Introduction
Cycling is one of the world’s most common methods of transport. It is also a recreational activity that different people participate. To some countries, cycling is not reliable as a method of transport following the extensive challenges that it is believed to hold. However, the case is different in Netherlands. Citizens of the country have considered cycling as the safest method of transport. This has been as a result of consideration for various elements such as the rate of road accidents, and cost of maintaining other methods of transport such as cars. Netherlands has approximately 31.2% of its roads users being cyclers. This is an extremely high proportion to other countries with the proportion being below 20%. Use of bicycles in the country has been a system of evolution, where different periods mark improvement in use of bicycles. The high use of cycling as a method of transport that is experienced today in the country has been caused by the high number of accidents that were witnessed from use of roads.
As a method to boost cycling as a method of transport in the country, measures have been undertaken by the government where cycling paths have been made compulsory along main roads in the country. The road traffic department of the country has been extremely keen on erecting signs that support cycling as well as regulate their conduct on the road. There are also public and private parking for bicycles in the country. For example, institutions and malls have made exclusive efforts of ensuring that the cyclers feel secure whenever they visit these places since they are not at risk of losing their bicycles (BicycleDutch 03).
This is the technique through which a company reaches the consumers of its products. It is supposed to attract new customers, as well as assist in retaining the existing ones. This technique should be handled with absolute concern and the best of the many that exists in the marketing field should be chosen. Choice for the most significant marketing communication strategy mainly depends on the kind of goods that one produces, or the services the he or she renders. Also, while choosing the best method of marketing communication it is always wise to consider such elements such as competition, and duplication of strategies. In this case, the most commonly used marketing communication strategy promotion (Greene 01).This marketing element entails a large proportion of strategies that would be vital in the definition of success for an organization.
The underground parking system is a unique idea that would have exclusive market in the country. Every organization would want to bet into partnership with the system in the bid to solve the problem that has been rampant in the parking sector in Netherlands. Therefore, the developers of the system should approach organization that experience high traffic of cyclers such as financial institutions, schools, and malls for a business deal on how the system would be implemented in the organizations. Although, this may seem challenging it would be sensible to manager or leaders who are tired of bothering so much with the issue of parking. Willing leaders of respective organizations or institutions will offer ample platform to analyze the benefits or risks that the system would cause (BBC 02). The new system will be required to hire employees and train them on the respective duties that they will be required to undertake in the company.
Sensitization of need creation events will be held in the institutions, organizations, and malls as a method of sensitizing the public or the users of the parking the difference that the underground parking system would cause to them. This will be a reliable platform to analyze the main needs of the users of the parking. It will be an ample platform to define the significance of a controlled parking. The element of security will be highly vital for discussion or analysis of the system. It is advisable for the presentation to cover the element of security in a deep manner.
The other element of marketing communication strategy that the implementation of the system would pay close attention to is direct marketing. Cyclers are people whom can be accessed at a given place at a given time. For example, in institutions class times would be used, in organizations tea and lunch breaks would be used to have a word with the cyclers. If a time is obtained to have direct conversation with the cyclers, it would be extremely easy to extend the information concerning underground parking system to them. The benefits of the system will be discussed at this point and it will be extremely easy to convince the cyclers why they may use underground parking instead of the normal forms of parking. Direct marketing aims at creating a personal contact with the customer. This is useful in enabling clients obtain exclusive services in case a problem concerning the system arises.
Promotion
This may be defined as the technique through which the manufacturer of goods or render of services attract customers to their business. The customer must be shown that his or her needs are being solved by using certain goods or subscribing for certain services. In the marketing sector, there are different promotional sectors that marketers may employ. However, the choice for the best or the most outstanding promotional strategy highly depends on the kind of services being rendered or products being produced. In this case, promotion may take the form of advertising, infrastructure creation, personal selling, public relations, social environment, and competition.
Advertising
This is a form of promotion where a company identifies the most influential and effective media to assist in reaching an extremely wide group of people. Following the connectivity of Netherlands to radio and TV, the most outstanding or applicable advertising media are TV and radio (Jefkins and Daniel 240). Almost all homesteads in the country are connected to a TV and a radio. These are the most common forms of entertainment in the country and most people own them. This means it is possible to reach a wide number of citizens through these media. Approximately, 76.4% of the citizens receive digital television signal (BBC 02). This makes it easy for the public to get aware of the new services in parking.
Advertising may also be done through other media such as billboards. The government of Netherlands has developed reliable road network that allows cyclers to follow paths that have only been developed for them. The paths may be used for advertisement to the cyclers. This will be done by ensuring that there exist billboards along the paths consisting of information about the underground parking system. Since cyclers use the roads everyday they will see the advertisement on the billboards and they will be able to react extremely well to the recommendations that will be given to them by the developers of the system. Also, newspapers are widely read in the country as they consist of news and advertisements which are the main inspirations to people purchasing newspapers (Jefkins and Daniel 246). This gives another opportunity for the company to sell its idea to a wide group of people in the country. Since some of the newspapers are read online, it will be extremely easy to reach and extremely wide number of customers in the globe.
Infrastructure
Underground parking system means that the parking has to be on the underground of a given house. This is an indication that the success of the system has to rely on the existence of a building to support the system (Young 41). However, it may be extremely expensive to construct a building with a sole intention of using its basement as parking. The company needs to approach the institutions that have already constructed buildings that have underground. The only thing would be to approach the management of a particular institution or organization with the approach of request for use of the existing underground to implement the system.
Once an agreement is reached between the developer of the system and the management and the owner of a given building, the public will be made aware of the parking that exists. Directions to the underground parking will be shown to ensure that they become operational immediately they are installed (Young 49). All services rendered through the system must be ascribed to customers to make sure there is element of attraction for any of the customers.
Personal selling
This is a promotion method where the company hires people to act as sales persons for the company. These people engage in conversations with customers on behalf of the company. However, such people have to be trained by the company for excellent representation. In this case, the system would be easily implemented if the company hired people and trained them on marketing skills that would help them reach customers on its behalf. These people who be assigned the duty of approaching individual customers and sell the benefits of the system to them (Young 54). This strategy would extremely influential to the entry of the company into the market as well as the process of acquiring new customers. The individuals are usually armed with facts, which are the convincing bits that customers want to hear. Whenever, the sales person succeeds in having adequate information for the customer, the company will be guaranteed for extremely high sale of its idea. The image of the services that the Underground Bike Parking System wishes to extend to its customers will be measured through the eyes and mouths of the personal seller.
Public relations
The Underground Bike Parking System would begin its operations through use of excellent public promotions. After the system has been installed in different organizations and institutions, a plan may be enacted where certain cyclers from a given organization are given a chance to park in the underground parking for a day to two. Depending on the publicity of the organization whose employees have been allowed free parking the services of the system would be known in the entire country. The public service, which was free to some of the citizens as a taste of what they expect from the system would be extremely useful in defining a wide market for the organization (Young 43). The company extending the underground parking services should consider this as an activity that it may undertake in all the premises within which they operate.
Social environment
A company that is socially connected to the community within which it operates is usually guaranteed of excellence. There is trust in business that develops as a result of extreme social connections between two people (Young 36). Since the Underground Bike Parking System highly depends on cyclers whose number is growing in Netherlands from time to time, it would easily build connections with the cyclers. This may occur if the company initiated a social competition for the bikers in the country. The social competition should be based on awards to the best bicycle riders. The competition would make the company famous and in the long run, it would be extremely easy to take control of the business in the country.
Training, Staffing, Quality Control
It is vital to understand that an organization cannot achieve its excellence if there is no proper knowledge or pool of skills in the organization. This is mainly achieved through excellent training for employees, proper staffing by the management and extensively effective quality control techniques. Therefore, for the Underground Bike Parking System to be extremely effective the three principles must be employed accordingly.
Training
This refers to a method by which employees are made aware of the activities of an organization. The company has to ensure that the employees have proper understanding of the activities of the organization and how they are executed. Training exposes an employee to the processes of a system in an orderly manner so as to ensure excellence in execution of the duties that will be assigned to an individual (Sahinidis and John 66).
In the case of the Underground Bike Parking System, the employees need to be trained on various elements. The first training would be on customers’ handling techniques. Since this is a new idea that people had not been used to, the employees must possess excellent skills on how to handle clients as well as introduce new products to them. Sales persons must be taught on how to ensure that the new customer sticks to the services of the company (Sahinidis and John 68). An outstanding sales person must be able to convince the client on continuous use of the parking services.
Since the system involves taking extensive care of a lot of bicycles as parked by customers’ proper understanding of the system is needed. The security personnel that will be employed in the facility must be fully aware of the protocols that need to be observed when a customer is parking a bicycle. This would equip the security officers with the necessary knowledge to help them identify the thieves who may have targeted the area (Sahinidis and John 67).This would secure the system and ensure that the organization has fully won trust from the customers.
Training will mainly take place through a word of mouth from the management. Since they are the people who understand the system extremely well they will be equipped with adequate information or knowledge that will be extremely useful to the employees. They will be able to demonstrate how certain elements of the system work and how different situations defined by the system should be handled (Sahinidis and John 69).They would also be educative on how certain risks that are evident with a system should be handled.
Staffing
The staff of an organization usually determines the performance of the organization. It is one of the sectors that any organization should consider vital and pay close attention to its operations. Staffing is the process by which an organization acquires its staff and how they are allocated duties in the organization (Divine and Wilson 219).
The Underground Bike Parking System is an organization that needs absolutely competent staff. These must be people with accurate understanding of the activities that take place in an organization. The organization will be having different departments which have to run in line with each other to ensure excellence of the entire organization. For instance, there will be the security department, which will require extensive measures to ensure safety of the parked bikes. If the people assigned the role of ensuring the bikes are safe, do not cooperate but engage in ill activities concerning parking the organization will definitely lose. On the other hand, if the individuals employed in the finance department are not honest people, the organization will initiate its operations on the wrong foot (Divine and Wilson 221). This means that the organization will be counting on losses before it has stabilized on operations.
The management must be ready to duplicate the dream they have concerning the organization to the staff. This would help the staff in understanding their roles in the organization. It would also be a platform to acquire knowledge on how certain management responsibilities should be undertaken in the organization. Only individuals with qualifications for a given vacancy should be hired since they would clearly understand challenges as they occur in a given field (Divine and Wilson 224).
Quality control
This is the determination of the reliability of the services offered by the organization. Every organization must be ready to offer excellent services to its customers (Sans 33). In this case, the Underground Bike Parking System would evaluate the effectiveness of the processes that it introduces in its operation.
In quality control, the organization would evaluate its ability to execute security to the bikes assigned to them. There may be proper analysis of the cases of insecurity that have arisen in the organization within a given period. Factors that acted as the agents of the element of insecurity for bikes in the organization must be discussed in length to ensure permanent solution is made. If the organization is driven by a central system, its effectiveness must also be analyzed with the available faulty elements replaced (Sans 53). Lastly, overall evaluation of the activities of the organization may be carried out to ensure ample solutions are given to the challenges that may have come up.
Conclusion
Netherlands being a country where cycling is a major methods of transport, parking should be a central point of consideration. Although, the government may offer parking services, it may not be enough to satisfy the 31.2% of the population who use bicycles for transport. It is through this that the Underground Bike Parking System has been developed. However, it is a challenge to make this system known to the public since it is new in the economy. Therefore, excellent measures have to be enacted to ensure people become aware of the services and are ready to use them. This may be achieved through execution of excellent promotional services for the system. The mostly used promotional services are advertising, public relations, social relations, infrastructure development and personal selling. The promotional activities would be effective if only they matched with excellent training, proper staffing and reliable quality control techniques.
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