JB Hi-Fi‘s Marketing Mix Strategy
In response to a simulated business scenario, you will evaluate marketing tools and prepare a written marketing campaign report. You will also develop samples of convergent tools and techniques.
The fact that traditional marketing alone never works in the current business environment, characterized by digital technology, (Bansal, & Prestige Institute of Management and Research, 2009), makes every marketing agency to struggle to find new conceptual bases on which to design and deliver marketing programs. Due to the rapid growth in the internet technology, marketing convergence has become a necessity organization. The fusion of electronic marketing (E-marketing) and the traditional marketing, by use of internet, has created various strategies and marketing tools. Creating a convergence marketing campaign requires marketers to centrally put the customer in the campaign(Bhasin, 2017).
Use of convergence marketing, provides an organization with practical and innovative guide for all management levels in order to balance brand-building tools with powerful direct marketing techniques. Convergence marketing ensures that all marketing goes direct. Through combining of brand and direct marketing, it strengthens the power of direct, involving both responsibility and relevance of the message, bringing about desired results (Rosen & Rosen, 2009).
JB Hi-Fi, through effectively evaluating the factors sustainable for creating the desired impact on the target market, has been able to be one of the fastest growing businesses in the Australian and New Zealand markets. Evidently, this firm is always geared towards positively impacting on the environmental conditions through developing strategies that can reduce the undesirable long run impact on the ecosystem. Moreover, the company, in developing its marketing campaigns, focuses on maintaining legislative rules regarding trade, thus the representation of the firm as a corporate citizen. This is not only an ethical marketing practice, but also, in itself helps the organization in achieving popularity in the desired markets.
Marketing mix
It’s one of the most popular tools used by marketers in identification of the target market appropriately. It enables marketers identify those factors that can create competitive advantage in the desired market. JB HI- FI’s marketing mix can be described as follows:
Product- the organization, aiming to have maximum impact on the market, has included top electronic brands such as Microsoft Xbox, Sony and Casino products. Furthermore, it highlights its products in a colorful way to attract and get the attention of its focus market; the youth aged 12- 35 years.
Price- by effectively using low cost pricing strategy, it improves its penetration in the market. The company’s slogan “Always cheapest price”, shows that it is in search of gaining competitive price advantage from its competitors. This helps attract customers from the intended target market appropriately. Moreover, the company’s selection of economic pricing technique has an objective of penetrating different market portions.
A Case Study: JB Hi-Fi’s Marketing Success
Promotion- JB HI-FI primarily focuses on direct marketing and sponsorship programs in order to grab the attention of the potential market customers. Also, the company focuses on effectively using personal selling technique for long period customer retention. It also focuses on using advertising technique effectively, this works to increase market popularity level. JB HI-FI uses print media, it has an official website to enhance effective use of advertisement techniques and make sure that the promotional message reaches its potential customers.
Physical distribution- JB HI-FI tries to develop distribution stores in all the prime areas in the market. Currently, the company has 124 and 10 retail outlets in Australian and New Zealand markets respectively. This helps the company increase its revenue levels appropriately.
Competitor analysis- JB HI-FI uses economic pricing technique to attain pricing competitive advantage in the highly competitive market. By being ready to sell its products even at a loss, it has become very hard for the competitors to achieve pricing strategies advantage (jbhifi.com, 2018).
By JB Hi- Fi using the Clive Anthony’s name, it applies a discount strategy in its electrical superstores in Australia, Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales. The company’s stores are the most preferred due to the relatively low prices of their products. These two strategies enable the company to attract more customers and realize 26% growth in profits compared to the financial year 2008/2009. Moreover, the use of the company web site for advertisement enables access of the company products by online shoppers thus increasing the company sales (managementstudyguide.com).
Thus, it would be recommended for the company to continue using its website along with discount strategy to ensure continued sales increase.
Various E-marketing techniques adopted by companies include: banner advertisements, online advertising, online sales promotion, pop-up advertisements, blogs advertisement, e-mail marketing and mobile marketing.
Online advertising- according to Cunningham, & Brown, (2010), some online advertising methods include:
- Pay- per-click (PPC) – a way to enhance the business appearance in search engine listings and to provide the company with instant information on the effectiveness of its listings.
- Search engine optimization (SEO) – involves making adjustments and designing the company Web site to make it friendlier in search engines and increase the company’s position in the search engines organic section.
- Company landing pages- refer to the direct pages that people go to when they use a certain keyword to do a search, and then click on the posted link from the search engine. These pages give the users the information specified by the keywords that the users have used to find the firm without making them search for the information through the company’s home page, which may be too difficult for the people to pursue.
- E-mail blasts- allow the recipients to download, for instance, a coupon, thus helping the company initiate a relationship with these recipients.
Banner advertising- Banners help create increasing brand awareness levels- culminating in top-of-mind awareness, without the customers necessarily clicking through the company’s website. Banner advertising along with other communication elements serve to facilitate increasing brand awareness levels, thus improving brand quality. Moreover, more exposure to banner ads by the customers, leads to increased purchasing probability of the advertised products and services (Shimp, & Andrews, 2013).
Sales promotion- Sales promotion strategy is implemented on the basis of the nature and composition of the market. Online promotional activities are necessary to attract and retain customers to a company’s products and services. Promotional activities include: using online advertisement banners, internet newsgroups, and social media networks, broadcasting emails, sponsoring online chats, internet mailing list, and distribution of electronic press release.
Various E-Marketing Techniques Employed by Companies
Mobile marketing- the use of smart phones has enabled the development of personal relationships with their customers, instead of mass marketing. Efficiency in communicating the message, the message being accessible and easy to view and make use of, contributes to effectiveness of mobile marketing. (Bhasin, 2017)
Example 1: Dacia
Platform used: Facebook
Goal: generating market leads and brand awareness creation.
The company placed ads relating to their Sandero, Stepway and Logan car models on Facebook. Focused on both users of desktop and mobile. Wide variety of ad testing was done through incorporation of past activity data. This optimized the impacts o the advertisement depending on the position of the customers on the buying cycle.
Results: cost per lead reduced by 45% in comparison to standard display ads, ad recall increased by 27- point, brand favorability uplift of 6- point and purchase intent increasing by 6-point uplift (digitalmarketinginstitute.com).
Example 2: TVibes
Platform used: Facebook
Goal: establishing engaged and loyal app users.
Solution: Integrating Facebook into the company’s social app made it easier for the followers to be able to create accounts, log into them and explore various channels created by their friends, conveniently from their Facebook home pages.
Results: half the number of new apps installed was driven by Facebook, an increase in customer loyalty and conversion from the Facebook driven installs by 10% and a rise in Facebook user engagement rates by 20% (digitalmarketinginstitute.com).
Conclusion
The choice of the best tool depends on the cost-effectiveness and the contribution made by the decision to the increment of the company’s sales. To fulfill all the business objectives appropriately, effective use of marketing or promotional technique is necessary. Convergence marketing is one of such examples of effective utilization of marketing technique.
References
Bansal, A., & Prestige Institute of Management and Research. (2009). Transcending horizons through innovative global practices.Indore: Prestige Institute of Management.
Bhasin, H., (2017). The use of convergence marketing for better reach. Available at l [Accessed 13thMay 2018].
Cunningham, C., & Brown, S. (2011). Local online advertising for dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Digitalmarketinginstitute.com, (2018). Available at https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com [Accessed 13th May 2018].
Igiglobal.com, (2018). Dictionary. Available at https://www.igi-global.com>dictionary [Accessed 13th May 2018].
Jbhifi.com, (2018). Available at https://www.jbhifi.com.au [Accessed 13th May 2018].
Managementstudyguide.com, (2018). Online sales promotion and advertising methods. Available at https://www.managementstudyguide.com/online-sales-promotion-and-advertising-methods.htm [Accessed 13th May 2018].
Rosen, R.G., & Rosen, J. (2009). Convergence marketing: Combining brand and direct for unprecedented profits. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons.
Shimp, T.A., & Andrews, J. C. (2013). Advertising, promotion, and other aspects of integrated marketing communications. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage.
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