Case Study : ' Marketing, Products, Services, And Swot

1.0 IntroductionTelstra Corporation is a telecommunications and information services company. It provides a range of services including fixed line services, Internet access, and business services. Telstra is the market leader in the telecommunication industry in Australia, with one of the most prominent brand names. However, its products and operating services face an increasing threat from competitors. An analysis with recommendations of Telstra marketing is necessary in order to improve its performance.

As described in figure 1, The strengths and weaknesses of the SWOT analysis are internal factors , and can be controlled directly by the organisation. Elliot, Rundle-Thiele, and Waller (2010) describes these strengths and weaknesses as those attributes of the organisation that can help or hinder in achieving its objectives.  In figure 2, the strengths portrayed for Foxtel in the SWOT analysis are vast in comparison to it’s weaknesses. In particular, the advertisement campaign has been a strength for Foxtel, despite the global financial crisis, Foxtel was able to successfully ‘sail through the storm’ with the help of a brilliant advertising campaign promising viewers to save money with Foxtel (Simon Canning, 2011) .  In contrast, the advertisements are targeted to a specific audience which has left out the aging population of 65 and over, which constitutes 13.5%  of the population as at 30 June 2010 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010), this exclusion is a weakness in its advertising campaign.  In addition to weaknesses, Foxtel has

Quick to react to market trends due to its supply chain design, operation & delivery

Zappos’ primary selling base is shoes, which accounts for about 80% of its business. There are currently about 50,000 varieties of shoes sold in the Zappos store, from brands like Nike, Ugg boots, ALDO Shoes, and Steve Madden heels. They also serve the niche shoe markets, including narrow and wide widths, hard-to-find sizes, American-made shoes, and vegan shoes. In 2004, they launched a second line of high-end shoes called Zappos Couture.

Unfortunately, many online retailers have begun to catch up with many of these core competencies. The concepts of next-day delivery and “above and beyond” customer service are no longer the “WOW” factors that they may have been five years ago. However, the relationships that make up “Powered by Zappos” are tough to beat and give the company a competitive advantage through its supply web. At the time of this case, Zappos still holds the niche of being an online shoe expert, but companies

The aim of this paper is to critically evaluate the SWOT analysis as one of popular tools in marketing. SWOT analysis is an analysis method of identifying all external and internal factors for organization strategies (Rauch, 2007). It is considered in this paper that though SWOT analysis has limitations, it can be improved to be more effective as its development. This paper firstly focused on the definition of SWOT analysis. And then it discussed the context of the SWOT analysis including its evolution and its applications. Followed by, the paper introduced two relevant practice cases based on SWOT analysis. Next, the critical evaluation of SWOT analysis was presented with

Zappos.com, established in 1999, has rapidly become a strong competitor in online apparel and footwear sales. With the original corporate vison of offering the absolute best selection in shoes; the vision has evolved over the past several years to include the goal of being the retailer that “provides the absolute best service online -- not just in shoes, but in any category” (Zappos, 2014). The online retailer stocks millions of reasonably priced footwear products; carrying thousands of hard to find brand named shoes, handbags, apparel and accessories via the company website and 7,000 affiliate partners. In recognizing their rapid success, Zappos credits it to their commitment to the customer, stating,

In 2011, the company also launched an educational website for SMEs to seek Zappos’ executives for advice with monthly fees. Lastly, Zappos could also expand and diversify away from retail, to businesses such as hospitality or banking, where customer service is dominant.

SWOT has been used by countless practitioners, marketing researchers, and is a frequent and popular tool for business marketing and strategy students. Its simplicity and catchy acronym perpetuates its usage in business and beyond as the tool is used to assess alternatives and complex decision situations. In the business arena the grouping of internal and external issues is a frequent starting point for strategic planning. It can be constructed quickly and can benefit from multiple viewpoints as a brainstorming exercise. Typically, managers first consider internal strengths and weaknesses (at the top row of the 2 × 2 grid) which can include image, structure, access to natural resources, capacity and efficiency, and financial

SWOT analysis has been identified as a defective tool used in the strategic planning due to its unsystematic and its non-quantitative nature that which does not have a predictive power. The Meta-SWOT has been introduced as an alternative because it does not consider market as one of the major determinants of the environment, but gives an opportunity in the resources and the potential in establishing the competitive advantage. The Meta-SWOT is crucial in making various decisions and how they can be utilized in future. The resources and capabilities are usually utilized based on the VRO method, they are categorized based on rarity, inability to imitate, and the company. The criteria used to analyze the market are ensured that it matches the

Competitors include Crest, Colgate-Palmolive, GUM and Oral B. These companies manufacture plastic, non-recyclable toothbrushes ranging in price from $1 to $7. Some of these brands even sell replaceable head, electric or battery-operated toothbrushes within mainstream channels for $20 to $70 a piece. Sustainable toothbrushes represent another category made from bamboo and other reusable materials.

Strategic management is an approach to help leaders forecast the direction of their organization. This approach helps organizational leaders gauge the quality of its services, products, and/or internal systems by performing internal and external audits. These audits help leaders identify the internal strengths and weakness, and the external threats and opportunities (SWOT) within a given market. This analytic framework helps leaders forecast contingencies and help leaders develop strategies to create value for key stakeholders, such as an organization’s employees. Since, strategic management is a cross-functional approach organizational alignment is imperative to an organization’s sustainability. Let’s apply the strategic management

Marketing planning is the process that enterprises focus on customers’ needs, organize various business activities, through concerted mutual product strategy, pricing strategy, promotion strategy and placing strategy to provide customers with satisfactory goods and services, and then achieve business goals (Piercy & Morgan, 1994). Some scholars think that adopting benchmarking in marketing planning is easier to lead imitation. Enterprises tend to set competitor 's marketing activities as templates, and use similar product strategy, pricing strategy, promotion strategy and placing strategy with competitors (Zhou, 2006). It is not conducive to long-term development. And it is unable to highlight the advantages and characteristics of enterprises. Other scholars argue that benchmarking is not equivalent to imitation. It learned from advanced enterprises, at the same time, it was compatible with the characteristics in innovation. Enterprises will find the most suitable strategies in marketing planning. In other words, benchmarking is valuable as well in marketing planning (Vorhies & Morgan, 2005). And this view is agreed in this article. Learning the industry or other industries marketing methods has become a good way to expand sales. Benchmarking contribute to the marketing planning. The values are addressed below.

The shoe industry seems to regain some stability after the dim past years of recession. The industry is a mature market undergoing some crucial changes that players need to consider carefully. On one hand, players who miss the online transition may certainly loose market shares. On the other hand, players who manage to rethink the way they operate and to redefine a consistent corporate identity

Nick Swinmurn struggled to find the perfect pair of shoes in his local mall. He browsed through many stores and failed to find the correct size shoe, in the right color, with the right style. This is when he thought to create an online shoe store that made shoe shopping easy. Every style, color, and size all on one site. At the time the internet was just starting to come alive and currently 5% of the shoe industry was being sold through mail in catalogs. This encouraged Swinmurn and lead him to believe there would be success with an online shoe store (Hsieh). He originally named the site, shoesite.com, and in 1999 he went on his way to find investors to jumpstart the website. He fell upon Venture Frogs, an early stage venture investments