Executive Summary
The raise of popularity of the product introduced by the company highly depends on the marketing strategy applied.
The Company
The enterprise per se which is to create its digital marketing strategy in order to get advantage on the market is engaged in additive manufacturing trying to popularize mass 3D printing. The former is advertised as the instrument which can provide people with both professional tools and toys.
The company ‘3D Printing & Home’ has already become a sensation in wide circles, as the items it offers used to be always respected only by certain categories of society, but not by the mass.
The company is highly involved in E-commerce collaborating with eBay Inc. and Amazon Inc, having found its consumer in this sphere. ‘3D Printing & Home’ has been praised due to its business-to-consumer vector, as lots of companies only now try to do.
It means that instead of explaining all the technological features of the product sold by the company, the former, inspired by S. Sinek’s “Start with why”, prefers explaining why people do need them, where they can be used, and why 3D technology deserves clients’ attention.
Company is divided into certain departments (the number of which is much lower than in typical companies) which are responsible for the key areas of ‘3D Printing & Home’. Among them, the following are to be mentioned: Purchasing and Quality Assurance which cooperates with Research and Development Unit as well as IT department. These three units are the ones which create our products, improve their characteristics, innovate, research the market as well as respond to clients’ concerns and comments regarding the quality of the products.
Two other important units which currently work on the plan are Marketing Department and Financial Control Department. The former and the latter are to develop the strategy which will help the company to be a leader on the smart technologies market without any further arrears and financial loss.
The person running the company is CEO, namely Mr. Tom Johnson, who has an experience of working in Microsoft Inc. and Apple Inc. being responsible for marketing management. The first step made by the CEO was the creation of ‘leadership and innovation team’ (hereinafter – LIT), created from the candidates who have proven that they possess the appropriate qualities during the call for these positions. It consists of twelve employees who are empowered to control the workers’ adherence to the rules and standards of the company as well as motivate the former to get involved into the internal processes.
The company managed to make a strategic choice once, having defined its key areas as well as supporting activities. This has led to the creation of the decentralized structure of the company with the possibility of the employees to affect the decision of the board of directors and CEO.
The step has also provided the company with certain limits of such a decentralization, in particular it has set the limits of interactions between the units (so as to prevent inappropriate interference); general rules of control over the activities of the lower units (Dugdale and Lyne, ).
During the strategy planning process, the LIT has developed the formalized rules of company culture. The purpose of the company’s activity has been extracted from Sadler’s handbook on strategic management (2003), namely: to meet the needs and expectations of all the stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers, and the community as well as the investors.
In order to fulfill the purpose, the following goals were set:
Understanding that the market the company enters has not been explored yet, the former has to keep improving itself so as not to lose the advantage gained at the beginning. At this moment, the idea of selling 3D technologies is competitively unique and valuable (Sadler, 2003). Simultaneously, the company is to care about its reputation and strategic assets as well as to keep innovating so as to remain compatible (p.12).
The company itself is designed in, it should be said, mechanistic way, when all the key tasks and functions of the units are foreseen (the one is often criticized as such which cannot cope with unstable conditions), however, such a structure provides a possibility for all the stakeholders to express their vision towards the development of the company, share ideas, and cooperate with other units, thus, it is decentralized.
The Market
The U.S. IT market is the area on which the products of the company are generally to be sold, despite the existence of other key markets which also play important role for ‘3D Printing & Home’. At first, analyzing any market, it is necessary to formulate the agency vision/need (Perera and Charles, ).
The company has to clearly understand how it can satisfy the needs of the consumers and what role of the company in this process would be (for instance, it is to be a leader or be in top 5).
We intend to become a leader in the field of 3D printing technologies for personal purposes, namely the products of ours are the ones which can be used at home.
Despite the fact that we highlighted the advantages of entering this market (there is almost no concurrency nowadays), it has to be mentioned that it is started being explored by the other companies as well. These are Aleph Objects creating all the types of electronic and mechanical hardware and WASP which is aimed at creation of low-cost housing units (https://all3dp.com/best-3d-printing-companies-startups-to-watch/).
If we analyze the world market of 3D printing, the situation will look in the following way:
(The information is extracted from the website:
all3dp.com/best-3d-printing-companies-startups-to-watch/)
Thus, it is expected that, in contrast to the above-mentioned companies, 3PH will be providing 3D printing services and 3D printers per se exclusively for personal use, to some extent ignoring the segments of science and business which have been already occupied by the competitors.
The market itself largely depends on the primary market, which includes equipment, materials, software, design and services (Wijk, 2015). The growth of the above-mentioned market is estimated to be 30 per cent annually (p.32). The market is being nowadays invested not only by large investors, such as Ford and Microsoft, but also by lesser enterprises which recognize the potential of this market segment.
Deloitte has summarized that 3D printing sector of economics is about to keep growing (Wijk, 2015). Moreover, it is expected that the printers are to become more affordable, thus, we can conclude that this is high time such a company as ours managed to cope with all the market risks.
The Organization
References
Bird, D. (2007). Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing 5th edn. London: Kogan Page.
Chaffey, D., Smith, P.R. (2013). E-marketing Excellence: Planning and Optimizing Your Digital Marketing 4th edn. New York: Routledge
Perera, D., Charles, S. (2012). The Inside Guide to the Federal IT Market. Management Concept Press
Sadler, P. 2003). Strategic Management 2nd edn. London: Kogan Page
van Wijk, A., van Wijk, I. (2015). 3D Printing with Biomaterials: Towards a Sustainable and Circular Economy. IOS Press
