Segmentation, Consumer Decision Making & CRM

Evaluate a company's approach to customer segmentation and targeting?

Explain customer buying decisions and the role of various factors on the consumer's buying decisions and discuss how a company builds customer loyalty and engagement.

Product Sony TV

Question 1: Customer Segmentation

a. Segmentation Variables Template, for Sony TV. On what basis do you think your company segments its customers? Commonly used characteristics to segment markets are geography, demographics, psychographics, benefits sought and usage rates. Based on the template

b. Summarize who you believe the primary target market is for this product?

Question 2: Consumer Buying Decision

a. What cultural, social, individual and psychological factors are impacting the consumer's purchase decision for your product? Explain why and how these factors impact the consumer's decision. These factors are summarized in Exhibit 6.3 and throughout chapter 6

Question 3: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

a. Your company will want to ensure customers remain loyal and are engaged with the product and company. As discussed in class, building a strong relationship and trust with consumers are important factors to building loyalty. What does your company do to build customer relationships, strengthen customer engagement and trust and keep customers loyal?

Does your company use CRM technology to assist with building a relationship?

How do they use technology?

What CRM tools do they use?

What is the role of salespeople in selling your product to the end consumer?

How are customer issues with your product resolved?

What kind of messaging does the company use to build trust and loyalty with customers?

For Sony TV, select which segmentation variables you are using to segment the market and explain/describe the characteristics that are reflective of your customer.

For example, if your product is a luxury SUV that performs well in snow and ice, your segmentation overview may look something like this:

Segmentation for Luxury SUV

Bases for Segmentation Sub-Bases Explanation/Description Geographic - Region of the country or world, climate, population density? -Canadian Provinces with cities with large population density - Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta Demographic - Income Segmentation: Low, middle or high income? High income

Family Life-Cycle Segmentation: Young, middle-aged or older? Single, divorced or married? Children or no children? Married with 2 or more children

Psychographic - Lifestyle Segmentation: Socioeconomic characteristics, beliefs, how they spend their time?

High income with busy lifestyle - family involved in many sports, drive many kids in carpools.

Assignment 1 below for your Reference - Product Sony TV

Tactical Marketing Plan

Marketing environemnt is constantly changing. Success and failures depend on companies' ability to adapt to these changes. There should be new marketing strategies to analyse the trends that occur among the consumers and in the economy. The following report shows the trends and changes For Sony TV that had impacted in Canadian Market.

Plan Overview

Specifics:

Marketing Environmental Scan and a Competitive Analysis

Name of the Product:

Sony TVA8H OLED

Market:

Canada

Factors:

CREST (Competitive, Regulatory, Economic, Socio-cultural, and Technological environments)

Objective

Trends that occur in the external environment specifically in the competitive, regulatory, economic, social-cultural and technological (CREST) environments impact greatly on the marketing plan for goods and services. Trends in CREST factors provides crucial information that aids the managers to make decisions to grow, establish and sustain the firm's performance.

Target Market

This research paper aims at determining the negative and positive implications of the changes and trends in CREST factors on Sony TV marketing plan in Canada.

Product Demographics

SONY has segmented the market based on income level earned by the consumers. It mostly targets people between medium to high income group using its premium-priced TV products. Another demographic classification that Sony used is marital status. Most of the TV products are marketed with people with families or those above 25 years old and are considered as early adopters in mind.

Target Contact Demographics

The target audience was affluent consumer electronics shoppers nationwide.

TypeOLEDSub-Type WRGBResolution4k

The Sony A8H OLED is an excellent TV that delivers incredible picture quality and manages to improve upon its predecessor, the Sony OLED Its OLED panel can turn off pixels individually to produce perfect blacks with an infinite contrast ratio, which is idealfor watching movies in a dark room.

Sony: You can buy theSony A8H OLED 4K TVin either 55- or 65-inch sizes for $1,000 less than their regular prices. That's not just a huge discount on a Sony OLED TV, it's currently the best deal on any OLED TV, period.

The Following are the positive and negative implications of the marketing plan for sony TV

Competitive environment

Itspositiveimplications include; increased productivity and motivation that encourages consumers to purchase, improved quality of Sony TV display and sound that attract many customers and improved creativity and innovation so as to meet consumers' specific needs. Thenegativeimplications are loss of customers due to high price and lack of a required aspect as well creation of a bad image of the product in the market.

Canadian CREST factors could affect the marketing plan for Sony TV

The firm has to carry out thorough research on competitors'' threats before making any plans. This analysis shows the position of the firm and the flexibility options that are available. Moreover, the analysis provides information on the global economic trends that may affect the effectiveness of the firm's marketing plan.

SOcio-cultural environment

The positiveimplications are; ability to be customer centric by meeting their social cultural demands, environmental conservation as well as demographic segmentation to facilitate marketing. Thenegative implications are; loss of customers due to their preference to certain TV brands and the increased costs needed to segment the market depending on the demographics.

Canadian CREST factors could affect the marketing plan for Sony TV

This comprises the consumer perceptions, beliefs, preferences, education, demographics and group dynamics that influence their choice of products. The manager of the firm must collect information on practices that are friendly to the socio-cultural environment. This analysis provides data that is necessary for design of custom products that meet the needs of specific market segments.

TECHnological environment

Thepositiveimpacts are; enhanced quality quantity of Sony TV due to embracement of the advancements in technology. Thenegativeimplications are the costs that are incurred in the emerging technologies that affect the marketing.

Canadian CREST factors could affect the marketing plan for Sony TV

This relates to the adoption of the emerging trends in technology that improve productivity and quality of products as well as reducing costs.

ACTION PLAN

The action plans to address the implications are; the Sony TV features should fairly match the competitors' with regards to the technological advancements so as to compete fairly, the price for Sony TV should be almost similar to that of other TVs so that many customers can be attracted, the promotional message should capture the content that meets the socio-cultural needs of customers and the sales outlet should include both physical selling and online selling in order to reach out a wider target.

COMPETITIVE SUMMARY

Competitor

Product Comparison

Pricing Comparison

Promotion Comparison

Place Comparison (# of outlets in Canada)

Sony TV

OLED displays whose brightness is around 800 nits

The price for Sony Bravia AF8 55 inch is 1,199.79 at eBay

Best TV for bright or sunny rooms, the best TV for picture and sound quality and the best sounding TV(Rear, 2020)

Ranked 2 (70 Outlets)

Samsung TV

QLED displays that achieve a brightness of 1000-2000 nits hence enables vivid HDR scenes and high impact images on TV

The price of a 55-inch Samsung Q9FN is 1,599 euros at Amazon

The promotional message depicts it as the best budget TV and the most beautiful TV

Ranked 1 (7 Outlets)

Life's Good (LG) TV

It uses OLED screens that gives clear pictures and acoustic design that offers brilliant quality of sound

The price of a 55-inch LG E7N at Amazon is 1,499 euros.

The promotional message describes it as the best bang for your back TV and the best TV suitable for wall mounting.

Ranked 4 (7 Outlets)

Panasonic TV

It has both Dolby vision and HDR (Pouli, 2016)

The price of 55-inch Panasonic FZ802B is 1,499 at Appliances Direct.

The promotional message focuses on its picture quality.

(21 Outlets)