Politics
Abstract
The world has experienced credible changes in past few years. The proliferation of new products, the growth of the internet, the lighting speed of technology innovation, the globalization of business and in addition to the rising changes caused by the terrorists attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These changes have consequently affected today’s market place from what it was in the last decades. Some companies have been rendered stagnant while some have progressed. The left behind companies include Smith-Corona and Weiner’s Department Stores. Others like South West Airline, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Procter& Gamble and other internet firms like Yahoo, Wine.com, and e-bay have greatly flourished. This paper will focus on marketing principles which have to be understood by managers in order to implement and develop effective marketing practices. This will be in special interest to Smith-Corona Corporation. It is of importance to note that these principles will only be effective when applied with special consideration of psychological, social, ethical and political influence which are the forces that have an impact on the market.
Introduction
Marketing has various definitions and in all these definitions, the basic idea is creating customer values in the most effective way. Marketing is subject to ethical and other constrains that a company may have. Marketing involves the exchange between buyers and seller and also between other parties. Marketing has an impact to a firm, its suppliers and customers. The process of marketing includes communication, delivering, creating and enhancing and offering. Marketing frequently involves enduring relationships between sellers and buyers and other parties involved. In marketing there are two concepts that exist. There is selling the concept verses marketing. This is the traditional concept of selling which emphasis on selling the existing product. In this traditional concept there is the idea that if the product is not selling, then more aggressive measures need to be undertaken for the products to be sold. This will include more advertising, cutting price and hiring more aggressive sales persons. Smith Corona, a manufacturer of typewriters, was too slow to come to a realization that consumers wanted the liability to process documents and not typewriter per se. In contrast, the marketing concept focuses on getting consumers what the seek and want regardless of whether it entails coming up with a totally new product.
Smith Corona Corporation
SCM Corporation is a US calculator and typewriter company. It was once a large UBS manufacturer which experienced sales declines of its typewriters in the mid-1980s. This was because of the introduction of PC-base word processing. This new technology was introduced by IBM, Olivetti and Brother who acted as Smith corona competitor. The company was established in 1886 by Lyman, Wilbert, Monroe and Hulbert Smith came up with Smith Premier Typewriter Company. They created the first machine to be used both for lowercase and uppercase letters. Other rival firms during 1893 included, Calligraphy, Densmore, Yost, and Remington who like Smith Corona had joined the Union Typewriter Company, a trust in Syracuse, New York. In 1903, quitted the trust to form L.C Smith and Bros. By, 1914, the company had become successful in its corona model leading to the renaming the company to Corona type writer company (Smith Corona, 2010).
Smith Corona was formed when Corona Type writers united with L.C Smith& Bros making Corona typewriters and office typewriters portable. Springfield riffles were made by Smith Corona during the World War11 along side other small arms for US Forces (Smith Corona, 2010.) After the war smith Corona company fully concentrated on typewriters especially on making them more efficient and convenient for business office use. There was successful and the sale of these typewriters after the Second World War Increased rapidly because of their faster out put. In 1955 the company introduced electric type writers which were more portable and easy to travel with hence, becoming convenient for business people. By 1957 the type writers were largely being purchased for general home use and it became as essential to US College and high school students.
Smith Coronal purchased Merchant calculator in 1958. The company then changed its corporate name to Smith -Corona Merchant in 1962 after inventing the type writer power cartridge return. Later developments included the introduction of cartridge ribbon which solved the problem of getting ink stained fingers when replacing spool of ink ribbon. The company’s calculator market became devastated when there was the introduction of cheap electronic pocket calculator in the market. This was during the mid 1970s. In 1985, the company introduced its first portable word processor alongside a portable type writers with an electronic spelelelsing function. Personal computers were widely being used for word processing. In 1995, the manufacturing plant moved from Cortlandvills to Mexico. During the year, the company announced that is was cutting down seven hundred and fifty jobs because of the continuing sale decline after which the companied declared bankruptcy. Since then the company has concentrated on the sale of word processor and typewriter supplies as well as the sales of portable electronic typewriters. The current models include inbuilt dictionaries, spell, checker and grammar features and LCD displays.
Analysis
There are various organizational cultures that are beneficial to company’s financial results. Most important is to develop an operational marketing plan by selecting an appropriate marketing strategy for an organization to operate within it. This is important for any company because a marketing plan defines the overall purpose of the company as a whole. This will help in the identification and creation of a sustainable competitive advantage (Dibbm, Smikin, Pride and Ferll, 2001, p 689). A marketing plan adds value to the organization because it is a combination of understanding, knowledge and application of skills and abilities that could enable an organization to have a along lasting competitive advantage.
The ability to apply marketing in different context is important because it places the company at a stronger position as well as adding value to its position. Corporate planning should be continuous process of making presentations, and risk taking decisions which are systematic with great knowledge of a corporate future. In such a planning process, there is the need of measuring results and expectation against the expectations through systematically organized feedback (Nykiel, 2003, p 35). Marketing planning also involves environmental scanning. This is the fundamental planning process which is the interregnal part that will determine decision making and localized planning. This secession considers political influence and laws which determine a product. A corporation needs do an assessment and research on proposed and known changes in the environment such as, social and demographic change, politics, economic issues, technology and legal issues which affect a company in the long, medium and short term period. PEST analysis is essential to conduct environmental scanning.
The next important step is to conduct a market audit which involves systematic evaluations, analysis, and collection of information that relates to external and internal environment of the corporations. Strategic planning generally involves coming up with long term plans of the organization’s overall business objectives. Through this, the organization will conduct a SWOT analysis to determines its strengths, weakens, Opportunities and threat. Marketing projects and activities should consider the findings of the general organization (Beamish& Ashford, 2007). The focus should be implementing a marketing plan that members will work as a team giving careful attention on the needs and special consideration for the actual implementation of the plan. Marketing begins with finding out what the consumers need then developing that product. After the creating of that product, the next steps is to inform customers about its and make the product available for them.
Organizational culture and effective marketing
Financial success of company involves well established elements like costs effective procedure, skillful marketing, visionary leadership, competitive pricing, high productivity workforce and comparative pricing. These elements though essential, they do not guarantee success. The most important factor to consider is organizational culture which will act either as the constraining factor or the supporting factor in determining the financial objective of a corporation. An organizational culture comprise of assumption and business, values as well as practices that together knit an organization as one unit. The behavior and social norms of an organizational form the basis of every day practice and performance stands , behavioral expectation and promotion criteria.
The following are recommendation to Smith Corona managers that will in adopting the universal attributes of organization to enjoy financial success which have been given by Hegberg Consulting Group. First is to get grounded on business realities of a Company like Smith Corona should have know what is going on in their world by considering the company’s competition the market place and what the customers need . This is through the use of SWOT analysis. One of the major threat for then in 1985 was the computer technology which uses word processing. The best alternative would have been to either change their products to also specialize in computers or come up with a technology that would serve the need of their customers. SWOT analysis would help in keenly monitoring competence, opportunities and threats. The second recommendation for the senior managers of Smith Corona is to spend time with customers and understand their need. They have to focus on the customers for the company to attain financial success. If the typewriters is what they customers need, then the product should be effectively marketed but if the customers need a more advanced technology, then the company should consider coming up with a anew and better product to serve the needs of the customers. Such a n openness in leaders to input the needs of the customers assists to understand the world form the point of view of the customers and enrich their process of decision making.
Another recommendation for Smith Corona corporation is to stay focused on long term vision, goals and strategies. This is because long term vision , strategy and goals are the aspects that play an integral part for a successful organization. The managers need to understand that the world is rapidly changing. Its is true that in the 1970s, world processing was mainly used with typewriters but now computers have taken that role with more added advantage. Therefore, managers should constantly be on the look out beyond the horizon for trends and shifts their strategy accordingly. Alongside this developing an existing missions, visions and business model will greatly help in inspiring and motivating employees to come up with creative ideas to financially assist the company. This has been used in successful companies like Microsoft and BMW among others.The managers have to invest in management development which will help them to be committed in management development, continuous learning and quality improvement. These were cultural norms that will benefit Smith Corona in developing quality products. Such a culture will help the managers learn new trends and technologies that are on the horizon. They should continuously adapt their system and products to accommodate new changes for them to remain financially stable.
Any successful organization has to cultivate a cultural norm that will continuously challenge inefficient and outmoded system. Smith Corona managers are not excepted from this recommendation. They should avoid getting tied down to old procedure and assumptions and establish a way of constantly developing themselves, their products and services. Finally the managers should model their company as winners and not on the losers. And this will be determined on how corporation adopt to change. Smith Corona, TWA, Montgomery Ward and the Bing Three automakers did not adopt to changing condition. They have lost enormous market share to foreign comparison by failing to recognize consumer demand and changing trends. Finally, smith Corona Corporation has to develop a cohesive team that models collaboration, creates an atmosphere of trusts and give the members a strong sense of loyalty and belonging (Hagberg, 2010).
Conclusion
Marketing is a general term that does not simply mean the selling of a product but its comprises of various factors that run within an organization. Marketing is fulfilling the desires and demands of customers and in so doing the general organizations culture has to adopt changes, restructure of its products and services and adapt new technologies to meet the demands of the customers.
Reference
Smith corona (2010) History of the e corporation Retrieved from
https://www.smithcorona.com/
On June 11, 2010
(Dibbm, S, Smikin, Pride and Ferll(2000)Marketing Concepts and strategies 4t edition, Houghton Mifflin Publishers. p689).
Ashford, R & Beamish, K (2004) Marketing planning, revised edition, Butterworth-Heinemann, p 234
Hagberg, R (2010) Organizational Cultures that get financial results. Retrieved from http://www.leader-values.com/Content/detail.asp?ContentDetailID=218
On June 11, 2010
Nykiel, R (2003) Marketing Your Business: a guide to developing a strategic marketing plan, Rutledge publisher’s p 35
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