Integrated Marketing Communication - Millenium Passion Ltd - Case Study Example

Marketing Communication Student’s Name Institution Table of Contents 1.0Introduction 3 1.1 Format 3 1.2 Purpose 5 The main objective of this report is to understand the role of internet based communications and make recommendations on our client’s marketing communications strategies and practices. The report will seek to analyze how Millenium passion Ltd can gain a competitive edge by using internet communications in the contemporary business world. The research will, therefore, help to develop strategies for the effective implementation of integrated marketing communication for Millenium passion Ltd. 5 1.3 Company Background 5 2.0 What is being “sold?” 5 3.0 Target Market 6 4.0 Brand Positioning 7 4.1 Brand Positioning Map 7 5.0 Physical Marketing Communication Material 9 6.0 Matrix Analysis 10 6. 1 Design and Format 10 6.2 Navigation/Functionality 11 6.3 Interactivity 11 6.4 Product/Service information 12 6.5 Security/Privacy 12 6.6 Firm Information 12 7.0 Conclusion 13 8.0 Appendices 14 8.1 Matrix 14 9.0 References 15 1.0Introduction 1.1 Format In the face of globalization, organizations have moved to integrate their marketing actions with the public, popularly known as Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC). In order to achieve a synergistic communications strategy, firms throughout the world have integrated their traditional marketing communications aspects such as sales promotion and advertising with new marketing channels. Within small to medium enterprises(SMEs), the limited marketing budgets has seen business organizations adopting various relationship marketing concepts in order to enhance customer loyalty, as well as retention. Throughout the world, Small to Medium Enterprises s have become a critical element of national economies. The emergence of internet marketing has revolutionized the internationalization of Small to Medium enterprises. Khosrow-Pour (2006) in his studies argued that small and medium sized enterprises have embraced internet marketing at a feverish rate. According to Khosrow-Pour (2006) more than 90% of SMEs in developed nations have web sites that enable them to reach a wider clients’ base. The New Digital era has enabled people to be more creative thus resulting to a growth in client traffic, as well as new business partnerships. Research shows that the adoption of internet technologies has the ability to enhance marketing practices. A study, which was done by Sharma, (2011) stated that SMEs that have adopted the concept of internet marketing have gained from continued customer satisfaction. On the other hand, failing SMEs do not bother to capitalize on the internet and hence lacks a competitive edge over their rivals. These SMEs are not bothered by the high preference their competitors give to innovation programs. In recent years, marketing communications have become exceptionally complex, and this has called for careful advertising arrangements to harmonize integrated marketing communications policies. The main goals of communications include creating awareness, influencing, reminding and creating value. With this regards, marketing managers should harmonize their promotional activities in order to create incorporated client-focused messages. They should strive to identify client’s needs and convey the image in all that they undertake, because their activities portray a lot about the product being advertised. To expound more on marketing communication, this study sought to analyze market communication strategy for our client, Millennium Passion Ltd, which is a small and medium enterprise. In so doing, it defined three main objectives, namely to be the market leader in the passion fruit industry across Australia and beyond, to be the pacesetter in quality, health, safety and environment and to maintain a constant supply and profitability in the sector. 1.2 Purpose The main objective of this report is to understand the role of internet based communications and make recommendations on our client’s marketing communications strategies and practices. The report will seek to analyze how Millenium passion Ltd can gain a competitive edge by using internet communications in the contemporary business world. The research will, therefore, help to develop strategies for the effective implementation of integrated marketing communication for Millenium passion Ltd. 1.3 Company Background 2.0 What is being “sold?” The company aims at increasing productivity of the passion fruits across the Australian market. This will be realized through adoption of greenhouses and state of the art technologies to increase productivity and save on cost. In addition, the company will target the international markets in the end. In addition to increasing productivity, the company will also endeavour to maintain quality and freshness of the fruits. The company will also ensure safety and environmental implications of the fruit production. The workers will be equipped with the protective gear to enhance their safety and health. The company will ensure that the supply of the fruits in constant throughout the year. The traditional production of passion fruits, various with seasons. However, the company will adopt greenhouse technology to ensure a constant supply of the fruits across the year to ensure market stability and profitability. 3.0 Target Market The target market is largely based on the purchasing power and demographic variables. The first marketing phase will aim at increasing the frequency of purchase especially to the infrequent buyers to woo them into growing their purchase levels. Based on these classifications, the marketing plan will target three major groups; young transitional individuals, established couples and manufacturing market segments. The young transitional presents the greatest opportunity for the market growth due to their explorative nature, influence and minimal opposition to new products in the market. Notably, this group has a strong qualitative and quantitative association with the passion fruits, and winning their confidence will create a huge market base due to their power of influence. To tap this market segment, the market communication plan will involve extensive use of social networks to reach a wider audience. The established couples also present a wider market due to their purchase powers. Unlike the young transitional, this group has more purchasing power and influence to other couples. In addition, this market segment has a wider use of passion fruits such as processing domestic juice and using it to add flavour to the tea. As such, it will provide a guaranteed market for the fresh fruits. The manufacturing market is composed of the industries that process the passion fruits at large scale to yield passion juice as well as food flavors. This market segment purchases the fruits at large scale and would be ideal in realizing our object of increasing production to satisfy their demand and needs. The company will ensure a constant supply of fresh and quality fruits to sustain this market. In addition, it will have special rates for manufacturers to give them a competitive advantage to other fruits and increase the market for passion fruits across Australia. 4.0 Brand Positioning The company aims at adding value to the passion fruit industry in Australia and across the globe in various ways to create a competitive advantage. This includes boosting the value perception of the consumer through promotions, campaigns and training to create awareness on the different uses and storage of the fruits. The packaging and branding will also contribute to value addition, especially to the new markets. Branding ensures easy identification of our company’s products and creates a competitive edge over other brands (Reed, 2006). In addition, branding will appease the impulse buyers and create a competitive advantage to the substitute products. Awareness creation and quality control will be ensured throughout the supply chain in terms of handling, display and storage to ensure that only quality products reach the consumer. The manufacturers will have the fruits at a better rate to woo them into buying more of the products and expanding the clientele base to passion fruits and their associated products. Other positioning activities will include merchandising of the product to expand the market. 4.1 Brand Positioning Map Brand positioning map is a technique used in marketing to graphically present a company’s position in comparison to competitors. Millennium passion Ltd company brand positioning map will help to analyze the company in comparison to three other competitors. Passionfruit Australia Inc., passion inc., FreshFruits inc.are the main competitors in the industry. Quality of products and customer care were used to develop the positioning map. Quality of products The Millennium passion Ltd Company envisages being the market leader in the passion fruit industry. The company strives to offer the best products in the market through value addition. Passionfruit Australia Inc., passion inc., FreshFruits inc. too offer value addition to the passion fruit products. Millenium passion Ltd has a competitive edge over the other companies since their products were found to have a higher shelf life than the others did. There are more than ten brands of passion products produced by Millenium passion Ltd. The other companies’ products have a shorter shelf life and they only major on two bands each. The taste of Millenium passion Ltd was found to be sweeter and well flavored the other brands. Customer care Customer care is an essential component to the growth of a company. When customer’s perception is negative to any company, its sustainability becomes difficult (Cook, 2011). Companies throughout the world are now coming face to face with new market realities, namely: the acceptance that the customer is not a burden to the business. He is the reason the business exists. Millennium Passion Ltd has taken cognizant of the need to meet customer expectations. On its part, the company aims at gearing all its efforts towards delighting the clients. Any issues raised by customers were addressed instantly through engaging customers in friendlier manner and tone. That is, unlike Fresh Fruits inc. where some customer queries went unanswered. Passion Fruit Australia Inc has an established call centre to handle customer complaints. Millennium Passion Ltd Brand Positioning Map 5.0 Physical Marketing Communication Material The Millennium passion Ltd Company has adopted a unique branding and marketing strategy. That is done through the use of aggressive marketing campaigns using both the traditional media and the new media. There is higher utilization of newspaper advertisements and distribution of brochures in major supermarkets and eating places. Online presence is significantly higher than that of the competitors. Customers are engaged through regular updates online through twitter and facebook. The colours used in all promotional and product marketing are eye catching and invokes the great taste of passion fruit. Orange and green are the color of choice for the company. Any brochures distributed contain bold and dark images of a glass transparent glass containing passion juice. That not only invokes curiosity on the products, but also the customers get eager to have a taste of the product. 6.0 Matrix Analysis The website of the Millennium passion Ltd Company was analyzed using specific criteria. This was done in comparison with three competitor websites. The assessment was done in consideration of the best practices for the online presence (Mitchell, 2002). Each category was rated in terms of percentages where an average score was later calculated. The higher the percentage the better a specific feature on the website has been addressed. A lower percentage indicates a poor rating. Key features Millennium passion Ltd Passionfruit Australia Inc passion inc FreshFruits inc Design and Format 70% 90% 50% 40% Navigation/Functionality 82% 80% 60% 50% Interactivity 90% 80% 70% 50% Product/Service information 80% 90% 60% 50% Security/Privacy 50% 75% 40% 40% Firm Information 80% 80% 70% 60% Average Score 75% 83% 58% 48% 6. 1 Design and Format The home page of a website plays a critical role in any online promotional endeavors. A poorly designed home page distracts site visitors and discourages any other visits to the website (Weinschenk, 2009). Millennium passion Ltd Company’s website is well designed but needs further enhancements. The fonts are tiny, and therefore, any visitor with eyesight challenges may strain a lot to read the text. The color would also need some balancing to avoid too much yellow color on the home page. Since the company colors are mainly two, it is recommendable to balance the colours. The website home page should incorporate site maps for ease of identifying any relevant information a user might be interested. In general, the website design is above average, and therefore, would qualify for a score of 70%. 6.2 Navigation/Functionality Navigation/functionality in any website is important to a website visitor. A website visitor may easily be lost or confused when navigating in a website, especially when navigation bars are poorly designed (Lopuck, 2006). Navigating in the Millennium passion Ltd Company is quite good and user friendly. The navigation buttons are easy to locate and have simplified submenus. The website should, however, minimize the use of animated popup menus that makes a website heavy and therefore reduce download speeds drastically. The navigation links at the bottom of the website should be aligned to the left for ease of being located by website visitors. 6.3 Interactivity An interactive website keeps site visitors engaged all through the website visit. When users are engaged, they tend to develop an attachment with the website and hence increase the site visits (Robbins, 1999). The Millennium passion Ltd company has managed to incorporate a number of user interaction mechanisms. These include the use of social media links such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. A score of 90% on this feature is commendable. The company also needs to improve in terms of instant messaging. Online instant messenger should pop up immediately a site visitor opens the home page. The company should also consider engaging online virtual assistants for instant online queries handling. 6.4 Product/Service information The content on any website should focus to promote company products or services. The Information posted on websites should always be timely and accurate (Willard, 2011). Consumers should be empowered through such information to make proper judgments. The millennium passion Ltd website has a gallery for information dissemination. All the products are well discussed and it is easy to download the information without any copyright issues. It is advisable for the company to incorporate features whereby kindle users can also access data. The current website does not have the facility to facilitate reading on the Kindle. 6.5 Security/Privacy Web security has recently become more challenging than ever before. Online fraud and other criminal activities continue to rise every day (Gorman, 2007). It is important to incorporate methods and techniques for securing websites from malicious attacks. The current company website has security flaws since the website has not incorporated the use of digital certificates. Any malicious attacker can pretend to be a genuine user and steal other user’s confidential details. 6.6 Firm Information Company information should always be used to position a company as the leading brand. The words and the tone of the language used on the website should customer centric. Any form of misleading information may lead to a company’s disrepute. Millennium passion should ensure that company details such as contacts and location are properly displayed and a contact form should be simply designed to avoid a requirement for too much information on the form fields. 7.0 Conclusion This research has shown that Millennium Passion Ltd has taken cognizant of the need to meet the client’s expectations. The global markets coupled with intense competition in the market place have been in the vanguard of driving integrated marketing communications for small to medium enterprises. These factors have forced SMEs to take a serious look at the imperative of internet adoption. The accepted wisdom amongst many scholars is that Integrated Marketing Communication enables SMEs to gain competitive advantage by enhancing a firm’s transactions and also, increasing the client’s satisfaction. Internet adoption is the only way Millennium Passion Ltd can create new markets as well as develop old ones. Organizations, which expect to sustain their competitive position, must be at the vanguard of the integrated marketing communication wave. It is important for Millennium Company to consider securing the website through use of security digital certificates. An example of such a certificate is SSL (secure shell layer) certificates. That will give an assurance to the site visitors that their information is secure. The company uses the website to transact some sales online through credit cards. This is a risky move since hackers can easily divert all transactions to a fictitious website through social engineering. Any secure website is easily identifiable through the uniform resource locator (URL). A safe website will always have a HTTPS instead of a HTTP URL. 8.0 Appendices 8.1 Matrix Key features Millenium passion Ltd Passionfruit Australia Inc passion inc FreshFruits inc Design and Format 70% 90% 50% 40% Navigation/Functionality 82% 80% 60% 50% Interactivity 90% 80% 70% 50% Product/Service information 80% 90% 60% 50% Security/Privacy 50% 75% 40% 40% Firm Information 80% 80% 70% 60% Average Score 75% 83% 58% 48% 9.0 References Cook, S. (2011). Customer care excellence how to create an effective customer focus (6th ed.). London: Kogan Page. Gorman, G. E. (2007). Issues in online security. Bradford: Emerald Insight. Khosrow-Pour, M.(2006).Emerging Trends and Challenges in Information Technology Management: 2006 Information Resources Management Association International Conference, Washington, DC, USA, May 21-24, 2006, Volume 1. Pennsylvania: Idea Group Inc (IGI). Lopuck, L. (2006). Web design for dummies (2nd ed.). Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Mitchell, B. (2002). Website planner: a practical guide to planning your website presence. Frenchs Forest, NSW: Prentice Hall. Reed, P. (2006). Strategic Marketing Planning, 2nd Ed. Thompson, South Melbourne. Robbins, J. (1999). Web design in a nutshell a desktop quick reference. Beijing: O'Reilly. Sharma, S.(2011).E-Adoption and Socio-Economic Impacts: Emerging Infrastructural Effects. Pennsylvania: Idea Group Inc (IGI). Weinschenk, S. (2009). Neuro web design: what makes them click?. Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Willard, W. (2011). Web design demystified. New York: McGraw-Hill. Read More