Assessment 1: Individual work.
4Ps of marketing
The 4Ps
As stated by Mullin et al., (2007), every marketer is faced with a challenge of presenting the products or services to the customer with the best strategy to maximize on sales and a brand loyalty. As stated by Parkhouse (2001), in the traditional model, the marketer is more concerned with presenting the product in the right way, at the right or best place, at the best price and takes care of what product to present to what market. Therefore, the marketer is greatly concerned about the mode of combining product with positioning, pricing, promotion, and place to achieve his objective (otherwise referred to as 4Ps). By coming up with an effectual marketing strategy, the marketing manager is able to carefully bring together all the 45Ps into a selection of activities that budge a range of customers up the ladder (Parkhouse, 2001).
Product
The marketer, in regard to the product, must be aware that be it a service or a product that he is endeavouring to sell, he must present the commodity in a way that attracts the targeted customers. As stated by Parkhouse (2001), the marketer must also be aware of the different customer needs in relation to the product. This is because two customers may be consuming the same product while in the real sense, they are actually consuming different products based on the benefits they derive from the consumption (Shank 2001). The marketing manager must understand the life cycle of his product. This is to make sure that strategies like coming up with new products that are meant to be a response to the market needs are accomplished in a satisfactory manner. When thinking about the product, the marketer must present a product with distinct features to fit in a particular class of products. Knowing how the consumers use the product can help the marketing manager to capitalize more on the product features that can make the product stand out and attract customer loyalty (Parkhouse, 2001). The sales manager will also count it as an achievement if the sales staff members are thoroughly knowledgeable regarding the product they are presenting for sale.
Place
Another item in the mix is the place. It can also be described as the strategy that ensures distribution of the products to the marketplace. In regard to this strategy, the marketing manager or sales manger must identify the best channels of distribution that can be used to get the product to the prospect market or target customers. According to Mullin et al., (2007), the marketing manager must choose wisely the channel members, and he must not forget to look at areas like market coverage, logistics as well as the levels of service. Wrong decisions in this marketing mix item might cause delays among other inconvenience that may work well against the objective of the marketer. For instance, if the channel of distribution is too long while the market is not as vast, this might also cause additional costs in addition to delaying delivery to the final consumer.
Pricing
Pricing still remains a challenging task in the market. The marketing manager must ensure that while making the pricing decisions, he takes into account the profit margin of business and the pricing response other competitors are likely. Parkhouse (2001) asserts that price plays a critical role in the marketing mix of the marketer in that prices can be readily altered. The price is extremely visible and any changes effected on it can be communicated with ease hence impacting on the consumer perceptions. Where the market is characterized by an elastic demand, the marketing manager may use price as a very effective tool. Nevertheless, the marketing manager must be aware that price is ever close to the consumer’s mind and therefore any tinkering with it may be very harmful (Shank 2001).
Promotion
Promotion is one area that the modern marketer has to consider and is very essential in providing a chance to dwell on the salient features of the product. In this area, decisions made include those with respect to communicating and selling to prospective consumers. Given that these costs can be large in as compared to the product price, the marketing manger must carry out a break-even analysis whenever he is faced with the task of making promotion decisions. Mullin et al., (2007) states that important thing for the marketer in relation to the promotion decisions is that it is helpful for him to establish the value of a customer to facilitate determination of whether more customers are worth the cost of obtaining them. Promotion as stated by Parkhouse (2001) must be made part of marketing strategy by first establishing the wants and needs of the customers so that when carrying out promotional events like advertising, media types, special events and public relations the main aim is actually purposing to satisfy an already identified want or need of the consumer (Shank, 2001).
Steps Bloomberg has taken to develop new revenue streams
The company expects its revenue to grow by 3% in the current year. There are various strategies that have been employed by the company to help achieve the expected growth. According to Secunda Thomas, the overseer of Bloomberg’s financial products, the company has been presently looking for new revenue streams for trading and domestic management of risk programs for Wall Street firms.
The company to increase its revenues opts to increase its customer base. Bloomberg will hunt for new clients using web-based product targeting the law firms. The company executives are also eying sports arena, having interests on team owners and leagues to analyze sports statistics for them. The web-based product will also attract other potential customers and will allow for easy referral when a customer is satisfied.
Bloomberg also plans to invest more money in news to generate extra revenue. The news industry is currently struggling heavily to stay afloat, and has not been concerned with growing financially in the recent past. The further investment will ensure the company stays afloat and boot its financial status for generating more profits.
The implications that surveillance has on digital Taylorism
Taylorism involves systematic control and evaluation of workers and detailed timing and monitoring of their operations. As stated by Lynn (1994), Taylorism permits a relaxing of centralized, bureaucratic management supervision and monitoring. Through surveillance, workers become aware that individual performances are more closely observed, and this itself may have a disciplinary effect thus creating direct control superfluous (Brown et al., 2010).
As stated by Brown et al., (2010), the digital Taylorism, leads to status of being prudent in making claims for a revolution in management or the information down organization or worker empowerment. The de-skilling of jobs as in surveillance results to few highly paying jobs. This in turn leads to reduction of the number of opportunities available a company and thus joblessness. In some cases, surveillance may lead to biased and unstable working condition in cases where the employee fears the supervisor. This can also take place when the supervisor has formed opinions about a particular employee or about given task.
On the contrary, as stated by Brown et al., (2010), the close monitoring of the employs ensures maximum performance by the workforce and hence improved products and services. The company will only retain the highly performing employees and jobs relevant to the growth of the organization. Since only the high performing employees will be retained all the employees strive to have a position in the company leading to high performance and competency. Reference
Brown, P., Lauder, H. and Ashton, D. 2010. The Global Auction. Oxford: OUP
Shank, M., D. (2001). “ Marketing: A Strategic Perspective” 2nd Edition, Prentice Hall.
Tellis, G.J. (2004) Effective Advertising: Understanding When, How, and Why Advertising Works. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Mullin, B., J., Hardy, S., Sutton, W., A., Stern D., J. (2007). “Sport marketing” 3rd Edition:
Human Kinetics Publishing. – pp 17, 26, 45-7, 88-97, 104.
Parkhouse, B., L. (2001). “The management of sport: its foundation and application” 3rd Edition
McGraw-Hill,
Wilson, R.M.S. & Gilligan, C. (2005) Strategic marketing management: Planning, implementation and control. 3rd Edition. Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann.
