Samsung Company is one of the best company selling phones and other technology items. It has been operational for several years thus serving a large number of consumers worldwide. Recently, I happened to meet with the head of the marketing department, sales representative, marketing representative and agents as I was taking the consultation task. The aim was to understand the challenges facing the marketing department as they market their products across the country. The consultation was necessary to help point out the gaps facing marketing department and implement strategies to address the gaps for better performance in the market.
After interviewing key persons in the marketing department, we were able to point out some gaps. The first gap identified from the interview was the gap of demand, whereby if some customers were asked they could change their suppliers. Some customers are dissatisfied with services offered by their suppliers thus reducing the level of trust. Many customers would prefer to switch to supplier there are sure of better services (Zeithalm, Bitner & Gremler, 2012). The customers complain about poor services from the agents and feel that their needs are unmet. Also, some customers complain that they fail to get what they want. For example, a new phone is advertised on the market with certain features that seem appealing, but upon buying the phone, they get a different phone from what was advertised. In search scenario, the customers are not satisfied and fail to trust the company.
Another gap identified is the supply side gap. From the interview, I realized that the company uses traditional methods in offering the services to customers. The company has not fully embraced the use of technology in selling and advertising their products. Instead, the company uses marketing agents who move around in vehicles advertising the products. They also give out brochures and put banners that advertise the products. The method of supply is traditionally and meets only a few customers. With the fast growing technology, most people have moved to digital marketing and buying (Zeithalm et. al, 2012). Most of the buyers do online shopping without having to move to the company or the agents. The traditional method of selling is expensive as it requires agents to move around looking for customers as compared to online selling whereby the agent will only post and within no time it attracts millions of buyers. Also, the other gap is the gap of lack of opportunities for the products. In that, there is the lack of opportunities. The company fails to balance the costs; they only offer products of high cost forgetting the customers who can only afford low-cost products. Therefore, there is no balance in the market, and it ends up concentrating with a class of people leaving others behind.
Besides, there is also the communication gap whereby the company raises the customer expectation, and they fail to deliver it as expected. The customers tend to be disappointed when the services fail to match with the reality. Also, the knowledge gap that exists when differences arises between management perception and customer's expectation. In most cases, the management incorrectly perceives the expectation of the client thus destroying their relationship (Zeithalm et. al, 2012). Therefore these gaps and shortcoming mention by staffs from marketing department may directly affect or indirectly affect the demand and supply of the products.
However, there are some strategies that marketing department should employ for better performance. The marketing department should address these areas including marketing talent, strategy, and technology for success. The company should work toward attracting, training as well as retaining the marketers for better performance. Therefore, the company should offer internal training to marketing agents on how to deal and build good customer relationship (Zeithalm et. al, 2012). Also, to recruit from the nontraditional backgrounds marketers existing in the company and employ talented personnel Also, to maintain the performance based culture whereby the markets will be frequently assessed and compensate the best based on their performance and achievement. Finally, the staff should focus on the company culture and attract very talented market agencies.
The company should improve the technology section, management, and activation. The marketing department should build and maintain a strong working relationship between the marketing team and IT department to improve on online marketing. Also, they must assess the marketing technology in place and identify measures to improve the weaknesses. Also, since the company lacks digital marketing, they should appoint the chief marketing technologist in charge of managing the convergence of the technology and marketing of the entire company (Zeithalm et. al, 2012). Ensure that the marketing is done digital or online platform where they can attract pools of customers from various part of the world. The company should move from the traditional methods of advertisement and adapt technology based advertisement that will reach wide areas.
The company needs to improve on the strategy and capitalize on the age of context, content and that of customer experience. Therefore, the company should work towards adapting campaigns and strategies in real time that are based on analytics from the marketing director. Also, the marketing department should take up an integrated approach to automation, analytics, digital marketing, content marketing, mobile, email social platform, search and the web among others. Therefore that will help reach out more customers. The company should work towards balancing the campaigns in the sales funnels and also mixing activities that are designed to generate leads, build a brand, increase the customer supply as well as converting leads to sales (Zeithalm et. al, 2012). They should also focus on personalized as well as the consistent customer remarks and experience across the channels. Also, the company should work toward maintain good customer relationship and avoid giving misleading information, especially in the advertisement.
Reference
Valerie Zeithalm, Mary Jo Bitner & Dwayne Gremler. (2012). Service Marketing (6th Edition). London: McGraw-Hill.
