gul-ahmed

Marketing Management Term Report

“Customer is the mirror of your marketing efforts.”

How strongly a company builds it’s brand image is dependant on the value that the

consumers receive. More the value received, higher is the brand equity going to be. The

behavior of customers towards a certain brand then reflects how well or bad a company’s

marketing efforts have been. Following are six points that are linked to a brand.

Attributes

ValueBenefits

UserCulturePersonality

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As Gul Ahmed also operates in the international market, it has its agents abroad who

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MODULE 6

VALUE COMMUNICATION

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MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS:

Advertising is any paid form of non personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods,

and services by an identified sponsor. The advertising department is usually apart of each

firms infrastructure. Their job is to propose a budget; develop advertising strategy:

approve ads and campaigns, and handle direct mail advertisements and other form of

advertising. Gul Ahmed uses an outside agency to help create an advertising campaign

and to select and purchase a media which varies from country to country.

The advertising program involves making five major decisions known as “the five Ms”

1. Mission: What are the advertising objectives

2. Money: How much can be spent?

3. Message: What message should be sent?

4. Media: What media should be used?

5. Measurement: How should the results be evaluated.

Setting the objectives

This is based on the target audience, marketing positioning and the marketing mix.

The company can choose from the following objectives

MISSION

1. Informative: aim is to create awareness and knowledge of new products

2. Persuasive: Aims to create liking , preference, conviction and purchase

3. Reminder: To stimulate repeat purchase

4. Reinforcement: To convince current purchasers they have made the right choice

Setting the budget:

Advertising is really an investment that builds up an intangible asset called ‘brand equity’

This is based on the following factors

MONEY

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1. Stages in the product lifecycle: New products need heavy advertisement budget to

gain awareness

2. Market. share and consumer base: This is done to increase market share which

requires a large budget

3. Competition and clutter: If the brand faces heavy competition then it must

advertise on the same level in order to stand out.

4. Advertising frequency: the number of repitions needed to put across the brands

message to consumers requires a higher advertising budget.

5. Product substitutability: Brands in a commodity based class require heavy ads in

order to establish a differential image.

Gleamed has set its advertising budget according to the sales of the product which means

that product which has a high demand will be allocated the largest budget.

Messages must be effective in order to capture the audiences attention this involves four

major steps;

• Message generation: must be creative and relevant to the target customers.

The more ads that are independently created the higher the profitability of

finding an excellent one. Yet, the more time spent on creation the higher the

costs.

• Evaluation and selection: a good ad generally focuses on one core selling

proposition. Here market research must be conducted in order to determine

which ad works best with the target audience. Once this is done a creative

brief must be prepared which is usually an elaboration of the positioning

statement. This includes key message, target audience, communication

objective. Benefits to promise support to benefits.

• Message execution: The message impact depends on how the message is

executed .this can either be done by rational positioning or emotional

positioning.

Any message can be presented in a number of execution styles: slice of life,

lifestyle, fantasy, mood or image, technical expertise, scientific evidence and

testimonial.

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Gul Ahmed usually advertises on the basis of emotional positioning with the

slogan

“IDEAS THAT MAKE A HOME”

This emotional communication strategy is further elaborated by assuring the

customers of classy, exclusive and special designs made by Gul Ahmed.

Social responsibility review: the company must make sure it does not violate any

social and legal norms. Some companies build ad campaigns on a platform of

responsibility. Gul Ahmed does not violate any social norms; in fact it takes

careful consideration to cater to the needs of the different culture segments it

targets. It also looks makes sure it operations are environmental friendly and that

it takes care of employees as well as customer safety.

Deciding on media and measuring effectiveness:

This involves finding the most cost effective media to deliver the desired message

to the target audience. The steps include;

1. Choosing the media based on desired reach, frequency and impact.

2. Choosing among major types :

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PROFILES OF MAJOR MEDIA TYPES

Medium Advantages Limitations

Short life; poor Flexibility; timeliness; good reproduction quality;

Newspapers local market coverage; broad small pass-along acceptability; high believabilityaudience

Good mass market coverage; High absolute costs; low cost per exposure;

high clutter; fleeting Television combines sight, sound, and exposure; less audience

motion; appealing to the selectivitysenses

High audience selectivity; Relatively high cost per

flexibility; no ad competition Direct mail exposure; “junk mail” within the same medium;

imageallows personalization

Audio only, fleeting Good local acceptance; high exposure; low attention

Radio geographic and demographic (the half-heard” selectivity; low cost medium); fragmented

audiences

High and demographic selectivity; credibility and Long ad purchase lead

Magazines prestige; high-quality time; high cost; no reproduction; long life and guarantee of positiongood pass-along readership

Flexibility; high repeat Little audience

exposure; low cost; low Outdoor selectivity, creative message competition; good

limitationspositional selectivity

Small, demographically High selectivity; low cost; skewed audience;

Online immediacy; interactive relatively low impact; capabilities audience controls

exposure

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3. selecting specific media vehicles

4. deciding on media timings

5. deciding on geographical media allocation

Advertisements: Gul Ahmed uses a combination of print media and electronic media. It

focuses more on print media egg. Women’s magazines because it can be viewed more

clearly compared to television ads. Billboards are also a very important media for

advertising. They are installed at the airports. Apart form this nowadays Gul Ahmed is

using radio to promote the Bridal campaign.

Then the results of these decisions must be evaluated. Evaluation can be done by:

1. Communication effect research: this is done before the ad is put into print media

done to check if the communication is done effectively.

2. Consumer feedback: Involves asking the consumers for their reaction to an ad.

3. Portfolio tests: consumers are told to view ads and recall the details. Recall level

indicates the ads ability to stand out.

4. Laboratory tests: Use equipment to measure physiological reactions. This

measures attention getting power.

SALES PROMOTION:

Sales promotion consists of a diverse collection of incentive tools, mostly short term

designed to stimulate quicker or greater purchases of a particular product or service by

consumers. This is an incentive provided to the customers to purchase the product. Gul

Ahmed does sales promotion by using one major tool

1. Home card

Ideas introduce Home Card an exclusive service to reward special customers. By being

Ideas Home member, customers can avail discounts besides earning points on every

purchase. It introduces them to the world of innovative Ideas® where they may enjoy

exclusive benefits and a variety of services. :

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By visiting Ideas® store for an exclusive range of fresh deals they can avail 10% discount

on purchases of Rs.5000 or above with your Home card.

Free Forever

enjoys the benefits of the Home Card free of charge, as there is no joining or annual fee.

Earn points

Gul.Ahmed offers an amazing Reward Program that lets customers earn points while

shopping through the Home Card. Every time they spend Rs.5000/- they get one point.

These points are accumulated in a balance. This can be redeemed for fabulous products

of choice as per following schedule.

Points Rewards

10 Shopping of Rs.500/=25 Shopping of Rs.1,250/=

50 Shopping of Rs.2,500/=100 Shopping of Rs.5,000/=

500 Shopping of Rs.25,000/=1000 Shopping of Rs.50,000/=

This card also has the feature of free delivery of Ideas Gift Voucher with a

complimentary flower bouquet to a loved one as a gift.

PUBLIC REALTIONS

– Building good relations with the Company’s various publics by obtaining Favorable

publicity, building up a good ‘Corporate image’ and handling or Heading off favorable

rumors, stories and events.

The different types of tools used for PR

Are as follows

• Publications

• Events

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• Sponsorship

• News

• Speeches

• Public – service

• Identity media

Most companies have a public relations department that monitors the attitudes of the

organization’s publics and distributes information and communication to build goodwill.

The best Pr departments spend counseling top management to adopt positive programs

and to eliminate questionable practices to so that negative publicity does not arise in the

first place. They perform the following functions:

o Press relations

o Product Publicity

o Corporate communication

o Lobbying

o Counseling

SALES FORCE MANAGEMENT: Gul Ahmed is a firm that believes in sales force

management with courteous, informed and well groomed sales force. As they place

importance on a sales force that not only knows about the tactics of selling but also is

presentable and can communicate to the customers. The following procedure should be

followed to ensure effective selling of the product.

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Major Steps in Effective Communication

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Prospecting and qualifying

Pre approach

Approach

Presentation and demonstration

Overcoming Objectives

Closing

Follow-up and maintenance

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