Brand Management - Click Frenzy - Assignment Example

BRAND MANAGEMENT - CLICK FRENZY By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Brand Management: Click Frenzy. Q 1 Click frenzy is the leading online shopping website in Australia and it was launched in November 2012. Despite numerous challenges the company has continued to strengthen its weaknesses and over the time, it has proved to be a useful resource to online shoppers both in the region and elsewhere (Richard & Wilson, 2005). (b) Click frenzy was established with the goal of giving Australia a chance to fight back against international competition. The company would achieve this by availing online brand management services to both local and international clients. Online shoppers would get an opportunity to bide for various deals from the company website (Bobby, B. 2012). Q 2. The event of launching the famous click frenzy which was described as Australia’s version of cyber Monday failed in big a way to provide the much anticipated services to consumers. After only few hours of its launch, the site crashed. The crashing of the site was largely attributed to the huge traffic from the consumers who logged into the system. The serious technical issues which led to the crashing of the system were experienced despite widespread assurances from experts. (Richard & Wilson, 2005). Planners had not expected large number of the consumers after such a short time after its launch and were therefore not set to contain huge traffic. Later on, these technical issues were resolved and consumers were able to make decisions on what to buy and what not to buy from click frenzy. This was achieved through comparison of prices from other online retail companies and shops. The information gathered from these sources was quickly spread through means such as social media. Q3 (a) Australia’s leading power retail initiative click frenzy has over the recent past signed some of the leading brands providing an amicable answer to cyber Monday. The company provides focused and strategic brand management with the intention of making its clients benefit in various ways. (b) The company Targets both local and international consumers. Most of the leading brands in Australia have thrown their support on the company with the hope of having their brands even more popularized. (c) Apart from wanting to have a brand, most organizations desire to have their brands well managed. Efficient brand management has proven to be major determinant between thriving and struggling business organizations. (Kotler et al, 2002). Companies from all sectors in Australia and other parts of the world are faced with the challenge determining the likelihood of a brand consolidating or increasing their profits. They wonder what they should do to create a brand or even become a corporate brand. The steps they ought to follow, using which investment and in possession of which skills are not clear. However a company that undertakes to invest in proper brand management stands out among others. Its products are popular in the market and consequently, it leaps numerous profits. Aggressive brand building has numerous benefits to an organization (Rogers, B. 1991) A strong brand builds a strong customer preference for the goods behind the brand. Consumer research has indicated consumers will always tend to buy goods and services they know and trust. Strong brands presents themselves to customers as having less risk and expectations to perform as expected are high. This is only achievable through embracing appropriate brand management protocols (Rogers, B. 1991). Click frenzy provides its clients with reliable brand management protocols. Consumers can search a variety of brands contained in the company’s site and view various features of the products they intend to buy. Modern day company market value has shifted from the traditional balance sheet and physical assets to brand equity. Brands have emerged out as the company’s strongest asset. Q 4 (a) The success associated with click frenzy has not been achieved easily and many obstacles have been encountered along the way. Many companies have emerged to offer this crucial service to business organizations, individuals, institutions and other parties with the interest of having their products publicized to the market or their target (Rogers, B. 1991). This has triggered more competition in the area of brand management. Despite major criticism from experts that the company’s software and technology platform is incapable of handling big demands, the company has continued to respond to this positively and proven all its critics wrong. (b) The emerging competitive frames have force the company to take various strategic measures in order to maintain its position in the market. Huge amount of customer awareness created by the company over a relatively short time has played a pivotal role in helping the company achieve its overall success. The company has managed to sign up many retailers and brands. Several customers have also been witnessed to sign up on the site. This coupled with the Australian’s customers love to search and negotiate for better prices over the internet has contributed greatly to the company popularity. Although there has been no clear metric to evaluate the company’s success over the recent past, large volumes of traffic which led to crashing of the site was a clear indicator of the large number of customers the company should anticipate in its future endeavors. Q5 (a) Respect for the informed consumer is held in very high esteem at click frenzy, this is largely associated with the company’s brand equity. Technological advancement has brought about globalization which has given rise to a breed of consumers which is not only educated but also resourceful and keen in finding great products at relatively low prices over the internet (Rogers, B. 1991). This has completely brought to an end days when retailers used to dictate product ranges, pricing and promotion (b) Communication based on products awareness and its advantages is very crucial so as to establish consumer’s attention and awareness. After creating awareness, the product should be readily available in all respective distributing outlets to ensure availability to customers. At this stage, sales and promotion tactics should be applied to trigger market demand. Focus should be emphasized mostly on building long term relationship with customers to create a base of long term profit. (Scat, 2001) argues that marketing strategy should include approaches that will be used to reach target market. The strategy should as well include the plan of ways objectives will be achieved Q (6). Launch of click frenzy immediately triggered comparison deals with the local and international offers. This comparison highlighted lack of value from some of the Click Frenzy offers through social media such as Facebook and twitter. Q (7) Social media can be a powerful tool for creating awareness about various brands if properly used. The ability of Click Frenzy to take full advantage of social media power has resulted in numerous benefits. The company has successfully managed to generate consumer awareness to the social community via Google+, Facebook, twitter and several other social sites. This has in turn transformed many Australian consumers into using social media to give their views and opinions regarding various products and services. Q (8) Retailers can prepare themselves by tracking their brand equity at lick frenzy. A brand is described as a name that has positive influence on its consumers. Tracking brand equity involves identifying the source of its influence with the intention of increasing or intensifying this influence. It is an activity aimed at measuring of source of brand power. A survey carried out revealed interesting responses when consumers were asked their perception of a strong brand. 65% of those interviewed responded that brand awareness was the most significant aspect which can be used to establish the positioning of a brand in the market. Numerous surveys conducted both nationally and internationally still reveal brand awareness as the distinguishing factor for positioning a particular brand in the market. Q (9) Intensive brand management is also a useful tool for helping a Company build a strong brand online. This can be achieved by advertising brands along other strong brands which have been born online e.g. on Google and Facebook. This prevents new competitors in the same area from entering the market. A renowned company that controls a particular market segment servers as a powerful barrier which hinders other competitors from penetrating the market. A company that takes advantage of creating this market segment benefits tremendously (Rana & Chad, P. 2006). Brand management increases the profitability of an organization by giving an organization the opportunity to charge higher prices for its goods and services. Consumers always are ready to pay premium rates for established goods or services as opposed to a non-name product. (Strydom & Jooste, 2006). Well branded products creates unique and differentiated company image. They go beyond both the service and the tangible products being offered and establish an emotional connection with the consumers which could serve as a perfect foundation and a strong differentiation strategy. The ability of the company to attract new distributors for is brands are to a big extent governed by the popularity of the company brands. An established brand with proven consumer loyalty finds little or no problems in finding distribution partners. Every distributor wants to distribute a product that is popular among consumers as it provides high turnovers. (Rana & Chad, P. 2006) The negotiation power between the company and its suppliers is boosted by the rating of its brands in the market which is further determined greatly by the level of brand management undertaken by the company (Rogers, B. 1991) The employee turnover has also been found to be greatly decreased by strong brands which serve to provide a sense of purpose and direction to the employees thereby promoting employee loyalty to the company. Q (10) .In its efforts to provide a leading role in availing competitive brand management and online retail services, click Frenzy Company has endured many challenges ranging from general criticism to technical issues(Edwin, & Ruud, 2006). The inability to meet its promise to provide a user friendly online market place with the ability to withstand an enormous concurrent traffic volume from the ever increasing number of clients has greatly damaged the company’s reputation. It is with no doubt that the creators of the site had failed to anticipate the large number of customers within such a short duration of time (Richard & Wilson, 2005). The large number of people assessing the site within the first few minutes of its launch was far much more than that forecasted by the founders of click frenzy. Although being an arduous process, system testing should be implemented in a manner that focuses and fully addresses all customer needs, claims and concerns. False allegations and accusations from the competitors have also greatly damaged the company reputation. Managing scale on social media has also proven to be an issue of growing concern to the organization. Successful brands always have more customers than the employees available to attend to the needs of these customers (Scott Monty, 2011). This implies that there are conversations about such brands than these employees can be able to handle therefore some consumers are left ignored which can impact negatively on these brands. The ability to scale social media conversations requires good prioritization. The stakeholders involved need to exercise good judgment to determine the most viable conversations. Determining the number of services and platforms to use is essential. One should also be careful to identify networks which are most convenient for the targeted customer base.. A major challenge also facing brand managers at click frenzy and also elsewhere is the ability to decide the right tools to use from a wide variety of tools available for use (Rogers, B. 1991). The task of determining the right tools to amicably suit your business needs is not only challenging but a long term process. Establishing good relationships with customers also significantly works well for a particular brand. Brand managers are faced with the challenge of establishing, building and sustaining fruitful relationships with consumers via social networks. Cultural shift required to support engagement in social media is also a technical issue to brand managers. This cultural shift is also important for setting within the social network of relevance. (Edwin, & Ruud, 2006) To achieve this cultural shift, Click Frenzy need to adopt a bottom-up conversation workflow which leads and responds and also a top-down approach that is geared towards transforming insights into new products and services. Essentially all business organizations have an obligation to do this. Following the current trend, click frenzy expects is customers to increase in future. The company should therefore put in place adequate sustainability measures to cater for the anticipated large number of customers (Richard & Wilson, 2005).This will involve developing a strong technical infrastructure and a good technology platform to cater for increased number associated with increased number of customers. Brand management strategy for each product should be designed to ensure brand loyalty is maintained. Management strategy should include situation analysis i.e. the position of the firm in the competition league. In addition, management objectives should be well defined i.e. the target of sales volume, target segment to be approached and cash flow. All marketers face challenges in the field thus an ideal marketing plan should be created and applied effectively. Marketing management process starts with market research to identify competitors’ strength and identify the needs and expectation of customers (Scat, 2001). Market research should collecting, analyzing and interpreting information/data collected from, customers, competitors and business environment (Rana & Chad, P. 2006).. Effective marketing strategy should be maintained always to maintain competitive advantage. They should always open their eyes in the market outside due to rapid changing trends such as consumers taste, technology, fluctuating economy, competitors’ energy and marketing challenges, thus they should employ innovative marketing strategies and create marketing plan that work. Types of marketing plan should be employed to ensure the products go through in the market and maintain competitive advantage. Marketing planning process include planning, analysis, communication and lastly the action. More time should be spent in planning and analysis of the market to ensure effective communication and action (Nicholas, Mark & John, 2003). Types of marketing plan includes, strategic market plan focuses on maximizing profit and increasing the volume of sales. The marketing plan helps marketers to scan the environment so as to get the right target consumers of the product. Tactic market plan focuses on creating product awareness to attract back many customers. Marketers should know the strategic level to operate in to increase the sales (Rana & Chad, P. 2006). Example, marketers obtaining poor results may mistakenly use tactical marketing plan instead of strategic plan in order to increase sales but even the sales volume end up declining more. Relationship marketing plan is a strategy a firm employs to retaining existing customers closer to their product thus increasing products sales. They employ tactics such as offering discount to customers, lowering the cost of products to existing customers. (Edwin, & Ruud, 2006) Marketing management is developed into marketing plan to specify ideally how the firm is going to implement strategies and objectives. Marketing plan is used to derive marketing objectives and goal of the firm. Good marketing plan should have the following, executive summary, market analysis of information gathered in market research, the objectives should focus on the marketing strategy the firm is choosing to pursue and the competitive position it is fighting to achieve (Edwin & Ruud, 2001). According to (Waisum & David, 1998) different companies have their own version of marketing plan, with different marketing tactics and strategies. Thus, the marketing goals and objectives do not mean the firm will achieve the desired sales volume. All together the success of the firm to be top in competitive advantage is left in management of marketers. Marketing planning is very important in every business to successes, the goal of marketing planning should be focused on the customers, thus it should be organized to attend to customers questions such as, and how much are customers willing to buy and when do they want to buy the brands. What customers really need and expect from the brand and where they want to get the products. Marketer should address these questions when preparing marketing plan so as to reach the group targeted. (Edwin, & Ruud, 2006) The main objective of market planning should be based on communicating the product’s benefits. The objectives should be realistic and address question like how much money the firm is will spend while marketing. How the media that will work best to market the product and how the effort of promotion will be evaluated. Is the ultimate goal of the plan to increase sales or to be famous in the market. Is customer retention main objective of market planning? Marketing plan should be implemented for goals and objectives to be achieved (Rana & Chad, P. 2006) The firm should identify ways market plan will be auctioned (Richard & Wilson, 2005). The live today is rapidly changing, and mode of communication too has changed, thus for marketers to be successful in the highly competing world they be should change their marketing plans accordingly. Reference Charles, W, L., Joseph, F, H., & Carl, M. 2006, Essential of marketing. New York: Thomson South-Western. Edwin, J, N. & Ruud, T, F. 2001, Strategic marketing planning: a management approach. Kluwer academic publisher, Amsterdam. Gordon, E, G. 1989, An understanding of marketing strategy. European journal of marketing. 23(8), 45-58. 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