Executive Summary
Command Spanish is a small sole proprietorship franchise in Grand Valley. It specializes in providing occupation Spanish training to businesses and government institution in the region. In the past, it has been very successful, because of the wealth of experience that Mr. Sadoval the owner has in teaching Spanish and the personalized attention he gives to each and every of his students.
The company has a wide distribution network allowing it to reach many customers at their convenience. The company is ranked the best for quality. The company has adopted many new and innovative ways to deliver its services such as the internet, books, audio tapes and CD’s as well as the traditional face to face approach.
However the company is facing increased competition from new entrants into the Spanish language training market. Some of these companies are well organized, well resourced and are using cheaper and innovative methods to deliver their services.
As a result the company’s market share and position is being threatened. However the competitors lack local knowledge and their services lack personal touch that Command Spanish is renowned for.
The company’s primary objective is to expand its service into other segments other than corporate and government institution. The company also seeks to defend its position and market share from new entrants and various forms of competition.
This will be achieved through transformation into a fully fledged institution with a fixed location, highly trained and motivated staffs that are able to provide high quality services at affordable prices. The challenge that the company faces is that it has a weak financial position and lacks funds to finance the expansion program. It will source these funds externally from financial institution or invite equity partners.
The owner also lacks the capacity to implement the transformational process. External consultants will be hired to advice and guide the process. The company will use its knowledge and experience to enter into new segments. It will maintain same levels of service quality in these new markets segments.
The products will continue to be differentiated through quality and personal touch and through provision of high quality supplementary materials using new innovative delivery methods.
The products will be creatively priced to maximize revenue yet giving value to customers, The Company will deliver its services through its new training facilities and through the internet, CDs and books. The company will undertake an advertising campaign to create awareness of the company products and will use the internet to promote its products because it is cheaper and it has a global reach.
It will place adverts in print media especially business magazines and journals because they have a longer shelf life. The company will invest in its staff as they are the key channel through which the services are delivered through provision of training and adequate motivation. The company will also invest in the best processes to ensure that services are offered in the best way and that customer’s experience is enhanced.
It is expected that after implementing this programme, the company will realize increased growth in sales and profitability; it will achieve growth in market share and level of customer satisfaction. These measures will be monitored constantly to evaluate the success of the marketing programme and to guide future marketing planning activities.
Marketing Plan
Developing Competitive Advantage
Matching internal strengths to its opportunities to create capability in serving customers needs; the emerging opportunities for Command Spanish company have been identified to be in the areas of information and communication technology, use of new media such as internet, audio-visual and print to reach a wider market, the recovery of the United States’ economy which is expected to increase hiring and hence the market size, and the.
The company should use its internal strengths to ensure maximum exploitation of these opportunities.
First Command Spanish will need to carry out research to identify the needs in the new present market segments and emerging market segments and then utilize the vast experience and knowledge of the company to provide high quality training to customers.
New methods of service delivery should be used to reach those customers who are far, or are unable to attend classes such as CDs, books and the internet.
The company should use all forms of communication that is internet, radio, TV and print to promote itself and inform the market of their products and the high reputation of the company, its trainers and training programs. They should also maintain flexible pricing to attract all types of customers.
The company has been committed to operational excellence, product leadership and customer intimacy and this is demonstrated through its investment in research and development to ensure customers’ needs are met and emerging trends identified. The company has provided high quality training for many years and is the market leader in quality teaching of Command Spanish.
It espouses customer intimacy as seen in the personal attention given by Mr. Sadoval to his student and prompt response to their queries. The company also maintains a flexible pricing policy to accommodate all customers.
Weaknesses and Recommendations
The main weakness of the company is its weak financial position. Because of lack of adequate funds the company is unable to adequately finance its operations, expand into new markets and segments and is not assured of sustainable future operations. Lack of funds for research and development, limits the company’s ability to develop relevant products and this may lead to poor quality services.
Poor quality services will damage the reputation and the image of the company. The company should increase its funds by injecting capital, inviting equity partners or taking a loan facility. If the company is unable to secure financing it should maintain the current level of operations where it’s assured it can deliver high level of service quality to its current limited number of customers given its limited resources.
Liabilities
The company has several major liabilities and their effect on service delivery is visible. The most significant is that Mr. Sadoval is the only trainer in the whole company. Because of this, he is unable to teach many students and at the same time give personalized attention to those he teaches.
The company also lacks a permanent venue for training as he has to hire space and he keeps moving around. This costs money and there is low visibility of the company than if the company had a permanent office and training facilities.
The company also has a limited segments focus. A market segment is a group of customers in a market who have a homogenous set of needs and wants and whom exhibit similar behaviors (Kotler, Keller, Brady, Goodman, Hansen, 2009). It focuses on the corporate and government markets ignoring other segments completely.
The market potential of the other segments namely personal, educational, and international has not been tapped. Finally the teaching format of Mr. Sadoval focuses so much on phonetics rather than grammar and conversational skills. The company should realize that its customers do not seek mastery of the language but just working knowledge to enable them converse at basic level on Spanish.
The company should also employ more trainers to assist Mr. Sadoval and find permanent premises where training will be carried out. There is need to expand training to the other untapped segments and finally implement a shift from emphasis on phonetics to providing practical grammar and conversation skills in the training
Developing a Competitive Focus
The recovery of the economy in the United States presents Command Spanish Company an opportunity for growth. However there is increased competition as more and more trainers enter into the market. Some of them are using cheaper methods such as e-learning, learning softwares amongst others. Some of the competitors have more resources than Command Spanish.
To maximize the opportunities and counter the threats in the market the company needs multiple approaches in strategy. One to adopt a defensive strategy whereby it will seek to protect its market share and position itself differently among new competitors.
Secondly the company should adopt a market segment diversification strategy in which it will seek to enter into other market other than the corporate segment it currently serves.
To serve this multiple segments well it needs to adopt a differential pricing strategy where a different price will be charged to business/government and individual clients. To effectively distribute its products the company needs to have a fixed premises for carrying out training activities. This location should be well considered as it determines the perception of people of the company and the brand.
Other methods of distributing the services include on site delivery for example training delivered to companies, schools, institutions among others. Internet, audio tapes, CDs and books should also be used to distribute the service. The company will need to revise and redesign its products so as to meet the needs of the market especially the new segments it enters.
Marketing Goals and Objectives
The marketing goal for Command Spanish should be 1: To offer Spanish language training to business community, government and other segments. The following should be the subdivisions of the main objective.
Objective A 1: Provide high quality services by using multiple, internal, high-value resources through teaching aids such as books, audio, CD’s, internet and face to face interaction.
Objective A 2: To increase the capacity of the organization to cater for the expected growth in demand for training due to improved economic condition and demographic factors by hiring two assistant trainers in the next three months.
Objective A 3: To develop new ways of delivering service and value to customers in the current financial year by establishing a fixed location for a training institution. And increased usage of new media such as internet, software, TV and audio promote the organization in the next six months.
Marketing Goal 2: To grow the Market size of the company
Objective B 1: To expand the organization’s business segment’s focus from the current two segments of government and corporate to include schools, personal and Institutional segments in the current financial year.
Objective B 2: To increase the expenditure in Research and Development by 40% in the next 2 years, to facilitate product review, new product development, market analysis, trend monitoring and projection. This is expected to enhance the organizations capacity to improve satisfaction of current customers needs as well as enter into new segment thereby resulting in growth.
Objective B 3: To expand into at least three major countries as other markets other than the United States in the next 3 years. The country has focused entirely on the United States in the past and has overlooked opportunities in other markets where the service is needed.
The company should use the development in technology such as internet learning, internet conferencing and physical entry into these new markets as means to provide training in the new market. The countries with good potential to enter include Canada, UK and China, Germany, Japan amongst others.
Marketing Strategy
The primary market constitute of both English speaking government and corporate institutions’ employees in the Grand Junction and Western Slopes area who require knowledge of Spanish in the course of their work. The individuals that use or need the training services are those that feel that a little knowledge in Spanish will improve their business or work.
The customers or potential customers for the company’s training services also include any company that does business with Spanish speaking people or might have them as customers or suppliers in the future. The customers of Command Spanish services are English speakers who do not speak any Spanish.
Most of these customers do not feel it is necessary to master the Spanish language in order to improve their business and work, but would benefit from having a working knowledge of Spanish. The advantage of the Command Spanish training is that it is not as broad and tedious as most competitors programs are but it is simplified to equip its customers with knowledge necessary to communicate in Spanish within a short time and with minimum effort.
Identifying Characteristics
Those who need the training services are business owners, workers as well as government workers. They are English speakers and are usually new employees who are young in age but also include older workers who have settled from other areas where there are very few Spanish speakers to be found.
People who need Spanish language training are workers who manage Spanish speaking personnel such as farm managers and construction managers as well as public employees such as law enforcement officers, librarian, health workers, school teachers, social workers as well as workers in retail and business who interact regularly with Spanish speaking people.
Basic Needs and Requirement
The desire of those seeking Spanish language training is a working knowledge of Spanish which include the ability to understand and express themselves in Spanish. Due to the pressure of time, these customers require flexible and convenient training programmes that fit into their busy lifestyles.
They also require programmes they can afford that are customized to their needs as well as a lot of attention and prompt responses. The young people undertaking the programmes prefer IT savvy modes of training such as CDs, audio tapes, video and internet. Older generations are content to use books and tapes that are easy to read and the material simple enough to comprehend.
Purchasing /shopping habits
Purchasing /shopping habits are most likely to be influenced by age and incomes. Young users are likely to buy and use the product online. They are likely to make payments using online systems.
They prefer quick and convenient access to training services which online system would provide, are more likely to favor a group training session instead of a one on one approach. Status is important to them; therefore need to emphasize the status significance of training. They are unlikely to identify the need for training; mostly it would be a senior manager who would recommend they go for training.
On the other hand older users will identify their own need for training; they will prefer face to face training over internet and audio.
They are likely to consider the cheapest form of training and are unlikely to buy a lot of supplementary materials because of price sensitivity. They are known to be loyal to respected personality and are likely to be loyal customers of Mr. Sadoval who is widely respected and renowned in the Grand Valley area. They are unlikely to use online payment systems and instead more likely to pay using cash.
Product strategy
The brand name, package design and logo design of the Command Spanish Company are widely known and respected. The company has the widest and most up to date distribution system in the market. The quality level associated with the company is the highest and their programmes are known to be concise yet very significant.
The company trainer Mr. Sadoval is well renowned and respected and he delivers personalized training to all his customers. The major features and benefits of the training programme is its compactness.
It is brief yet sufficient. It has an exciting approach to learning utilizing a conversational style and uses a wide variety of interesting modern tools such as CD’s, internet, books and videos to enhance learning. It is cheap and it is customized to the needs and ability of every customer.
The attention given to every student is a very strong characteristic as it shows the commitment of the company to the success of every customer. In addition the curriculum is well researched and incorporates dialogues and phrases that are widely recognized among all Spanish dialects. The programme also is flexible to accommodate the time and money a student has.
The product is differentiated from others in its quality focus since the company always seeks to provide the highest quality of service using the best methods of delivery. It is positioned as a market leader in the Grand Valley area and has the largest distribution network. Unlike its competitors the products are specifically tailored for occupational purposes and not just for a broad understanding of Spanish.
The service is faster and less expensive, and incorporates cross cultural training necessary for occupational purposes. The service is provided with supplementary products which customers are encouraged to buy such as books audio tapes and CD’s as well as using additional material in the web to increase their knowledge. These materials enable students to learn at their convenience.
Pricing Strategy
The company’s pricing strategy is designed towards its key market segments i.e. government and corporate institutions. The objectives of the pricing strategy are to contribute to giving value to customer through high quality services at affordable prices.
There are different types of competition; there are large organizations like Profluent and Spanish Now which are big institution with human and financial resources and their prices closely match those of Command Spanish.
Other competitors include Rosetta Stone who have developed a Do-it-Yourself Software and are using their financial resources to aggressively market it. Online website also offer training at rock bottom prices compared to others. People can also get free training from Spanish speakers.
The company’s prices are designed to give the best value to the customers and this is achieved through R & D, personalized attention and care to individual students. Compared to competition, the prices are more superior as they give better value. Companies like Profluent and Spanish Now are not regionally based so may lack personal touch and local knowledge.
Their programmes are not always occupational based (but Spanish now has a business training programme which is provided to groups upon request and is expensive – costs more $40 an hour). Online and web based programmes may be cheap but they lack conversational aspect and are less fun, thus are less effective since they lack human touch which is important for effective learning.
The prices that Command Spanish charges are fair and they have always enabled the company to achieve break-even point and achieve respectable profitability. The company’s overheads are low (for example lack of an advertising budget relying instead on word of mouth) as its operations are lean enabling it to charge low prices.
In the future though, the company may need to review its pricing when it hires new staff, acquire premises for training and engage in aggressive promotion of its service and to improve its overall financial position which is weak limiting the company’s ability to grow and expand.
The company has a discount pricing policy where it charges less for big groups and also has flexible charges and customizes lessons to fit what customers can afford.
Distribution and Supply Chain Strategies
Command Spanish has the most extensive distribution network in the market. It uses an organization wide network to distribute its learning services such as the internet, online classes, books, CDs, and personal training. This intensive approach to distribution ensures that customers have access to a wide range of information to enhance their learning.
Since it is a service no intermediaries are involved because services have to be distributed directly by a provider to the customer. The distribution strategy is consistent with the organizations goal to provide high quality service to customers that are cost effective.
The information in these new media is developed through careful research, upholding the company’s image as a leader in quality service. The company is also able to satisfy a wide range of customers through these mediums and customers have access to wide array of information and sources and each choose that which is most applicable to them.
Integrated Marketing Communication (Promotion) Strategy
Due to limited resources, the current strategy heavily depends on word of mouth to promote the company and its products. The company also uses internet to communicate and websites to promote its services. The current strategy works well due to a limited segment focus and the existing capacity of the company given that Mr. Sadoval is the only trainer and the company lacks fixed premises.
To achieve expansion and to continue providing high quality services the company should adopt the following promotion strategies given its limited resources: Continue using the word of mouth strategy to reach to customer.
This can be enhanced by giving incentive to those who recruit customers through this medium e.g. a 5% rebate on any new student introduced. The company should run a TV and radio commercial for a limited period of time; this will be targeted to non-users and those not aware of the existence of the services (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2007).
The company can also place adverts in business and trade magazines which are known to be effective because by nature they tend to stay for long on the shelf thus extending exposure over a long period of time. The company can also engage sales representative to market the company. These would target managers who are the ones who usually identify and prescribe need for language training in their workers.
The company can carry out a customer advertising promotion campaign by handing out well designed brochures and pamphlets at strategic locations such as malls, shops, colleges, airports among others.
The company can sponsor or co-sponsor events such as sports to increase visibility and take opportunity of the event to explain itself and its products. The company can also get involved in social responsibility such as clean ups, cancer campaigns, cerebral palsy, diabetes awareness campaigns and in the process be seen by possible customers.
The company can use its location as a promotion tool. An appropriate location communicates a lot regarding the quality of service provided by an organization (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2007). Secondly, the company can use point of sale advertising such as banners, posters, logos, signposts, billboards to increase visibility and attract attention. The company should continue to use internet advertising to reach out to customers.
Further it should create linkage with popular websites such as Google so that its products can be located through its search engines. It should extensively use the power of free advertising presented by new social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Groupon and Linkedin. The popularity of these sites with young well educated tech savvy people presents a good marketing opportunity.
The company should ensure it appears online web directories at a small fee. The company can also use branded items such as pens, caps, tee shirts, writing pads, mouse pads, and office calendars to increase visibility. Finally, the company can organize open days for prospective customers to meet the trainers and have their questions answered.
Market Implementation
Structural Changes
There are major structural changes that need to be made in order to implement the new marketing plan. One will be the creation of physical and organizational structures (Hartline and Ferrell, 2011). The company needs to establish a physical location for training and administrative offices. The company needs to recruit trainers, administrative marketing and support staff.
To do this the organization will have to undergo a transformation from an owner managed enterprise into an organization run by professional and managed by an administrator. An experienced change management consultant is required to guide the organization through this process.
The organization must be vigilant to ensure high quality standards associated with the school are maintained during the transition process and that pitfalls are avoided and feedback obtained throughout the whole process.
The organization should recruit highly qualified, certified and experienced trainers, administrative and support staff. They will be trained on the organizational values and strategies that have been successful in the past and how to work together as a team to deliver results.
Mr. Sadoval will require training on how to let go the control of the whole organization and let the professionals run the day to day activities of the company. Channels of communication will have to be established as well as incentives developed to encourage employees to deliver on the firm’s marketing goals and objectives
Tactical Marketing activities: the Service Marketing Mix
The marketing of Spanish language training require the 7 P’s of marketing be evaluated. Services unlike products are invisible, intangible, inseparable and cannot be stored. Thus the challenge of marketing service is different and more intense than that of products (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2007). Tactical marketing activities involve the following components.
Product: This is the most important part of the marketing plan because no matter how well the other aspects of the marketing mix are, a poor product will fail miserably. The aim of this strategy is to create a winning service that will deliver great value to customers than the competitors.
The company will achieve this through research and development, innovation in products, service delivery, focus on the customer and personal attention. The company should focus on providing occupational Spanish speaking skills as its core products while translation services and other services will be provided as auxiliary products.
Price: Price is a very critical component of the marketing strategy because it attracts customers and retains them thereby generating revenues for the organization. The company will be expanding and will require resources for its operations, growth plans and future survival. Thus, the price set for the product must generate sufficient revenues for the company.
The five factors that influence pricing decision are “profit maximization, market share maximization, survival, social consideration and personal or organizational objectives” (Palmer, 2008). These are the factors that will strongly guide and influence the organization on price.
The company will consider the prices charged by competitors so that it doesn’t out-price itself out of the market. It should charge differential prices to different segments in order to maximize return while at the same time guaranteeing satisfaction to ensure repeat buying and positive word of mouth. Volume discounts and other incentives should be used to increase turnover.
Place: Place decision is concerned with how to deliver services to customers economically, safely and conveniently.
There company will deliver training through its own training premises, or at the premises of the customers and also using electronic media such as internet, audio, CDs, DVDs etc although the latter method of electronic should be limited to avoid proliferation, intellectually material loss through copying and loss of face to face interaction which is useful in learning.
Promotion: Promotion entails all effective communications used to bring awareness of the service provided by Command Spanish to the market.
The aims of promotion are to create awareness in the market of the service, to provide additional information as to aid customers learning and to convert prospects into users by convincing them to buy the product. A combination of advertising mediums should be used including advertising on TV, radio internet and magazine.
The company will also run promotional campaigns to create awareness and stimulate purchase of services. Outdoor advertising such as billboards, banners, and posters will also be used.
Pamphlets, brochures will also be distributed in malls, schools and colleges. The internet will also be used especially social media and online advertising boards such as, Penny Saver, Craiglist etc. The company will also use word of mouth to promote its services
People: Services are delivered by people (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2007) in this case trainers and front line staff. The company will ensure they are motivated at all times to ensure they deliver good quality services; the interaction between customers and service staff strongly influences the customers’ perception of quality (Hartline and Ferrell, 1996).
The front line staff should be courteous, helpful and well informed when dealing with customers. Administrative and support staff should also be trained to complement the activities of the front line staff in delivering high quality service to customers.
Physical Evidence: Because services are essentially invisible, they use physical and visible cues to judge the quality of service provided or to be provided. These include supplementary material provided such as CD’s, books, the physical location of training facilities and the layout, design and equipments found within the facility. The staffs’ uniform conduct and posture also constitutes the physical evidence.
Process: Services are delivered in real time and they also require in many times the cooperation and involvement of the customer. The mechanisms by which services are delivered, including the procedures, policy guidelines, equipments and the processes that have been mechanized all affects the quality of service delivered (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2007).
Service personnel should be properly trained on the process to deliver services and what to do if the service delivery process fails. Feedback from customers should be taken seriously and incorporated in future planning.
Evaluation and Control
Measures must be put in place to guide the implementation period, track progress to determine its effectiveness and to ensure the set goals are achieved as much as possible within the company’s timeline (Hartline and Ferrell, 2011). Pre implementation controls: Before the implementation of the program, the following must be in place to ensure success.
Adequate funds to finance the change process and for capital investments, human resource such as new trainers, as well as administrative and support staff, finally adequate research must be carried out to provide accurate information to guide the process.
In the course of the process, a skilled project management consultant is required to guide the management in implementing the key changes. Also a specialist on human resources procurement is required.
Post implementation review: Review of the post implementation results will be carried out to determine whether the programme was successful and whether the desired level of market share and profitability is achieved and if the brand image has been upheld, improved or harmed.
The company will also get feedback from customers on the quality of products and whether thy get value for their money. This information would form the basis for future marketing programmes.
Formal Standards for Evaluation
In addition to evaluating progress on the implementation schedule (attached appendix 1) in which clear targets are set regarding time and finances and goals to be achieved and who is to perform them, the following standards will be used to determine its effectiveness of the program after its implementation.
Overall standards: This will measure growth in sales, profitability, brand image, market share, customer satisfaction and retention and determine if the change is as desired in implementing the programme
Product standards: This will measure the quality of the new product whether it meets set specifications, the core product quality whether it is satisfactory, the supplementary products such as training materials whether their quality is satisfactory, customer experience, and whether there is any innovation in new products.
Price Standards: This will determine if the price set is helping the company to achieve its revenue target and if it delivers value to the customers.
Distribution: Measures the effectiveness and efficiency of the distribution system. Are the new methods of distribution helping the company reach its intended customers effectively and affordably? Does it deliver value to customer through flexibility and convenience without compromising quality? Is the connection between the company and its market lost?
Integrated marketing communication: This will determine whether the communication objectives are being met, whether brand awareness has been created, brand recall and recognition is established and whether there is an impact in converting prospects into opportunities and retention. It will also measure the effectiveness of sales promotion campaigns that the company will have undertaken.
Performance Audits: There is need for regular and timely audits to be carried out to establish progress made towards achieving the set goals. The company will use internal resources such as sales reports, financial reports to carry out these audits regularly but will need to employ an external professional firm to carry out an overall audit at least once a year.
Research: As clearly seen in the implementation schedule, at each stage there is need for research to inform decision making. Marketing research will be carried out before, during and after implementation of the programme to monitor closely the market conditions and advice the need to adjust the implementation strategy.
References
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Hartline. D.M and Ferrell, O. C. (1996). The Management of Customer Contact Service Employees. Journal of Marketing, 60(4): 52-70.
Lovelock, C.H. and Wirtz, J. (2007). Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy. 6th edition. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Kotler, J. Keller, G. Brady, B. Goodman, L. & Hansen, I. (2009). Marketing Management. London: Pearson Educational.