Introduction
The most overwhelming challenge facing any company involved in global marketing activities is how to retain or improve its image and marketing activities. This is due to global competition from huge multinational companies offering the similar services.
Arkas Company, a maritime enterprise company is not an exemption in this scenario. It needs to restructure its services and operations in such a way that it retains its market share in the market, at the same time maintain the existing customer base, and solicit for new customers in the market (Arkas Awards, 2011). For this to happen, it calls for strategic management and marketing within the company. This will help the firm to survive in future and erase the doubt of being extinct in the market.
The Arkas Company should adopt advanced marketing strategy. According to this strategy, a business enterprise should create “a unique business proposition” which states that a company should come up with a unique competitive benefit on a dimension of importance to a significant segment of the market. It can enjoy a substantial share and high margin (Schmitt 1997, p. 2).
Theoretical studies show that many managers spent substantial amounts of their budgets in order to keep their businesses going. Bearing in mind that the Arkas Company has been in the maritime business for almost a century, there must have been so many business entities, which, have ever and are still willing to imitate the company’s services due to the success of its business activities. As it has been observed, the Company was wise enough to adopt one major marketing integrationstrategy.
That is besides being involved in shipping transportation the company has gone step further and horizontally integrated its business operations by offering other services like air transportation, warehouse services, automotive services, tourism services among others. This strategy, besides expanding the business and increasing its revenue, helps to reduce various business risks since profits from one sector of the business unit can cushion out losses from the other units (Arkas Partners, 2011).
Managing strategic change
Among the objectives of the Arkas Company is to make the firm free from vulnerable to any unexpected change either technological changes, economic changes or any stiff competition from an emerging business competitor. Therefore, managing strategic change is a fundamental aspect in this company.
According to Fornell and Wernerfelt (1987, p. 136) Strategic change can emerge both from within the company and the outside environment where it operates. The style adopted by an operating company to manage change is a very crucial role in its success or failure. There are four main strategies to manage a change (Gerrit, 2010, p. 12)
- Empirical-Rational Strategy: This strategy emphasizes on the self-interest of those who are affected by the change. The basic assumption here is that human beings are rational and will always strive towards benefiting from the change once the consequencesare clearly understood. To enhance effectiveness, the benefits must outweigh the risks and combined resistance cannot be overwhelming. In the case of Arkas company, any emergence of new business venture related to its business activities should be fully utilized and be the part the group that benefits from such an opportunity.
- Normative-Reductive Strategy: This strategy holds that people are social creatures with distinctive cultural beliefs. This strategy advocates for dynamism since we are living in a dynamic world and we should be ready to accommodate any change that comes before us (Arkas Purpose, 2011).
- Power-Coercive Strategy: The assumption behind this strategy is that society as a whole will comply and match itself to the rule of power or authority. For the sake of effectiveness, the firm must not exempt it from being a threat in its existence and wise decisions are essential for the company’s survival.
- Environmental-Adaptive Strategy: The strategy holds that there is possibility for people to adapt to a new culture or technology than to oppose itThis will in turn lead to growth and creation. This strategy is considered best for radical and transformative changes.
Arkas Company, an international transportation company can apply the above strategies in its maritime enterprise in maintaining its status quo so that the other competitors do not drive it out of the market.
For instance, this company is involved in the loading and offloading of cargo in different ports. Advancementin information technology has led to massive technological improvement of machines and equipments used in such facilities. Therefore, the company should be in the forefront in adopting any emerging new technology to improve its services and meet the increasing customer needs.
Use of high laborsaving and efficient machines will speed up the processes in the company and the company can easily acquire monopoly status because it will make it hard for other companies to enter the market. Absorption as well as retention of high quality personnel should be one of the prime objectives of this company. This will improve the company’s service delivery and its efficiency.
There is no single strategy that fits all the situations that a company experiences. Instead, all strategies need to be combined to address specific cases. As for the Arkas Company, number of things should be put into consideration including the magnitude of changeand resistance, expertise availability, number of stakes involved and how huge the company is.
In the event that the company’s stakes are high, a combination of all the four strategies is recommended. Power-Coercive strategy is advisable in cases of inadequate expertise. In addition, if there is dependency of the company on its owners, it will call for power-coercive style (Arkas Services, 2011).
Strategic implementation
Strategic implementation refers to ways in which strategies are executed in an organization. Strategies are achieved through such processes. Arkas shipping company should be in a position to provide an environment or avenue for the implementation of all the critical strategies concerning the company’s growth. There are six supporting factors during strategic implementation, which Arkas shipping company should take into consideration.
- Action planning: The Company should develop a well-detailed action plan in order to achieve its objectives. Delegation and assigning of duties should be done in systematic manner according to professional qualifications. There should be specialization amongst the workers and the management should translate broad statement into a variety of specific work assignments.
- Organizational structure: The organizational structure of the company will determine many things among them commitment towards developing new products. The company should hire competent research and development team to enhance the coming up of new products such as offering new efficient cargo services or improvement of warehousing system.
- Human ResourceFactors: The Company’s personnel should understand well all the strategies they are implementing for the benefit of the company. All the communication needs should be well addressed. In addition, the management should be in a position to predict or foresee the effects of each new strategy. Finally based on the employees’performance the company should decide whether to train existing workers or hire new ones.
- Annual Business Plans: It is important for every business to have annual business plans. These analyze in depth what the company intends to do for the year in question and they are the supersets of the strategic plans. Strategic plans go in line with business plans and they can easily be implemented in the presence of business plans (Berry, 1983).
- Monitoring and Control: after a project has been implemented well, there is need for monitoring and control practices so that it operates as planned and that the outcome is as expected in the plan. In case of any deviations, corrective action measures are taken in advance. In this process, a schedule can be changed or even a strategy dropped if does not seem to yield anything positive for the company.
- Linkage: this refers to how systems and operations in a company are coordinated. There are two types of linkage, vertiacal and horizontal linkages exist. Vertical linkage help the firm coordinate and support its sections hence improving on its performance and profitability. On the contrary, horizontal linkages help an organization increase its operations and coordination in different regions and countries.
Arkas Company has a proven record of success for the previous years. It has won three competency Awards and made remarkable profits over the years. If it implements strategies in the best way possible based on the existing goodwill, resource ownership and proper management, it will emerge the world’ biggest shipping company, cargo loading and off-loading company as well as lead in the provision of other services.
One of the strategies should be to expand its market activities all over the world. As it has indicated having business interest in Nigeria due to the country’sprojectedeconomic growth, it should go ahead and hunt for more business potential countries in Africa since it is believed there are other countries rather than Nigeria with future business prospect.
Strategic recommendations
Introducing a new service or entering a new market
In the recent years, Arkas has expanded its business activities and as at now, it has more than fifty companies operating in the maritime, land, air and rail transport and services sector. It is well known for the provision of wide range of services globally. It is quite evident that the company has contributed significantly towards the economic growth of Turkey due to its successful trading activities. Actually, it is one of the engines propelling the economic progress in that country.
Due to its good reputation, the company has even been recognized by the International Financial Organizations like International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Company has already indicated interest in continuous expansion of its operations. This will most probably be through introduction of a new service or entering a new market. This will call for a strategy before the Company does so.
The first initial strategy in the introduction of a new service the Company should do is thorough market survey of the service it intends to introduce. This will provide the Company with such crucial information like whether other market players in the market are currently offering the service and if so to what extend (Gale, & Chapman, 1994).
The customer demand for the product, the cost of introduction of anew service and the possibility of entering into a merger if the product is to be offered in a foreign country in order to reduce the risk and increase market penetration in the target market should be considered.
Entering in a new market might involve operating in a new territory, which in this case can be a new country. The management should consider certain factorsconducive for a good business environment like political situation in the country, economic potential and security situation in the target country.
In the event that this strategy succeeds, the Company can enjoy the benefits of Economies of Scale due to its expansion programs (Porter, 2004, p. 67). This is because the fixed costs will be spread over wide areas of business activities. Sometimes such a strategy may end up failing if not well implemented which might be caused by collection of wrong or inadequate information regarding the strategy in question.
In implementation of thisstrategy, two things have to be put into consideration. These are relationship marketing and the internet marketing (Gordon, 1999, p. 34)
- Relationship marketing: It is a form of marketing which results from direct interaction with customers and puts more emphasis on customer retention and satisfaction rather than sales-driven motive. This company being a maritime enterprise should focus on satisfying customers first instead of focusing on sales since it is out of customer satisfaction that the sales will stemout.
- Internet marketing: this is marketing via wireless media. It involves digital customer data and wireless customer relationship management (Rayner, 2010, p. 38). In executing this initiative, all the maritime activities should be computerized so that customers and goods can be tracked easily whenever a need arises.
Internal improvement (process improvement initiative)
The prime objective of this reason is to improve the ways in which services are offeredthrough techniques that are more efficient and cut down the costs involved. Adopt this strategycan only if the company is aware of the latest technology and the pace at which it adapts to new change will determine its success or failure.
It has been discovered that despite containers being the fastest and cheapest way to move a good from one point to another, it is not being widely used in many third world countries. This is because these countries have not been able to adopt the latest technology that means they still rely on mediocre technology in offering loading and offloading services in their ports.
The Arkas Company should utilize this as an opportunity, devote its resources towards acquiring the essential equipments, and extend its services to these nations before another Company comes in. Adoption of new machines alone is not adequate to address the issue of latest technology but the company should also hire qualified and modern personnel to operate these machines.
The contribution to be brought about by successful implementation of this strategy is remarkable. Efficiency production will lead to production of high quality services. Subsequently, the existing customers will be retained and more customers attracted to the services of the company hence increasing the sales revenue. One of the reasons why such an initiative might fail is due to inadequate funds to implement the initiative or incompetent personnel within the company (UNCTD, 2010).
Adoption of new (information) technology system
As pointed out earlier, modern technology is being advocated because reduces the company’s cost of production. Some modern machines are believed to be increasingly replacing human labor thus saving many companies huge amounts of money that should have been used in paying the employees. The Company should come up with a clear strategy on whether to adopt new technology or not.
However, various factors have to be considered. These include the overall costs involved, the impacts of introduction of such technology on environment and the possibility of the introduction of such a technology bringing positive results to the company. A technology that will enhance the provision of modern logistics services in all its agencies will put the company in a more competitive position (Arkas Purpose, 2011).
In addition, services should be improved by ensuring there is smooth flow of information between different agencies and ports as well as between the Company and its customers. Just like internal improvement strategy, the adoption of new technology will lead to reduction in production costs hence higher profitability in the company and production of high quality products.
Adoption of new technology does not necessarily succeed. It can fail because it does not match the needs of the company. For example, a company like Arkas that deals with maritime activities might be in need of very complicated services. Therefore, it calls for professionalism in adopting any technology required. Nevertheless, the company should be determined in overcoming all the challenges that can deter it from adopting latest technology, which is very important in modern world.
Conclusion
Arkas International Transportation Company is a company with good reputation and goodwill. It is a company with growth prospects and its intentions of formulating and implementation of new strategies will bring about positive expansionary impacts and growth of company’s revenue. Its recent growth has been due to wise business strategies like putting customers first by ensuring that it satisfies its needs. If the current pace of the company continues, it willeventually emerge the world’s most profitable multinational company.
References
Arkas Background, (2010) “The Background of Arkas.” Web.
Arkas Line, (2011) “The Information about Arkas Line.” Web.
Arkas Purpose, (2011) “The Purpose of Arkas.” Web.
Arkas Services, (2011) “The Service provided by Arkas.” Web.
Arkas Partners, (2011) “The Companies they Represent.” Web.
‘Arkas Awards,’ (2011) “The Awards given to Arkas.” Web.
Berry, L. (1983) Relationship Marketing. American Marketing Association, Chicago. p. 146.
Fornell, C. & Wernerfelt, B. (1987) “Defensive marketing strategy by customer complaint management : a theoretical analysis”, Journal of Marketing Research, pp 337-346.
Gale, B. & Chapman, R. (1994) Managing Customer Value: Creating Quality and Service That Customers Can See New York: Free Press.
Gordon, I. (1999) Relationship Marketing: New Strategies, Techniques and Technologies to Win the Customers You Want and Keep Them Forever. John Wiley and Sons Publishers.p. 336.
Porter, E. ( 2004) Economic Development in Rural Areas. Web.
Rayner, A. (2010) Put the E-mphasis on Local Internet Marketing and reach first page on Google. Web
UNCTD, (2010) Value of volume of world trade by Sea. Web.