Marketing Management

Question:

Write an essay on Marketing management.

Answer:

Marketing management is a process that allows organizations to plan, analyze and implement several strategies so that it can able to manage to fulfill its objective. The prime of objective of marketing management is to develop effective promotional strategies for the organizations in such a way that it can actually able to reach its target market, which will help to increase revenue level of the company. In this assignment, in-depth evaluation will be made on the effectiveness of the marketing management strategies and planning in order to evaluate the kind of impact it can make on the business expansion processes.

In this assignment, the focus will be on the Tesla Motors marketing and promotional strategies to introduced battery powered electric vehicles in the entire Australian market. The assignment focusing on the marketing strategies of Tesla Motors, as it is going invest huge amount almost US$1 billion so that it can able to sale 20,000 units of Tesla cars in the Australian market. Therefore, marketing strategies has become one of the most crucial issues that the management of Tesla Motors will have to implement in such a way that it can actually fulfill the objective of the company.

Background:

About Tesla Motors Inc:

Tesla motors, is regarded as one of the largest energy and automobile storage organizations of the entire world. The company has able to generate huge amount of revenues from the beginning of its business. Headquarter of Tesla Motors is in California. According to Brue (2015), the company has to handle almost 28 million of customers regularly. This success induces Tesla to introduce new technologies in the market so that it can able to maintain its position in the market. As a result, the company has able to introduce energy efficient battery vehicles in The United States and major portion of the European countries successfully. This success induces the organization to target the Australian market to expand the market for the energy efficient vehicles even further.

As one of the major companies in the automobile industry, Tesla Motors has able to develop a popular brand for the company. Currently, around 198,000 employees are working for the organization. Elon Musk, the current CEO of Tesla Motors mentioned that the company would maintain its marketing principles in order to introduce new energy efficient vehicles in the Australian market

Aims and objective of Tesla Motors:

From the beginning, Tesla Motors has able to create high quality vehicles, which helps the company to expand its business all over the world. Therefore, the prime objective of Tesla Motors will be to maintain its quality so that it can able to gain major portion of the Australian market as well. In addition, Tesla Motors also aims to provide high quality customer services so that the new energy efficient vehicles can successfully introduced in the Australian market. Since, to introduce a product successfully in the market, feedback of the customers will have to consider very seriously. Otherwise, the firm might not able to achieve its desired objective. Hence, Tesla Motors marketing management strategies focuses on to develop an effective customer services so that it can able to understand the unique requirements in the Australian market.

Current strategies implemented by Tesla Motors:  

From the perspective of the marketing managers, it can be understood that Tesla Motors like to implement effective marketing strategies so that the company can able to reach to its targeted potential customer in the new Australian market. According to Theodosiou, Kehagias & Katsikea (2012) the effectiveness of the marketing strategies of Tesla Motors can easily understand from the fact that the company has able to reach almost 29 million of target customers already (De Mooij, 2013). Since, Australia is considered as a develop country, management of Tesla Motors have decided to implement advanced technology for promotional activities so that the product of the company can able to sale 20,000 units of energy efficient vehicles.

Though the company has its presence in many countries, still major portion of its revenue comes from the US market. Therefore, Tesla Motors has to restructure or modify its promotional strategy so that the company can able to reach to its target customers in the Australian market. Tesla Motors will have to introduce products of the company in such a way that it can able to go with the culture of the Australia. Otherwise, the citizen of Australia might not show any interest of purchasing the product of the company.       

Situation Analysis:

Situation analysis enables marketing managers to evaluate internal and external environment effectively. Since, it helps to identify the kind of challenges that the organization has to face in order to introduce a product in a new potential market. Therefore, Tesla Motors also have to analyze many factors that can have impact on the future businesses of the company. Factors like overview of the overall market situation, customer needs, price range etc. will have to take into consideration before implementing business strategies (Cassidy et al., 2013). In addition, Tesla Motors will have to analyze its competitors marketing strategies so that it can able to counter it successfully. Therefore, Tesla Motors will have to go through in-depth analysis that elaborated as follows:

Market summary:   

As mentioned earlier, Tesla Motors has successfully able to grab major portion of the USA and Europe market with its new energy efficient vehicles. Therefore, the management of the company collected feedbacks from the customers, which enables them to understand the kind of changes that had to be made so that the product can be imposing in the new market successfully. Since, the prime objective of the company is to become the best vehicles service providers of the entire world, the company will have to implement strategy that can help to gain trust of the Australian customers.

Market demography and demand analysis:

Initially Tesla Motors prime objective was only to focus on the United States market. Therefore, strategies implemented by the marketing managers are restricted within the specific region. However, as the Tesla Motors is looking to expand its business across the border in the Australian market, marketing managers of the company will have to modify its marketing approach so that it can able to fulfill its objective successfully. Marketing managers will have to concentrate on demographic, geographic and socio-graphic segmentation of the market. To gain major benefit from the introduction of the energy efficiency vehicles, Tesla Motors will have to target a broad range of people from the Australian market. Since, it is very important to make the brand or product popular in the market first, which cannot be done if the company selects only a particular part or segment of the market. Since, Australian automobile market is already has huge number of competitors like Toyota, Mitsubishi Motors and Holden (Peck et al., 2013). Therefore, Tesla will have to face immense competition in the Australian market. In addition, demographic segmentation of Tesla will have to formulate in such a way that it could able to attract all levels of people from Australian demography.

SWOT analysis:

According to Poturak & Duman (2014) organization has to plan and implement marketing strategies as per its strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise, the effectiveness of the marketing plan might just fade away. As per the article by Kotler (2012) participative environment is one of the prime strengths of Tesla Motors. Since, it provides employees the opportunity to communicate with each other in a much more effective way. This also allows the organization to implement collective decision-making strategy.

SWOT analysis factors Description

Strengths ? Participative work environment

? Well-developed reputation in the US market

? Effective communication process among all level of employees

Weaknesses ? New in the Australian market

? Lack of knowledge in developing market penetration strategy in the Australian market

? Comparatively fewer employees 

Opportunities ? Huge potential market in Australia

? Become one of the major name in the automobile industry

? Increase the present level of revenue 

Threats ? Strong and powerful global competitors

? Understanding of the new market culture

? Substitute energy efficient vehicles

Table 1: SWOT analysis

(Source: Lionakis & Avlonitis, 2014)

Current competition:

As per the article by Philip (2016) the prime competitors of Tesla Motors in the Australian market is the Mitsubishi Motors. Since, it is also trying to capture the energy efficient vehicles market of Australia. In fact, Lovelock, Patterson & Wirtz (2014) found that the marketing strategy of Mitsubishi Motors is far more effective in the Australian market as compared to Tesla. Therefore, the company has able to gain major share of the Australian market. As highlighted by Christopher, Payne & Ballantyne (2013) close to 35 million of people visits several stores of Mitsubishi across the world every day. The workforce planning of Mitsubishi developed in such a way that allows the organization to meet the needs of the Australian customers.

Mitsubishi Motors promotional budget analysis:   

Success of marketing activities depends highly on the kind of budget that has been allocated by a particular organization. Therefore, marketing managers always like fix the monetary value that will be needed by the organization to implement marketing strategies effectively. In case of Mitsubishi Motors, the company generally spends huge amount of money so that it can able to gain major portion of the market. The budget plan of Mitsubishi illustrated as follows:

From the above figure, it can be understood that Tesla has initiated enough money for gaining implementing effective promotional campaign. However, the differences in the budet between the two companies are not too much. Hence, Tesla will have to utilize all its funding effectively in order to gain competitive advantage in the market.

Market positioning and target market analysis:

From the budget plan of Mitsubishi, it can be highlighted that the prime aim of the marketing campaign of the company is to utilize the media. Therefore, Mitsubishi invest huge amount in the advertisement campaign so that it can able to reach to its target customers. Mitsubishi is primarily target higher income level customers, as major portion of the sales have come from this segment of the people (Armstrong et al., 2014). So to counter this strategy Tesla Motors not only have to advertise in different media platforms but also have to utilize marketing technique like direct marketing, sales promotion and seasonal offering etc. 

Marketing promotion objectives:

As mentioned earlier, Tesla Motors already has able to gain popularity in the USA and European regions with its energy efficient vehicles. Therefore, the company has able to generate trust from customers of these markets. As a result, the company is currently looking to increase its market share. For that reason, Tesla’s prime objective is to expand its businesses across the countries so that it can able increase the present revenue level. Introduction of energy efficiency vehicles in the Australian market is a part of that objective. The promotional objective of Tesla Motors for the years of 2016 to 2017 described as follows:

? To create customers in the international market

? To expand across the borders

? To increase the present level of revenue for the company

? To increase the number of stores of Tesla Motors present in the Australian market

? To represent itself as one of the major name in the automobile industry of the world

Marketing strategies of Tesla Motors:

As opined by Chng et al. (2015) developing marketing strategy is one of the most crucial aspect for promoting a particular brand so that it can able to reach to its target audience. Marketing mix considered as the most effective strategies that almost every company follows. Therefore, Tesla Motors can also implement the marketing mix approach in order to meet the objective of selling 20,000 units of vehicles in the Australian market. Since marketing mix will allow to place the new product in the Australian market in an effective way. The seven P’s of Tesla Motors described as follows:

Product:

Tesla Motors is looking to introduce energy efficient battery vehicles in the Australian market. Therefore, promotional campaign of Tesla will have to focus on the quality of the introduced products. Since, it is necessary to inform the citizens of Australia the kind of benefits it can able to achieve by purchasing this product from the market. 

Price:

  Pricing decision of Tesla will have to be formulated in such a way that it can able to attract major portion of the market. To make it more effective, Tesla can implement different levels of prices for this newly developed vehicles of the company. It will allow Tesla to gain customer from all level of the Australian market.

Promotion:

Promotion is arguably the most important aspect of the marketing strategy that every company has to implement carefully. Otherwise, the objective of implementing marketing strategy might not get its fulfilled. Tesla Motors will have to utilize advertisement, sales promotion, direct marketing, and public relation so that it can able to attract huge number of customers from Australian market.

 Place:

According to Crouch & Housden (2012), Tesla Motors have almost 3000 stores in the entire USA market. Therefore, customers in USA can easily visit on any of the retail stores of the company very easily. Hence, Tesla also has to develop stores all across the Australian region so that more and more citizens of Australia attracts to the introduced product of the company.

People:

People are another important factor that Tesla will have to consider at the time of implementing marketing strategies. Hence, Tesla will have to utilize all its internal resources from managing director to executive level of employees so that the company can able to provide high quality services to all its customers, which will help to the company to gain popularity in the Australian market.

Process:

To maintain effective process for delivery, Tesla will have to utilize online support services, direct selling method and home delivery services. Tesla also has to make sure that citizen from all part of Australia can able to use these processes of the company.   

Physical evidence:

Tesla Motors will have to give some value added such as two year completely free of cost service with the energy efficient vehicles so that the product can able to gain popularity in the market.

     

Figure 3: Marketing Mix

(Source: Cross, Belich & Rudelius, 2015)

Media and Budget Allocation:

In the present situation, media has emerged as the most powerful medium that allows the companies to reach to its target audience much more effectively. Therefore, Tesla Motors also will have to utilize media to penetrate the Australian market successfully. Hence, Tesla will have to invest significant portion of the budget in the media. Social media is another factor that Tesla will have to consider at the time of implementing marketing plan (Shimp & Andrews, 2013). Since, it has significant amount of impact on the modern generation; the company will have to spend a major portion of the budget in the promotional campaign of social media platform. Search engine and website marketing also have to implement by Tesla motors. Apart from that, Tesla also will have to implement other marketing promotional technique like video advertising, display advertising, event advertising so that the citizen of Australia gets attracted with the new product of the Tesla Motors. The total budget for the promotional campaign is set 1 billion for Tesla motors and the budget allocation for 2016-2017 described as follows:  

Budget allocation for 2016-2017

Methods Total Investment Projected income

Search engine and website and marketing $5 $20

Event marketing $20 $17

Direct marketing $15 $25

Social media marketing $20 $30

Display advertising $10 $23

Video advertising $25 $15

Electronics advertising $15 $16

Table 2: Budget allocation

(Source: Browne et al., 2014)

Conclusion:

The above analysis highlighted the fact that Tesla Motors will have to utilize situation analysis, budget allocation and marketing strategy to introduce energy efficient vehicles successfully in the market. Since, marketing technique is a key to the success of any company. Tesla also has to implement it properly. Otherwise, selling 20,000 units of vehicles cannot be achieved.  

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