Marketing Ganga

Blog

  • Competitive Advantage

    According to Michael Porter , a sustainable competitive advantage is the key to creating long – term value for shareholders at the business unit level . His book Competitive Advantage is published in 1985 . He views the business system as a value chain . To him , value is the amount the customers are willing to pay for the output of the firm . Business is profitable so long as the total value exceeds the total costs incurred in all the firm’s value activities .
    The ultimate aim of business is to create user value that exceeds the cost of doing so . A firm’s competitive advantage depends not only on its value chain but also on those of its supplier and user systems .
    Value activities of a business are of two types – primary and support . Primary activities transform inputs into outputs and in delivery and support after sale . Support activities support the primary activities and each other – these include procuring inputs , managing  HR , developing technology and providing general administrative functions .  Whereas primary activities are line activities , the support activities are staff functions .
    Five Primary Activities
         Input logistics  receives , stores and distributes inputs . These include warehousing , inventory control , materials handling , inspection and returns .
    Operations  transform inputs into outputs . These include machining , assembling , curing , packaging .
    Output logistics collect and distribute the output to the users . These include transportation , order processing , finished goods warehousing and vehicle scheduling .
    Marketing and Sales  facilitate the exchange of the products . These include advertising promotion , pricing personal selling , channel selection channel relations .
    Service  provides customer support after the sale to enhance or maintain the product value . These include installation , spares provision , repair , training , adjustments .
    Competitive advantage can be achieved at any or some combination or all of the above activities . However , the relative importance of these activities vary from industry to industry . A seller of pins and pencils may not be concerned with after–sale – service , but a computer dealer has to be particular about it .
    Different firms in the same industry may choose different competitive strategies , thus changing the relative significance of the different value activities e.g. low –cost airlines choose a ‘ no– frill ‘ strategy and provide fewer services at discounted fares whereas full–service airlines provide a whole range of services including in –flight meals.
    Support activities too can facilitate the gain of competitive advantage . The raw materials used can affect the output in terms of cost and quality . Technology can offer a major competitive advantage . Software firms gain due to their human resources . Administration such as participatory style , organisation structure do contribute a lot .
    Linkages amongst the activities must not be overlooked . They themselves can be a matter of competitive advantage . Channel linkages provide opportunities for gaining competitive advantages .
    A successful competitive advantage will be subject to a cycle – there will be an initial period of product growth followed by a shake–out period , as more and more competitors imitate it or even improve upon it . Ultimately , a competitive advantage becomes a competitive necessity  as most organisations adopt it .
    Competitive advantage is sustained by adopting legal methods such as patents , exclusive licensing and preferred access to scarce resources . Alternatively , complex advantages or more subtle advantages are built . Competitive find it difficult to observe / understand them . This is possible by concentrating on indirect support activities such as technology development , HR development or improved general administration .
    Marketing Research :  Is It Always Necessary ?
    Steve Jobs’ approach was to figure out what the customers are going to want before they do – you have to anticipate their wants.Henry Ford once said if his customers were asked what they want, they would have opted for a faster horse.You have to show people the new products.Till then they do not know what they want.Steve, therefore, did not rely on market research.As an organisation, we must read things that are still not on page.According to him, there should be a deep current of humanity in the innovations.Steve built Apple on the strength of great products, and unlike others did not allow the sales people to dominate the scene.

  • Products to serve the society

    Products to Serve the Society

    Fire in the BloodA documentary ‘Fire in the Blood‘ has been made by Dylan Mohan Gray which portrays Africa’s fight for HIV medicines, the controversial role of governments and pharma groups. What has happened in Africa has been described as the  ‘crime of the century‘. It is one of the greatest crimes in human history! Even then not even one person has been called to account. Though pharma companies act in their own interests, it is the role of the governments that is deplorable. The monopolization exists, and the tax payers are ripped off. The system benefits the pharma companies at a horrendous cost to society. Pharma companies do influence the government policies.

    India has become the pharmacy of the world, since the changing of the Patent Act in 1970 . It supplies high quality, lower cost products to every corner of the planet. It not only makes available affordable drugs to its  1.3 billion people, but to so many billions elsewhere in the world. India has not granted blanket monopolies to big pharma’s incredibly expensive drugs.

    The West works ruthlessly against the flow of inexpensive medicines from India and other countries. The main tool in their arsenal is coercive trade agreements.

  • Media Interdisciplinary Courses

     

    Interdisciplinary courses have a huge advantage over pure disciplinary courses. These courses make you adaptable. Media courses offered by the universities are now interdisciplinary. They expose students to pure arts, liberal arts, fine arts, commerce and management simultaneously. The students also learn film – making, research, history, advertising and journalism. The courses make students more employable. These courses focus on live projects and seminars beyond syllabus. As against this, pure disciplinary courses focus on theory.

  • Media Regulation

     

    Journalism should be able to read the writing on the wall. Media wields enormous power. Media, therefore, must be accountable. Self–regulation is the best way, so that there is no justification for  outside intervention to regulate. The outside intervention would come from the government in power. The self-regulation must be seen. Print media has to decide whether it has to have an ombudsman or a readers’ editor or some other robust mechanism for the benefit of readers. A second tier of self–regulation must be created. It could be an industry-promoted body with both editors and proprietor – managers mandated to adjudicate and with powers to impose fines etc. As Vinod Mehta puts it, ‘ You can judge the health of a democracy by the tension between journalists and politicians. When the relationship gets too cozy, it is time to worry.‘ Politicians may think media as adversary. It does not matter. What matters is what the common man thinks about the media.

  • Crowd Sourcing

     

    It is a method by which the consumers participate in the decision making process. They use it to seek new ideas through contests and campaigns. There is an i10 Story Contest for writing a commercial for this car brand. The winner shares the screen space with the brand ambassador Shah Rukh Khan. There was a public design contest sponsored by the Ministry of Finance to create a symbol for rupee. Hero asked people to interpret Hum Mein Hai Hero anthem and created several TV commercials from this content. Perfetti arranged package design contest for Happydent chewing gum. Pepsi arranged ‘suggest a flavour‘ contest for its wafer brand. The term is coined by Jeff Howe in a 2006 article in Wired magazine.

  • Media Content Regulation

    It is an euphemism  for control of news. There are talks of setting up a regulator. There are moves to ask the broadcasters to pay TDS on the 15 percent trade discount they give to ad agencies. There are moves to limit ads on TV channels to 10 minutes per clock hour. Earlier this 10 minute cap could be adjusted across the day.

    In the hyper–competitive satellite channels market, this will spell death for news channels that survive on large volumes of cheap advertising. They may have to resort to promoting corporate interests otherwise, and lose their independence.

  • Cross-media Controls

    There are curbs on newspapers owning TV and radio channels. The issues here must be properly understood. Such ownership caps were introduced in a few countries when there was no media plurality.
    These are the days of satellite TV which cuts across the territories. In India, we have 80,000+ registered publications and 800+ TV channels. It is the most plural media market. Private media in India is not allowed into terrestrial TV. Technologically too cross – media curbs are not tenable. There is convergence of technology. There is access of several print and electronic media on the computer, tablet and mobile. There is no one geographical market or no domination of one media. The  competing media today are the internet and social media. These may become source of news of doubtful veracity. Cross–media curbs, wherever they exist, are being dismantled to create a level playing field .

  • Short Term Gain – Long Term Gain

    HP-to-take-over-Autonomy-007HP bought  Autonomy, a software company to achieve short term growth at the expense of long term innovation that can produce profits and jobs. The other such companies which sacrificed long term term growth for short term gain are Kodak and Merck.
    HP got a software company but lost its ability to innovate from within by discarding in part its engineering – driven culture for a sales orientation .

  • Product Patent : Some Problems

    Human-DNA-Sequencing-picturesThe patent system was conceived to encourage innovation but has become vulnerable to excesses that have the opposite effect –

    • Locks up ideas
    • Discourages competition
    • Hurts the advancement of diagnostics and therapeutics

    The US Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that human gene may not be patented , underlining  that laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas are not patentable because they are not themselves innovation but the basic tool of scientific and technological work .

    The processes of isolating the DNA are too well understood by geneticists and so cannot be patented. However , if companies can establish that their methods of isolating genes are innovative or that the DNA under consideration has been synthesized in a lab need not lose heart – they can obtain patents on new applications of knowledge gained from genetic research.

    While genes are certainly a product of nature , the isolation of fragments and knowledge of their properties are the outcome of huge financial and material resources invested with its attendant risks. Researchers who discover human gene sequences responsible for a particular disease may not have adequate incentive to disclose the new discovery . Even scientific exploration for new and rare organisms will get a setback .

  • Marketing – An Introduction


    Marketing     is an important department of modern day business organizations. It is concerned with the wide array of products you use. It brings these products from the marketers to you. Since these products satisfy your needs and wants, marketing’s basic function is to bring  to you want satisfying products. How will you know about these products? Marketers use advertising and other methods. Advertising persuades you to buy the advertised products. Where do you buy these products from – either from an online store or and off-line brick-and-mortar shop-or a hypermarket or a supermarket. These are the distribution channels that the marketers use. All these products are competitively priced. Marketers thus, have to manage the so-called four P’s – Products, their Prices, their Promotion and the Places where they are available.

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    Marketers sell you the products in the country you live in. They also export products to other countries. Marketers have to manage a large sales force who approach the buyers and distributors. Thus foreign trade and sales management are integral to marketing. Marketers have to study the behavior of consumers to know what they buy and why do they buy. It is more or less  the study of consumer psychology.

    Thus the scope of marketing is very wide. It covers products, pricing of the products, promotion and advertising of these products, and the distribution of these products. It also covers international marketing and consumer behavior. Marketing research is conducted to know about the markets and consumers.
    Had it not been for marketing, we would have not been able to use all these new products, say music systems, lap tops, tablets, antibiotics, automobiles and so many other products. Some of these products were not known a few decades back. Marketing facilitates the introduction of new products. It in a sense delivers a standard of living to you.

    To begin with , companies focused on production and manufacturing. As markets expanded they felt the need of selling. In selling , the product is made  and sold to you.Later came marketing. It is a paradigm shift. Marketing starts with the needs and wants of the consumers. Products are the made to satisfy these needs and wants. Thus philosophically, it is different from selling. Marketing puts the consumer in focus.

    Marketing Management

    Marketing management     is being taught at business schools. All big companies have marketing and sales departments. They either do marketing research in-house or engage outside agencies.
    Marketing management consists of marketing planning and its implementation. Any plan has to set objectives and devise strategies to achieve these objectives. A marketing plan contributes to the overall corporate plan.

    A company first ignores marketing. It the stumbles and falters and the feels the need for marketing. A company takes a long time to adopt marketing. However, companies tend to forget marketing philosophy very fast. There should be a top management commitment to marketing. Marketing department’s head occupies a place of pride in the company. Marketing function is on par with other managerial functions such as finance, production and HR. Marketing ideally should be at the centre of the organisation. It should guide the other other core functions of the business available.