Management With Banking And Finance

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING

Using an organisation of your choice write a report that explains how the company seeks to deliver customer value. The report should have the following sections:

1. Introduction including background to the organisation


2. Organisational objectives


3. Product & Brand portfolio


4. Pricing strategies


5. Distribution strategies


6. Promotional mix


7. Conclusion, including some informed speculation as to future developments

Introduction

What is really an organization? An organization is a group of people intentionally organized to complete goals and tasks of the organization. Business organizations vary in size from two people to thousands. Organizations have an important role in our society if we would just think all the products or services that we consume emanate from them. Moreover, people's income and employment as well as the development of the economy of every country depend on the different organizations. Every organization has certain goals that justify their existence. The organizations goal or task could be a desirable state that seeks to reach or an aim to be completed.

A worldwide and well known organization is General Electric Company or GEC. From generators and turbines to TV, from household appliances to power plants as well as aircraft engines, transportation equipment, kitchen and laundry appliances, lighting, electric distribution and control equipment, and medical imaging equipment General Electric GE is plugged in to the business. GE is an important part of the history of technology in the USA. In 1890, Thomas Edison an owner of several businesses established one corporation called Edison General Electric bringing them all together. At around the same time Charles A. Coffin founder of Thomson- Huston Company gained access to a number of key patents. By 1892 General Electric was founded by the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson- Huston Company. In 1911 the National Electric Lamp Association (NELA) was wrapped up General Eclectics' present lighting business. In addition, the Radio Corporation of America was founded in 1919 by GE. GE's long history of working with turbines in the power generation field gave them the opportunity to move into the field of aircraft turbosupercharges, GE presented the first supercharges during World War 1 and continued developing them during the Interwar period, GE was the leader in exhaust-driven supercharging when the war started. The experience gained from the WW1 gave the chance to GE to develop the Whittle jet engine. At 1960 GE was one of the eight major computer companies. In 2002 GE bought Vivendi Universal television and movie assets reaching the third largest media conglomerate on earth.

In May 2005 GE presented the beginning of a program named "Ecomagination", by this program GE emphasized on a clean technology aiming to improve products and benefiting the company. As in October 2008 GE had produced 70 products that were brought to the markets as well as exchanging from halogen lamps to biogas engines investing 1.4$ billion in cleantech research. In 2009 GEs new energy project included solar power, wind power and GE Jenbacher gas engines using renewable and non-renewable methane-based gases, created 10.000 job opportunities and occuping more that 4.500 people from all around the world. General Electric also dealt with educational issues donating one million dollars of Logiq E Ultrasound equipment to the Medical College of California and the Wayne State University School of Medicine. Finally, in 2004 GE was nominated as number one company for employers and employees on the Forbes 500 Global list.

Organisational Objectives

Organisational objectives are the long-term goals or task that every company seeks to achieve. These objectives could include market share terms, sales or market leadership position.

General Electric like every multi-glob business company has many and different organizational objectives that desire to accomplish. GEs objectives for the past year were to drive the organic revenue growth at two to three times domestic product GE generated 8% industrial organic revenue growth. Another goal that General Electric has in mind is to create a smaller, valuable business and more focused finance company in this way the company will have a portfolio of business. GE is a 128 year-old company with a widespread reputation and a strong culture, consequently a very important task for the company is to retain an excellent team and the hard work. In the year of 2008 GE achieved record revenue producing the third largest earnings in GE's history as well as "reducing the company's leverage and its reliance on commercial paper debt and diversified its funding sources." (General Electric, Annual Report 2008). Finally an organizational objective of General Electric was to continue to strengthen the Board membership of the company.

Below I will demonstrate the financial objectives of GE briefly.

FINANCIAL OBJECTIVES

Product and Brand Portfolio

General Electric has a strong brand which customers have grown up with and have a special affinity with it. "GE businesses all share one important trait: each harnesses the power of imagination to make life better for our customers and consumers all around the world." (General Electric Annual Report 2009). Every company produces different products, a product is anything that can be received with an exchange. A product can be a service, an item, an idea, an organization, a country or even a person.

Brand one the other hand is the name, the sign, the symbol or design. Brand is an entire collection of properties and attributes that are related to a product.

GE is one of the largest companies worldwide with many products and services available to the customers and consumers. GEC provides healthcare; biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, medical diagnostics and drug discovery giving a new age of patient care. Moreover GE is one of the biggest manufacturers of appliances as well as a leading provider of aviator services. GE supplies the military, marine industries with engines, as it is known GE was the first to create America's first turbojet engine. GE was also concerned about the security and safety of their costumers and the communities.

For over 100 years General Electric has been a provider of water treatment, however GE is not only a supplier for water but for energy, gas and oil also. GE is a top provider of financial business offering credit card services; loans and general equipment for help business grow. But this is not only what GE provides its customers and consumers, to continue General Electric has been lightning our world for over 128 years and continuing by providing a large range of products to companies wide-reaching. To conclude media and entertainment could not possibly run away from GEs portfolio. NBC Universal is a well known company dealing with news and entertainment.

Pricing Strategies

There are two main pricing strategy thata company could follow, value-based pricing and cost-based pricing. What is value-based pricing? Value-base pricing is to "set prices based on buyers perceptions of product value rather than cost" (P.Kotler et al.,2005). Of course on the other hand there is cost-base value, this is where the company at first identifies how much a product or a service has cost to produce and then adds a target profit onto the price. The illustration below will help understand the differences between cost-base pricing and value-base pricing.

Example of the price strategies of GE is: the company has produced a dishwasher with SmartDispenses technology that could save the costumer up to $400 cost over the life of the appliance, also GE washer could save the consumer up to 23gallons of water. When using GE services and products you manage to have a 20% savings on energy and water consumptions. "So even though it may cost more to purchase, a 2,500-sq.-ft Home Inspired by ecomagination it is designed for a lower total cost of ownership thanks to yearly utility savings between $600 and upwards of $1,500 compared to an industry-accepted average new home." (General Electric, 2009) "With the cost of natural gas and electricity rising in recent years, a high-performance home can help. So even though it may cost more to purchase, a home built to the ecomagination specification is designed to have a lower total monthly cost of ownership. This is due to its significant savings in utility costs versus an industry-accepted average new home." ( General Electric, Energy Pulse)

GE acquires one of the most sophisticated services support costumer program of any other company. GE provides its costumers with over 400 different types of guaranty and warranty services.

General Electric is a company that has committed to helping people less fortunate or in countries that are underdeveloped such as Ghana, Uganda, etc. They also help people in developed countries such as Canada, but in isolated areas like Baffin Island, in this case in collaboration with the Ottawa Hospital they provide medical equipment that havebeen developed to detect heart conditions. GE has also developed a laptop ultra sound system so cardiologist can travel to remote Artic areas and being able to help and examine the Inuit's and detect heart diseases. Without GE ,these people would have to travel hundreds of miles to Ottawa to have health care in a country that believes, it has to be provided for all its citizens regardless where they live. General Electric also has hundreds of volunteers that travel to parts of Africa and donate medical equipment. They also help provide power and communication systems as well as water systems, enabling them to have fresh water. This is a 30 million dollar investment which they provide to thousands of people in need. Lastly, another extraordinary act on GE's part is that they invest in primary education to girls in countries such as Ghana, Malawi, and Uganda.

Distribution Strategies

Each company uses different types of marketing channels depending on the companys needs. General Electric uses the conventional marketing channel illustrated below.

                                MANUFACTURER        WHOLESALE           RETAILER          CONSUMER

"Marketing channels are sets of interdependent organizations involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption." (Philip Kotler). Conventional marketing channels are also known as indirect marketing channels, where medium value is added and there is a medium cost of transactions. One of the main reasons of using conventional marketing is that this way the same product is sold through two or more competing channels. The company when using this method aims to increase sales and to broaden itself.

GE products and services can be found in all leading retail outlets in the world. GE distribution strategy is Selective distribution. Selective distribution appoints several outlets but not all retails giving the chance to the customers to locate the GE brand. There are some advantages to this strategy of distribution. Firstly, they concentrate their effort on a few productive outlets. Secondly, there is better market coverage and at last there is more control of the products and less cost.

Promotional Mix

Promotional mix is thought to be the strongest element of all parts of the marketing mix as it brings together consumers and suppliers. Promotion has four elements: advertising, public relations, word of mouth and point of sale. Of course it very usual for companies to decide on a different promotion plans each year to make their products and services more appealing to the costumers. Nowadays competition has risen, so every organization must do their best to stay in the preferences of the consumers, promotion aim to create a target market developing a long-term relationship with the costumer. GE has a variety of promotional strategies in order to communicate with their customers. Using the promotional mix elements I will identify and analyse GEs promotional strategies. Advertising is thought to be as something the organization aims at the public. In January 2005 GE launched a complete new image, GE believes that its image should reflect the brands character; trustworthy, leading, dependable, contemporary, global, innovative, dynamic and approachable.

"Over the past 100 years, GE has used a total of nine brand slogans. The latest one was "We bring good things to life," which had been in use for over 20 years since it was first introduced in 1980. In the fall of 2002, GE conducted extensive surveys to find out what employees, customers and investors thought about the "Good Things" theme, and found out that nearly everybody considered it to mean only two things: lighting and appliances. But in today's reality, the broad range of products and services that are provided by GE actually covers much more than that. With thorough investigations and researches, GE finally decided on using "imagination at work" as the new advertising tagline to reflect its true spirit at the current time."( GE logo Dsign and History). The "imagination at work" campaign was GE's first foray into web advertisement with, Yahoo, MSN and AOL the ad of the campaign invites all viewers to use their creativity and imagination.

In October 2004 GE launched an advertising campaign in Beijing for the Olympic Games of 2008. That was GE's first corporate advertising campaign in China. Several GE ads were broadcasted by TV.

To conclude, General Electric is nowadays a multi-dollar business that occupies over 300,000 employees with $131 billion worth of annual revenue. GE is one of the oldest companies listed in the Dow Jones Industrial Index and recently has been chosen as the " World's most respected company" in a survey of 903 global companies. GE managed to be one of the most respected and sophisticated companies in the world by focusing not only on profits but company culture and philosophy as well. GE considers itself a "good corporate citizen", as they believe in giving back to the world community providing power of imagination and better life to all people around the world.

References

Kotler.P, Wong. V, Saunders. J, Armstrong. G, 2005. Princeples of Marketing. 4th Edition. Harlow.

General Electric, 2008. Annual Report 2008.[Online] Available at: http://www.ge.com/ar2008/pdf/ge_ar_2008.pdf [Accessed 15 November 2009].