How Singer Should Improve The Marketing Strategy

According Audit finding it is evident that Singer has few issues with internally and externally. In terms of internal issues Singer’s current strategy is been a crisis which leads to acquire very slow growth in year 2010. Strategy evaluation will be helpful to identify factors such as has the company grown or not? Is the profit rate good or bad? How significant is the competition? Following sections will explain how Singer strategy should be improved to deliver competitive, innovative and customer focused value proposition.

Marketing Strategy Making Process of Singer SL

Singer top management plays an important role in a formal planning process which gives birth to a strategy. The top management is involved with the senior management of a company while strategies are formulated. The strategic planning process involves four steps which have been mentioned as below:

Source: Annual Report, 2010

Evaluation of Current Marketing Strategy

Assumption: How the marketing strategy should be improved discussed only considering Audio & Video section of Singer to give an accurate answer and due to the word count policy.

The strategy of Singer is based on the Market Share and Cost Leader marketing strategy. Currently Singer is the market leader in this consumer electronic industry in terms of sales and revenue. Singer products have been promoted to the consumers who can be categorized under upper middle class to lower class sections by proceeding following sub marketing strategies.

Get Help With Your Essay

If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help!
Find out more about our Essay Writing Service

Key Issues/Gaps Identified in Current Marketing Strategy

Outline of the Singer’s current marketing strategy and its issues identified have been explained in the strategic audit and summary of the audit (Refer 2.3) respectively. Following are the other issues which have been identified in their current issues which have been identified.

Marketing Communication: A significant amount has been spent for communications but when compared to the costs against the returns, the achievements are unsatisfactory. Singer hasn’t grasped and miscalculated the potential and new emergent marketing tactics which were not in there marketing mix. (e.g, Role of social media, viral marketing, etc). The celebrity (A Singer) they used for advertising didn’t have charisma to convey the message since his behaviour was controversial in several times.

Strategy Planning: Marketing emergent strategies have not been planned and considered by Singer and hence the organization needs to anticipate the future environment changes when develop their marketing plans. Occurrence of such a situation is risky thus fluctuations of markets, new rules, policies and standards have to upset their pricing and routine work. Strategy making process has been top down approach where they have skills and knowledge of lower level employees which would have been better.

Erroneous Positioning: Singer is been targeting across all target segment rather than targeting niche segments where they have been trying to position themselves as a price leader. But this distracts the attention of upper end consumers since they perceived it as a budget product where lacks quality and value. Although they sell budget Singer has been tried to position themselves as high quality producers which is not believed by many consumers due to regular quality issues in the electronic products and compared to superior qualities like durability, robustness, performance, cutting edge technology of the products from global players.

How Singer Can Improve Their Marketing Strategy

According to the Audit findings it has been identified there are few issues which diminish their current value proposition where Singer hasn’t been able to differentiate their products from their competitors. Through the evaluation of the current marketing strategy, it’s identified that there are few gaps in the current marketing strategy which need to be fulfilled in order to perform recommendations that are made for their current value proposition. To bring a more customer focused, innovative and competitive value proposition amendments should be carried out to their current marketing strategy and sub strategies. According to the following framework Singer should consider three factors mainly when developing the strategy.

(Sims and Smith, 2003)

What Basis? (Competitive Strategy)

Singer has to define their basis (corporate main purpose) to improve their value proposition. As per the value chain analysis Singer has been suffering from few cost problems since they sold their goods at much lower price with the aim of becoming the price and market leader in the industry.

Source: Ansoff Matrix, 1980

Figure 4: Singer’s Competitive StrategySinger should have to follow differentiation strategy for their Audio & Video as a solution for their cost issues. Differentiation occupies making Singer products or services different and more attractive from their competitors. There are three main reasons for proposing this strategy as follow:

Almost everyone delivering similar kind of products where low cost products are coming from gray markets. So it’s not profitable if singer tries to stay as the cost leader furthermore.

The value added by the uniqueness of the product may allow the firm to charge a premium price for it. Additionally firm can expect that the higher price will more than cover the extra costs incurred in offering the unique product.

It will help to reduce the bad image and perception in higher end consumers mind and promote their products over large players like Sony, Samsung.

Which Direction (Growth Strategy)?

Source: Ansoff Matrix, 1957

Figure 5: Singer’s Growth StrategyAudit finding has shown a very slow growth has been achieved in terms of sales and revenue in the Audio & Video category. If Singer needs to improve their value proposition and bring out more innovativeness and customer focused to their value proposition they have to pursue other options of growth strategies such as market development or new product development. Since they have a wide product portfolio (Refer Appendix II) Singer cannot stick into one growth strategy. Currently penetration strategy is on the process and adaptation of new product development strategy will give following benefits where it matches with proposed generic strategy since the differentiation always go with innovation.

Segmentation and Targeting

As per the audit finding Singer is being targeting all consumers without targeting a specific segment As a solution for that a new target consumer base has been proposed where it is mostly concerned regarding their lifestyles, who fall under higher/middle in their social class and income level. The age and behaviours of the consumers can be some few other crucial factors. Following are the segments Singer should pay close attention to attract consumers, as the sub segments also share common characteristic when buying Audio & video products.

Positioning Strategy

According to Audit finding Singer has a huge concern about the position of their products in target audience due to quality issues and bad customer service. According to the selected differentiation and new product development strategy for their Audio & Video products Singer positioning strategy should be positioned their product as a high quality convenience product.

This will help to increase their customer focus towards their consumers by giving more convenience and quality products at fair prices. Singer can articulate their product or company characteristics such as quality, innovation, availability (enable consumers to buy products through the online site at any give time without accessing showrooms) of their products and company stability and image of the company.

Product Strategy

Pricing Strategy

According to Philip Kotler 9 price-quality strategies Singer should select High Value section which s known as market based pricing. Prices can be set after accurate analysis of the market and consumer requirements. According to there new value proposition to convey market led characteristics this pricing method will be very applicable.

Source: Kotler 9 price-Quality Strategies

Promotional Strategy

Singer advertisement budgets are sufficient but Singer has to select proper mediums to promote their products. Singer can use emerging mediums such as mobile marketing, email marketing and social media other than traditional mediums for Singer to promote their new product and services.

A well known super star like Lasith Malina (Famous Cricketer) who has a good charisma within the country can be used to promote their corporate brand where people will start believe him and change their perceptions and result in buying products.

Market Entry Strategy

Even though there are going to deal with innovation and differentiation Singer has to revise their market entry strategy from “Laggard Entry” to “First-In” strategy. Singer is being always an imitator in technological advancements (e.g., late introduction of LED 3D TV)

Proper Strategy Making Process

Singer has to revitalize their strategy making process where they should have a bottom up approach since most of the successful and innovative companies following particular approach. This approach will enable Singer management to discover innovative and contemporary ideas which can be included in their marketing activities. Singer should have a process to respond emerging situation by following an emerging strategy making process rather than deliberate strategy making process

Source: Adapted from H. Mintzberg and A. McGugh, Administrative ScienceQuarterly, 1985.

Impact of the Proposed Strategy on Singer’s Value Proposition

Customer Focus

These proposed strategies will increase customer trust, satisfaction and loyalty due to quality and reliable products since it will match their exact requirement/need. Repositioning their products as a convenience product by improved customer service, distribution, communication will help to build a close relationship, image and level of the customer focus.

Innovative

Introduction of new products and services will improve their competitiveness and value proposition by being categorised as innovative high-tech company. (e.g, 3M)

Competitive

Differentiation of their products in terms of quality, price, features, and services will enable Singer to deliver a more competitive value proposition. First-In market entry strategy will add more charge to become very competitive in the market.

How to Improve Stakeholder Value

Following diagram will illustrate broadly how this new marketing strategy will increase the stakeholder value in terms of customers, shareholders, suppliers and customers

By following above mentioned supportive strategies will help to improve the overall marketing strategy which will be capable to deliver innovative, competitive and customer focused value proposition. To follow an innovative and differentiation marketing strategy Singer has to rethink about how they are going to do these amendments because internal development, external growth or some joint venture would require. Development of a strategy will not give proper results as company expected. Monitoring and controlling should be there to evaluate their strategies and check the association with corporate goals and objectives. How Singer should implement those strategies with a control will be explained in future chapters.