Question one: Real life example of a company outline the key components of a customer driven marketing strategy
There are diverse ways of approaching the market. This is explained in the different ways of dividing the marketing factors referred to as market segmentation. One of the ways of market segmentation is customer driven marketing. Customer driven marketing is a strategy that uses the customers as the main engine that drives a certain market. In such a case, the customers are knowingly or unknowingly, used to pass the information about the company and its brands to fellow customers (Chitty, Barker, & Valos 2011). In a case study, this paper analysis such a strategy as used by Harvey Norman a leading electronics manufacturer in Australia. The marketing in the study that I personally participated in was a partner project with the Commonwealth Bank dubbed “Harvey Norman Merchant Marketing Campaign”
Harvey Norman Merchant Marketing Campaign
Harvey Norman has been distributing electronic equipment to Commonwealth Bank. In the Harvey Norman Merchant Marketing Campaign, the Commonwealth Bank was seeking customer information on the functionality of the systems that commonwealth bank was using. The customers were expected to give both personal experience and that that they had received from their fellow customers.
The systems that the customers were expected to give report about were: the communication systems, the data systems, as well as the marketing systems. The information that the customers gave was received by both the commonwealth bank and Harvey Norman marketing departments. The intention of the whole activity was to use the data collected in the end in marketing. This data could be used by both commonwealth bank and Harvey Norman. I at that time was part of the Harvey Norman marketing team. The primary recipient however was Commonwealth bank.
Question 2: How Harvey Norman has been capturing values from customers.
As noted above, Harvey Norman has been using various strategies in getting values from customers. The case study given above is one of the numerous ways that the company uses. As we have noted, the company among other channels uses partner projects in getting feedback from the customers (Chitty, Barker, & Valos 2011). In this study, the company uses a customer company in getting the feedback. The customers of Commonwealth Bank unknowingly give their opinion on the functionality of the products of Harvey Norman. In such a way, the company is able to get some values on which to add their products.
The other way that Harvey Norman uses to get values from its customer base is through their website which has pages that customers can forward complains or give their compliments on the products. This is used hand in hand with the online voice calls that are run in a twenty four hour system. This system is used by the customers in rising any complain or enquiring on the functionality and performance of the various products (Fleming, 2007).
Conclusion
Customer based marketing segmentation has been adopted by many companies as its effectiveness has proven itself. The case study that we have seen in the paper is clear evidence on how this can be attained. However, this paper does not assume other marketing models that are used. Marketing strategy is dependent on the objectives of the marketing, thus other strategies may be used where they are best appropriate. This paper, recommends use of customer based marketing complementary with any other marketing system. As an old saying says “customer is the king”
Chitty, W., Barker, N.,& Valos M. ( 2011). Integrated Marketing Communications Asia Pacific Edition. Australia: CengageBrain
Fleming, L., (2007). Excel HSC Business Studies. Australia: Pascal Press
