Marketing
Essays

¶ … Project Management program at George Washington University is the next step in my career development. My career path has been structured to this point with project management in mind.

¶ … valuable learning experience. The structured methodology allowed us to gain a strong sense of the position the business was in. From this, our strategy came much more easily and was a better strategy overall.

Microsoft is the top global producer of software applications in the order, specializing on a diversified range of segments of such products, including operation systems (Microsoft Windows), spreadsheets and text…

The marketing of e-books could be retooled to successfully meet the demands of consumers as well as allay their fears about the technology itself. As evidenced by the survey, one of the biggest grievances that consumers…

Building a brand is an extensive task that requires multiple important elements to be successful. It does not only involve branding the product/service a company provides, but also focuses on enhancing the image of the brand, developing brand by adding value to it and by improving it according to the dynamics of the markets. Brand development has been made crucial for the companies to flourish in the dynamic markets that exist today, considering the effects of globalization on the world market. With continuous advancements in the business industry, companies, in order to survive or thrive have to develop their brands to differentiate their products from others. This vital importance of developing brands gave birth to Brand management.

The foundations of the Wal-Mart value chain and its global success is predicated on how well this company aligns every internal system and strategy to their unique value proposition of Low Price Everyday (LPED) leadership. This unique value proposition galvanizes the mission and vision statement of Wal-Mart and is one of the foundations of their success and continued growth. Their competitors give lip-service to price competition yet only Wal-Mart has engrained the LPED value proposition deep into their logistics, supply chain management (SCM), supply chain planning and optimization, advanced pricing, real-time logistics and most of all, in-store retail operations. Wal-Mart also is a very analytics, and metrics-driven company, measuring every aspect of their operations with a focus on continual process performance improvement. Wal-Mart sees the LPED value proposition as critical to their functioning as a continually improving business, continually striving for greater efficiency and performance gains over time. Wal-Mart evaluates each product line, retail location, distribution center and supplier with a strict series of analytics and metrics to ensure performance meets standards while also looking for opportunities for improving the area itself (Wal-Mart Investor Relations, 2012). Wal-Mart believes passionately that all of these factors must be captured in analytics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to support their mission statement which is "to help people save money so they can live better" (Mcginn, 2009) (Wal-Mart Investor Relations, 2012).

Faced with increasing price competition on their mid- and low-end brands globally combined with consolidation occurring at a quickening pace across the larger brands and breweries, the Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division needs to move quickly to stabilize its market position. Doing nothing will lead to the company falling quickly behind smaller, more agile competitors who have unique supply chains and production processes that are delivering high-quality premium and craft beers. These smaller brewers with their focus on quality and highly differentiated beers and flavors, along with wide-scale efficiency gains in larger competitors, is squeezing the gross margins and profitability of Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division. As the analysis in this report indicates, the higher the per capita income of a given household, the more beer is purchased. The higher the income the higher the expectation of quality and unique taste as well. Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division will not be able to attract the higher-end, more profitable customers if they continue producing the same products they are today. What is needed is not only a change to their distribution channels but to their product strategy as well. The following recommendations are based on these factors and insights gained from previous sections of this report. Recommendation #1: Develop A More Vertically Integrated Supply Chain As Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division's global competitors align themselves to dominate the fastest growing economies globally, chasing China, India and many regions of Asia by streamlining their supply chains and engaging in joint ventures, the company needs to consider how to become strong in North America. The most strategically vulnerable aspect of the company's value chain today is its supply chain, accentuated by the high level of consolidation occurring in North America today. The future of the North American been market will be deiced who is controlling the most essential and critically important ingredients for brewing beer. Right now, Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division is at a major competitive disadvantage by relying on multi-tier sourcing and procurement agreements. This leaves them very vulnerable to domestic and global competitors alike who could easily enter the American market and quickly buy all sources of barley, hops, grains and essential ingredients for brewing beer. If this happened Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division would either have to drop their standards of quality or consider a joint venture with a smaller competitor that would cost them market leadership. Solving this strategic weaknesses will also open entirely new product line options that will allow Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division to successfully compete at the high-end of the American beer market. Recommendation #2: Turn Quality Management Into A Strategic Weapon Based on the analysis competed earlier in this paper, it's clear that given the price competition and consolidation of major vendors, beer quality is suffering and is trending to the worse instead of better. Instead of following the other competitors down the price curve and steadily losing gross margin globally, Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division needs to take the opposite and invest heavily in quality management systems and processes. With many of the major beer producers globally in free-fall from a profitability standpoint, their quality will suffer and eventually erode over time. Quality is an attribute of beer no one wants to be mediocre about, as a lack of it will lead to a brand being blacklisted and all the marketing in the world won't save its reputation. For many brand-loyal customers of the Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division, the consistent quality of the beers produced are what keep them buying every week. If quality was to drop, these customers would move on, some faster than others. Quality is so central to the future success of the Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division that it needs a strong strategic focus and continual investment. With the rapid consolidation fo the global beer market globally in general and in America specifically, investing in quality has the potential to be a very strong marketing differentiator over the long-term. As Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division's competitors continue to concentrate on surviving through mergers and acquisitions that continually fuel consolidation, the company needs to double down on quality management and get ready to take share from them when their quality drops. It's clear from the analysis section that Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division's competitors will very likely sacrifice quality as they look to gain greater distribution advantage. The exception to this trend are the more well-entrenched European competitors including Carlsberg who is investing heavily in R&D centers and quality initiatives as they see this as critical to their future growth. Chance are with this strategy they will survive the industry shake-out by putting this priority about many other potentially attractive strategic options. With a heavy investment in this area, Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division will also be more able to scale up into the higher-end segments of the market where premium beers are making the most profits today. Quality will also further strengthen their brand, which is excellently received in North America. Investing heavily in quality will further distance them from their competitors as they sacrifice this critical attribute to gain greater profits. For Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division this is a major competitive strength they can continue to distance themselves from competitors with. Recommendation 3: Dominate Distribution and Marketing in North America While Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division's competitors are distracted with strategies for entering the many Asian and South American nations that show potential for growth, the company needs to concentrate on how to dominate distribution in the U.S. and throughout North America. The best possible strategy in this regard is to enter into a series of joint ventures with key distributors throughout Canada, the U.S. and throughout Mexico. Mondelo in Mexico specifically needs to be considered for a joint venture for distribution rights throughout the upper provinces of that nation. As the analysis shows in this report, Mondelo is dominant in Northern Mexico and throughout the Southwestern U.S. including California and Arizona. Mondelo is the distribution company for best-selling Corona beer, which is one of the most potent competitors to the mainstream Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division beers. By creating an alliance with Mondelo and buying up key suppliers in Northern Mexico, Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division will have achieved the goals of the first recommendation and also solidified its distribution channels as well. In addition to joint ventures with key distribution partners throughout Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division needs to strengthen its marketing strategies by being more aggressive and intelligence about using social media as well. The higher per capita income beer customers are on social networks. Anheuser-Busch Inbev Division needs to be there too.

¶ … Small Business Needs to Do to Compete Against Big Box Stores Such as Wal-Mart

The study of marketing, sales and company ethics has a very diverse foundation of empirical and analytical research ranging from gender- and trait-based analysis to the defining of models that seek to capture the dynamics that create ethical paradoxes and drive decision-making in organizations. In the research completed and presented in the article A Framework For Personal Selling and Sales Management Ethical Decision Making (Ferrell, Johnston, Ferrell, 2007) the authors carefully analyze trait-based and situational ethics theories and previous research. The first sections of this well-written and researched article illustrate that trait theories alone cannot explain the spectrum of ethics within sales and marketing departments and their decision-making processes, or provide insights into corporate cultural mindsets with regard to ethics. What the authors do however in this initial section of the article is frame up the foundation of their model, A Framework For Selling And Sales Management Decision Making (Ferrell, Johnston, Ferrell, 2007). This model captures the paradoxical nature of ethics by showing how organizational culture, sales activity, ethical issue intensity (perceived and actual) and ethics decisions are dependent on both the sales ethical climate and individual factors of a business (Ferrell, Johnston, Ferrell, 2007). All of these factors are taken into account in defining the evaluation of outcomes. What is missing from this model is a contextual component that the authors only speak to, yet don't include as a component in the overall model. Contextual reference could have been added as a core foundational element or created as an overarching module that unifies the entire model. Figure 1, A Framework of Selling and Sales Management Ethical Decision Making is shown, illustrating the integration of concepts the authors make reference to.

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