Business Product Strategy: A case on Magneto

Product attributes

This would involve the features or characteristic of the product. Before Magneto goes into production they need to understand the ability for the product to fulfill the needs of the customer

Quality – the major tool in positioning your product. It encompasses two key elements: 1) quality level - how it is made or perceived, and 2) quality consistency - how it performs over its life.

Features – the physical or intrinsic characteristics of your product that contribute to the benefits it offers.

Design – a combination of how the product looks and how it performs.

• Branding

A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these elements that identifies the maker or seller of a product or service. Branding is an important part of a product and contributes to its personality and perceived value. The power of a brand cannot be underestimated – many people buy on the strength of brand alone with no regard for price or performance.

• Packaging

Packaging incorporates the wrapper or container for your product. It serves to protect the product, ensuring it reaches the buyer in good condition and also conveys the personality of your brand and important safety and statutory information.

• Labeling

Labeling incorporates all the written information about your product and usually takes the form of an adhesive sticker, a tie-on tag or a printed piece of packaging.

The characteristics of the target market

The characteristic of the target market or the product’s potential customers is an essential part of the product strategy. This is because the company needs to understand the potential customers’ needs and their characters for the purpose of developing a product that this group can connect with. Magneto will need to consider their geographical locations which may encompass region, climatic conditions and so on, demographics which may include their age, gender among other variables, psychographics which includes the general personality and lifestyle, behaviors which includes their level of knowledge and attitude.

Market share objectives

Magneto will need to place focus on their market forecast for this product and their market share intentions. This will depend on whether they need to achieve market share dominance or they will just pursue profits or both. Market share objective will involve determining the size of the market and estimating how much of that market Magneto will require to meet their corporate and product goals.

Competition

Magneto will need to understand the competitive environment within the product category and class. In case Magneto is the pioneer for the said product they will need patents to protect their product from competition if this is not possible then they should gather information about other companies that are more likely to produce a similar product. This will enable them develop their product with strong features to withstand the threat. Competitor analysis makes up for an important part of product strategy because it seeks to offer insights on how well to beat the competition through taking advantage of their weaknesses and the opportunities that generally exist in the market.

Desired product positioning

This will involve the development of a unique selling preposition about the product. The product by Magneto can be positioned on the basis of an attitude or benefit, use or application, price or level of quality. The positioning should play to the company’s product strength and away from weakness.

Profit objectives

Depending on the product Magneto is making they may not be able to set their own prices but in most cases companies can set prices for their products. In that case then Magneto should pay close attention to the pricing of their product to ensure they offer value to the customer but also make profits. The price set versus the cost of production would directly impact profit objectives. Pursuit of cost leadership which affects the price will also have a direct impact on the profit targets from the product developed by Magneto. 

Importance of Strategic Marketing to businesses

Strategic marketing seeks to establish a sustainable competitive advantage for an organization. This can be achieved through allocation of resources to opportunities that are geared towards meeting the organizations objectives. Strategic marketing employs processes beyond the marketing mix scope to ensure the organization differentiates itself effectively through providing superior offerings to customers. It provides the organization with an opportunity to improve on its strengths while seeking out opportunities and avoiding or dealing with threats appropriately.

Strategic marketing and customer value

Strategic marketing plays a major role in delivering added value by increasing consumer satisfaction and the quality of the organization’s offerings. Value from a strategic marketing point of view would include

·         The quality offered being commensurate with the price being charged

·         The value that is attached to the reputation of the brand

·         Value through customer service

·         Value provided by exceeding the customer’s expectations

In order for the above to be achieved strategies need to be implemented to better understand the customer’s needs and how they make their decisions, to incorporate features in the product or service that would meet these needs and cultivating loyalty and trust to ensure long-term engagement with the customer.

Strategic marketing and business portfolio

Strategic marketing enables the organization to determine the businesses that it should engage in. Thus the organization only concentrates its efforts and resources towards developing an attractive business portfolio and understanding the businesses that it engages in. Apart from determining the direction of the businesses the organization should engage in, strategic marketing will also guide the process of developing the organization’s growth policies.

Strategic marketing and understanding of the environment

Strategic marketing provides for the understanding of the environment and situation. A PEST analysis would guide the marketing process in order to gain the highest level of benefits. Political, economic, social-cultural, technological, legal and environmental factors are given high priority to enable the organization to recognize both the opportunities and threats presented by these factors.

Marketing strategies

Strategic marketing provides the approaches that would be used to handle the different strategic business units as they are determined by the organization. These approaches are derived from the different characteristics of a particular unit. For example, using the BCG matrix, different units would be classified in different levels which are stars, cows, question marks and dogs. Stars are high growth products that are stronger than competitors and have the potential of becoming cash cows in future. Cows are low growth products with a considerable high market share. Question marks they operate in high growth markets but are currently in low market share. Dogs are units that operate in low growth markets and have low market share making them unattractive.

For each of these levels different strategies may be employed such as building share to turn a question mark into a star, hold where the organization would invest only enough to keep the unit going in the case of stars, Harvest in the case of stars to turn them into cows and Divest in the case of dogs.

Do private secondary schools in Kenya need a strategy

Private secondary schools in Kenya need a strategy in order to ensure that they offer value to the community they serve. The schools are also driven by results and the performance of their students and this means that they need to implement some strategy to ensure that they meet these objectives. It is through meeting these objectives that they are able to gain their competitive advantage. Private secondary schools in Kenya cannot base their performance or expect results without implementing a strategy that gets them to where they want to be. If it is the case that these results are achieved through guesswork then this makes them unstable and unsustainable which eventually reflects negatively on the stakeholders.

Strategy ensures growth and development in private schools in terms of enrollment, improvement of learning equipments and facilities. Private secondary schools need strategy to ensure that there is a low student to teacher ratios in order to improve the effectiveness of their service and enable them address the different needs of the students with a personalized touch. Strategy in the private schools will also guide professional development of the staff this will in turn translate to better overall performance. This will ensure that the private schools are able to retain excellent and differs faculty.

Strategy will ensure that the private secondary schools utilize their resources adequately through appropriate allocation. This ensures that all resources allocated for educational or administrative purposes are utilized as such. For example the school bus may not be used to run the principals private businesses instead of taking students and teachers on educational field trips. This represents misuse of the resources which were to be used for purposes of improving the schools performance.

Private secondary schools need a strategy to ensure they remain focused on their objectives. Just like any other entity private schools can also lose focus of their goals in the long run. A strategy helps ensures that the stakeholders are constantly reminded of what they are required to achieve. For example if the institution’s vision is to offer world class standards of education or increase the level of diversity or improve performance to be the top school nationally. Then all actions by the institutions should be in support of that vision. This means that private schools need a strategy to govern their actions in order to work towards achievement of the vision.

Private secondary schools need a strategy to help them in dealing with the external and internal environments. Just like any entity, private schools also exist within an environment which is unpredictable and can wreak havoc if the entity is not prepared. So the strategy helps in forecasting and predicting some of these events and if they are noticed earlier the negative impacts from the environmental changes can be minimized or avoided altogether. Strategy also presents opportunity for adaptations to the environment for private schools.

In conclusion, private secondary schools in Kenya need a strategy as illustrated. It would be risky for private secondary schools to operate without a strategy and miss out on the benefits that it offers.