Course Assignment for Marketing Design and Innovation - Paper Example

Orbit Professional Gum is a brand or product of the Wrigley Company that has a long lasting freshness. The product was launched in Kenya in the year 2009 from its local plant in the country, which serves a larger part of the continent of Africa. It has a smooth and a refreshing taste of sugar free gum that leaves the mouth with a good breath. It should be considered that Orbit gum is a global brand that is present in more than two hundred countries all over the world. Therefore, introducing the Orbit Professional Gum brand into the country was not difficult because the brand already had presence in the region through the Orbit gum.

The brand has widely been accepted all over the country and in the region due to the freshness that it has. Considering the fact that the country is still a developing one, the opportunity for the brand came at the right time because there was no other similar product in the market. It was easy for people to identify with the product because it was the first of its kind and also had a name in the country. Therefore, it was purchased in large numbers immediately after its introduction and the success that it has seen is still being experienced largely. There are several other reasons that have seen the great success of the brand in the country as will be highlighted in the subsequent discussions.

The operations plan is a catchphrase or strategy that is utilized to change the inputs like materials, work, exclusive data, and so on into yields like quality-included products, services, merchandise, and so on. The company took this strategy seriously on the side of operations to see a success in the introduction of the new product. The system incorporates an anticipating, capacity planning, booking, overseeing inventories, guaranteeing quality, propelling representatives, control of action, and some more. At the end of the day, it is 'a field of study that spotlights on the viable planning, booking, utilize, and control of a manufacturing or service organization through the investigation of ideas from configuration building, modern designing, and management data frameworks, quality management, generation management, bookkeeping, and different capacities as the influence the operation (Sassoon, 2014). Operations plan concerns are making the most proficient utilization of whatever assets an organization has to give the completed merchandise or administrations that its client need in an opportune and perceptive way.

Marketing and Sales Strategy.

The marketing and sales strategy has been one of the products driving force that has ensured it success in the new market. The business will re-evaluated the its experience for people, families, and selling to bring out clients with discretionary salary high quality, inventive products at a sensible value, outlining, helpful areas, and giving industry-benchmark client service. The marketing is done through the utilization of billboards mostly and fliers. These are the most common means of advertisement considering their locations, where there is a high human traffic. To grow at a rate steady to meet the companys objectives, the management put forth an extra funds for the purposes of marketing.

Social media

Social media is one of the platforms that many successful companies are using to market their products. The business uses the social media to bring awareness to their chewing gums. This is because of the many benefits that social media brings when it comes to advertisement. There are several reasons that led the business to choose social media as their platforms for advertisement. One of the common reason is that is cheaper compared to other means of advertisement. In the past, several companies where using the television to advertise their products since they believed that it would bring out the clarity of their products. Various researchers indicated that television was not the best means to advertise products since not many people around the world could afford it. This means that it was limited to certain number of individuals.

The business is also using Instagram and Facebook as their channel for advertisement. It is believed that millions of people around the world have subscribed to these sites. The benefit of using these two Sites as the channel for advertisement is that any person who has little knowledge concerning the internet can use it. An individual is only required to create an account with the two sites and like the business group page. With such sites, the company is likely to achieve its objective by reaching to millions of people around the country.

Magazines

Magazines are the other media platform that the business is using to advertise their products. The reason as to why the company decided to use magazines for advertisement is the ability to higher quality image and clear picture of their products. It gives the target market a clear idea of the companys products. Research conducted by advertisement agencies have indicated that many people prefer reading magazines compared to other books. This because of the pictures that will attract be appealing to their eyes. The company has invested a huge amount of money in purchasing equipment to increase capacity of production of the chewing gums that would ensure that there is a steady supply of it to the market and even to supply or extend the supply to other parts of the market. The initial thing that attracts people to reading magazines is the cover. The cover should be more appealing for it to catch the interest of the reader to want to know more about that product. The other advantage of using a magazine for advertisement is the ability that it gives more information concerning that product. The manufacture can also give examples to enable to the customer get more clarity about the companys brand.

Nature of the market

The nature of competition during a decline and the strategic replacements available for coping with it are complex. The sweets and chewing gum market in Kenya is not so much competitive, and perhaps, that is why Orbit Professional Gum has succeeded. In fact, the marker is largely dominated Wrigleys other products such as Juicy Fruit, Orbit, PK and Big G among others. People even take these products without knowing that they are from the same parent company. Now one can imagine if most of them knew about this. However, the fact that Orbit is apparently related to Orbit Professional, this makes the consumers to identify with it more easily, considering the level of success that the former has seen in the market.

The dominance by Orbit has seen local products or competitors perform dismally that others are forces to terminate. It is important to understand that, the conventional strategy for falling industries are either to divest or harvest; this implies producing maximum cash flows existing in investments without the need to reinvest. Such approaches assume that the falling industries are essentially unprofitable. However, it is crucial to learn about the four approaches that can be followed either separately or chronologically in the diminishing markets. These strategies are maintenance, niche, and harvest and profitable survivor. These strategies vary greatly in terms of their goals and also their implications for investment making it simpler for managers to pursue them individually and in some other cases, subsequently. It is important to learn that, as an industry declines, it becomes less important to suppliers, which results to a raise in their costs, while the distributors powers increases. In this chapter we can learn that, a decline in the markets result to substantial price pressure from the powerful intermediaries that have actually reduced profitability, hence forcing suppliers to help fight off declines in that particular market.

Orbit has set its target market at those who like flashy and classy products. The Kenyan market has a class of the elite who believe that consuming such products give them a high standing in the society, considering that it is a developing economy. The goal of niche approach is to pinpoint a section of the diminishing industry that will either ensure a stable demand or decline slowly (Sarti, 2009). It also aims at strengthening the position in one or a few substantial segments considered to be relative with the need to retain future profits. A company can then move defensively in order to gain a strong position in this segment while still disinvesting from other segments. The management can decide to use some actions situated in the leadership strategy in order to reduce competitors exit barriers from the chosen segments profitability. The highly appealing segments are those that are in a position of providing the utmost prospects for constancy and where there is the most unyielding demand. The product was highly accepted in the market by all customers. This is due to the pocket friendly prices.

The Orbit Professional Gum was a new product idea, which narrows down to the ultimate introduction of sugar-free gums as one way of incorporating creativity and innovation at the same time. This goes alongside deduction of the activities as well as items on which success relies upon, timing intervals concerned with information gathering as well as analysis of feedback, the prevalence of the feedback loops and finally, significant factors felt relevant in emphasizing on the new product. Feedback on business idea supports product performance, evaluation and helps firms survive pressure in a competitive environment.

Preliminarily, it should be pointed out that the sugar-free products developed by the company heavily concentrate on the likes and followers of the product on the Internet. The two aspects form part of the activities that play a major role in evaluating the successfulness of the product. More likes and positive comments made by potential customers around the world may indicate how touchy the product is to the out-world. Nevertheless, the media platforms such as television as well as online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter may provide a showcase of the successfulness of the project

Reviews and testimonials observed in the developed products website further provide the most important feedback loop. This allows the business to receive immediate feedback from customers regarding compliments, complaints and the satisfaction felt by the customers. Possible means include creating groups over the social media. Virtual communities on Facebook and Twitter serve as relevant areas that can be attached to the chewing gum influenced by the business. On the other hand, Google pages and Google Plus allows sharing of details among a group with members having same interests and personalities. This further creates a potential ground under which the project can easily get the feedback from competitors and customers.

The feedback loops mentioned in the above case allows an informatory platform that has a significant impact on the marketability and consumption of the product. Primarily, the feedback loops determine the decision made by the business. Decision making is important as far as marketability is concerned. A lot of complaints from customers mean that the business should change the retailing strategies or add some features on the t-shirt. However, positive feedback from customers implies that the business should increase the outlets to enhance distribution of the t-shirts. Secondly, the feedback from marketing environment provides details on the competition and new strategies that need to be deployed to suit the competitive requirements. This enables the business to evade all areas that will degrade its performance. From the reviews online from the customers who have been consuming the sugar-free chewing...