. Consequently, the company was in a position to compete with the likes of Volkswagen Group and the Daimler group, both German automobile manufacturers who specialize in developing luxurious brands such as Mercedes Benz and AUDI. This paper reviews how the company employed extensive marketing mix strategies in order to consolidate its international market, as well as expand its local market of the JLR brand in order to compete effectively with the other leading players in the industry. b) Literature Review It is important to determine the marketing strategy employed by Tata Motors after it purchased the JLR brand from Ford Motors in 2007. This is because the marketing strategy adopted by the company was instrumental in restoring its consumers’ confidence in the company, as well as in the brand despite the change in ownership. As such, similar industry players can copy this strategy and apply in case scenarios related to the one faced by Tata Motors at that time. It is important to note that both companies, Ford Motors and Tata Motors are industry leaders in their own right within their domestic markets, which were the United States and India respectively. However, at the time when the transaction was taking place, both companies were facing serious challenges that could easily jeopardize their entire global operations (Carpenter, Farley & Shankar, 2012) On one hand, Ford Motors faced stiff competition in its domestic market, and as such opted to relinquish its international interests such as the Jaguar Land Rover brand so that it could concentrate on its local US market to consolidate its presence. On the other hand, Tata Motors was just recovering from a poor investment decision that nearly brought the manufacturing giant to its knees, the Nano brand vehicle. In fact, this investment decision wasted a large amount of the company’s resources leading to losses that it needed support from the Indian government in order to continue normal business. The government bailed out Tata Motors in an effort to promote local manufacturing and job creation within the country. As such, judging from the background, consumers of the JLR brand assumed that Tata motors would not meet their expectations, and as such, sat back to examine some of the strategies employed by Tata motors in promoting the JLR brand, as well as stamping its mark within the luxury brand vehicles. It is also worthy to note the JLR brand opened new market opportunities for Tata motors to explore the luxury cars market, and as such, compete effectively with other leading market players such as the Mercedes Benz brand, the BMW brand, the AUDI brand, as well as the Volkswagen brand, all German luxury car brands. c) Case study After Tata Motors acquired the JLR brand from Ford Motors in 2007, all the global customers of the JLR brand were jittery with anxiety as to whether the new owner would be in a position to maintain the quality and luxury standards of the JLR brand, which placed it on the map. This was especially in consideration with most of the brands manufactured by Tata Motor as at that time, which apparently did not command a significant market control in the luxury car brands niche. Therefore, the biggest fear among most of the consumers of the JLR brand was the ability of Tata motors to meet the quality standards set by Ford Motors as pertains the JLR brand, as well as introduce new inventions and specifications on the brand in order to keep it relevant and in line with the ever developing automobiles luxury market. In the luxury brand of automobile manufacturing, consumers go for quality rather than price of the car. In fact, these consumers presume that the more expensive a vehicle is, the higher the quality of the vehicle as it contains more features and improvements to ensure their comfort and maximum satisfaction while using the automobile. As such, the consumers expected Tata Motors to maintain the quality of the JLR brand, as well as introduce new improvements and innovations to the brand that would make it trendy, more fashionable, as well as competitive within the luxury brand market (Paley, 2006). Unknown to its consumers, Tata Motors was equal to the task and manufactured several units of the JLR brand just as uniquely and as luxurious as the ones manufactured by Ford Motors. In addition, the company managed to add a few innovations into the brand in order to make it trendier, as well as meet some of the expectations of its consumers. However, the biggest hurdle was to let its consumers learn of its ability to meet and surpass their expectations. It is no doubt that the vehicles manufactured by Tata Motors of the JLR brand are or a more superior and appealing quality as opposed to those previously manufactured by its former owner, Ford Motors, all thanks to the extensive research and development program engaged by Tata motors in order to ensure comprehensive and continuous improvement of the JLR brand The company adopted the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) strategy in order to reach out to a wide threshold of its global customers in order to create awareness of its new improvements on the brand, as well as sell its products across different international markets. Through IMC strategies, the company was able to collect different views, opinions, as well as suggestions made by consumers on what they expected from the JLR brand, and this information was instrumental in guiding the R & D department of Tata motors in developing vehicles designed to meet consumers’ tastes and preferences. This approach enabled the company to maintain its presence within the market, as well as manage to control a significant market of luxury automobile vehicles across the world, especially in the African and South American markets (Jones & Ryan, 2012) d) Methodology As mentioned earlier, the bulk of the research work was through the internet sources, especially on sites, pages, as well as online publications such as articles and journals with the information needed. The key research topic was how Tata Motors applied a marketing mix strategy in order to restore its customers’ confidence in the JLR brand after its acquisition from Ford Motors in 2007. As such, a significant number of the online periodicals reviewed were marketing periodicals and publications. Apart from internet research, there was secondary research as well, whereby researchers looked for the necessary information from magazines, newspapers, journals, as well as other relevant marketing publication with the needed information. In addition, the researchers also obtained raw data from the field that enabled them to counter check and correlate most of the information gathered through secondary sources and online publications. This field research work was mainly through selected participants with critical information regarding the research topic (Ulph, 2011). As such, the researcher interviewed a number of key managers within Tata Motors Limited and Ford Motors Limited in order to establish the key decisions made by the management regarding the marketing strategies adopted by Tata Motors on the Jaguar Land Rover brand. All the collected information would then undergo a critical analysis using both qualitative, as well as quantitative measures of data analysis in order to establish the veracity of the data, and obtaining the much-needed information. e) Data analysis & conclusion The data collected had to undergo both qualitative, as well as quantitative analysis in order to deduce a clear output from the data. One of the key points sought was the marketing strategy used, and how this marketing strategy was instrumental in promoting the company’s control of the market share, as well as maintaining the brand image of the Jaguar Land Rover’s brand. As such, the data had to go through various stages of analysis in order to ensure accuracy, and precision since the information retrieved from the analysis would form the benchmark for decision making on the topic selected. Most of the information retrieved after analysis pointed to the fact that Tata Motors mainly applied Integrated Marketing Communications strategy as its marketing mix decision that enabled it to keep the JLR brand alive and domineering in the luxury cars market after it acquired it from Ford Motors in 2007. This means that the IMC strategy adopted was quite instrumental in enabling Tata motors maintain market relevance of the JLR brand, as well as promoting its presence across different global markets after its acquisition. In addition, this strategy enabled Tata Motors to allay fears and anxiety developed by customers of the JLR brand over its capability to keep the image of the JLR brand alive while maintaining its position high within the luxury cars market niche (Jones & Ryan, 2012) f) Recommendations From the above analysis, marketers learn that the Integrated Marketing Communications strategy is a comprehensive marketing strategy that enables a company, or a market player to consolidate its position within the market, as well as ensure success and growth within its market share, both on domestic, as well as international market spheres. Consequently, IMC are critical marketing techniques that enable the manufacturer to produce products that meet the expectations of its customers, in terms of their tastes and preferences, as well as provision of additional features that would ensure and guarantee maximum satisfaction of the end user. This is evident through the impressive results recorded by Tata motors on its JLR brand as IMC strategies greatly enabled it to market its new brand across the globe, maintain a global market presence, as well as grow the brand’s appeal to attract more customers. References Carpenter, G, Farley, J., & Shankar, V. (2012) Handbook of Marketing Strategy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Jones, C. & Ryan, D. (2012) Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation. London: Kogan Page Publishers. Paley, N. (2006) The Managers Guide to Competitive Marketing Strategies. Boston: Thorogood Publishing. Ulph, C. (2011) Marketing Strategies used by Intel to Create a Sustainable Market Position. Munchen: GRIN Verlag. Appendixes Figure 1. Market sales of the JLR brand in two financial years. Retrieved from http://www.tatamotors.com/investors/financials/69-ar-html/mda2.html Read More