Advanced Strategic Marketing

โดย: ดร.นิเวศน์ ธรรมะ, 2552, Current Issue in Marketing, Ramkhamhaeng University

บทความนี้จะวิเคราะห์เจาะลึกถึงการหยั่งลึกความเข้าใจการตลาดร่วมสมัยมากขึ้นและที่จะพัฒนาทักษะในการพัฒนาทางการตลาดที่ประสบความสำเร็จ รวมทั้งการศึกษาถึงวรรณกรรมทางด้านวิชาการ ทั้งทางทฤษฎีและทางการค้นคว้าทดลองที่เกี่ยวกับการตลาดเชิงกลยุทธ์ การสร้างและการนำกลยุทธ์การตลาดไปปฏิบัติ เช่น วงจรชีวิตผลิตภัณฑ์ การพัฒนาผลิตภัณฑ์ การบริหารกลุ่มผลิตภัณฑ์ (Product portfolios) และโมเดลการจัดสรรทรัพยากรอื่นๆ กลยุทธ์ที่ประสบความสำเร็จเปรียบเทียบกับกลยุทธ์ที่ล้มเหลว ความสัมพันธ์ของการตลาดกับหน่วยงานอื่นๆ ทางธุรกิจ ปัญหาเกี่ยวข้องกับการนำกลยุทธ์ไปปฏิบัติ ด้วยกรณีศึกษาทั้งของประเทศไทยและต่างประเทศ

Marketing Concept in Current Century, Customer Oriented.

Why we buy? as the question that we dont know before making decision on the market place. Many time we know well what we decide while we buy. The customer buy so many product from inner stimulus.

Marketing Management

โดย ดร.นิเวศน์ ธรรมะ และคณะฯ "การจัดการการตลาด" 2552, แมคกรอ-ฮิล ราคาเล่มละ 275 บาท สั่งซื้อได้ที่ dr_nivej@yahoo.com

หนังสือการจัดการการตลาด (Marketing Management) เล่มนี้ถูกแปลและเรียบเรียงจาก Marketing The Core 3/e ปี พ.ศ. 2009 ซึ่งได้พัฒนาเนื้อหาเชิงบูรณาการ ในด้านการจัดการการตลาดให้ทันสมัย สอดรับกับสถานการณ์การเปลี่ยนแปลงของสิ่งแวดล้อมการตลาด สังคม และเทคโนโลยี ที่ส่งผลกระทบตรงต่อพฤติกรรมของลูกค้าซึ่งในอดีตการปรับเปลี่ยนพฤติกรรมของลูกค้าเป็นเรื่องยากที่นักการตลาดจะทำให้ผู้บริโภคยอมรับหรือปรับเปลี่ยนพฤติกรรมในการบริโภคสินค้าตัวใดตัวหนึ่งที่ไม่เคยมีประสบการณ์มาก่อน เนื่องจากการเปลี่ยนแปลงของเทคโนโลยีที่รวดเร็วทำให้การรับรู้ข้อมูลในแต่ละวันจึงมีความเร็วเป็นหลายเท่าในการตอกย้ำการรับรู้ของลูกค้า รวมกระทั้งกระแสของวัฒนธรรมที่หลากหลายจึงเป็นตัวแปลในการกระตุ้นให้ลูกค้ากลุ่มเป้าหมายกล้าที่จะลองรับของใหม่ๆ เร็วขึ้น จึงเปิดโอกาสทำให้นักการตลาดหลากหลายสำนักต่างปรับตัวให้เข้ากับกระแสสังคมที่เปลี่ยนแปลงอย่างรวดเร็ว ใครที่สามารถปรับตัวได้เร็ว ผู้นั้นยอมมีชัยชนะเหนือคู่แข่งไปกว่าครึ่งทาง ฉะนั้นเพื่อเป็นแนวทางให้ผู้ที่สนใจ นักการตลาด นักบัญชี นักการเงิน นักการจัดการทรัพยากรมนุษย์ ผู้บริหารระดับ ต้น ระดับกลาง ระดับสูง หรือนักศึกษาเอ็มบีเอ ได้เล็งเห็นโอกาสทางธุรกิจได้รวดเร็วและแม่นยำขึ้น หนังสื่อเล่มนี้จะชี้ช่องแสดงให้เห็นวิธีคิด วีธีการจัดการการตลาด การวิเคราะห์สถานการณ์สิ่งแวดล้อมทางการตลาด การมองความได้เปรียบเสียเปรียบทางการแข่งขัน การกำหนดกลุ่มเป้าหมาย การกำหนดจุดยื่นในการแข่งขัน การสร้างกลยุทธ์การตลาดสมัยใหม่มัดใจลูกค้า การมองโลกใบนี้เป็นอีกโอกาสทางด้านการตลาดและการปรับตัวให้เข้ากับการตลาดยุคไอที จะสร้างความได้เปรียบในการแข่งขันมากยิ่งขึ้น พร้อมด้วยทีมงานผู้เขียนที่ผ่านประสบการณ์การตลาดภาคสนามและบนเวทีวิชาการมานาน จึงทำให้การแปลและเรียบเรียงครั้งนี้ อ่านง่ายและมีตัวอย่างประกอบขยายความเข้าใจสำหรับผู้ที่ต้องการเริ่มต้นก้าวแรกอย่างได้เปรียบเตรียมพร้อมที่จะก้าวไปสู่ยุคการเปลี่ยนแปลงของสังคมและสิ่งแวดล้อมในอนาคต ทีมงานผู้เขียนหวังว่าหนังสือเล่มนี้จะเป็นใบเบิกทางให้กับผู้ที่ต้องการความก้าวหน้าในอาชีพกันทุกคน

Wal-Markt-s Midlife Crisis

BusinessWeek, APRIL 30, 2007

Wal-Mart's Midlife Crisis By Anthony Bianco

Wal-Mart's Midlife Crisis Declining growth, increasing competition, and not an easy fix in sight

Fleming may be America's most powerful merchant, but a timely solution is beyond him even so. Wal-Mart failed to order enough of these China-made T-shirts last year, and so they and other George-brand basics will remain in short supply in most of its 3,443 U.S. stores until 2007's second half, depriving the retailer of tens of millions of dollars a week it sorely needs. "The issue with apparel is long lead times," says the quietly intense Fleming, who spent 20 years at Target Corp. (TGT ) before joining Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT ) "We will get it fixed."For nearly five decades, Wal-Mart's signature "everyday low prices" and their enabler—low costs—defined not only its business model but also the distinctive personality of this proud, insular company that emerged from the Ozarks backwoods to dominate retailing. Over the past year and a half, though, Wal-Mart's growth formula has stopped working. In 2006 its U.S. division eked out a 1.9% gain in same-store sales—its worst performance ever—and this year has begun no better. By this key measure, such competitors as Target, Costco (COST ), Kroger (KR ), Safeway (SWY ), Walgreen's (WAG ), CVS, and Best Buy (BBY ) now are all growing two to five times faster than Wal-Mart.Wal-Mart's botched entry into cheap-chic apparel is emblematic of the quandary it faces. Is its alarming loss of momentum the temporary result of disruptions caused by transitory errors like the T-shirt screwup and by overdue improvements such as the store remodeling program launched last year? Or is Wal-Mart doing lasting damage to its low-budget franchise by trying to compete with much hipper, nimbler rivals for the middle-income dollar? Should the retailer redouble its efforts to out-Target Target, or would it be better off going back to basics?If Wal-Mart seems short of answers at the moment, it might well be because there aren't any good ones. Increasingly, it appears that America's largest corporation has steered itself into a slow-growth cul de sac from which there is no escape. "There are a lot of issues here, but what they add up to is the end of the age of Wal-Mart," contends Richard Hastings, a senior analyst for the retail rating agency Bernard Sands. "The glory days are over."Simple mathematics suggest that a 45-year-old company in an industry growing no faster than the economy as a whole will struggle to sustain the speedy growth rates of its youth. In Wal-Mart's case, this difficulty is exacerbated by its great size and extreme dominance of large swaths of the U.S. retail market. Wal-Mart already controls 20% of dry grocery, 29% of nonfood grocery, 30% of health and beauty aids, and 45% of general merchandise sales, according to ACNielsen.However, the expansion impulse is as deeply embedded in Wal-Mart's DNA as its allegiance to cut-rate pricing. Wal-Mart was able to boost total U.S. revenues by 7.2% last year by opening new stores at the prodigious rate of nearly one a day. According to Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr., the company plans to sustain this pace for at least the next five years. In fact, he is on record saying that room remains in the U.S. for Wal-Mart to add 4,000 Supercenters—the largest of its store formats by far—to the 2,000 it now operates.Does Scott, 58, recognize any limits whatsoever to Wal-Mart's growth potential in the U.S., which accounted for 78% of its $345 billion in sales last year? "Actually, and I know it's going to sound naive to you, I don't," he replies. "The real issue is, are [we] going to be good enough to take advantage of the opportunities that exist?"TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORTWall Street does not share Scott's bullishness, to put it mildly. Wal-Mart shares are trading well below their 2004 high and have dropped 30% in total since Scott was named CEO in 2000, even as the Morgan Stanley (MS ) retail index has risen 180%. "The stock has been dead money for a long time," says Charles Grom, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. (SPM ) analyst.Even money managers who own Wal-Mart's shares tend to see the retailer as a beaten-down value play, not a growth company. "I'd be surprised if true growth-oriented investors were involved at this point," says Walter T. McCormick, manager of the $1.2 billion Evergreen Fundamental Large Cap Fund, which began buying the stock a year ago. "The issue the Street has is market saturation: We may be in the seventh inning of a nine-inning game."One can argue that the deceleration of Wal-Mart's organic growth is a function of the aging of its outlets, given that same-store sales rates slow as stores mature. Outlets five years or older accounted for 17% of all U.S. Supercenters in 2000 and 44% in 2006, and will top 60% in 2010, according to HSBC (HBC ) analyst Mark Husson. "There's an inevitability of bad middle age," he says.Meanwhile, the underlying economics of expansion have turned against Wal-Mart, even as it relies increasingly on store-building to compensate for sagging same-store sales. On balance, the new Supercenters are just not pulling in enough sales to offset fully the sharply escalating costs of building them. Part of the problem is that many new stores are located so close to existing ones that Wal-Mart ends up competing with itself. All in all, the retailer's pretax return on fixed assets, which includes things such as computers and trucks as well as stores, has plunged 40% since 2000.Even many analysts with a buy on Wal-Mart want it to follow the lead of McDonald's Corp. (MCD ) and cut way back on new-store building to concentrate instead on extracting more value from existing stores, which vary wildly in their performance. Wal-Mart disclosed a year and a half ago that same-store sales were rising 10 times, or 1,000%, faster at the 800 best-managed outlets than at the 800 worst-run ones. Equally shocking was its admission that 25% of its stores failed to meet minimum expectations of cleanliness, product availability, checkout times, and so on.Scott is acutely aware of the Street's discontent. "We have to find a way to give our shareholders back the returns that they need through some mechanism," he acknowledges. In March, Wal-Mart boosted its dividend 31%. Apparently, the board also is considering spinning off Sam's Club, the warehouse club division that is a perennial also-ran to Costco.Wal-Mart announced late last year that it would trim its customary 8% annual addition to U.S. square footage to 7% in 2007. At the moment, though, slamming on the brakes is out of the question. Says Scott: "If you stop the growth at Wal-Mart, you'd be silly to think that [alone] means you're going to have better stores."Wal-Mart's "home office" has taken a series of steps to improve the performance of its far-flung store network. Last year it implemented a whole new supervisory structure that required many of its 27 regional administrators to move out of Bentonville and live in the districts they manage. In April, Scott removed the executive in charge of U.S. store operations and put her in charge of corporate personnel instead.The number of stores falling below the threshold of minimum customer expectations has declined but remains "more than would be acceptable," says Scott, who is surprisingly philosophical about the persistence of mediocrity. Asked why it has been so difficult to fix bad stores, HE replies: "That's a very good question. It's a question I ask all the time."The polite, self-deprecating Scott is no Robert L. Nardelli, whose ouster as Home Depot Inc.'s (HD ) chief had as much to do with his abrasive personality as the chain's business problems. That said, Wal-Mart's stock has performed worse under Scott than Home Depot's did under Nardelli. "The Street is going to look to the back half of 2007 for evidence of improvement," says an adviser to a large, longtime Wal-Mart shareholder. "If that doesn't happen, you're going to see a tremendous amount of pressure."Scott & Co. already are struggling to cope with mounting sociopolitical backlash to Wal-Mart's size and aggressive business practices. Over the past decade, dozens of lawsuits were brought by employees claiming to be overworked and underpaid, including the mother of all sex discrimination class actions. Organized labor set up two Washington-based organizations to oppose the antiunion employer at every turn (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/9/07, "Stop the Bullying, Wal-Mart"). And hundreds of municipalities across the country erected legal obstacles of one kind or another.Wal-Mart's initial reaction to the gathering storm of opposition was to ignore it and maintain the defiant insularity that is a legacy of its Ozarks origins. "The best thing we ever did was hide back there in the hills," Sam Walton, the company's legendary founder, declared shortly before his death in 1992.In the past few years, Scott has reluctantly brought Wal-Mart out from behind its Bentonville barricades. Virtually from scratch, this famously conservative company has built a large public and government relations apparatus headed by Leslie A. Dach, a veteran Washington political operative of pronounced liberal bent. Few CEOs have embraced environmental sustainability as avidly as has Scott, who also broke with the Republican orthodoxy of his predecessors by advocating a hike in the federal minimum wage.It's not just rhetoric: Wal-Mart has indeed made substantive reforms in some areas. It has struck up effective working relationships with many of the very environmental groups it once disdained. No less dramatically, the company has added three women (one is Hispanic) and two African American directors to its board and also tied all executive bonuses to diversity goals.It turns out, though, that there is a dark, paranoid underside to Wal-Mart's visible campaign of outreach. What began as an attempt by Wal-Mart's Threat Research and Assessment Group to detect theft and pro-union sympathies among store workers grew into surveillance of certain outside critics, consultants, stockholders, and even Wal-Mart's board. Bruce Gabbard, a security technician fired for allegedly unauthorized wiretapping of a New York Times reporter, has described himself as "the guy listening to the board of directors when Lee Scott is excused from the room."Wal-Mart's spreading Spygate scandal is perhaps the most damaging in a long sequence of PR disasters, including last year's conviction of former No. 2 executive Thomas M. Coughlin on fraud and tax evasion charges stemming from embezzlement of company funds. Coughlin, a Walton protégé who had been Scott's leading rival for the CEO post, is serving a sentence of 27 months of house arrest.There is no way of measuring how much business Wal-Mart is losing to competitors with more benign reputations. According to a recent survey conducted by Wal-Mart itself, though, 14% of Americans living within range of one of its stores—which takes in 90% of the population—are so skeptical of the company as to qualify as "conscientious objectors."But the Arkansas giant's fundamental business problem is that selling for less no longer confers the overwhelming business advantage it once did. Low prices still define the chain's appeal to its best customers, the 45 million mostly low-income Americans who shop its stores frequently and broadly. But the collective purchasing power of these "loyalists," as Wal-Mart calls them, has shriveled in recent years as hourly wages have stagnated and the cost of housing and energy have soared.More affluent shoppers also walk Wal-Mart's aisles in great numbers, but they tend to buy sparingly, loading up on toothpaste, detergent, and other "consumables" priced barely above cost while shunning higher-margin items such as clothes and furniture. To the selective middle-income shopper, quality, style, service, and even store aesthetics increasingly matter as much as price alone. "Here's the big thought Wal-Mart missed: Price is not enough anymore," says Todd S. Slater, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets.BACKWOODS KNOWHOWAt first, Wal-Mart management blamed its loss of momentum mostly on rising gasoline prices—a theory undercut when same-store sales kept falling even as the cost of gas receded during the latter half of 2006. Today, Wal-Mart executives are more willing to acknowledge the X factor of intensified competition. Says Fleming: "We're now up against world-class competitors that are each taking a slice of our business."Wal-Mart not only was slow to recognize this threat but also responded haphazardly once it did. The nub of the problem was that the discounter had relied for so long on selling for less that it did not know any other way to sell. Wal-Mart did not begin to build a marketing department worthy of the name until Fleming was named to the new position of chief marketing officer in spring, 2005, an appointment Scott hailed as "an extraordinary move for us."Founded in 1962, Wal-Mart rose to dominance on the strength of its mastery of retailing's "back-end" mechanics. Forced by the isolation of the Ozarks to do for itself what most retailers relied on others to do for them, Wal-Mart built a cutting-edge distribution system capable of moving goods from factory loading dock to store cash register faster and cheaper by far than any competitor. It added to its cost advantage by refusing to acquiesce to routine increases in wholesale prices, continually pressing suppliers to charge less.Walton, who was both a gifted merchant and a born tightwad, also pinched pennies in every other facet of business, from wages and perks (there were none) to fixtures and furnishings. Aesthetics counted for so little that when the retailer finally put down carpet in its stores it took care to choose a color that matched the sludgy gray-brown produced by mixing dirt, motor oil, and the other contaminants most commonly tracked across its floors. To Wal-Mart, the beauty of its hideous carpet was that it rarely needed cleaning.Low costs begat low prices. Instead of relying on promotional gimmickry, Wal-Mart sold at a perpetual discount calculated to make up for in volume what it lost in margin. Walton's philosophy was price it low, pile it high, and watch it fly. His belief in everyday low prices made him a populist hero even as he built America's largest fortune. (His descendants still own 40% of Wal-Mart's shares, a stake worth $80 billion.) Regulators forced "Mr. Sam" to modify his slogan of "Always the lowest price" to the hedged "Always low prices!" But hundreds of retailers went broke trying to compete with Wal-Mart on price just the same.In many ways, Wal-Mart has remained reflexively tight-fisted under Scott, a 28-year company veteran who trained at Walton's knee and rose to the top through trucking and logistics. Last year, Wal-Mart began remodeling the apparel, home, and electronics sections in 1,800 stores, replacing miles of that stain-colored carpeting with vinyl that looks like wood. To Fleming, the new "simulated wood" floor is all about aesthetic improvement. His boss takes the classical Wal-Mart view. "The truth is that vinyl costs less," Scott says. "And the maintenance on the vinyl costs less than the maintenance on the carpet."Yet Wal-Mart is neither as low-cost nor as low-price a retailer as it was in Walton's day, or even when Scott moved up to CEO. Most dramatically, overhead costs jumped 14.8% in 2006 alone and now amount to 18.6% of sales, compared with 16.4% in Scott's first year—a momentous rise in a business that counts profit in pennies on the dollar.The imperatives of reputational damage control have prompted Bentonville to add hundreds of staff jobs in public relations, corporate affairs, and other areas that the company happily ignored when it was shielded by the force field of Walton's folksy charisma. And as the nation's largest electricity consumer and owner of its second-largest private truck fleet, Wal-Mart was hit doubly hard by the explosion of energy costs.Wal-Mart also has purposefully, if not entirely voluntarily, inflated its cost base in expanding far beyond its original rural Southern stronghold. It is far more expensive to buy land and to build, staff, and operate stores in the large cities that are the final frontier of Wal-Mart's expansion than in the farm towns where it began. Then, too, the company is encountering mounting resistance as it pushes deeper into the Northeast, Upper Midwest, and West Coast, requiring it to retain legions of lawyers and lobbyists to fight its way into town.NARROWING THE GAPUnder Scott, Wal-Mart even blunted its seminal edge in distribution by letting billions of dollars in excess inventories accumulate at mismanaged stores. A dubious milestone was reached in 2005 as inventories rose even faster than sales. "You'd see these big storage containers behind stores, but what was more amazing was that [local] managers were going outside Wal-Mart's distribution network to subcontract their own warehouse space," says Bill Dreher, a U.S. retailing analyst for Deutsche Bank (DB ).Over the past decade, top competitors in most every retailing specialty have succeeded in narrowing their cost gap with Wal-Mart by restructuring their operations. They eliminated jobs, remodeled stores, and replaced warehouses, investing heavily in new technology to tie it all together. Unionized supermarkets even managed to chip away at Wal-Mart's nonunion-labor cost advantage, signaling their resolve by taking a long strike in Southern California in 2003-04. The end result: Rival chains gradually were able to bring their prices down closer to Wal-Mart's and again make good money.Consider the return to form of Kroger Co., the largest and oldest U.S. supermarket chain. Cincinnati-based Kroger competes against more Wal-Mart Supercenters—1,000 at last count—than any other grocer. Which is why until recently the only real interest Wall Street took in the old-line giant was measuring it for a coffin. Today, though, a rejuvenated Kroger is gaining share faster in the 32 markets where it competes with Wal-Mart than in the 12 where it does not.A recent Bank of America (BAC ) survey of three such markets—Atlanta, Houston, and Nashville—found that Kroger's prices were 7.5% higher on average than Wal-Mart's, compared with 20% to 25% five years ago. This margin is thin enough to allow Kroger to again bring to bear such "core competencies" as service, quality, and convenience, says BofA's Scott A. Mushkin, who recently switched his Kroger rating to buy from sell. "We're saying the game has changed, and it looks like it has changed substantially in Kroger's favor," he says.While Wal-Mart vies with a plethora of born-again rivals for the trade of middle-income Americans, it also must contend on the low end of the income spectrum with convenience and dollar-store chains and with such "hard discounters" as Germany's Aldi Group. These no-frills rivals are challenging Wal-Mart's hold over budget-minded shoppers by underpricing it on many staples.To right Wal-Mart's listing U.S. flagship division, Scott installed Eduardo Castro-Wright as its president and CEO in fall, 2005. The Ecuador-born, U.S.-educated Castro-Wright, now 51, worked for RJR Nabisco and Honeywell International Inc. (HON ) before joining Wal-Mart in 2001. In Castro-Wright's three years as CEO of Wal-Mart Mexico, revenues soared 50%, powered by sparkling same-store sales growth of 10% a year.To date, Castro-Wright has fallen so far short of replicating the miracle of Mexico that in January he had to publicly deny rumors that he was about to be transferred back to international. Instead, Scott shifted the vice-chairman over Castro-Wright to new duties. That the U.S. chief now reports directly to Scott both solidifies Castro-Wright's status and ups the pressure on him to show results.Castro-Wright can point to progress on the cost side of the ledger. By tightening controls over the stores, headquarters has halved the growth rate of inventories to 5.6% from 11.5% two years ago. Wal-Mart also has squeezed more productivity out of its 1.3 million store employees for eight consecutive quarters. This was done by capping wages for most hourly positions, converting full-time jobs to part-time ones, and installing a sophisticated scheduling system to adjust staffing levels to fluctuations in customer traffic.Wal-Mart has found other new ways to economize, notably by cutting out middlemen to do more contract manufacturing overseas. The company's much publicized green initiatives have tempered criticism from some left-leaning opponents but are perhaps best understood as a politically fashionable manifestation of its traditional cost-control imperative.By any conventional measure, Wal-Mart remains a solidly profitable company. Rising overhead costs have cut into net income, which in 2006 rose a middling 6.7%, a far cry from the double-digit increases of the 1990s. Return on equity continues to top 20%, however, and U.S. operating margins actually have widened a bit under Castro-Wright, as costs have risen a bit slower than Wal-Mart's average selling price.Evidently, though, it is going to take a lot more than Castro-Wright's workmanlike adjustments to revive Wal-Mart's moribund stock. In the end, Scott's aversion to a McDonald's-style strategic about-face leaves Wal-Mart no alternative but to try to grow its way back into Wall Street's good graces. But if opening a new Wal-Mart or Sam's Club almost every day can't move the dial, what will?Foreign markets present an intriguing mix of potential and peril for Wal-Mart, which first ventured abroad in 1992. Although the company now owns stores in 13 countries, the lion's share of those revenues comes from Mexico, Canada, and Britain. In 2006 international revenues rose 30%, to $77 billion. At the same time, though, Wal-Mart's long-standing struggles to adapt its quintessentially American low-cost, low-price business model to foreign cultures was underscored by the $863 million loss it took in exiting Germany.Wal-Mart is the rare U.S. company that is more politically constrained at home than abroad in angling for outsize growth opportunities. In March it withdrew its application for a Utah bank charter just before a congressional committee was set to convene hearings. The retreat marks an apparent end to its decade-long campaign to diversify into consumer banking.Although Wal-Mart regularly makes sizable acquisitions abroad, it is in no position to respond in kind to such domestic dagger thrusts as CVS's $26.5 billion acquisition of pharmacy benefits manager Caremark Rx. "That deal is a real threat, but Wal-Mart would have huge antitrust problems if it made an acquisition of any size," says a top mergers-and-acquisitions banker. "They are kind of stuck."In the end, Wal-Mart seems unlikely to regain its stride unless it can solve what might be the diciest conundrum in retailing today. That is, can it seduce tens of millions of middle-income shoppers into stepping up their purchases in a major way without alienating its low-income legions in the process?Largely because of the pressing need to differentiate itself from Wal-Mart, Target began grappling with this very puzzle more than a decade ago and gradually solved it with the cheap-chic panache that transformed it into "Tar-zhay." Says the president of a leading apparel maker: "Target has an awareness of what's happening in fashion equal to a luxury player, maybe greater. They have set the bar very high."Scott acknowledged as much in making former Target exec Fleming chief marketing officer, reporting to Castro-Wright. Fleming, who had been CEO of Wal-Mart.com, went outside to fill every key slot in building a 40-person marketing group from scratch. He supported Wal-Mart's move into higher-priced, more fashionable apparel and home furnishings with the splashiest marketing the retailer had ever done, buying ad spreads in Vogue and sponsoring an open-air fashion show in Times Square.Wal-Mart's top management all the way up to and including Scott presumed that Wal-Mart could run like Tar-zhay before it had learned to walk. "What Wal-Mart tried to do smacks of a kind of arrogant attitude toward fashion—that you can just order it, put it down, and people will buy it," says Eric Beder, a specialty retailing analyst at Brean Murray, Carret & Co.CRASH COURSEWal-Mart did everything at once and precipitously, introducing ads even as it was flooding stores with new merchandise and before it could complete its store remodeling program. Bentonville was learning marketing on the fly and did not even attempt to adopt the sort of formal, centralized merchandise planning at which Target and many big department-store chains excel. Instead, Wal-Mart relied on dozens of individual buyers to make critical decisions as it pushed hard into unfamiliar product areas.How else to explain why a retailer whose typical female customer is thought to be a size 14 loaded up on skinny-leg jeans? Or why Wal-Mart's cheap-chic Metro7 line got off to a flying start in 350 stores only to crash and burn as it was rolled out to 1,150 more? Or why Wal-Mart not only severely misread demand for George-brand basics but also is unable to replenish its stocks for months on end while "fast-fashion" chains such as H&M easily turn over entire collections every six weeks?Scott loved Wal-Mart's bold new direction until he hated it, his enthusiasm diminishing in sync with same-store sales throughout much of 2006. "We are going to sell for less," Scott says now, emphasizing a return to Wal-Mart's first principles. "I believe that long after we are gone, the person who sells for less will do more business than the person who doesn't."Yet Scott also signaled his continuing commitment to the pursuit of the middle-income shopper by promoting Fleming to yet another new post, chief merchandising officer, as part of a January shakeup of the senior ranks. Although Wal-Mart no doubt has sponsored its last glitzy runway show, Fleming insists that the company is sticking with its underlying strategy of "customer relevance"—that is, of moving beyond a monolithic focus on price to try to boost sales by targeting particular customers in new ways. "We're not going to back off," he vows. "We've learned certain lessons. Some things we'll build on, some things we won't."While the look of its stores is primarily a function of how much Wal-Mart chooses to spend on them, the retailer is unlikely ever to come up with an ambience conducive to separating the affluent from their money without changing its whole approach to labor. The chain's dismal scores on customer satisfaction surveys imply that it is understaffing stores to the point where many of them struggle merely to meet the demands of its self-service format.It is entirely possible even so that Wal-Mart in time will figure out how to sell vast quantities of dress-for-success blazers, 400-thread-count sheets, laptop computers, and even prepackaged sushi. But as Wal-Mart closes in on $400 billion in annual revenues, it is going to have to overachieve just to get same-store sales rising again at 3% to 5% a year.The odds are that Scott, or his successor, will have to choose between continuing to disappoint Wall Street or milking the U.S. operation for profits better reinvested overseas. Only by hitting the business development equivalent of the lottery in countries like China, India, or Brazil can the world's largest retailer hope to restore the robust growth that once seemed like a birthright.

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Marketing Management (IT Smart Program)

โดย ดร.นิเวศน์ ธรรมะ, 2552, สรุปภาพรวมการจัดการการตลาด, "การจัดการการตลาด" มหาวิทยาลัยรามคำแหง
By Dr.Niwet Thamma, Marketing Management in Conclusion, Marketing Management, 10 May,2009

1. SWOT
a. Internal Factors
i. Market share, Sales growth, Profitability
ii. STP : Potential for increased profit, Difference of needs, reach a segment cost to segment, Similarity of needs
iii. Product : Brand name, Brand Image, Product line, Branding, Product verity, Global brand, Product Extension, Product Adaptation, Product Invention,
iv. Price : Low cost leadership, Pricing Strategy
v. Place : Experience, Specialist, Training, Distribution Strategy, Coverage
vi. Promotion : Social Event Marketing,
vii. Shareholder : Experience
viii. R&D, Production, Finance, Management
b. External Factors
i. Customer
1. Discover Customer needs, GEN M, Y, X , B and Racial and ethnic Diversity, Global Consumer
ii. Industry’s Competitor : Slice or heavy , Potential, Alternative form of Competition, Competitive position
iii. New Entrances : Number of new entry, Barrier to entry, Local or Global competition, Competitive position
iv. Supplier :
v. Substitution Goods
vi. Dynamic of World Trade, Tariff, Market growth
vii. Political : Regulatory Forces
viii. Economic : GDP, Consumer Index, Consumer Income, Expected Growth,
ix. Social & Cultural : Social Moving, Mix Culture, Population shifts, Cultural Diversify
x. Technology : Rapid change, Customer Value, Electronic business
xi. Geography
xii. Stakeholder

2. STP : Geographic, Demographic, Benefit Sought, Usage patronage, Psychographic, Market size, Compatibility with the Organization ‘s Objective and Resources , Perceptual Mapping
3. Marketing Objective : Product life Cycle : PLC
4. Marketing Strategy (4Ps)
a. Product & Service Strategy
i. Experience of success or fail of new product management
ii. Product Variation
iii. Product Line and Product Mix
iv. Product development
b. Pricing Strategy
i. Demand oriented approaches
ii. Cost oriented approaches
iii. Profit oriented approaches
iv. Competition oriented approaches
c. Place Strategy
i. Channel of Distribution
ii. Physical of Distribution
iii. Intensive distribution
iv. Exclusive distribution
v. Selective Distribution
vi. Vertical Conflict
vii. Horizontal Conflict
viii. Logistic and Supply chain management
ix. Wheel of retailing
d. Integrated Marketing Communication : IMC
i. Promotion element: Advertising, Sales promotion, Personal selling, Public relation, Direct marketing
ii. Pull & Push Strategy
iii. Executing and Evaluating
iv. Interactive Marketspace
5. Customer Relationship Management : CRM
6. Corporate Social Responsibility : CSR

Blowing Up Pepsi

PepsiCo Americas CEO Massimo d'Amore has been rebranding Pepsi's core products top to bottom. Creative destruction—or just destruction?
By BusinessWeek, Burt Helm , April 16, 2009, 5:00PM EST

D'Amore aims to bring a more cohesive approach to each brand David Yellen/Redux


In 14 years at PepsiCo (PEP), Massimo F. d'Amore has muscled through his share of tough jobs. In New York in 2000 he marshaled PepsiCo's successful takeover battle for Gatorade's parent company, Quaker Oats. In 2002 he boosted PepsiCo's sales and profits in Latin America even as the Argentine economy disintegrated. In the following years the Latin America operations grew faster than Coca-Cola's (KO).
Now, d'Amore (pronounced da-more-ay) is tackling his biggest challenge yet: shoring up PepsiCo's North American beverage business. While Americans consume nearly twice as much soda per person as any other developed nation (49 gallons a year), they are drinking less and less these days. According to John Sicher of industry watcher Beverage Digest, Pepsi shipped 1 billion cases of Pepsi in 2007, down 29% from 2000. In recent years, PepsiCo has looked for growth in the juices, bottled water, and fruity sodas consumers increasingly prefer. That helped the North American beverage unit boost profits 6%, to $2.2 billion in 2007, on revenues of $10.2 billion. But starting last year, as the recession deepened, sales of noncarbonated drinks began suffering along with soda.
Not one to fiddle in the margins, d'Amore has taken drastic action. His audacious solution: tear down and then rebuild PepsiCo's biggest beverage brands, which, besides Pepsi, include Gatorade, Tropicana, and Mountain Dew. And he is doing this all at once. D'Amore's ambitious agenda brings to mind the Obama Administration's theory that it would be a shame to waste a crisis. His calculation is that a more powerful and enduring Pepsi will emerge from this creative destruction. D'Amore is willing to try new things even if it upsets traditionalists. And rather than cherry-pick a few priorities, he has taken on seven brands.
Since becoming CEO of PepsiCo Americas Beverages 16 months ago, d'Amore has not been shy. Gatorade, Tropicana, and Pepsi, which had long operated as independent fiefdoms, have been jammed into one operating division. And he has put himself at the center of brand management—hiring and firing ad agencies, helping conceive TV commercials, and even editing them. His hands-on style has alienated veteran marketing executives, and since his arrival several have left. D'Amore concedes he may have bruised egos but says: "We needed to implement this change fast."
It's a risky strategy, and d'Amore, 53, has already stumbled, most glaringly when a consumer backlash forced him to scrap new Tropicana packaging. If he fails, his tactics may well have ripped apart a storied marketing department and made PepsiCo weaker. If he succeeds, he'll have strengthened a famous brand and made himself a contender to succeed PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi.
Old (left) and new: Nooyi wanted a sleek and minimalist look, "like the iPod"

In the fall of 2007, Nooyi was wrestling with a dilemma. Since becoming CEO the previous year, she'd been selling PepsiCo as a growth company. But while Frito-Lay and the international operations were doing well, Pepsi, the name on the door, was in decline. She needed someone to shore up cola and take a hard look at other beverages found wanting. She had in mind just the man for the job: Massimo d'Amore.
Nooyi had noticed him in the '90s when she ran corporate strategy and he was chief marketing officer of the International Division. An engineer with a creative bent, d'Amore had both sides of the brain working. "He could look around the bend better than anybody else," recalls Nooyi. She figured d'Amore, an Italian, would see the U.S. market with fresh eyes, just as she had upon emigrating from India. "People who didn't grow up in [the U.S.] are students of this culture," Nooyi says. "It's almost like when you convert, you're more passionate about the cause because you converted." On Oct. 3, 2007, Nooyi and d'Amore were in Venice for meetings. During a break she asked him to walk with her in the gardens of the Hotel Cipriani. Would he run the beverages unit? she asked. Days later, d'Amore said he would.




UNIFIED APPROACH
When d'Amore settled into his new office at PepsiCo's Purchase (N.Y.) headquarters a month later, the global economy was starting to deteriorate. Some executives might have scaled back their ambitions in the face of the downturn. Not d'Amore. To save costs and give him the agility to make decisions, he wanted to consolidate his control of Gatorade, Tropicana, and Pepsi by forming them into one operating unit. Then he planned to refurbish the beverage brands he deemed promising. A series of brand extensions in recent years, he believed, had turned PepsiCo's beverage lines into a hodgepodge of products with no unifying theme. D'Amore wanted to bring a more cohesive approach to each brand.
Nooyi wondered if he should consolidate first and wait a year to rebrand everything. D'Amore, keen to put rivals on the defensive, assured her he could do both. Simultaneously unleashing multiple ads and designs, he argued, would captivate consumers and induce customers to place large orders.
D'Amore informally called his undertaking The Big Bang. It was an apt metaphor. He was proposing not just devising new ads and slogans for seven separate brands but redesigning 1,121 different bottles, cans, and other packages. And he wanted to have the reconceived products on store shelves in seven months to coincide with the 2009 Super Bowl, when PepsiCo was planning to unveil several new commercials.
Never had the company attempted to overhaul so many products so quickly. The danger was clear: In January consumers would walk into supermarkets and find that nearly all of their favorite PepsiCo beverages looked dramatically different—and they might hate the changes. What's more, d'Amore's team wouldn't have time for the exhaustive market research that usually helps mitigate such risks.
Companies often perfect each stage of a rebranding plan before moving on to the next one. For example, the design agency typically settles on a logo before handing off to the people working on the package. To save time, d'Amore decided to adopt the so-called concurrent model: design the logos, create the packaging, shoot the TV commercials, and so forth simultaneously. He acknowledges that this is riskier but insists the enhanced speed and agility are worth it. "Aiming for perfection is the enemy of good progress," d'Amore says. And if getting the project done in time meant inserting himself in the creative process—highly unusual for a CEO—then so be it. After all, he had marketing experience.
D'Amore wouldn't do all of this on his own. When he needed advice, he'd call on marketing and brand experts he had met over the years. They would help him formulate his thinking and provide outside perspective. D'Amore chose as a top adviser Manhattan branding guru Peter Arnell, whose Arnell Group is part of the advertising giant Omnicom Group (OMC). D'Amore had worked with Arnell before. Still, it was a controversial choice. Depending on whom you talk to, Arnell is either a genius or all sizzle and no steak. He has had successes, including the launch of the DKNY brand. And he dazzles clients with his erudition. But it has been years since he scored a hit, and his recent work, including a line of Muhammad Ali snack food for Mars, has fared poorly. D'Amore, who counts Arnell as a friend, defends his choice: "We value his ability to connect the dots."
One of the first Arnell-d'Amore productions was a TV spot for SoBe Lifewater, a beverage d'Amore wanted to reposition to take on Coca-Cola's (KO) vitaminwater. It was an early glimpse of d'Amore's management style. After giving the job to Arnell Group, he fired SoBe's existing ad agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty. He and Arnell then cooked up the idea for the ad together—a sendup of Michael Jackson's Thriller video featuring lizards dancing with model Naomi Campbell. Later, d'Amore flew to Los Angeles to help edit the commercial.
Before long, d'Amore decided Arnell should help him get the cola business growing again. Pepsi needed to be more clearly defined, d'Amore believed. It should be more tied to pop culture, as it was back in the '80s when Jackson starred in Pepsi's commercials.
When d'Amore and Nooyi invited Arnell in to talk cola, no other Pepsi marketing people were present. Nooyi knew exactly what she was looking for. "The iPod is an elegant product people like to be seen with," she recalls telling Arnell. "I want Pepsi to be an elegant product people like to be seen with." Arnell was jazzed. "The objective was very, very clearly laid out," he recalls. "We needed to rejuvenate, reengineer, rethink, reparticipate in popular culture."
But how could they turn a can of fizzy sugar water into a design icon? Arnell and his clients decided to start by redesigning the Pepsi logo. One doesn't do such a thing lightly. The project needed a name: It was dubbed Breathtaking. And Arnell needed inspiration. After meeting with Nooyi and d'Amore, he set off on a five-week world tour of trendy design houses.
On the PepsiCo campus, meanwhile, d'Amore's shakeup was causing considerable sturm und drang. Insiders say some executives resented the boss's tendency to shut them out and instead rely on Arnell's counsel. One recalls feeling "d'Amoralized." Key people were leaving, including chief marketing officer Cie Nicholson and the head of Gatorade. Then, on July 23, 2008, came news that the economy was taking a serious toll on the division—second-quarter operating profit had fallen by 7%. The upshot: During the first two full quarters of d'Amore's tenure, PepsiCo's North American beverage sales were the weakest in history. "We have to retool and reteam," d'Amore told analysts.
Twelve days later, Arnell presented his new logo to a handful of executives at PepsiCo headquarters. Arnell gave one of his trademark performances. He traced his design not just to Pepsi's days as a local brand in New Bern, N.C., but to the touchstones of Western civilization: the golden ratio, the Parthenon, Mona Lisa's smile, Einstein's theory of relativity, and, of course, the iPod. He explained how his smooth new circle, which would replace the 3D look of the old logo with simple matte colors, mimicked the minimalist lines of Apple's (AAPL) music-and-video player. The logo's upturned curves, he said, were like emoticons: Diet Pepsi was a "grin," Pepsi was a "smile," Pepsi Max a "laugh." Months later the presentation would leak online, to be pilloried by bloggers as so self-indulgent that many concluded it had to be a satire. But d'Amore liked what he saw, particularly the smiles. "They brought humanity to the logo," he says.
But much remained to be done if d'Amore was going to make his deadline. With the Super Bowl just a few months away, he appointed three PepsiCo veterans to key positions. Ralph Santana, who headed Pepsi's sports and entertainment promotions, would run Pepsi; Frank Cooper III, a hotshot in charge of Mountain Dew—one of the few growing brands in Pepsi's portfolio—would oversee all carbonated soft drinks; and David A. Burwick, who had served as chief marketing officer earlier in the decade, would return from the International Division to be CMO of all beverage brands in North America. D'Amore says he had planned the promotions for a while as part of his reorganization. The replacements also came at a time when d'Amore's Big Bang was falling behind schedule.
Cooper, for one, saw the challenge clearly. "The main charge was simple: It was to get Pepsi into the conversation again within the culture," he says. "[But] the only part of the puzzle clearly in place was Arnell reinventing the Pepsi graphics." Burwick, the new CMO, concluded Pepsi needed a new "brand manifesto."
Cooper huddled with a brand consultant. Here's what they cooked up: "We're done being all things to all people," they wrote. "We are going to reach out to one very special demographic, the real you.
The demographic of people who march to the beat of their own drum, who say no even when it's unpopular, who say yes even when it's an uncomfortable change, who change a hundred-year-old brand icon because the new one is simply more beautiful and fitting for our times."
Pepsi had its manifesto. Now it needed commercials for the Super Bowl. D'Amore was unsatisfied with the ads proposed by BBDO Worldwide, PepsiCo's agency of 48 years. And he wanted a bigger agency than Arnell's to handle the work. So he showed the manifesto to Lee Clow, creative director at TBWA\Chiat\Day, which already had the Gatorade account. A few weeks later, Clow presented his team's concept. D'Amore liked it enough to propose a showdown between Chiat and BBDO. The winner would become Pepsi's main agency.
The face-off took place in November at Calloway House, an old Colonial on the PepsiCo campus. In his presentation, Clow tapped into the Obama campaign. Proposed billboards featured words like "Optimismmm." Another showed people passing a bottle of Pepsi from one generation to the next. The tagline: "Every Generation Refreshes the World." Pepsi would sell youth, as it always had, but it would implicitly assure boomers they were still cool. A few days later, BBDO had its shot. D'Amore took a few minues to decide: Chiat had the gig. BBDO chief Andrew Robertson, who turned 48 that day, recalls: "I've had better birthdays."
By Jan. 15, Americans could see in stores the results of a hectic year's worth of work. Gatorade bottles featured a giant G, which PepsiCo hopes will become as iconic as Nike's (NKE) swoosh. SoBe Lifewater's lizard mascot was now larger. And big stacks of Pepsi cans and bottles featured Arnell's new logo. The response was mixed. Consumers hated Arnell's redesigned Tropicana carton, which included a cap that looked like an orange. After receiving mounds of irate letters, Nooyi decided to cancel the repackaging. Design critics said the Pepsi logo's "smile" would be lost on the average person. But the Pepsi Super Bowl commercial made USA Today's much-watched annual Top 10 list.
D'Amore and Nooyi say PepsiCo doesn't expect to see results until the second half of this year. So far the company says there have been glimmers of hope: Its surveys show consumers have become more positively disposed toward SoBe Lifewater, Pepsi, Sierra Mist, and Mountain Dew since the rebranding. Most promising, Pepsi has gained market share against Coca-Cola in the U.S., says Beverage Digest's Sicher. But cola sales still fell in the first quarter. And despite all the new advertising, Pepsi, like Coke, is losing market share to private-label brands. D'Amore is undaunted. "Breaking new ground is always controversial," he says. "Our opportunity [is] to change the rules."

Mcdonald's 24/7

BusinessWeek, February 5, 2007

McDonald's 24/7 By Michael Arndt

By focusing on the hours between traditional mealtimes, the fast-food giant is sizzling

It is 3:36 a.m. Thursday at McDonald's in Garner, N.C., a bedroom community just beyond the city limits of Raleigh. Although the town's taverns closed more than an hour ago, the last clubgoers are straggling home. Their cars barrel by ones driven by waitresses, commercial cleaners, musicians, nurses, and computer analysts heading home from work. The McDonald's sign, posted high along a commercial strip of big-box stores and chain restaurants, is one of the few still glowing.

Slide Show >>Inside the McDonald's kitchen, Julia Diaz is mixing buttermilk biscuit dough by hand in a giant stainless steel bowl, while Silvia Roldan is grilling sausage patties and eggs for breakfast, which begins in 24 minutes. Outside, at the drive-through window, D.C. Chavis is picking up a Premium Crispy Chicken Ranch BLT sandwich and a large order of fries. Chavis, 24, has just clocked out after 12 hours at a nearby food warehouse. He used to pick up an after-work snack at an all-night convenience store or diner. Now he swings by McDonald's at least five times a week for the premium sandwich combo meal or, if it's later, a McGriddle and a side of hash browns. The food is a lot better at McDonald's, he says, adding that the prices are cheaper and the brand is one he trusts. Says Chavis: "I was raised on McDonald's."

Quiz>>McDonald's went 24/7 in Garner in April, 2005, after a push by corporate headquarters to boost profits by extending store hours. Franchisee Fred Huebner had doubts at first. He doesn't anymore. By catering to the area's night owls and early birds on U.S. Highway 70, Huebner, who put on his first McDonald's uniform almost 35 years ago, figures he has increased his restaurant's revenue by 4.5%, or $90,000, over a year. "There are so many customers out there all times of the day," he says. "We have to be out there, too."Over the course of an average day, 1,500 people—the equivalent of 1 out of every 16 people in the middle-class suburb of 24,095—drive in to the Garner McDonald's. The clientele is every bit as diverse as the town's population. Old-timers joshing with one another over morning coffee. Office workers zipping from the pickup window for breakfast behind the wheel. Repairmen on a midshift break. Mothers taking a breather while their preschoolers scamper in the Play Place. Families ordering dinner in Spanish. And, in caravans, twentysomethings after a night of carousing.

Slide Show >>It wasn't always like this. When Ray Kroc launched his first drive-in in 1955, McDonald's was a two-meal place, opening just before lunch and closing not long after dinner. It kept those hours for the next 20 years. Then, with the national introduction of the Egg McMuffin in 1975, the company turned breakfast into a fast-food meal, too. Now the world's biggest restaurant chain wants to take over the rest of the day. Since 2003 more than 90% of the 13,700 McDonald's in the U.S. have extended their hours beyond the basic 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. day. Nearly 40% operate nonstop, up from 0.5% in 2002. Breakfast is busting out of its old boundaries. It now stretches up to seven hours at many locations, and the company is considering making it an all-day option. Next on the agenda: snack foods and fruit smoothies for between-meal refuelings and late-night munchies.The all-hours offensive reflects a strategic shift at McDonald's. For most of its history, growth meant one thing: more locations. And until the late 1990s it worked. Like a juggernaut, McDonald's rolled over the competition and across the nation, opening hundreds of outlets each year and cranking out a run of hit products. Then the company reached a saturation point. While overall revenue kept climbing, the new sites stole customers from existing locations. Margins and same-store sales slid into 2002, reflecting diminishing returns on the $1.2 billion a year that the company was plowing into new restaurants during this period. By spending so much time on real estate, recalls James Skinner, a 35-year veteran who was promoted to chief executive in late 2004, "we had lost our focus. We had taken our eyes off the fries."Today the mantra is "better, not just bigger." Instead of building more restaurants, McDonald's is increasing its financial results by squeezing more from the ones it has. The new focus has forced it to rethink every element of its business, from product development and marketing to restaurant design and technology. In the process, McDonald's, which seemed out of touch with consumers just a few years ago, has attempted to realign itself with contemporary tastes.The changes are obvious at the newly refurbished McDonald's in Garner. The dark wood and glass display case of its McCafé—think Starbucks (SBUX )—tempts customers with its desserts and sandwich wraps. Sheryl Crow and Norah Jones play on the restaurant's piped-in soundtrack, while flat-screen TVs show cable news. Amid live plants and wrought-iron magazine racks, four leather lounge chairs round out a den. Hand-blown light fixtures cast a warm glow. And that trademark McDonald's smell of burgers and fries? There isn't even a whiff of it. The restaurant's air system whisks kitchen odors outside before they can seep into the dining room. This is a place set up to make customers comfortable. The service is still fast, but the meal itself no longer has to be.McDonald's is, of course, much more than an ordinary fast-food chain. It is a cultural mirror. The changes at the burger company reflect the evolution of American eating habits. Traditional meals are getting pushed and pulled into nontraditional hours as longer drive times and hours on the job combine with busier after-work schedules to take up more and more of the day. The idealized vision of a family gathering for a home-cooked dinner seems as dated as Father Knows Best. These days, with the typical American eating out five times a week, according to market researchers at npd Group in Port Washington, N.Y., the dining room is likely to be a car seat in the family SUV. "People don't sit down and have an organized meal today," observes Marlene Schwartz, director of research and school programs at the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University. "Eating is something you check off."McDonald's is not responsible for the way Americans eat. But the inescapable fact is that it serves an enormous number of them. The $21.6 billion company now feeds a record 27 million people every day, 1 million more every year since 2003. As No. 1, it is likely to remain the top target for the food police. Although McDonald's now sells salads, its two most popular foods, the double cheeseburger and fries, are high in fat and sodium. McDonald's also seems out of sync with more recent health concerns. Wendy's has quit using trans fats in its fries and chicken, and KFC plans to purge its deep fryers of these oils in the spring, making New York City's recent trans-fat ban a nonissue for them. McDonald's says, though, that substitutes spoil the taste of its fries. "From a public health point of view," observes Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, "more people going to McDonald's means poorer health."Meanwhile creative and aggressive competitors, including Starbucks (SBUX ), Wendy's (WEN ), Burger King (BKC ), and Dunkin' Donuts, see the same eating trends, and they're targeting many of the same customers. Starbucks Corp. and Wendy's International Inc. both are testing hot breakfast sandwiches and planning national rollouts in the next year or two, in a direct challenge to McDonald's most profitable business.Despite the competition, McDonald's is, at the moment, triumphant. After posting its first-ever quarterly loss in 2002, it has logged 45 consecutive months of U.S. sales increases, including a 6.9% pop in December. It now commands nearly half the U.S. hamburger market—three times more than either Wendy's or Burger King—and has such a lead that even its fastest-growing rivals may never catch up. McDonald's share price, up 25% in the last year, is trading at a seven-year high of nearly $45. John Glass, a restaurant analyst with CIBC Worldwide, sees only further gains from McDonald's new strategy. "People's days are longer," he notes. "So are McDonald's restaurant hours. This is a natural evolution to capture more business."Skinner is all optimism. Hosting breakfast at the McDonald's restaurant inside the corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., the 62-year-old CEO says: "We've learned. We've evolved. We believe we've cracked the code in the United States." It's a simple secret, actually: Americans like to eat all day long. Having conquered lunch and dinner, here's how McDonald's plans to win the rest of the day.Early morning: at 5:50 a.m. on Thursday in Garner, CNN is on the restaurant's two wall-mounted flat-screen TVs. In the back of the dining room, a few retirees are drinking coffee. The first to arrive, David Scott, a former Raleigh police officer, had driven 14 miles to wait outside for the doors to open at 5 a.m. McDonald's is this group's social center. The men, joined sometimes by a few wives, are there every morning, each taking his usual chair.Meantime, Julie Brown has driven up in her Hummer to fetch breakfast for her daughter, Jasmine, and the rest of the high school swim team while they practice. Brown's order includes more than $30 worth of Egg McMuffins, sausage breakfast biscuits, egg-and-sausage bagels, hash browns, orange juice—and a peach-mango smoothie for herself. Brown, 37, loves the wider variety of foods and drinks available at McDonald's today. "I used to have to go to five different places for everyone. I'd have to go to one place to get bagels. Smoothies at another. Coffee at another," she says. "Now I can get everything here, all at once."Thanks to icons like the McMuffin and the McGriddle—a pork patty between two syrup-infused pancakes introduced in 2003 —McDonald's dominates mornings. It owns a quarter of the $25 billion market for fast-food breakfast. In fact, morning is now the most important part of the day for McDonald's in the U.S., accounting for a quarter of domestic revenue and nearly half of profits. Those numbers roughly approximate the breakdown in Garner, a fairly typical store, where breakfast accounts for 30% of the store's $2.5 million in annual sales. Lunch is 24%, afternoon 15%, dinner 15%, and overnight 16%. The single hour that generates the most revenue annually at the store, about $200,000, is the traditional lunch period, from noon to 1 p.m.For all of its success at breakfast, management is confident that there's still plenty of room to grow in the morning. Why? Because it is still the meal that people in the U.S. are least likely to eat away from home. For every restaurant breakfast, the typical American orders 2.5 lunches and nearly 2 dinners, according to NPD Group. And new products attract new business. Since McDonald's rolled out a darker and stronger coffee last March, same-store sales at breakfast have increased 7.5% in the U.S., on a pace with Starbucks. To build on this momentum, the company is testing two more breakfast items: a Southern-style fried chicken biscuit and Newman's Own iced coffee.A bigger breakthrough may come out of the company's experimental restaurant in Romeoville, Ill. Today the standard McDonald's kitchen has room for one built-in grill. As a result, restaurants have to stop serving breakfast in the late morning so crews can begin sizzling up burgers for the rest of the day. The company is working on a potential solution to this conundrum: a portable electric unit that would permit kitchens to serve breakfast all day long.It's hard to believe that the pace in Garner could get much quicker. At the height of mealtime rushes, the place routinely serves 90 cars an hour, vs. 77 two years ago. Crew chief Todd Marsh plucks hash browns from the fryer rack and steps back to the pickup window to hand out another breakfast. He resets the wall-mounted timer that had been digitally ticking off the seconds since the order was placed. Sixty-five seconds. Store manager David Mardenborough, who charts these times hour by hour, beams.Maintaining McDonald's mastery of the morning will not be easy. Starbucks has begun making hot breakfast sandwiches and plans to offer them to 6,500 U.S. outlets by the end of 2008. After testing its own hot breakfast sandwiches at 120 locations, Wendy's is contemplating rolling out breakfast to its 6,300 restaurants in the U.S. and Canada. Dunkin' Brands Inc. has announced plans to triple its doughnut chain, to almost 15,000 shops, while adding new products like breakfast pizza to a line that already includes its knockoff of the Egg McMuffin.Many restaurant analysts and consultants are betting on McDonald's to win the breakfast battle. Even 22 years after introducing the Croissan'wich, they note, Burger King Holdings Inc. has never come close to matching McDonald's sales volumes at breakfast. "The breakfast habit is the hardest habit to break," says CIBC's Glass. "We're promiscuous at lunch and dinner, but we tend to be monogamous at breakfast."Afternoon: Midday snackers may be the least loyal. They enjoy temptations ranging from Starbucks Frappuccino and fruit smoothies at Jamba Juice to Big Gulps at 7-Eleven. To shove its way to the front of this crowd, McDonald's has had no choice but to reinvent both its products and its store design.The company's most important new enticement for these customers is its $1.29 Snack Wrap, a strip of deep-fried chicken with cheese, lettuce, and a squirt of sauce tucked into a folded tortilla. Before it was introduced in August, McDonald's considered every detail in creating the wrap. Because so many consumers are on the go, the company needed something people could hold easily in one hand while gripping a steering wheel in the other. Since salsas would drip, McDonald's opted for thicker ranch dressing. To further guard against spills, it went with a larger, 8-inch-diameter tortilla. The planning is paying off: The company has attributed strong same-store sales growth in the last five months in part to the Snack Wrap. To keep the momentum going, the company is introducing a new version, with either fried or grilled chicken and honey-mustard dressing, in late January.Don Williams got hooked on the Snack Wrap after his first one. It is 3:27 p.m. Thursday, and Williams, 54, a self-employed electrician, has stopped by in between jobs for something to tide him over until he can have dinner at 9 p.m., after his wife gets home from work. He ceased eating McDonald's burgers some time ago to cut down on his cholesterol. But while the Snack Wrap is hardly low-fat, he figures he eats one three times a week. "I like this little quick sandwich," he says. "It gives me enough energy to carry me for another two or three hours."One reason McDonald's is creating crowd-pleasers again is that it has become much more rigorous in product development. New ideas are generated in the company's food studio in Oak Brook by a staff of three dozen chefs, food technicians, and market researchers. Potential new products get tried out first in one market for six weeks. The company doesn't just assess sales. It also monitors costs and margins and judges how easy a new product is to prepare by a crew that is constantly changing. (The annual turnover among cooking crews companywide exceeds 100%, although it is about 70% for the Huebners.) If the concept passes muster, McDonald's expands its test cell to 800 to 1,000 restaurants in four to six markets.Skinner and others say this wasn't standard operating procedure before the company embarked on its comeback in 2003. Back then the company was in all-out expansion mode, opening outlets somewhere in the world at the rate of one every 4 1/2 hours. Ralph Alvarez, 51, McDonald's president and chief operating officer, recalls spending six to seven days of his 20-workday month on real estate. That left scant time for things like consumer research. Little surprise that many new products bombed. Case in point: the McShaker salad. Introduced in 1999, it came in a large plastic cup designed to fit a car's cupholder. Problem: Nobody could figure out how to eat a salad while driving. "We were more willy-nilly then," says Skinner. "The attitude was, we'll make it and they'll buy it."Today the company is adding just 50 to 100 sites a year in the U.S. The shift has freed up billions of dollars in capital, which has enabled McDonald's to quadruple its dividend to $1.2 billion over the past four years, ramp up its share buybacks, and hand out generous subsidies to its 2,400 franchisees to refurbish their stores. Since 2003 the chain has remodeled more than 3,000 sites. Now it plans to convert every location over the next 20 years from its 1980s mansard roof design to a more upscale exterior of earth-red brick and glass accented by a yellow swoosh at the roofline. These new stores could cost up to $1.5 million apiece to build. To help franchisees, the company has agreed to chip in as much as $600,000 per site.Fred Huebner and his wife, Doris, redid the Garner store last year. Before, the dining room had been a single space, with fluorescent lights and hard-backed chairs and booths. Today it has different zones for different customers. There's the den with its wall-mounted flat-screen TV, a Play Place for kids, and a large high-top table in the middle of the store, behind a frosted glass partition. There are also decorative upgrades throughout, such as bronze sculptures and a fountain.Their redesigned restaurant also boasts a McCafé, a separately demarcated space inside the store that sells espresso-based coffees and pastries. It is one of 45 McDonald's in the U.S. testing specialty coffees. The McCafé in Garner doesn't have a separate seating area, but it has its own counter and a display case showing off baskets of muffins and platters of desserts, such as $2.50 tuxedo brownies and cheesecake at $3.25 a slice. In addition to $3.10 cups of latte and cappuccino, the Garner McCafé offers wraps and smoothies.Kim Borum is impressed by the restaurant's new design touches. It is 12:45 p.m., and she is leaving after joining her husband, Bennie, for lunch. The restaurant had always been conveniently located for the Borums, but she says they now eat at McDonald's two or three times a week. "The ambience of a place makes a big difference in how people feel about it," she says. "If you walk into a place and you see that it's decorated from 1975, the first thing you're going to think is old. And that's a bad thing to think about food."Late night: The Huebners are a genuine McDonald's success story. The couple, who met at McDonald's in 1977, paid $400,000 for their first store in 1986. They bought their 12th for $1.8 million in September. Their business now generates more than $25 million in annual revenue. They employ 710 people, including their sons, John and Frederick.Despite their track record, the Huebners were hesitant about staying open all night. McDonald's had begun urging U.S. franchisees to extend their store hours in 2003. It offered $1,000 per site to cover in-store promotional signs and local advertising if they went all the way and never closed. To drum up overnight traffic, headquarters also started dispatching tricked-out rvs to concerts, sports events, and bars to pitch twentysomethings with coupons and contests.Two months after they decided to go round-the-clock with the drive-through service, Fred Huebner says, his doubts seemed confirmed. Although the outlet already had an after-hours crew that stayed as late as 1:30 a.m. to clean up and another that clocked in at 4:30 a.m. to set up for the new day, the extra hours boosted expenses for payroll and utilities. Even with a limited menu, the store was losing money on the overnight shift. But by the third month the new shift was turning a profit. These days an extra 50 to 60 cars, on average, pull into the drive-through lane every night. The Huebners believe the move probably has helped increase traffic during "shoulder hours," too, since customers no longer wonder whether McDonald's is open.Elizabeth Williams, a pharmacy technician at a CVS store, is a new McDonald's regular. It is 2:53 a.m., and she is returning home from a bar in Raleigh. A few times a week, before she goes to bed, she says, she stops after an evening out for her nighttime snack: a Premium Grilled Chicken Ranch BLT sandwich, medium fries, and a 32-ounce sweet tea.Amid the barhoppers, there are also people like Steve Smith. A 45-year-old truck driver, Smith pulls in at 3:15 a.m., on his way to work, for a Quarter Pounder combo meal. He has been eating at McDonald's since he was a kid, and he still comes in at least three times a week. Before the restaurant was open all night, he says, his options were pretty limited: "I'd eat cereal at the house."The success in Garner's overnight business speaks volumes about McDonald's role today. Although it is well known for the sameness of its food and restaurants, McDonald's is really a lot of different restaurants that cater to a lot of different people. When Huebner started working at McDonald's, there was no breakfast. No Big Mac and no drive-through window, either. Now six of the Huebners' dozen McDonald's are open 24/7, and the rest are open at least 18 hours a day. "Ten years ago we saw every customer as a transaction count," Huebner recalls, "not as a person who needed to use the restaurant in a different way."

Assingment about this article
The taskes is the following: A. Burger King has heard much about the changes institutet by its main rival, McDonald's. The marketing manager of burger king has requested a memo report which must contain a description of the eating habits in the US, a summary and an nalysis of the recent changes at McDonald's and other fast-food chains and a recommended strategy taking the following into consideration (a) eating habits in the future, (b) new initiatives to be launched by Burger King. THE TASK FOR A. As a member of the marketing division, you write the memo report in English, suggested word count: at least 700 words TASK B. Based onyour recommendations in the memo report, you write a press release whcih should be sent to all relevent newspapers. In the press release you describe the initiatives which will be launched by Burger King and the events planned to introduce the initiatives, Suggested word count 300 words. Any one please wanna help me with the task :) ?

Cross Selling or Cross Purposes?

Harvard Business Review Article,07/01/2004 by Ford Harding

In the aftermath of a major
acquisition, everyone at
TopTek has been looking
forward to a festival of
synergistic selling. So
why isn't it happening?
Cross Selling orCross Purposes?

HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND?" John
asked. "just fine. We got away to the lake." "Hey, that's right-you have a place up
there. How long have you had it now?"
This was John's standard way of getting to what was on his mind. Anna decided to cut directly to the heart ofthe matter. "About three years. So what's up, John?"
Anna Tucker was officially the vice president for human resources at Top-Tek, maker of software for middle-market companies, but no more than half her time was devoted to HR. The rest, the fun part, was spent as CEO John Vaunt's troubleshooter. He gave her all of the problems that didn't fit neatly
HBR's cases, which are fictional, present common managerial dilemmas and offer concrete solutions from experts.
TOP-LINE GROWTH (ULY-AUGUST 2004
HBR CASE STUDY • Cross Selling or Cross Purposes?
anywhere else and those he didn't want messed up.
"We had dinner with Ric Gudalskis and his wife on Saturday," John began. "Do you know Ric? He's CIO at DigiDeal Stores, which has been a good account. He said he thought 1 shouid know something: Since the acquisition, we've been driving him nuts. Our people are in there frying to sell additional projects left and right. Ric feels we're churning the pot, trying to stimulate demand for a pace of change that the company can't handle, and taking up too much of management's time while we're at it. I called Peter Lee on Sunday to ask him about it, and he gave me an earful. 1 don't want to bias you -you should hear it from Peter yourself- but I think our sales compensation structure may be broken."
"That could be part ofthe problem," Anna offered cautiously.
"Whatever it is, would you look into it? With the saie of product flattening out, we need to sell more services; that's where the growth is. But we can't abuse our customers in the process."
Sins of Commission
Nine months earlier, TopTek had acquired the systems-integration and consulting firm Rossberg Lee, which had been one of TopTek's alliance partners. Both parties had stood to gain from the marriage. TopTek hoped to snag more ofthe software saies that were a natural by-product of a Rossberg Lee consulting engagement. And Peter Lee, the former head of Rossberg Lee and now executive vice president ofthe Solutions division at TopTek, was excited about TopTek's foot in the door at a much broader range of companies. The newly merged organization had spent a lot of time developing "solutions"- standard bundles of products and services to take to market. More customized and expensive offerings were also available.
But in many ways the two organizations had worked better as partners
Ford Harding is the founder ofMaplewood,
than as parts of the same company. Anna knew that John Vaunt's concern about the consultants was only the latest sign of friction. So when she met with Peter later that day, she wasn't surprised to get an earful herself.
Peter paced the floor of his office while they talked. It was clear that he had been stung by John's query. "Gudalskis isn't really concerned about all
to push product. Selling a solution designed to meet a client need takes a consultant's perspective."
"OK," Anna said, sighing,"but we can't just leave it at that. Otherwise, what was the point of our combining forces?" She took a breath and forged ahead. "Peter, you just made a remark about a commission. Is there something out of whack about our incentives?"
'Frankly, the sales force only knows how to push product. Selling a solution designed to meet a client need takes a consultant's perspective."
those calls to his people," he said defensively."He just doesn't like the fact that I play golf with his boss. CIOs don't like it when consultants have better access than they do." Anna couldn't help glancing toward the corner of Peter's office, where a display case housed several ornate golf trophies. "John should recognize that it's my relationship with Gudalskis's boss that got us that new work last month. I'm talking about the HR package they signed up for. The account manager had nothing to do with it - though, of course, that won't stop him from collecting his commission."
"So we don't need a sales force?" Anna asked, knowing Peter could take a gentle jabbing.
"The sales force is great at getting us into new accounts. But once a company has signed up for the basic financial package, they don't have the technical knowledge or the day-to-day contact that will lead fo add-on business. Ed Forsythe practically camped out at DigiDeal forthe final month ofthe rollout of the basic package," Peter said, referring to the principal consultant on the engagement. "I was there a lot myself. That's how you get the ties that bind. And it's how your consultants get to really understand a client's business. Frankly, the sales force only knows how
New Jersey-based Harding & Company
"Well, think about it," Peter said with a scowl. "The current compensation structure rewards the sales force for all the work sold into an account forever, regardless of whether they contributed to the sale. Our people-the consultants in Solutions - have to sell to keep billable, but fhe commissions go to the salespeople who won the accounts, even if it was years ago. Does a structure like that make any sense?"
"The salespeople's contributions are important, though," Anna said.
"Of course they are. Sometimes. But there are big holes." Peter glanced toward the door, where his assistant was mouthing a name and indicating a telephone with her thumb and pinky. "Fxcuse me," he said, striding toward his desk. "That's a call from a client that I just have to take. But I'll tell you who you should talk to: Leiia Chase. She's a Solutions person who calls into accounts directly-just what Gudalskis was complaining about."
Sins of Omission
LeIia was in charge of the consulting practice that implemented the facilities package of TopTek's major product suite. Anna welcomed the chance to talk with her. Lelia was professional and coolheaded; she could be counted on to be objective. Still, it was a strange recommendation. Implementations of this
(http://www.hardingco.com/), which consults to professional firms on sales. He is the author assemblage of software and services for of three books, including Cross-Selling Success (Adams Media, 2002). customers'facilities management func46 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
Cross Selling or Cross Purposes? • HBR CASE STUDY tions accounted for a small fraction of the company's revenue. Few customers signed up for it. The two arranged to meet in the company cafeteria, which had been upgraded since the merger and now served gourmet meals that were worth staying on campus for. Leila picked at herCaesarsalad."So,you've been asked to look at the way work is sold and rewards are given out My condolences" she said. "You're a sucker for all the choice assignments, aren't you?" This was Leiia's way of acknowledging Anna's role as troubleshooter. Anna found it flattering. "Why do you think Peter asked me to talk with you?" Anna asked. "Because if I waited for the sales force to sell work for us, our practice would starve." Anna, in the middle of a bite, could only register a surprised expression. Lelia elaborated. "The price of a facilities implementation is about a quarter of the price of any other package. Our projects are tiny. But it's going to take the account rep just as much time to sell work for us as it would to sell any other package. He has to build relationships with people in the client's facilities department people he has no other reason to get to know. He'd much rather be selling a juicy financial, HR, or sales package instead." "So you have to sell it." "Right. I don't blame them for being uninterested. But I can't wait around. I won't be able to hang on to the team I've built up over the past five years if 1 can't keep them busy. None of us will get our bonuses if we don't reach our utilization targets. So I sell." "I sense you'd rather not." Lelia shrugged."I don't mind. Besides, I have some advantages over the account reps. I deal with facilities people every day and understand their problems. I belong to the right associations. The account reps don't really understand what we do. There are several small units in Rossberg Lee-excuse me, I mean in Solutions-that suffer from this problem. I've asked if the company is really interested in our practice areas TOP-LINE GROWTH JULY-AUGUST 2004 47
HBR CASE STUDY • Cross Selling or Cross Purposes?
and I'm told that it is, that we are needed so the firm can offer a competitive array of products and services."
Anna brought up the question of commissions, asking if it bothered Lelia that account reps got a cut of the work she sold.
There was a long pause. "I don't understand it," Lelia said. "But I figure the higher-ups have their reasons."
She doesn't want to alienate the account reps, Anna thought, but the system seems crazy to her.
Lelia continued: "In this market, facilities software isn't all that popular
and, as you're aware, I pushed the acquisition of his firm. But he doesn't understand sales"
"I think Peter's a pretty good salesman, based on his record," Anna said.
"Sure he is. One of the best. It's because of Peter and one or two others that we bought Rossberg Lee. 1 mean he doesn't understand what it takes to manage a sales force. For all Peter's posturing, Solutions sales are only 20% of the business. If we're going to make our numbers, we need hard-driving salespeople who are amply rewarded for their efforts. The Solutions camp can't
'At least the salespeople can sell product. Most of the consultants couldn't sell sunscreen at a
nudist colony."
with clients. But when companies are growing, there's a lot of interest. I have to keep us going until the market turns and interest heats up again. Then, I suspect, the sales force will notice us.
"The funny thing is that before the merger, I was always considered a hero for going out and selling my own work, Now it upsets people."
The Princes of Sales
Anna needed to hear the sales organization's point of view. Ron Murphy, vice president of sales and marketing, showed up for the meeting with a face almost as red as his tie.
"You'd think I'd have learned by my age," he said with a laugh. "But it was such a beautiful weekend, and one of our customers invited us out on his boat. I should have taken a hat." He laughed again. "So what's this about changing the compensation formula for sales?"
Anna knew better than to take Ron's easy manner at face value. TopTek owed a lot of its success to his relentless drive. She described what she had learned about the DigiDeal case.
"I've known Peter for ten years, and I'm a big supporter of his," Ron said. "He's one ofthe smartest guys I know.
deliver the goods. Aside from Peter and a few others, most of them feel selling is unprofessional. They don't want to dirty their hands.
"Albert Washington worked for three years to get us into DigiDeai. The basic financial package they bought was smaller than usual. So if Al had been compensated for that package and that package alone, he wouldn't have had much to show for his hard work, would he? And now, his account is generating all kinds of revenue for TopTek. Peter and his consultants wouldn't even know DigiDeal existed if it weren't for Al. 1 don't question the job that Peter Lee and Ed Forsythe did there, but you can't screw Al out of his commission on last month's HR implementation. He wouldn't stay if all he got was a commission on the initial package."
Anna could recall at least two other occasions when she had been threatened with the loss of Prince Albert. "Yes," she said, "but if he didn't really contribute to the sale-"
"You have to understand how sales works. Sometimes you work your butt off, do everything right, and you still don't win. Sometimes it comes too easy. It all nets out. Al spends his time where it's needed. He senses things are going
well at DigiDeal, so he devotes more time to Southland Baking, which, by the way, is about to sign up for an HR and a planning implementation this month. You want to penalize him for doing the right thing? Ed Forsythe is the project principal on that account, too. You think he worked hard on it? He was too busy at DigiDeal to be bothered with South-land. But Al knows you have to stay in front of your customers."
"Peter said Ed practically lived at DigiDeal for a month to help with that rollout."
"Look, the consultants get compensated, and well compensated, on utilization. They didn't do much to sell the extension work at Southland, but they'll still get rewarded for the work they do there. They want it both ways."
"How much of the first sale at Digi-Deal was product and how much was services?" Anna asked.
"I can tell you've been talking to Peter. He's always accusing our people of 'pushing products rather than crafting solutions'-nothing pejorative about that language, is there? But he's got a point. Ifyou want to do something helpn ful, find out how to train account reps to sell solutions. And while you're at it, train Peter's consultants to sell anything at all. At least my guys can sell product. Most ofthe consultants couldn't sell sunscreen at a nudist colony."
Anna laughed, in spite of herself. The idea of some of Rossberg Lee's more introverted techies in that kind of situation was amusing, she had to admit.
Searching for What Works
At the cabin by the lake that weekend, Anna found her thoughts turning continually to the conversations she'd been having. On Saturday evening, during a walk along the water's edge, her husband noticed she was preoccupied. "What's wrong?" he asked.
She tried to explain, though she knew he often found her business life mystifying."Maybethemergerjust isn't working," he ventured.
Maybe it's not, she thought as she watched the fireflies in the gathering darkness. But no, the logic behind it still
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
held up. Sales and consulting each had its own inimitable way of getting businesses to open their wallets. And if they helped each other, the company would get a bigger share of wallet than it could hope to if they worked independently. It certainly seemed to be working that way at the Trigestis Pharmaceuticals account, the success story being touted by TopTek to the financial analysts. Maybe she could find the answers there.
A Productive Pairing
On Monday afternoon, she met with Tricia Boiling, a project partner from Solutions, and Charlie Hoaver, the account executive assigned to Trigestis. Anna explained her mission. "You two have succeeded wildly at Trigestis. Has the compensation system for rewarding sales helped or hurt?"
"1 try not to think about that," joked Tricia. "If I did, it might just break up our team."
Anna laughed. "Do you agree with that, Charlie?"
"Well, I never saw a sales compensation system that worked perfectly. This one's OK, 1 guess."
"So how do we create more successes like Trigestis?" "Hire more account execs like Charlie," said Tricia.
"Could you elaborate on that a little?"
"Yeah, I'd like to hear more about that, too," Charlie said.
"I can trust him," Tricia said. "Just after the merger, I took an account rep, who will remain nameless, to meet with the president of one of my old accounts. We were there to explain why the two firms had joined up and to reassure him that it would enhance the relationship we had with his company. The client was gracious, and the meeting went alongfine, until he indirectly mentioned a need he had. The account rep pounced on it, saying how much we would like to help him with it. He even brought out a brochure. It was totally inappropriate, and my client gave me a look I still remember. He hadn't agreed to a sales meeting, and we were out of there two minutes later. I had to call him up and apologize.
"Charlie would never make a mistake like that. He knows how to listen to accounts and when to come to me and my consultants and ask us to support him. Meanwhile, he's out there in the marketplace, which I don't have the time to be. We've sold more services and product at Trigestis than at any other account of its size as a result. Watch us do the same thing at the other companies we've targeted."
"Keep talking. I'm lovingthis,"Char!ie said. "Seriously, i could say the same thing about Tricia. I trust her. If I spend six months getting a customer to the point where he wants a meeting, I can trust her not to cancel on short notice because a current customer asked for the same time slot. When I introduce her to someone, she doesrj't go on about the latest technical fix till their eyes glaze over instead of listening to their problem. And she doesn't drop the ball."
Impressive, thought Anna as she left them, but how do we replicate that?
Overhaul or Tweak?
"Well, Anna, what have you found?" asked John.
"We're hung up on a number of dimensions," she responded. "Our sales force provides broad market coverage and our consultants provide content knowledge and deep working relationships. We need both, but we don't yet have a way to sort out the two of them."
"Compensation can clarify different people's priorities," John observed.
"Yes, but there are other issues as well. In many ways, the legacy TopTek and legacy Rossberg Lee people were better suited to their old organizations than to one that sells solutions. We are going to need to start recruiting to some new job profiles."
"I understand that, but even if I wanted to, I couldn't turn over a majority of the workforce in the next year without causing more problems than I solve. And I need results before then."
What will it take for cross selling to succeed at TopTek? • Four commentators offer expert advice beginning on page 52.
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(Rectangle comment Randy Sparks19/3/2550 20:31:19What will it take for cross sellingto succeed at TopTek? • Fourcommentators offer expert advicebeginning on page 52.)TOP-LINE GROWTH JULY-AUGUST 2004

Changing Consumer Behavior

โดย ดร.นิเวศน์ ธรรมะ, 2552, เมื่อพฤติกรรมผู้บริโภคเปลี่ยนไป, "สถานการณ์ปัจจุบันทางการตลาด" มหาวิทยาลัยรามคำแหง
By Dr.Niwet Thamma, Changing Consumer Behavior, Current Issue in Marketing, 1 May,2009

จากส่วนตลาดที่แตกต่างกันจะส่งผลต่อพฤติกรรมในการบริโภคสินค้าที่แตกต่างกัน นักการตลาดจึงต้องมีความเข้าใจในความต้องการของลูกค้าให้มากขึ้นซึ่งความต้องการสินค้าดังกล่าวมีความแตกต่างไปจากสินค้าที่เคยบริโภคก่อนหน้าเพื่อให้นักการตลาดมีความชัดเจนในการกำหนดกลยุทธ์การตลาดจึงมีการจัดลำดับการบริโภคสินค้าหรือบริการออกเป็นหมวดหมู่ได้ดังนี้
สินค้าหลัก (Essential) เป็นสินค้าที่มีความจำเป็นต่อการดำรงชีพหรือสินค้าที่มุ่งตอบสนองคุณภาพชีวิตให้ดีขึ้น สินค้าที่ต้องใช้ (Treat) เป็นสินค้าที่ตัดสินใจซื้อก็ต่อเมื่อเมื่อเห็นว่ามีความคุ้มค่า
สินค้าชะลอซื้อ (Postponables) เป็นสินค้าจำเป็นหรือสินค้าที่เตรียมการซื้อไว้ล่วงหน้าแต่สามารถผ่อนผันได้
สินค้าเกินความจำเป็น (Expendables) เป็นสินค้าที่รับรู้ได้ว่าไม่มีความจำเป็นหรือไม่มีเหตุผลที่จะต้องซื้อ
ลูกค้าทุกกลุ่มจะคำนึงถึงสินค้าหลักซึ่งมีความจำเป็นขั้นพื้นฐานต่อการดำรงชีวิต เช่น อาหาร ที่อยู่อาศัย เสื้อผ้า เป็นปัจจัยหลักและใช้จ่ายเงินไปกับการเดินทางและการรักษาสุขภาพในลำดับต่อมา การตัดสินใจบริโภคสินค้าแต่ละประเภทขึ้นอยู่กับคุณลักษณะของแต่ละคนว่าจะซื้อสินค้าหรือบริการแบบไหน

ผลกระทบการถดถอยทางเศรษฐกิจ ทำให้ผู้บริโภคทุกส่วนตลาด ยกเว้น ส่วนตลาด อยู่ไปวันๆ (live-for-today) จะมีการไตร่ตรองก่อนการซื้อสินค้ามากขึ้น ซึ่งสังเกตได้จากพฤติกรรมการซื้อสินค้าที่เปลี่ยนแปลงไปในแต่ละประเภทสินค้า เช่น ธุรกิจร้านอาหาร การท่องเที่ยว ศิลปะและบันเทิง เสื้อผ้า รถยนต์ เครื่องใช้ในบ้านและเครื่องใช้ไฟฟ้า มีผลกระทบในยอดขายเป็นอย่างมากเนื่องจากผู้บริโภคตระหนักว่าสินค้าเหล่านี้จะเปลี่ยนจากสินค้าที่เคยเป็นสินค้าหลัก (essential) เป็นสินค้าที่มีความจำเป็นต้องซื้อ (treats) หรือสินค้าที่ชะลอซื้อ (postponable) หรือกลายเป็นสินค้าที่ไม่มีความจำเป็นไปเลย (expendables) ขึ้นอยู่กับคุณลักษณะของลูกค้าแต่ละกลุ่ม เมื่อลำดับขั้นการตัดสินใจซื้อมีการเปลี่ยนแปลง ผู้บริโภคอาจว่างแผนการใช้จ่ายเงินโดยตัดค่าใช้จ่ายภายในบ้านบางอย่างออกไป เช่น เครื่องทำความสะอาดบ้าน เครื่องตัดหญ้าหรือคนตัดหญ้า เครื่องตักหิมะ ออกจากสินค้าจำเป็น กลายเป็นสินค้าไม่จำเป็นเลยก็ได้ หรือไม่ก็หาสินค้าอื่นมาทดแทนก็เป็นไปได้ หรือปรับเปลี่ยนพฤติกรรมจากทานอาหารนอกบ้านเป็นทำอาหารทานเองที่บ้าน สถานการแบบนี้ลูกค้าส่วนใหญ่อ่อนไหวต่อราคามากและมีความภัคดีต่อตราสินค้าน้อยลง พวกเขาจะพอใจกับการหาสินค้าอื่นหรือแบรนด์อื่นมาแทนที่หากสามารถทำให้ค่าใช้จ่ายลดลงได้หรือลดระดับความคาดหวังในตัวสินค้าหรือบริการลง ตัวอย่างเช่นเปลี่ยนจากอาหารเพื่อสุขภาพ(organic)เป็นอาหารปกติทั่วไป (nonorganic) โดยพิจารณาจากตารางต่อไปนี้

Technology’s Impact on Customer Value

โดย ดร.นิเวศน์ ธรรมะ, 2552, GEN B, GEN X, GEN Y: The Power of Generation"สถานการณ์ปัจจุบันทางการตลาด" มหาวิทยาลัยรามคำแหง
ที่มา : ดร.นิเวศน์ ธรรมะ และคณะฯ, 2552, การวิเคราะห์สภาพแวดล้อมทางการตลาด "การจัดการการตลาด" แมคกรอ-ฮิล ประเทศไทย
เทคโนโลยีเพื่ออนาคต (Technology of Tomorrow)
ผลลัพธ์ที่ได้จากการทำวิจัย คือการเปลี่ยนแปลงเทคโนโลยี ซึ่งยากที่จะพยากรณ์หรือคาดเดาได้ ตัวอย่างของการเปลี่ยนแปลงเทคโนลยีที่เคยเกิดขึ้นแล้ว ได้แก่
· นาโนเทคโนโลยี ซึ่งทำให้ผลิตภัณฑ์หรืออุปกรณ์ต่างๆมีขนาดเล็กลง
· เทคโนโลยี High Definition (HD) ที่ให้ความคมชัดและสีสันที่ดีกว่าในโทรทัศน์และรายการต่างๆ ทำให้เกิดมาตราฐานใหม่ในผลิตภัณฑ์ประเภทนี้
· ในอีก 5 ปีข้างหน้า โทรศัพท์มือถือกว่าครึ่งจะสามารถใช้อินเตอร์เนตผ่านมือถือได้ผลิตภัณฑ์ที่ใช้เทคโนโลยีเหล่านี้ไอ้ออกสู่ตลาดแล้ว เช่น รายการโทรทัศน์ทางเคเบิ้ลที่ใช้เทคโนโลยี HD อุปกรณ์บันทึกความจำขนาดเล็ก (Flash memory) ที่แทนที่ผลิตภัณฑ์ประเภทแผ่นดิสก์ CD และอื่นๆ

ผลกระทบของเทคโนโลยีต่อคุณค่าของผู้บริโภค (Technology’s Impact on Customer Value)
เทคโนโลยีที่ก้าวหน้าส่งผลกระทบโดยตรงต่อการตลาด เพราต้นทุนของเทคโนโลยีมีมูลค่าที่ต่ำในการรับรู้ของผู้บริโภค เนื่องจากคุณค่าที่ผู้บริโภคใช้ประเมินในการเลือกซื้อผลิตภัณฑ์ประเภทที่มีเทคโนโลยีเป็นพื้นฐาน มักมุ่งเน้นที่เรื่องของคุณภาพ บริการและความสัมพันธ์ แต่อย่างไรก็ดี เทคโนโลยีสามารถนำเสนอคุณค่าผ่านการพัฒนาผลิตภัณฑ์ใหม่ได้ เช่น ในตลาดรถยนต์ ผู้ประกอบการมักติดอุปกรณ์นำทางเพื่อสร้างคุณค่าให้กับผลิตภัณฑ์
เทคโนโลนีในระบบอิเล็คโทรนิค (Electronic Business Technology)
อำนาจของเทคโนโลยีการรับส่งข้อมูลที่เติบโตอย่างรวดเร็ว คือ ตลาดบนเครือข่ายอินเตอร์เนต ซึ่งเป็นการแลกเปลี่ยนการสื่อสารและข้อมูลผ่านทางดิจิตอลเทคโนโลยี บริษัทต่างๆพยายามนำอินเตอร์เนตเทคโนโลยีมาประยุกต์ใช้ภายในองค์กรเพื่อสนับสนุนการวางกลยุทธ์ในระบบอิเล็คโทรนิคต่อไป เช่น การติดตั้งระบบอินทราเน็ต เพื่อใช้ในการเชื่อมโยงภายในองค์กร และใช้เอ็กซ์ทราเน็ต ซึ่งเป็นเทคโนโลยีทางอินเตอร์เนตที่อนุญาติให้เฉพาะบุคคลากรในองค์กร เอเยนซี่ ผู้จัดจำหน่ายและพันธมิตรที่ได้รับอนุญาติรับส่งข้อมูลระหว่างกันได้