Introduction
The following paper focuses on the various aspects of marketing. It is based on analyzing the situational analysis of the business scenario of an organization. The organization that has been selected to conduct this scenario is the Warehouse Group. The Warehouse Group is one of the relatively new organizations in New Zealand who belong to the retail industry. In this paper, the various aspects like analyzing the marketing mix, describing the environmental forces that influence the business environment and the various issuers will be discussed here. The situational analysis of a business organization means analyzing the data from its database and judging the impacts of the natural and artificial resources on the business operations. This is very important aspect since this organization is operating and catering to the needs of the millions of customers. The resources that affect a business have got a deep connection with the profits and losses that are incurred.
This company named the Warehouse Group is the one situated in New Zealand is one of the relatively new organizations in the country (Thewarehousegroup.co.nz 2017). This company is situated at the North Shore. It is headquartered at Northcole in Auckland. The founder of the Warehouse Group is Stephen Tindall and the current CEO of the company being Simon Turner. It works in the retail industry that has a serious competition with the organizations like Wesfarmers, Woolworths and Coles Supermarket in the neighboring country Australia. The number of employees currently in this organization is 12000 (Thewarehousegroup.co.nz 2017). It has some group sourcing supports as well. They are Insight Traders, Schooltex, International Brands, Big Bucket Deals and many others. Another competitor of this company is Kmart that operates within the same country as well. The company has expanded in Australia lately that has given them the opportunity to gain more customers.
Their retail operations are conducted in three major formats under the three divisions. These divisions are The Warehouse New Zealand (Red Sheds), Warehouse Stationery (Blue Sheds) and Noel Leeming (Thewarehousegroup.co.nz 2017).
The Warehouse Group is focused to meet the needs of the natives of New Zealand with their products. They have concentrated to meet the requirements of the people by focusing on the people and the environment at the central point (Ferrell and Fraedrich 2015). They have always believed that healthy business need healthy societies and the opposite as well. According to them, healthy businesses and healthy societies are complimentary to each other. Their focus is on customer safety, customer satisfaction, keeping team members happy and making the communities of the country feel satisfied. They have committed themselves to build a sustainable business in the future (Ferrell and Fraedrich 2015). They have aimed for reducing the waste materials, conserving energy, operate ethically within their target market. They are an important member of the Sustainable Business Council.
This organization has some objectives in mind that have to be achieved to gain the leading position in their concerned industry (Reeves and Ventura 2012). This will help them to stay ahead of their rivals in real time. They have promised their stakeholders and employees for sustainable corporate governance and they have focused their concern on providing the customers with the best products to their audience. They want to provide the customers their products with the best offers available in the market. This is why they have continuously focused on producing the best products with the best quality (Reeves and Ventura 2012).
The warehouse provides its customers with a lot of products and services. They have been very committed and loyal towards their customers that have helped them to progress and strive in this competitive business environment (Babatunde and Adebisi 2012). They provide general merchandise in their retail organization. This company operates through several branches like The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, Noel Leeming, Torpedo7 and Financial Services Segments(Babatunde and Adebisi 2012). This will be helpful to determine their wide range of customer based products. The things they deal in are automotive, baby and toddler, food and beverage, furniture, gaming, gardening, gifting, hardware, health and beauty, music, pharmacy, pet care, technological appliances products, books, DVDs, electronic products, jewelry, supplies for party, toys, things for sports and outdoors and many more.
These products are generally very beneficial for the customers because they get many types of important things under one roof. Their online marketing strategies have been very effective as well (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 2012). Through this, they have gained more customers because several people are very busy with their own lives. They have put more effort on maintain the quality of the products since the customers are at the centre of focus (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 2012).
The customer value proposition is a very important thing in this scenario. The Warehouse Group has made sure that they remain in the focus of their customers in many ways (Osterwalder et al. 2012). They have their own set of ethical values, driven by which they are resolved to produce the best products. Their products are very friendly for their customers and this helps them to gain the attraction of their customers. The way they give more value to the business environment because it is product that matters the most to the customers. Their employees are fast learners and this gives and added advantage to make their products more customers friendly (Green 2012).
The Warehouse Group has a steady marketplace position at the moment. They look to capture the retail market in their country (Tassey 2012). They are strong competitors in the mass-market industry. The kind of pricing strategy they are following depends on low price and high sales of the products. The most important product categories of the organization are clothing, houseware, and entertainment and consumer electronics (Tassey 2012). They have adopted a market penetration strategy so that they can capture a bigger target market in the future.
Situational analysis
A situational analysis of the business is required when it chooses for expand in the other markets and prepares for a marketing plan. The marketing of the business organization has to be in line with the organization’s objectives (Armstrong et al. 2012). The situational analysis of the chosen organization the Warehose Group has to be done in this context. There are some frameworks for making a situational analysis of the organizations. These frameworks are internal and external forces or business environments, target segmentation of the business, organizations; performance on the broader perspective and the strategies that they might undertake to improve their business conditions (Armstrong et al. 2012). The various situations of the business organizations have to be analyzed as well by the PESTEL analysis. Apart from that, the Porter’s five forces has to be used as well to describe the scenario.
The main factors that are behind the success of this organization and the areas that needs improvement can be described through a PEST analysis (Gupta 2013).
Political factors
The laws and regulations of the New Zealand government have to be maintained by the organization so that attention can be drawn of the government. The possibility of implementing new legal frameworks can very easily affect the organization’s suppliers of the raw materials. The services suppliers can also be harmed in this course (Gupta 2013). The new law that is going to be introduced in the country will make a breach for the consumer supply standard from contracts to contain the unfair contracts. This would establish ‘take it or leave it’ relationship between the buyers and the suppliers. The suppliers will gain more power and The Warehouse Group will not be able to gain cheaper supplies.
Economic factors
The economic factors depend on the environment that the firm competes or wants to compete in. The retail industry had suffered great losses because of the heavy global recession. The Warehouse group is already a discount store. So, if they put on kore stress they will be facing huge troubles. The market conditions are quite challenging and the competition is increasing every day (Gupta 2013).
Socio-cultural factors
The Warehouse Group had been influenced by the uinion-led New Zealand Living Wage Campaign. This was designed to increase the minimum lower wage so that the gap between the rich and the poor could be sorted out. This factor may be able to create a stability in the minds of the Warehouse Group employees (Gupta 2013).
Technological factors
The advancement in the global technology has shed a huge impact on Warehouse Group. They have introduced the self-checkout machines (Gupta 2013). The self service equipments have made the business transactions safer, faster and more smoothly. The customers will be able to make the transactions in a faster way by introducing the ATM technology. The apps can be created for the company and the smart phone transactions will make big impact on this (Baden-Fuller and Haefliger 2013).
The business environment in New Zealand is quite competitive. The other organizations in the retail industry have been following the strategies of Warehouse Group. This has been very effective to increase the business spheres of the company. The organization will need to increase their efforts to be successful (Gupta 2013). The Warehouse Group must recruit more skilled and talented employees so that they will be targeting to gain the competitive advantage over their competitors (Gupta 2013).
The business ethics of the organization have to be maintained (Crane and Matten 2016). All the business ethics related to employment conditions, customer relationships, building good relations between the co-workers and most importantly the ways to increase the corporate social responsibility will have to be maintained by the top level management of the organization (Gupta 2013).
Role of digital media
The impact of the new digital media and the electronic marketing will be very important to assure the proper customer satisfaction (Couldry 2012). The role of the social media platforms is indeed significant since more number of people can be connected in this context. The online marketing system will cater to transactions being faster, smoother and safer. Effective marketing will be made through this process. Customers who are busy can be connected very easily through advertisements in the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others. Thus, the customers will be benefitted as well as the marketers (Couldry 2012).
Target segmentation
The four types of target segmentation bases have to be discussed in this part of the paper.
Warehouse Group’s geographic segmentation depends on the areas in which they market their products. They do not price their products at a high range so they can launch their products in the urban as well as the rural areas (Riefler, Diamantopoulos and Siguaw 2012). This will have a great impact on the sales of the company.
The psychographic segmentation of Warehouse group depends on the ways the consumers behave and their lifestyle. The company launches products according to the needs and the personality traits and moral values of the target audience (Riefler, Diamantopoulos and Siguaw 2012). They provide healthy foods to the people of the rural areas and luxurious products to the people who belong to the urban areas.
As the chosen organization is a retail group, it will focus on different age groups and produce the products that suit those particular age groups (Wedel and Kamakura 2012). The children prefer chocolates and other important things and they will produce things that will cater to the age group older than the children and the elder group of the society. They will be focusing online presence in the develop the online medium transactions of the products (Riefler, Diamantopoulos and Siguaw 2012).
The different sections of the Warehouse group like Warehouse Stationery, Noel Leeming and others have chosen to launch new products after making a thorough survey about the behaviors of their customers (Ailawadi et al. 2014). This will cater to their needs and the customers will be satisfied if they launch new products by judging the customer preferences.
|
Selected product/service |
Age group/ Demographic |
Behavioral |
Psychographic |
|
Healthy drinks |
10-25 |
The children and the boys or girls like to have a sip a cup of health drinks after coming from school or college. |
The children and the boys or girls like it because they feel they can get energy for their studies in the evening. |
|
Selected product/service |
Age group/ Demographic |
Behavioral |
Psychographic |
|
Technological appliances like cordless phones |
28-40 |
The people within that specific age group will be helped because they will feel it faster to communicate with the people. |
The people within that age group would like to communicate with their relatives and with people in their professional atmosphere. |
Conclusion
The paper can be concluded by saying that Warehouse Group is trying to become the global leaders in the retail industry in New Zealand. They have been making certain strategies that would make the customers to be attracted towards them. These strategies would be very appropriate for the target audience of theirs. They have to think about the various ways to increase their target audience and thus gain a competitive advantage over their competitors. The organization has several sections who promise to deliver the best services and products to their target markets by segmenting their markets and procuring the best positions in the market.
References
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