Sustainability of competitive advantage
Marketing mix is always implemented by most of the vast enterprises to enhance their competitive advantage against their competitors. Marketing mix is always the incorporation of several ideas and campaigns to promote their products to make popularity amongst the masses.
The major elements of marketing include the 7Ps and 4Cs of marketing:
- 4Ps: Product, Price, Place, Promotion with recent addition of People, Process, Physical Evidence.
- 4Cs: Commodity, Cost, Channel, Communication.
In Jumeirah beach hotel, most of the above marketing mix strategies are implemented to give them a competitive advantage over their rivals. Competitive advantage occurs in the organisation when policies and attributes are developed to outperform competitors, which have been implemented in the following way in Jumeirah Beach Hotel.
Cost Leadership Strategy where Jumeirah Beach Hotel has enacted a policy to provide high quality services at a low price. This has aided the beach hotel in that despite the high quality services, the prices are too low hence being able to have a larger number of customers visiting the venue.
Differentiation Strategy has also been implemented in Jumeirah beach hotel. This encompasses the doing of things in a different way. Majorly, it targets the provision of products and services in a more different way and features than their competitors. This has given them a competitive advantage, i.e. at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, their services also include the incorporation of such services as fashion and designing and current lifestyle trends in market a part from offering accommodation and meals to the consumers (Wenderoth 112). This explains the differentiation strategy that has been incorporated.
Jumeirah Beach Hotel also has a modernity strategy where they advocate for the introduction of new and different products and services, added attributes and new ways of manufacturing products. Jumeirah has introduced the production of their bottle tops for bottles. This combines luxury and style attributed to the hotel (Bose 23).
Operation efficacy approach is where the major internal operation undertaken in an organisation are performed better that the competitors by attempting to enhance value, productivity, and employees and consumer satisfaction within the enterprise. Jumeirah Beach Hotel has incorporated, i.e. the entertainment of their consumers with the latest movie production and world history artifacts which have given them a competitive edge over their competitors.
Customer-Orientation Approach has also been considered at Jumeirah Beach Hotel where their main aim is to make the consumers of their products contented with the kind of services and products offered. This strategy majorly puts into consideration undertaking the consumer analysis to determine what they want and how to be able to achieve that. Jumeirah has achieved this by incorporation of the web based management system where the consumer touch is obtained online, e.g. online booking system. This majorly encompasses informing, persuading and reminding of their customers of their products and services (Jumeirah Internationa).
The above strategies generally have illustrated how Jumeirah beach hotel develops their products and services to be able to sustain competitive advantage.
Distribution to provide consumer convenience
Distribution generally entails how accessible the products and services are to the consumers. In provision of services, i.e. booking reservations, Jumeirah Beach Hotel has incorporated the web based online booking system where room reservation services are easily accessible from anywhere across the world (Bose 34).
Consumers across other parts of the world, who are also in need of the same services, have been reached through the branches enacted in various places to be able to reach similar services offered at Jumeirah Beach Hotel, hence, this has highly increased the convinced of the offered products and services and its reach to the consumers (Wenderoth 145). This has also been achieved through the introduction of different residences by Jumeirah to be able to reach their vast customers across different town both locally and internationally.
How prices are set to reflect the organisations objectives and market conditions
Price is generally the rates paid by the consumers in exchange for provision of services and products. Most of the time price aids in achievement of the enterprise objectives and their position in the market. Price then reflects the organisation objectives and market conditions through:
Maximisation of Profit
No organisation or business enterprise always establishes to maximise, losses hence through pricing and enterprise is in a position to determine how they will be able to achieve the objective of maximising profit on the rate charges to consumers at the expense of the rate of spending to offer the particular product or service (Wenderoth 160). While considering the rate of charges to be able to maximise on profit, the organisation should be able to evaluate their position to be able to assess market condition e.g. what is being charged by their competitors and the market price (Wenderoth 171).
To meet specific return on net sales
Normally, the price set (target price) is enacted after determining the necessary gain (on cost) per unit of service offered or product sold to achieve the overall intended profit goal. This explains the relationship between pricing and objectives on maximisation of profit.
Realise End Sales Level
Enterprises do asses their success in terms of returned revenues. This is always a surrogate for market share; pricing approach in this case is intended to focus on setting price that maximises the sales (Wenderoth 174).
Maintenance of market share
Increased output is attached to the capture of the desired market share in most organisations; the pricing approach in this case is always offensive or defensive. Most organisations do implement the offensive approach where increased market share through lowering of set prices in the short term which may lead to increased sales which in the longer term can lead to lower costs and ultimately increase the price due to increased market share.
Counter competition
Prices are normally set which mirror the average industry price with most being tailored to the features of the organisations specific service and product offered. Most organisation always use the market analysis to be able to analyse the current consumer price before coming up with a particular products price, this is because they do not want to charge to much which would give their competitors a competitive advantage over them and also too low not to be able to maximise the profits fully to achieve the organisations goals and objectives.
How promotional activity is integrated to achieve marketing objectives
Promotion refers to the different strategies and ideas implemented by marketing personnel to make the consumers aware of the products. This is achieved to achieve marketing objectives through the analysis of both product characteristics and customer characteristics. Majorly, this is always done through advertising to make the consumers aware of the existence of the product in the market by informing them on the benefits and features. Jumeirah has done this through online marketing and advertising as well as branding.
Hence, to be able to understand some of the integrated promotional activities, understanding the actual activities will enable the understanding of how these activities are integrated in the marketing objectives. Thus, major marketing objectives include:
- Increase sales.
- Improve product awareness.
- Establish yourself in the industry.
- Brand Management.
Hence promotional activities will be integrated to be able to achieve the above objectives in that;
Increase sales
By increasing sales the organisation will be trying to provide a direct incentive to purchase a product. This is included in the sales promotion as promotional activities. For example, at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, by booking a room, one would be offered with other range of services such as swimming pools and other entertainment services at the hotel. This acts as a sales promotion strategy to be able to increase on sales and to some extent be able to inflict a return purchase habit of the customers. By also providing a free incentive as a sales promotional activity of purchasing product and services also increases awareness of the public as an objective of marketing.
Improve product awareness
Exhibition and trade fairs are promotional activities that are geared towards improvement of product awareness. For example, a display of several products and services rendered by the enterprise to the general public enhances the consumers to be able to understand and know about the existent of a particular product. This promotional activity normally involves the physical attachment of a consumer to a product through exhibition. This is integrated to achieve the marketing objective since it aids the consumers and the target population to be able to understand the range of products and services that are provided or offered by an enterprise.
Establish yourself in the industry
For an organisation to be sure of the return to purchase actions of customers, a lot of factors contribute to this. Promotional activities such as public relations, personal selling, merchandising and many others enable a particular enterprise to be established and be sure of a particular market share. Promotional activities mentioned above such as public relations enable an organisation to have favorable publicity in the media, this will enhance the possibility of them winning the heart of most of the consumers, and sponsorship also enhances the establishment of an enterprise in the industry since enhances good publicity. For example, sponsorship, this to the public acts as a service to the community hence aiding in increasing the publicity achieve one of the major goals of publicity of creating awareness of product and services to the consumers and potential once too.
Brand Management
Brand is always aimed at maintaining the public image, they are not normally aimed at advertising a particular product but the simple use of certain images makes the consumers remember the brand which is always related to a particular product or service.
Hence, through promotional activity, marketing objective of making the consumers aware of the products and services provided by an enterprise is achieved; this is majorly reflected in the revenue or sales returns realised at the end. The major promotional activity aimed at ensuring brand management is advertising which always encompasses the introduction of a particular product in the market, to ensure increase of demand for a particular product, to counteract competitors advertising trends, to support other promotional tools, to inform the consumer population of product change or the introduction of new services/products, to encourage repeat use of a product, and top remind a market about a product.
Summary
The above elements of market mix are basic for an enterprise to be able to realise the set objectives, the extended market mix that is people, process and physical evidence are significant in that, people is generally recruiting right personnel, creating right skills for a particular task, which also may enhance customers relations. Process generally is the operations and service charters in place which pertains to enterprises goods and services; this is because consumers normally want to understand more than the services offered. Physical evidence is the overall appearance of the enterprise and entire products which is essential in winning the customers intention and perception. Most of the consumers do rely on the physical cues as prospects for decision making on a product. Hence, a service provision environment, such as the one for Jumeirah Beach Hotel, always replaces these physical cues with physical evidence to be able to persuade their consumers. Physical evidence is the fabric part of a service. Hence, to be able to achieve this, enterprises have relied on things like buildings e.g. prestigious buildings or picturesque quarters, the interior of any service environment, logos of organisations, and the colors used etc. These majorly appeal to the consumers eyes hence being in a position to be convinced by what he is seeing apart from the services offered.
These are all essential to be able to realise the aims and objectives of an organisation and at the same time attain the set goals.
Works Cited
Bose, Chandra. Modern Marketing. Chicago: PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd, 2010.
Jumeirah. n. d. Web.
Wenderoth, Martin. Particularities in the Marketing Mix for Service Operations. Michigan: GRIN Verlag, 2009.