MBA Course for Young Managers - Essay Example

Introduction The report describes an event that is being planned by a business school which is launching an executive MBA for young managers. The section A outlines the profile of invited guests and the product that is to be promoted. Section B discusses the product and services to be purchased for the event, it also discusses in greater depth the rationale behind four purchases in the sense how they influence the decision making of the target customers. Section C of the report, deals with how the application of specific concepts in taking all the decisions about organizing the promotional event. Section A The function is being organised for young managers who are in lower or lower middle level in any mid / large size organization in the city. The guest list also includes middle or senior level HR and marketing managers who are working for similar profile of organizations. The rationale behind choosing two sets of guests is that, one set of guests will be the user of the product that we plan to offer right now i.e. an executive MBA course, while the other will act as opinion leaders and referees for this product, but as customers for our corporate learning products that we plan to offer in future. The profile of first set of guests is as Demographic – Males and females, married and single, belonging to age group of 20- 35 years, working in various functions like sales & marketing, finance and accounting, HR, operations, IT etc, with work experience ranging from 3-12 years. Psychographic – People who are ambitious, excited about growth, Love learning new things and sharing them with others, , Interested in further education, who believe in pushing hard to succeed, Love reading career blogs. Behaviour - Attend career seminars; counsel others (co-workers) for career planning. Working hard for getting promoted Geographic – Residing in the same city The other set of guest would be people in the age group of 32 -45 years of age, Males and Females, Working at middle / senior position in HR and marketing domain in the companies. Psychographic – believe in growth of human potential, have positive attitude towards education and development. Behaviour - Write about career planning on their blogs etc, Geographic – Based out of the same city but travelling at other places. Product The product is executive MBA an 11 months course in various streams. Another product, to be launched in future, will be corporate learning solutions. The guests that we are inviting are target group of our brand communication. We need to target the potential customers or people who can promote our products. Section B Ten purchases 1) Band 2) Caterer 3) Media for promotion 4) Simulation games 5) Hotel Banquet 6) Motivational Speaker 7) Rent a car service 8) Stationary (Memorabilia – pens, books etc) 9) Anchor 10) Agency to manage the event Consumer Decision Making Model - The consumer decision making model suggests that a customer’s decision to purchase a product is a result of a process. The process starts with customer’s exposure to the product or its idea through either marketer’s cues like various P’s of marketing or socio-cultural environment. The idea is, before someone thinks he needs a car, the person either must have seen a car or heard, read about it. This learning may take place by seeing some thing in a shop or a friend’s place, or watching or hearing its advertisement, being told by some one to try such and such product. Understanding this model helps a marketer in deciding how best to get exposed the customer to our product or product idea. Since this event is meant for product promotion. We also have to work along this model, to influence consumer decision making. Every thing in the event is aimed at that purpose only i.e. influencing consumer decision making positively. Some of them will be working directly in the sense their contribution can be seen or evaluated with the help of this model, while others may help at a subliminal level. For example Taxi – Hiring an upmarket car will give higher image to our organization, The Band performance – We will hire the best Band available in the city. The Band show will be kept at the end to entertain the guest so that they leave the venue in happy mood. This will be working on creating a positive emotion which will help in keeping the memory of the event live for long term and positive mood generated by Band show will subconsciously affect consumer decision making. Mood affects consumer behaviour in many ways. For example, when a person receives a small gift that puts one in a good mood affects the evaluation of the products one owns (Isen, Shalker, Clark, & Karp, 1978). Thus inducing a good mood will lead more positive product evaluation for our course. Mood also helps in ensuring that customers remember the message for longer time, as Lee et al (1999) discussed in their paper. Media We will hire online media and business newspaper and magazines to reach out to target customers. However invitations for the final guest will through personal contact for inviting them. If we try to relate this decision with consumer decision making model, we will realize that target customer’s those who have already recognized the need may be in the information seeking mode and influencing them in this phase is both important and easier as they would already be looking for information thus message will get better reception. Apart from this we also need to consider which media we will choose. We need to select the media one which is consumed by our target group, it has to be in congruence with the message. And finally our message should be received at that time when the customer will be in a frame of mind where he is considering career planning and contemplating over his career moves. Thus the obvious media of choice become the websites offering career guidance, newspaper articles discussing career planning. Our message should be very close to these entire media situations so that there will higher chances of message being attended to and positively evaluated. The media gives the credibility to the message and brand equity to the brand. Thus this decision is important from that angle. Memorabilia – As the consumer decision making model suggests that whenever a person recognizes the need the person first searches for information internally i.e. drawing from his memory, Thus brands always want that they are in the awareness set of the consumer as if they are not there they will have no chance making it to consideration set let alone evoked or purchase set Schiffman and Kanuk (2001). Thus we will purchase very premium quality pens to distribute among the guests which will act as memorabilia. The pen is part of metamarket of education thus high congruency between the memorabilia and the product being promoted will have higher impact. Motivational Lecture – The motivational lecture will strike at that part of the consumer decision making model (process) which determines not only need recognition but also product/brand evaluation. The psychological field of the consumer i.e. Motivation, perception, learning, attitude and personality, determine whether a particular need will be recognized or not and even if it is how strongly is determined by this psychological fields. For example those who could not pursue studies due to some constraints might have convinced themselves, while dealing with dissonance, that they don’t need further education, following self perception theory (Robbins & Judge 2007). A motivational speaker can deal with such problems and make the need recognition intensified and also affect their product i.e. course evaluation by giving certain messages. Calling a renowned speaker is the key. Those of the guests who don’t face such a problem will still be benefited by learning how to motivate others and influence their decisions. The 3 programmes chosen 1) A speech by a motivational speaker 2) Band performance 3) A simulated business game with various prizes like I Pad, I phone etc and various memorabilia to the participants The rationale behind choosing the motivational speaker As the speaker will be quite renowned this will help in getting attendance to our program. And since our product is education and career development plan thus we need an event which induces people in to the similar psychological and mental context. This will increase the chances of need recognition or if the need is already recognized this will heighten the need recognition. And for a commitment to professional / personal development motivational speakers are great motivators. Business Game This will put people into the same frame of mind which is required to generate thoughts about career development, growth etc and that is competition. When people are sensitized towards the competition to a certain level, it motivates them to commit for development and growth. Thus quiz wills serve the purpose of sensitizing people towards the need of education, professional development. Band performance Not every body will be motivated to attend the event by a motivational speech. Thus to add fun and enjoyment which will act both as an attraction to attend and mood elevator in the event we need to call a Band to perform. The group must be a famous band to attract audience and the songs should be such which are mostly played in restaurants, café, cabs etc. According to the learning as information processing theory by Schiffman and Kanuk (2001), , the node of songs will have been connected with the node of our product / brand and thus, every time they will again here the same songs the connection between the nodes will be strengthened and we will have those songs as brand associations. Model of consumer decision making is as Decisions regarding the function The decisions that I made are: Roping in certain media, Organizing Motivational Speech, Deciding the hotel, Band performance, Business Game competition etc. The purpose of the overall event is to generate the demand for the product and also build the brand equity. However these two are the major aims behind this event more specific objectives are to generate hot leads, building awareness, media coverage for publicity, understanding customer’s psychology, contacting the innovators and opinion leaders, building positive evaluation among the opinion leaders, finding out the major mental blocks in the target customers’ minds, assessing the potential for added products. The guests that I have chosen to invite act as the opinion leaders in the market. How these decisions fit in to consumer decision making model Event Sponsorship - Gwinner and Eaton (1999) empirically proved that when a brand sponsors an event the image transfer takes place from the event to the brand being the sponsor of the event. They however warned that undesired image may also be acquired by the brand if event carries those as a part of its overall positioning. Thus before sponsoring an event it’s advisable to measure the perception of the audience towards the event. We have deliberately chosen the programmes of the event to lend that kind of personality to our programme. Our event will be characterised by a potential of great life ( life transforming motivational speech), Business plan competition (which would lend it an image of competitiveness) and Band performance (full of energy and excitement). So over all the image of the event will be characterized as life transforming, competitive and full of variety and colours. Such would be an image built up for our MBA program as well. We want to position our program as life transforming, full of life, and very competitive. How ever to appeal to professionals it has to be lent a professional image also and thus venue that we have chosen is a hotel known for corporate meetings, rent a car service that we have arranged will add to our professional and empathetic image. The media that we have chosen will help in building authentic image as the media that we choose to communicate determines how credible the message and the sender sound. The memorabilia that we will give to our guests will also serve the same function of lending or reinforcing professional image. While at an individual level the different programmes will serve other purposes also. Business Game Business Game will induce a thought process characterised by competition and winning over one’s rivals. If we blend embed our brand communication well within the game, we will be able to connect node of competition and our brand in the consumer’s mind. I believe that an employee many times a week confronts a situation in which they feel competition and thus is disturbed by it. This phase is crucial as here the person will recognize the need, not specifically the need for an MBA from our institute but for something that will help them overcome that stress. This phase of need recognition will help them in recalling our brand as we would have connected these two nodes i.e. the competitive stress and an MBA from our institute. Thus we will gain very contextual place in customer’s mind. The Motivational Life transforming speech The Motivational Life transforming speech will have two major impacts. One is of stimulating the dormant need in the people of growing and achieving their dreams and second the learning that these people will gain from the speech will be utilized by them while mentoring their subordinates or colleagues. Since we would have caused a higher self esteem in them, they will oblige us by positively evaluating us and being opinion leaders. As Laudon (2001) described that Opinion leaders tend to have higher self esteem. Like we discussed elsewhere in this report, the motivational speakers have an ability to break people’s inhibitions and make them come out of their shells, thus people will open up and discuss their problems and the problems faced by their colleagues, which we can transcribe and later on, can be used for exploratory research. We will gain lot of insight in to our target group’s psychology through such open discussions. The motivational speaker will also be required to share some of his lecture through notes that customers can carry, may be a personal diary in which his note swill be printed or a book by him. Book will help in not letting the excitement die just after a day or two. When people carry those diaries with them to their work place, it will help in building further buzz around us. This can actually help in generating enquiries by others who did not attend our program but got intrigued by the discussion with the attendees. The Band Performance The Band Performance will help in elevating the mood of the audience, which will help in creating a positive feeling in them. The positive feeling will help in ensuring that the entire event remains in their mind for a longer time. Bower (1981); Bower et al (1981) and Bower et al (1978), suggested that mood can have strong and consistent effects on memory. While there are also studies which say that mood can affect judgement also (Isen et al, 1978). Rationale behind choosing Senior Managers Though they will not be our customers i.e. candidates in our Executive MBA program but they would have considerable influence on how well we perform in the market. These people will act as judges in the business game. But they will also be exposed to our brand communication in a highly captivating environment. These people by virtue of their positions in the companies and their power to influence their subordinates will be enormous and their endorsement with us would increase our reliability. They may be our customer by getting us corporate assignments for training and others that we have plans to start. In all these ways the entire function will achieve its objectives. Conclusion The entire event was conceptualized considering the decision making process of consumer. Though the event had many objectives but the major focus was on generating hot leads and building brand equity. The event used the concept of opinion leader to influence the market at large. The programmes conducted in the event were all to lend an image to the product i.e. the course in the way a sponsorship helps a brand gaining brand image associated with the event. Overall the major focus of the event was on consumer decision making process and event tried to work at several level of the process. References Bower, H. (1981). Mood and Memory. American Psychologist, 36, 129-148. Bower, H., Gilligan, G., & Monteiro, P. (1981). Selectivity of Learning Caused by Affective States. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 110, 451-473. Bower, H., Monteiro, P., & Gilligan, S.G. (1978). Emotional Mood as a Context for Learning and Recall, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 17, 573-585 Gwinner, K. & Eaton, J.(1999). Building Brand Image through Event Sponsorship: The Role of Image Transfer. Journal of Advertising, 28(4) 47-57, Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4189124 Isen, M., Shalker, T. E., Clark, M., & Karp, L. (1978). Affect, accessibility of material in memory, and behavior: A cognitive loop? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 1-12. Lee, A., Sternthal & Brian. (1999). The Effects of Positive Mood on Memory. Journal of Consumer Research, 26(2), 115-127 Loudon (2001). Consumer Behavior: Concepts And Applications. Tata McGraw-Hill, 267-268. Schiffman, L. & Kanuk, L. (2001). Consumer Behavior. Prentice Hall, 207-216. Robbins,S. & Judge, T. (2007). Organizational Behavior. Prentice hall, 78-79. Schiffman, L. & Kanuk, L. (2001). Consumer Behavior. Prentice Hall, 564-574. Exhibit 1 Source : Schiffman, L. & Kanuk, L. (2001). Consumer Behavior. Prentice Hall Read More