Revenue Management Is The Application Of Disciplined Tactics

Customer profitability was a determinant used for segmenting and targeting, studies were done on customers’ likes, dislikes and types of products they would benefit from and models were developed to determine their propensity to buy.

In order for a company to decide what marketing program will work, the company needs to have an understanding of how consumers make decisions. Consumers are quite unpredictable. So what might have worked yesterday or today may not work tomorrow. Therefore the marketers need to constantly improve their understanding of consumers and their behavior and form that adapt their marketing strategies to the changes in consumer behavior.

Accordingly, to reach the scale of revenue required would mean increasing the number of transactions per month a few folds from 2,000 to 8,000 transactions. Moreover this would require not only increase in the marketing of the existing 2,000 products listed on the store, but a significant increase in the breadth of product offerings. If the number of vendors was not going to increase the current process might continue be manageable, nevertheless one of the Store’s strategies is to limit the number of products from each vendor to only 20, hence requiring an increase in the number of vendors fourfold which is relative to the increase in revenue.

It has recently come to my attention that Target Co. utilizes data mining to extract a wide spectrum of information about its customers by accumulating, analyzing and storing data about customer purchases. While I understand that this practice enables Target Co. to simultaneously deliver individually targeted advertisements across its diverse customer groupings, thereby increasing the potential for sales and improving customer retention, I also understand that large amounts of data unearthed by data mining can be manipulated to uncover hidden purchasing patterns to predict and shape future purchase decisions. Therefore, although there are significant benefits to using data mining, there are also serious costs associated with data mining that

After identifying the sales targets, the strategies, tactics and actions to achieve them can be worked on. Gluck (2014), mentions that to identify underlying strategies and increase sales, a business can break into a new market segment by adapting an existing product or boosting the average sale per customer by using add-on sales or upselling premium features. When developing the sales strategies, the market segment, customers' motivations and expectations, and the capacity to meet customers' expectations should be considered.

Revenue stream generated from the customer segments may get impacted with changes in Transaction Costs and subsequently Price per Kit.

According to Kimmel, Kieso and Waygandt (2011), "the revenue recognition principle requires that companies recognize revenue in the accounting period in which it is earned." Basically, this means that revenues should be recognized (or in other words recorded) on completion of the process of revenue generation i.e. once revenue has been earned. This is as per the accrual basis of accounting. Essentially, revenue recognition derives its significance from its utilization when it comes to the determination of the specific accounting period in which earnings should be recorded.

Markets consist of buyers that differ in their needs, wants, resources, locations, buying attitudes and buying practices. To reach customer insight, it is important to understand the needs of different segments and to communicate pertinently to them (Brown L, Brown C, Gallagher SM, 2008).

As a result of competitive pressures from the domestic market, the A-Team shifted its target clientele by from the B2B towards the SMEs and Consumers markets. As a result, a differential pricing strategy was adopted to cater the price-sensibilities of the Consumers market. This initiative proved to be sound, given the healthy revenue incurred from Consumers by year 3 and 4.

In order to market the product into the market successfully, marketers need to have some marketing strategy to enter the desired market and make profit. Market segmentation is the process of dividing a market into subsets of consumers with common needs or characteristics (Schiffman et al., 2011). Understanding the market size and segmentation is valuable, but the keys to effective targeting is to know just how valuable specific consumer groups are, and being able to quantify the impact of consumer trends ( Berry, 1999).

Maytag formed a cross-functional new product development team to quickly focus the effort. It screened various product ideas and strategies on criteria such as potential for superior customer value, initial costs, long-term growth, social responsibility, and profitability. Using nearly 40 pieces of consumer research, the team refined what the strategy might be and what it would cost. Marketers today have better marketing metrics for measuring the performance of marketing plans. They can use four tools to check on plan performance: sales analysis, market share analysis, marketing expense-to-sales analyss, and financial analysis. Sales analysis consists of measuring and evaluating actual sales in relation to goals. Market share can be measured in three ways. Overal market share is the company's sales expressed as a percentage of total market sales. Served market share is its sales expressed as a percentage of the total sales to its served market. Its served market is all the buyers who are able and willing to buy its product. And relative market share can be expressed as market share in relation to its largest competitor. Annual plan control requires making

* When demand > supply, ‘best way to sell’ instead of ‘fast way to sell’

This entire process is known as marketing management " the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping, and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value" (Kotler & Keller, p.5).

Price, which is one of the most important elements of the marketing mix, can be difficult to get right. Pricing too high, or low, can negatively impact on customer satisfaction and revenue. Adopting a pricing strategy is necessary to achieve desired sales objectives (Chan & Wong 2005).

Marketing cost analysis is another important tool of marketing control. In recent years, business firms all over the world have experienced steep escalations in their marketing and distribution costs. They have found, to their dismay, that increased sales do not necessarily bring them increased profits. Containing marketing and distribution costs has