Question

This has to be one of the most depressing annual review meetings you’ve ever sat through. Sure, times have been tough before, but never like this. In the past year, your power-tools company has lost 37 percent market share. Sales have decreased by 64 percent. Profit is down almost 70 percent. You had to lay off one-third of your workforce. And worst of all, it doesn’t look to be getting better anytime soon. Housing sales and construction are at an all-time low, meaning your best customers, contractors, have little work to do and even less money to spend on new tools.

“We have to increase sales!” you tell the rest of your management staff. They just stare back at you, of course, because everyone knows what needs to be done. They just don’t know how to do it. How do you sell a product when demand is so low?

As everyone in the room ponders over this, an intern sitting in the back corner raises her hand and says, “Why don’t we sell more to women?” She mentions that she’s read of a number of companies that have found new success by reaching out to a more diverse customer base. Harley Davidson, for example, which has long been known primarily for motorcycles that appeal to older white men, was able to increase market share by appealing to women. It produced a new motorcycle, the SuperLow, which has a lower seat, making it easier to get on, and weighs 150 pounds less than other Harleys. It hired supermodel Marisa Miller for an ad campaign specifically targeted to female riders. And it holds women-only events at dealerships where women can see up-close, personal demonstrations about a Harley’s safety and features.

“And it doesn’t have to be just women,” she continues, “We can target a whole bunch of groups that we’ve never given much thought to before.”

An enthusiastic energy courses through the room as people start discussing the potentials—new customers, more sales, higher revenues, and good times again! But the mood quickly dampens when you ask some questions: “How do we sell a reciprocating saw to women? Do we just slap some pink paint on it and expect customers to come flocking? How do we appeal to different kinds of customers without insulting them?”

Instructions:

For this assignment, please devise a marketing strategy that caters to women for this power tools company. Pick 5 power tools. Write a paragraph for each power tool describing a creative marketing strategy/advertisement tactic or angle to make that tool appear as a useful and attractive buy for women. Explain why you think this tactic would work. A little research will be required about your item. What is the average price of this item? What is the lower end price and the higher end price on the market? What age group would you target in your advertisement? Why would you target that age group? How does your advertisement appeal to that age group? Is there any way you can make higher priced versions of that power tool a valuable commodity that you would get women to start saving their money for from how excited they are about the product?

Answer 1

THE VARIOUS STRATEGIC ANALYSIS TOOLS SWOT Analysis PEST Analysis Value Chain Analysis Five Forces Analysis Four Corners Analysis Business Motivation Model Strategic Analysis is a core step in the Strategic Learning Cycle. Every strategist should have a toolset of analytical models at his or her disposal. However, there are many techniques and tools available for strategy analysis. If you google around the web, you will find a long list of options available. The challenge is to acquire the right techniques and tools for a given business problem. This article give you a brief introduction for you to jumpstart the strategic analysis learning process. What is Strategic Analysis? Strategic analysis helps to explore growth options, addresses challenges within industry, and makes better corporate decisions. Strategy analysis is an approach to facilitating, researching, analyzing, and mapping an organization's abilities to achieve a future envisioned state based on present reality and often with consideration of the organization's processes, technologies, business development and people's capabilities. Strategic Analysis You need to look outside of our organization to identify the changes out there and to look forward and think about the opportunities in future. Strategic analysis is not just about understanding changes. It is about turning this into concrete actions through generating options and choices, making decisions and integrating this into your organization's planning process. Selected Strategic Analysis Tools Just as having the right tools won't necessarily make you a good mechanic, having the right strategy analysis tools won't automatically make you a good strategist - but they will help you get jobs done more effectively. Here is a list of essential tools for strategy analysis: SWOT Analysis SWOT analysis is a technique developed at Stanford in the 1970s, frequently used in strategic planning. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats and is a structured planning method that evaluates those four elements of an organization, project or business venture. A SWOT analysis is a simple, but powerful, framework for leveraging the organization's strengths, improving weaknesses, minimizing threats, and taking the greatest possible advantage of opportunities. SWOT Analysis SWOT analysis is a process where the management team identifies the internal and external factors that will affect the company's future performance. It helps us to identify of what is happening internally and externally, so that you can plan and manage your business in the most effective and efficient manner. PEST Analysis The PEST analysis is a useful tool for understanding market growth or decline, and as such the position, potential and direction for a business. PEST is an acronym for Political, Economic, Social and Technological factors, which are used to assess the market for a business or organizational unit. Sometimes it's expanded to include legal and environmental factors and called a PESTLE analysis. A PEST analysis guides us to identify effective strategies for setting priority, allocating resources, planning for time and development roadmap and formulating control mechanisms. With this analysis, you can identify potential opportunities and threats associated with your strategy and figure out ways to take advantage of them and avoid them. Value Chain Analysis Value chain analysis is a way to visually analyze a company's business activities to see how the company can create a competitive advantage for itself. Value chain analysis helps a company understands how it adds value to something and subsequently how it can sell its product or service for more than the cost of adding the value, thereby generating a profit margin. In other words, if they are run efficiently the value obtained should exceed the costs of running them i.e. customers should return to the organization and transact freely and willingly. Originated in the 1980s by Michael Porter, value chain analysis is the conceptual notion of value-added in the form of a value chain. He suggested that an organization is split into 'primary activities' and 'support activities'. The figure below divides activities into primary and support activities as suggested by Porter's Value Chain Analysis model. Five Forces Analysis Michael Porter developed the Five Forces Model in 1980. Michael Porter's Five Forces is a powerful competitive analysis tool to determine the principal competitive influence in a market. It is a broadly used model in business that refers to the five important factors that drive a firm's competitive position within an industry. By thinking through how each force affects you, and by identifying the strength and direction of each force, you can quickly assess the strength of the position and your ability to make a sustained profit in the industry. Thus Five Forces analysis helps you stay competitive by: Knowing the strength of these five forces, you can develop strategies that help their businesses be more competitive and profitable. Looking at opportunities, you can to strengthen their organization's position compared to the other players for reducing the competitive pressure as well as generate competitive advantage. Four Corners Analysis The Four Corners Analysis, developed Michael Porter, is a model well designed to help company strategists assess a competitor's intent and objectives, and the strengths it is using to achieve them. It is a useful technique to evaluate competitors and generate insights concerning likely competitor strategy changes and determine competitor reaction to environmental changes and industry shifts. By examining a competitor's current strategy, future goals, assumptions about the market, and core capabilities, the Four Corners Model helps analysts address four core questions: Motivation - What drives the competitor? Look for drivers at various levels and dimensions so you can gain insights into future goals. Current Strategy - What is the competitor doing and what is the competitor capable of doing? Capabilities - What are the strengths and weaknesses of the competitor? Management Assumptions - What assumptions are made by the competitor's management team?