Marketing Questions 1. Describe the

Marketing Questions 1. Describe the marketing strategy currently used by this restaurant. Do you that this approach is effective? What suggestions would you make to improve the restaurant's marketing programme. Van-Oriental Restaurant's marketing strategy concentrates on the expertise of its executive chef, Mr. Joseph Ma, and his range of Chinese cooking styles including Shanghai, Szechwan and Cantonese in addition to underscoring his international experience. The intent of relying on Mr.

Ma's expertise is to attract discerning customers who can appreciate his talents at preparing foods in styles appropriate to each area mentioned. To broaden the potential customer base, the advertisement also mentions they offer Western dishes prepared in Hong King Style, and also have become known as a "famous BBQ Specialist" as well. The marketing strategy also stresses convenience, with dine-in, take-out and free delivery as well. In attempting to attract as many customers as possible, this marketing strategy has become diluted and less relevant to one specific segment.

Speaking to as many potential customer segments as possible instead of focusing on the needs and preferences of one this marketing strategy appears to be so broad as to lessen the value of the high-end of its offerings and make the ancillary offerings appear to be just added on to attract more customers. It is uncommon for a restaurant to call itself a famous BBQ specialist while also having a well-known executive chef on staff as well, or that they have three delivery options as well.

The restaurant is sending mixed messages with its marketing strategy today. The restaurant must decide who its primary customer segment is and re-align its marketing strategy appropriately. Mentioning fine Chinese cuisine and the exclusivity of a world-renowned chef Mr. Joseph Ma supports a suggested marketing strategy aimed at the higher end of dining customers, and is one that can potentially deliver the greatest profits.

The mentioning of preparing Western dishes in Hong Kong style and also having three delivery options detract from the marketing strategy of concentrating on the higher end of the dining customer segments the restaurant needs to attract to fully capitalize on its most unique service differentiator, and that is having a well-known chef on staff. Concentrating on Mr.

Ma and his cooking expertise is the strongest differentiator this restaurant has; to mention they are also a famous BBQ specialist and has three delivery options just detracts from their best possible differentiator. 2. Airbus has had more than its fair share of problems recently. The first of the A380 planes, the "superjumbo", was delivered to Singapore Airlines 2 years late, and now the aeroplane maker has suffered from a couple of technical problems with other models.

(See below.) How do these problems affect the firm's marketing strategy? What should the CMO do to put the firm "back on track"? With the introduction of the A380, Airbus has taken a unique market position with its airline customers including Singapore Airlines of positioning this superjumbo jet as the greatest potential revenue generating aircraft in the world.

Given its several seating areas and room for adding in high-end features for first class passengers, business class seating that is the most spacious of any airline, and more coach seats than any other comparable aircraft, Airbus' marketing defines differentiation of this aircraft as potential of every flight generating significant amounts of revenue for airlines.

The delay of two years has forced every airline customer to incur much higher levels of interest on the funds borrowed to finance the airport expansions, and has lead to a few asking Airbus to subsidize interest and finance charges due to the A380 being late. Airbus' problems also include quality control challenges on the A330 and A340, two plane models that have recently been involved in depressurization and landing accident.

The delay of the A380 and the technical problems becoming evident from the A330 and A340 incidents make the company's core value proposition of being the innovators of aviation increasingly suspect and open to criticism. The development, sale and delivery of the world's largest passenger airplane, the A380 was fraught with problems as Airbus learned which sourcing, manufacturing, and service processes would work as they built the plane.

Meanwhile Boeing, Airbus' nemesis, continued to stress technological expertise and the cost benefits their future planes would provide in terms of fuel savings and lower cost of ownership. As Airbus began experiencing technical problems on existing models and delays on the A380, Being gained several new sales of their smaller, more fuel efficient and lower cost to operate planes. For the CMO of Airbus, the challenge of regaining the trust of both its airline customers and the public needs to start with the A380 and continue to existing aircraft.

With the A380, the reliability and highly differentiated, unique experience of travelling and the convenience and comfort must be aggressively promoted to the travelling public. As Airbus specifically built the A380 to deliver significantly greater revenue per flight than any other aircraft, the CMO must focus on getting as many passengers as possible for its airline customers. By concentrating on the allure and prestige of flying in an A380, the CMO will also be strengthening the Airbus brand as well.

The A380 must be seen as the preferred airliner for those travellers who want to have the ultimate flying experience, and the first class cabins on Singapore Airlines, if promoted also by Airbus, will help to elevate the brand. With existing aircraft, the CMO needs to look at the many instances of these planes surviving extreme conditions including frost, snow storms, hit by lightening and flying through windstorms untouched. The durability of the existing planes need to be communicated using extreme conditions to underscore this positioning. 3.

The most popular mountain bike race in BC is the Test of Metal. (testofmetal.com) In the last 5 years the popularity of this race in particular, and marathon mountain bike races in general, have increased to such a degree that the 2007 race sold out in 48 minutes. After the very muddy 2007 race about 250 of the 800 racers came down with a Campylobacter infection and many were hospitalized for dehydration.

Given that the race is both hugely popular, and due to some operational problems in 2007 many of the racers got sick, how would you expect the organizers to market the race in 2008? In retrospect running Test of Metal on a course that had the potential of generating not only e-coli, a potentially deadly disease, but also campylobacter infections in participants who either get caked with mud or accidentally swallowed it shows how important site validation and qualification are for this event.

What the race organizers need to do is immediately create an advisory council of the top MDs in BC who have an interest in and regularly mountain bike. This specific segment of MDs would find the task of going over potential trail sits enjoyable while at the same time taking precautionary planning measures to make sure participants in 2008 aren't infected with the viruses those in 2007 were infected with.

The advisory council would also need to publish a complete analysis of why the viruses infected so many of the participants so severely, and also in the report, mention what the advisory council will do the ensure the level of infections do not occur again. Further, the advisory council will need to also share all potential sites they are considering, being completely transparent with the public in general and with mountain cycling enthusiasts specifically.

In addition to all these activities, the race organizers also need to provide free medical care and cover the costs of those participants infected during 2007 who did not have insurance.

After creating the advisory council, completing all the recommended action items, and also covering the uninsured participants who were infected in 2007, the race organizers needs to underscore that the trail selection process is being handled by the best MDs in BC and share their progress on a website and blog specifically dedicated to creating an open, honest interchange with the public in general and with enthusiasts specifically to regain and grow trust. 4. Facebook has received some criticism over its Beacon ad programme.

(This tracked the site visits that Facebook users made.) What marketing objective did this programme hope to achieve? How could Facebook re- launch the programme in the face of the privacy objections. Facebook's development and launch of their Beacon ad programme was aimed at capitalizing on the social networking that pervades its own site and those of affiliates and partners.

Implicit in the structure of the Beacon is the ability to track current, previously-registered, and even visitors to Facebook who also visit affiliate sites, reporting back specific pages viewed and length of time visiting a specific page. Additional features of the Beacon programme is the reporting of certain actions back to the Facebook friends' network in what the company is calling Social Ads.

The marketing objective of the program was to capitalize on the social networking inherent in the Facebook site and create an equivalent to the very successful Google AdWords program of the search engine provider. Where Google relies on search terms to trigger the display of a given AdWords advertisement, it can be seen how Facebook wanted to create the equivalent advertising business model through the use of social networking and interactions triggering which ad was shown.

The ethics however of tracking visits and activities on affiliate sites of current and previous Facebook members, in addition to monitoring those visitors who have never opted in to Facebook yet are being monitored based on affiliate site click- through traffic, is troubling. The lack of transparency about the entire programme and the use of Beacons to become the foundation of a social networking equivalent of Google AdWords is also troubling.

In short, all these factors detract from trust that Facebook visitors and users have of the site and their further lack of communication on the issue just adds to the deteriorating trust visitors and participants on the site have. The widely varying responses of the affiliate companies, from strict alignment to Facebook's position to admitting that the programme had potential privacy concerns associated with it shows how fragmented the perception of just how ethical this concept was to begin with was perceived in the affiliate companies.

The marketing objective of creating and advertising based model that capitalized on social networking and attempted to get a viral effect going on advertising content failed due to a lack of transparency of how the program worked and why it would benefit site users. Contrast this to a typical Google introduction of a free service, for example, Google Reader or Google Mail and the differences are striking. Facebook will have to re-launch the Beacon programme with much more transparency and disclosure associated with it.

Most troubling about the initial launch of this program was its secrecy, difficulty of opting out, and lack of clear benefits to the users who were being tracked, many times without their knowing it, for the gain of Facebook's potentially lucrative advertising business model. The entire programme needs to be re-thought from the perspective and orientation of the Facebook user and provide them with benefit in exchange for their affiliate site activity, ranging from simple site visits to purchasing products.

Facebook needs to also study the AdWords business model more closely and see how the Google business model looks to enrich the value of the search and online experience. In addressing that aspect of the Beacon business model, Facebook will need to re-think how to increase the value delivered to users first. Only after that specific aspect of the Beacon programme is defined should Facebook re- launch the programme. 5. Retailers are devoting more shelf space to private brands. These private- label products are direct competition for the national brands.

In recent years many retailers, such as Shoppers Drug Mart, have copied not only the products produced by national brands, but also the colours, shapes and even complete packaging. Why are retailers adopting this strategy? How should the national brand companies react? Private brands are giving retailers an opportunity to control the financial, supply chain, and marketing strategies of high volume consumer packaged goods (CPG) products without having to contend with the potential conflicts of working with consumer packaged goods manufacturers.

As gross margins on high volume CPG products become more and more thin, retailers are reverting to their own private brands in an attempt to retain as much gross margin and profits as possible. What's made this possible for retailers is that there are secondary and tertiary sources of products available from suppliers willing to work with retailers and re-brand them to their specific merchandising requirements and needs.

In addition to retaining gross margins, retailers often have conflicts with CPG manufacturers (or national brand companies) on product timing and decisions on product lifecycles of high-volume consumer products. By sourcing, merchandising and selling these private label products, retailers have the freedom to define product lifecycles that are best attuned to their known sales cycles. The combination of increased gross margins and freedom of product-related decisions are making private label products much more prevalent than before.

For national brands to compete effectively against private label products from retailers, the emphasis needs to first be on brands these manufacturers have spent years and millions of dollars to produce as the foundation for keeping customers loyal. Brand loyalty is the best defence of CPG manufacturers against private label brands, followed by the use of a series of highly targeted marketing and promotional campaigns to reward brand loyal customers and keep them from reverting to only price as the means of deciding which specific product to purchase.

Third, CPG manufacturers need to accelerate their new product development and introductions, as innovative new products will be very difficult for private label providers selling to retailers to replicate. These three strategies taken together are giving CPG manufacturers the ability to maintain customer loyalty that would have been lost to private label products which are sold mainly on price and availability as a trust substitute to a national brand.

Mini-Case (Answer should be no more than 2 to 4 pages long.) (50 marks) Nokia has failed to achieve the same success with its products in North America as it has in the rest of the world. Now the company is planning to concentrate more on the North American market. (See article below.) Evaluate Nokia's chances of success and identify the key obstacles that you feel the company will face and propose solutions.

Nokia's chances for success in North America will continue to be limited based on the number and magnitude of the company's key obstacles that are made all the more challenging by the company cultures' ethnocentric attitudes and engineering-driven product development. In previous attempts to enter the North American market, Nokia has held a decidedly ethnocentric attitude that their company culture was bringing a superior brand of product innovation and superior approach to using their products.

In addition, Nokia is an engineering-driven company that sees innovation as the highest priority over and above listening to customers and aligning technologies and solutions to their needs. The combination of a strong ethnocentric attitude regarding their company's superior approach to technology and how to use it, and an unwillingness to apparently modify their products for North American customers' preferences due to perceived superiority combine to create a major roadblock in Nokia's efforts to re- enter the market.

When these factors are taken into account the key obstacles Nokia needs to overcome in order to gain entry into the North American market are made all the more difficult to overcome.

These key obstacles Nokia has to overcome in order to successfully enter the North American market include addressing their weakness at successfully partnering with service providers in general and content providers specifically; the need for speeding up new product development and considering outsourcing production to concentrate entirely on expanding their brand as their North American rivals already are doing; concentrating more on collaboration with convergence partners versus considering this superfluous to their strategies; and evaluating how Nokia can create its own communications and entertainment platform for enabling customers' use of social networking applications and websites, in addition to broad Internet access.

First, the apparent weakness of Nokia to successfully partner for the long- term both with service providers in general and content providers specifically is exemplified by the efforts to create an.