The Fifth Component of Arimount Marketing Plan - Essay Example

? Ritz Carlton Case Study and the Fifth Component of Arimount Marketing Plan Ritz Carlton Case Study and the Fifth Component of Arimount Marketing Plan Ritz Carlton Case Study Ritz Carlton has been known as one of the largest hotel chains in the world operating in 70 locations and even earned the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Awards twice (Evans and Lindsay, 2008, p. 156). They have kept up with the competition and increased their standards to attain high quality services to their customers. They have provided the top quality services by being first to provide the private bathroom for each bedroom (Last name of textbook’s author, year, p. 379). With the convenience of having an own bathroom allows the guests to enjoy their bath. After all, it is less convenient if guests will need to leave their rooms and compete for the use of a common bathroom. In addition, crowding may occur if public bathrooms are the only ones available in the hotel that might decrease the number of customers of Ritz Carlton. Ritz Carlton also maintains its high number of guests by keeping their services top-of-the-line. They train their employees to project the best of their service by following three conditions: welcoming the guests with a salutation using their names, attending to the needs of the customers, and saying a polite goodbye to leaving clients (Last name of textbook’s author, year, p. 379). The three aforementioned conditions boost the overall hospitality of the employees to the guests of their hotel. The customers will feel their importance once the service providers address them personally. Studies supports the claims regarding the relationship development can be boosted by face and name recognition. By addressing the clients personally, the connection is built and transformed from pseudo relationships to paying and loyal customers (O’Fallon and Rutherford, 2011, p. 30). People do really love to be addressed personally that boosts their feeling of importance toward themselves. It is a good strategy that the employees of Ritz Carlton apply to their work everyday. Values also keep the performance on top since those serve as guidelines to the behavior of the employees on their work. They also boost their morale by having the values instead of acting without any direction that may disrupt the services toward their customers (O’Fallon and Rutherford, 2011, p. 116). In Ritz Carlton, their employees are constantly reminded regarding the service values by the unique method of the managers. Each manager carries a laminated list of the service values to consistently remind their employees to follow them (Last name of textbook’s author, year, p. 379). In addition, the constant reminder adds confidence to the employees to exert their best efforts to accommodate the guests nicely. Those actions contribute to the increase in loyal customers of the hotel and keep up with the competition. The top-of-the-line hospitality in Ritz Carlton is also influenced by the successful and unique strategy done by the management together with the employees. Everyday the managers remind their employees about their values and mission by spending 15 minutes of story-telling regarding the unique instances that happened in the hotel. Those captured moments were retold to boost the employee confidence since the stories serve as role models in building rapport and rendering the best services to their clients. The true stories also recognize the employee who showed exemplary actions to please their guests and even meet the unexpected needs of the clients (Last name of textbook’s author, year, p. 379). In response, employees are motivated more than before since they would like to be appreciated like the exemplary workers in the wow stories shared everyday at Ritz Carlton Hotel. They can boost their service quality by feeling good and imagining that it is also possible for them to be praised by the management when they get to display an exemplary example (Bidgoli, 2010, p. 402). In addition, it has been proven that stories contain values in life that set people into action by providing hope for their own improvement and development (Gallo, 2007, p. 112). Some of the examples for the wow stories of Ritz Carlton Hotel were documented to provide specific instances that can be documented to be used as sample stories to boost the overall morale of the employees. In turn, the motivation session using the stories produces significant improvements in the service quality. For instance, one family stayed at the Bali branch of the hotel and the son looked for a certain egg because of his food allergy. The head chef remembered that the particular egg is sold in Singapore and he immediately asked his mother-in-law to buy the eggs. In return, his mother-in-law went to Bali personally for the eggs to be delivered. The story showcased the Service Value six which shows how an employee immediately took action and solved the problem of the guests promptly (Last name of textbook’s author, year, p. 379). For many, the circumstance seemed to be impossible to be solved or if possible, it is not worthwhile for them to take action in providing the need of the guests. Maybe the head chef acted impractically as he sought the help of his mother-in-law, but he preferred to do it for the sake of providing the best service to clients. The Fifth Component of Arimount Marketing Plan Arimount is said to be an average company earner in the field of beauty and grooming with proven track record for 20 years. Recently, it decided to take on the market to a higher level by creating an innovative product to get a bigger market share. It focused on developing a new deodorant added with a newly-formulated chemical that can change the way people use the product. For that matter, the five levels of marketing would be analyzed for the deodorant before it is successfully released in the market. The five levels contain the core benefits, the starting form of the product, the targeted form of the product, the improved form of the product beyond expectation, and the potential product (Verma, 2008, p. 57). The core benefits showcase the main advantage that the customers may get when they buy the product while the starting form of the product is called the basic product. The expected product is the targeted form of the product that the customers may expect regarding the product. On the other hand, augmented products go beyond the expectation of the customers. Lastly, the potential product is the form wherein the manufacturers will do all the things that they can do to go beyond the expectation at all directions (Verma, 2008, p. 57). In the case of Arimount, the core benefit would be the long-lasting effect of the deodorant which reaches up to five days and cannot be removed by water and soap easily. The basic form of the product would be the deodorant itself doing its function to prevent undesired body odor. The expected product would be more than the usual effects of the competing deodorants. On the other hand, augmented product would be the addition of the chemical that allows the deodorizing effect to lasts longer than normal. Lastly, the potential product would be the Arimount innovative deodorant that allows the users to have five days without body odor with just one application of the said product. The next one to analyze is the pricing objective of Arimount regarding the release of the new deodorant in the market. Pricing objective is said to be the goals set in declaring a certain price for a certain product. The company may usually consider the objective in setting the price to be for-profit, but it may not be the primary objective. The following may serve as the objective for a company in identifying the price of their new product: survival, status-quo pricing, target return on investment, profit maximization, and market-share goals (Pride et al., 2012, p. 382). Most probably the pricing objective of Arimount would fall under the market-share goal as it decides to get higher market share and increase its usual average return on investment. Lastly, packaging and labeling are important to ensure that the product is well-identified in the market and prevent any unwanted results from wrong usage. The practice also allows the buyers to know the proper use of the product and enjoy its benefits (Pride and Ferrell, 2011, p. 416). In the case of Arimount, it may label its innovative deodorant as Deovative: The Anti-body odor that lasts for five days. The brand may take on the words deodorant and innovative that showcases the unique capability of the product to satisfy the need of the market. References Bidgoli, H. (2010). The handbook of technology management. USA: John Wiley and Sons. Evans, J. and Lindsay, W. (2008). Managing for quality and performance excellence. USA: Thomson Higher Education. Gallo, C. (2007). Fire them up! 7 simple secrets to inspire colleagues, customers, and clients. USA: John Wiley and Sons. O’Fallon, M. and Rutherford, D. (2011). Hotel management and operations. USA: John Wiley and Sons. Pride, W. and Ferrell, O. (2012). Marketing. USA: Cengage Learning. Pride, W., Hughes, R. and Kapoor, J. (2012). Business. USA: Cengage Learning. Verma, H. (2008). Services marketing: Texts and cases. India: Dorling Kindersley. Read More