Macro environment analysis of 3M Australia

Discuss about the Marketing Plan on Re-Launching of MP-180 Pocket Projector.

‘3M’ the name came from Minnesota mining and manufacturing company which is founded in 1902.  It is an American multinational corporation and the global headquarter based in Maplewood, US. The company deals in the products like fire protection, dental, medical, electronic materials etc. 3M operates in more than 140 countries globally. In 1950s, the company started its operations in Australian territory and the company has more than 4000 products till date (3M, 2016). Through this report we will choose MP-180 pocket projector under display and graphic product line of 3M Australia and we will design a marketing plan on re-launching of a particular product line. Before designing that plan we will go through an environmental and SWOT analysis for better understanding of brand. After completion of analysis we will find out the potential problems which company may face on re-launching and then set the companies goals and objectives for next 12 months. At last we will design the marketing mix strategy. Thereafter in conclusion we will judge whether this plan can be acceptable or not.

Macro environment consist of things like: Demographic, Economic, Natural, Technological, Political and Socio-cultural (Koontz & Weihrich 2010). We will elaborate these more on our below discussion.     

(Caption: Diverging Radial representation of Macro environment)

Demographic: 3M is a global brand also they deals with diversified products category. Due to its large presense in all category the product segment is also huge also if we talk about Australia in last few years we have seen that there is a diversity in people (Commisceo, 2016). Therefore 3M Australia have maintain the product segment very well in order to grab the Australian market (3M 2016).

Economic: In recent times the global economy has faced a high recession which made a several effect on the pricing and production of 3M. Therefore in order to maintain the balance we need to keep the economic factor in our mind before designing a marketing plan (3M 2016).

Natural: Natural consists of two things one is renewal another one is non-renewal, renewal are forest, agriculture etc. and non-renewal are fuel, minerals etc. though 3M produces diversity products therefore there product line is dependable on both renewal and no-renewal. We need to focus on these areas whether our product is eco-friendly or not (3M 2016).

Political: According to a data provided by World Bank (2015) the Australian political stability falls in -2.5 weak; 2.5 strong. So we can take this situation good for doing a business (Business 2016).

Micro environment analysis of 3M Australia

Technological: 3M which is more dedicated to techno products. If we take consider Australia in the field of technology then we must have to say that the contribution is quite well in this field. Technologies are changing frequently and the people are becoming more techs oriented (Atse 2015). Therefore in order to maintain the balance between products and current demand 3M has built its own R&D department and we have observed some good innovation in its products

Socio-cultural: Australia can be considered as the most diverse community place (Commisceo 2016). But the products of 3M falls less under this category which represents the culture or community. They should make a separate division of their products where products will be presented based on the culture

Micro environment deals in internal factors such as Market share or customer and Competition (Dutta 2010). The analysis of Micro environment is provided below.

(Caption: A hierarchal representation of Micro environment)  

Market share: Market share is the main purpose of doing a business for any firm. In this aspect 3M has gained a huge number of market shares in last few years compare to other brands. This we can identify by observing the last one year stock data of 3M Australia. We can clearly observe that there is significant growth from Sept 2015 to till date.

(Caption: Last one year stock data of 3M Australia)

Source: 3M.com

Competition: In last few years companies like GE and Honeywell has given good competition to 3M products. In this regard 3M is not far behind than others they have spent more than $1.7 billion in their R&D for innovation. It clarifies how innovative they are by nature for competition which results more that $30 billion sales in 2015 for 3M Australia (Bromels, 2016).

When we talk about the brand then 3M has fulfilled all the criteria to establish them as a renowned global brand with its present in 140+ countries and diversified product category helps them to sustain as a loyal brand over the last few decades (3M 2016). In last few years we have observed that there is a lack of sales in display or graphic segment of 3M’s product therefore in order to increase in sales and better market share we are going to design a marketing plan on re-launching of 3M MP-180 pocket projector under display and graphic segment. But before designing a plan we need to predict the potential problems that we may face with re-launching.

• Earlier the 3M MP-180 projector rejected by customers due to its sensitive parts.
• Legal is another problem projectors produces more carbon compare to other electronic items and adding of new features on re-launching may produce more carbon which are not eco-friendly.
• Due to globalization the same products are sold in every market so there will be a huge competition.
• 3M projectors comes up with modern technology a normal customer is not aware about with all modern technologies which requires good maintenance otherwise technical fault may occur which will result in customer dissatisfaction and the company may lose the brand loyalty.
• How do we select what features need to be there on re-launching?                                                     

• To make double the sales of that particular product line and increase the market share of that particular product segment.
• To earn the customer loyalty for 3M brand by providing 100% customer satisfaction related to that particular product line.

SWOT analysis of 3M Australia

We will divide our objectives in two phases; each phase will be for 6 months.

To select the right features at first we will conduct one marketing survey. This marketing survey will help us in choosing the correct features as per the choice of the customers. Not only this but also we will be able to identify whether the customers are aware about this modern technology or not.

To make aware our customers about the re-launch of that product we will run few campaigns, through these campaigns we will not send the message of re-launching of product rather we will send a message of new version of that product, because sometimes when we use the word re-launch customer may thing that there might be any problem or defect in the previously launched product that’s way the company is again re-launching it this thing may affect the overall brand image.

To increase the market share we will promote the reference buying activity, suppose if one of our existing customer refer one new customer for buying of that particular product and if that new customer actually buys it through his/her referral in that case we will provide an extended 3-5 years free maintenance service for that particular product to our existing customers.

To reduce the global warming we will conduct few seminars on ‘how do we can reduce the global warming’ through this seminars we will show how much concern we are about global warming and indirectly relate our eco-friendly projector system by showing the extra filterization technique for reducing carbon this will help us to create a good brand image in front of our customers (Rao & Shivaramakrishnan 2008).

To increase the market share on that particular segment we will run one cultural sales activity, suppose in Australia we know that there are diversified communities people live in according to that whoever will purchase our projector system we will provide a one year free subscription of music CD’s and Videos programs DVD’s related to that particular culture of that customer (Rao & Shivaramakrishnan 2008).

Marketing mix consist of 4Ps such as Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Here we will simply follow the theory given by E.Jerome McCarthy in 1960 for our product, price, place and promotion.

Product: McCarthy has said that a product needs to be fit according to the customers want in the same time it should be like what the customers are expecting for. Hence in our objectives we have described that first we will conduct a marketing survey and this will help us to identify what the customers actually want and what they are actually expecting from our product. From our survey analysis whatever output we will get accordingly we will make our product and add those features as per the expectations and choice given by the customers (Govindarajan 2009).

3M Australia as a brand

Price: According to McCarthy pricing should be set as per the value for money in the same time it should not be a cheapest one. As per our previous discussion we have mentioned that we will more focus on re-launching a quality product, therefore adding of quality simply means you need to do more research and development also it requires some costly raw materials which may result to few extra production cost, therefore we will set a standard competitive price by keeping the profitability factor in our mind for our products. As we all know that customers fells happy to pay few extra bucks when they get some good quality product which works well (Govindarajan 2009).

Place: According to McCarthy placing should be done in such a way that a customer should not find and difficulty to purchase it a product should be displayed everywhere and needs to be available every market. Since our product is branded and it is offered by a renowned brand so we cannot display our product in each shop or a normal market in order to maintain the brand image, because displaying of our product in each normal shops or every market will shows our product more cheaply. Therefore in order to apply this theory in our placing strategy we will more focus on online sale through our company website because now days everyone is connected to internet, so they can easily access from there without facing any kind of difficulty, also selling through our online portal will help the company to reduce the intermediaries cost such as distributor, wholesaler and retailers cost (Govindarajan 2009).

Promotion: McCarthy has mentioned that promotion is not all about spreading messages; in the same time choosing of correct medium also plays a key role for effective promotion strategy. Therefore for promoting our products we will adapt the social media marketing strategy because each and every community’s people are connected through social media now days. A social media promotion strategy will be more suitable for 3M’s product because by reading the profiles of people we can easily identify whether these people are interested to listen our message or not, what are their interests and which background they belong from also we can send the message to our correct target audience (Kazmi & Batra 2008).

Conclusion

From the above environmental analysis part we have noticed that in some areas 3M is doing extremely well but they are lacking with customer oriented approach, therefore we have designed a marketing plan which is more customer oriented. In many cases we have seen that organizations promises to pay attention on their customers problem but when these companies reaches to their projected profitability margin either they forget the promise or they ignore the customers problem. Therefore in order to ensure a high success rate of this particular marketing plan 3M Australia should listen to their customer first and they should solve their customer problems related to their product line on a priority basis.

References

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