Strategy Identification Marketing Mixes Product Marketing Essay

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015

The Carrefour product includes about product quality, variety, design, feature, brand name, packaging size and warranties for most of the people needs. The product part is the most important part, because if there is no product so there is any businesses.

Price

Carrefour is using low-pricing strategy because it's dealing directly with suppliers in Malaysia and this decrease the price. For pricing strategy, discount offered, allowances, payment period and the length of credit period is very much important.

Place

Carrefour availability of the products to its target customers is doing by its branch in Malaysia. According to its branches in the website, there are around 14 branches in all over the Malaysia.

Promotion

There are promotions in the Carrefour Malaysia Company that are setting up in some certain periods. These promotions communicate the merits and demerits of the product to the target customers and convince him to buy it.

E-CRM

Carrefour is using E-CRM strategy for the purpose of attracting, maintaining and enhancing its customer relationship. It already implements the E-CRM in most of its activities and departments. With using a browser users can have a tour on the Carrefour website and they can see how it is working. Carrefour is using this website as an application that helped them to implement E-CRM strategies. For an example it is using this website to collecting customers information to be connected with them throw the internet by emails and e-newsletters. The goal of customer retention is important for every business. Carrefour could make reduction in time and cost for customer retention with using E-CRM because implementation and maintenance can take place at one location and on one server.

Virtual Communications

Virtual communication is one of the strategies that Carrefour Company is currently using this method to achieve its goals. As Carrefour is a business that needs physical stores to continue its activity so there is no need for them to follow virtual communication in both synchronous and asynchronous ways. Carrefour is using some of the most common form of asynchronous like email and internet forums. These two methods are places that people can post comments publicly or send private messages. Carrefour is also using social networks such as facebook to implement this strategy and be contacted with its fans and customers.

Environmental Analysis

SWOT Analysis

Carrefour is the biggest hypermarket chain in Malaysia with around 14 branches.

This company is a powerful brand of retails in Malaysia economy.

Carrefour is making job opportunities in Malaysia for people.

Because of the organization size there maybe some problems in the controlling aspects of the company.

Providing all the consumers requirement and the flexibilities of providing goods.

Some of the competition on the prices compare to other competitors like Tesco, Jusco.

Growing the population is making demand for Carrefour to open new branches.

Can reduce the price of some products which are especially in a certain times in the year in the promotions like Ramadan.

Government support for the small retailers can threats the larger retailers like Carrefour.

Price wars with competitors.

Taxation is introduced on the product.

Opening a new branch requires a big plan so it takes time to open the branches and it can count as a threat.

PEST Analysis

The PEST Analysis is a powerful kind of analysis that can make the external environment of the company more clear to observe and is a useful tool for understanding market growth or decline and the market`s opportunities and threats, as well as it is a business measurement tool.

Political Factor

Malaysia's economy has benefited from several factors, including a stable political environment, an effective bureaucracy, flexible economic policies, export-oriented industrialization, and inflow of foreign direct investments. This has brought prosperity and a high level of confidence to the majority of the population. The country has a healthy, rapidly growing economy, although its government has often been criticized for state intervention into economic development and the imposition of capital and currency exchange controls.

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Asia-and-the-Pacific/Malaysia-FUTURE-TRENDS.html

Economical Factor

Economic recovery, which started in mid-2009, will continue in 2011. Developing Asia with better economic fundamentals and stronger domestic demand is set to lead global growth. Developed economies will suffer from ongoing sovereign debt issue and deleveraging prospect. High growth economies of developing Asia will face rising inflationary pressures, leading to further policy tightening measures. Inflation will be contained in the developed nations, delaying interest rate hikes to possibly end-2011. Developing Asia currencies will appreciate against the USD, while other major currencies likely consolidate vis-a-vis the USD.

http://www.mier.org.my/

Social Factor

Malaysia is a country that includes most of the religious in the world inside of it. In the other hands you can see people that follow Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and traditional Chinese religions. So Malaysia is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multilingual society country. As you can see in the Figure1 the total population on 2010 is 28.96 million consisting of 67% Malays, 24.3% Chinese, 7.4% Indians, and 1.3% others. So there will be a good space for Carrefour to make the environment suitable for itself.

social factor.png

Figure1: Malaysia people in 2005 & 2010. http://www.malaxi.com/population_size_age_structure2001_2010.html

Technical Factor

We can separate the technological elements of this analysis in to two major parts of knowledge that have changed the environment of the businesses. These parts are Internet and Mobile technologies those are affecting on the markets in the entire world. In Malaysia the amount of the Internet subscribers is expected to reach more and more in future. Also the growth of Mobile technology in the country is developing every day whit the new Mobile Service Providers in Malaysia and the new services such as MMS and improving the old.

Porters Five Forces

The Porter's Five Forces tool is a simple but powerful tool for understanding where power lies in a business situation. This is useful, because it helps you understand both the strength of your current competitive position, and the strength of a position you're looking to move into.

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_08.htm)

Porter'5.GIF

Figure2: Porter's 5 forces

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_08.htm

Threat of New Entrants

Because the Carrefour is the biggest retailer in Malaysia, threat of new entrance and new competitors in this field doesn`t seem to be a important business danger for the company. It is obvious that in this kind of business new entrants will come but for them it is difficult to have a serious competition with Carrefour, so this threat is low.

Bargaining power of buyers

This part of the analysis absolutely depends on the earnings and educational level of the buyers which is increasing quickly in these days in Malaysia. The buyers in the Malaysian market have many choices that are increasing with competitors. This creates relatively high buyer bargaining power.

Bargaining power of suppliers

Carrefour has a wide relation with the variety of domestic suppliers to provide customers' requirements. Here you assess how easy it is for suppliers to drive up prices. This is driven by the number of suppliers of each key input, the uniqueness of their product or service, their strength and control over you, the cost of switching from one to another, and so on. So by switching from one to another Carrefour has power for bargaining.

Threat of substitutes

This is affected by the ability of your customers to find a different way of doing what you do. As you know Carrefour customers can find many replacements for their requirements` sources in Malaysia by other retailers that are available especially with increasing globalization. The quick development speed of international hypermarkets like Giant, Jusco and Tesco, So this threat is high for Carrefour`s business.

Intensity of rivalry

What is important here is the number and capability of your competitors. If you have many competitors, then you'll most likely have little power in the situation, because suppliers and buyers will go elsewhere if they don't get a good deal from you. And there are some competitors for Carrefour such as: Jusco, Tesco, Giant, and even traditional bazaars that are located in some certain places. So there are some competitors for Carrefour in Malaysia that Carrefour needs to compete with them in the price wars. On the other hand, if Carrefour can give the best product with best service, then Carrefour can often have tremendous strength.

Segmentation, Targeting, Differentiation and Positioning (STP)

Segmentation bases and targeting

Geographic

The geographic segment should be divided to different geographical places such as nations, regions, cities or neighborhoods. Malaysians those who live in the urban areas have become accustomed to do shopping for groceries material at hypermarkets and supermarkets. According to figure1 above, the urban population has increased from 63.0 % in 2005 to 63.8 % in 2010 and, the rural population has decreased from 37.0% in 2005 to 36.2% in 2010, and the total population of Malaysia is 28.96 million and the population growth rate is 1.6% in 2010. So as the result shows the population of Malaysia is growing every year and based on the urban and rural rate in 2005 and 2010, most of the populations are moving to the urban areas. So this moving is making opportunities for Carrefour group to choose geographic as one of its segment.

Demographic

Carrefour divided the market into groups based on variables such as age, gender, family size, family life cycle, income, occupation, education, religion, race, generation and nationality.

Age structure

The age structure of the Malaysia population is like below:

0-14 years: 32.2% (male 4,118,086; female 3,884,403)

15-64 years: 62.9% (male 7,838,166; female 7,785,833)

65 years and over: 4.8% (male 526,967; female 667,831) (2007 EST.)

For shopping from the Carrefour, the most interested group of shopping is the middle one between 15-64 years old that are the 62.9% of whole population.

http://www.historycentral.com/nationbynation/Malaysia/Population.html

Gender

In Malaysia, because of the specific kind of culture, that is usual among the females to do the shopping. They usually look for convenience such as pre-mixes, ready-to-cook food, or ready-to-eat meals. They are very concerned with healthy and beauty products. Of course for do shopping there is not any limitation on the gender factor. Carrefour is targeting both male and female as its segment in selling products.

Income

Malaysia is classified as an upper-middle income country, High and middle-income households spend most of their money at hypermarkets, followed by supermarkets and traditional grocery stores which mean more than MYR 3,000 monthly.

Occupation

The Carrefour's customers in Malaysia usually are the families, which include: students and employees, and foreigner that are living in Malaysia for purpose of education or businesses in the cities. Also housekeeper females are really interested to shop from the hypermarkets where all the requirements are available there in one place.

Psychographic

Carrefour should divide buyers into different based on social class, lifestyle, or personality characteristics. Malaysia has a fast progress in education and this fact is related to the social class of this country`s people, so change their lifecycle to be a higher standards of life. On the other hand this influence is seeing over the urban areas and their attraction to shop in modern retail outlets can be observed.

Behavioral

Carrefour divided buyers into groups based on their knowledge, attitudes, uses or responses to a product. Carrefour`s customers usually want to save their time in the shopping. They often shop in grab-and-go mode and reaching for the brands they usually buy without reading the label or checking the price. When making shopping decisions, consumers' radar is fully turned on as they actively explore alternatives. So because of the type of Carrefour customers knowledge to being the high quality goods is the main thing also in Malaysia deal to the lot of student and their uses of cheap product which is sufficient with their budgets is the another point.

Differentiation Strategy

Chanel Differentiation

Carrefour has used the internet as a place to communicate without any limitation like time and location. In the Carrefour Malaysia website, there are some functions as a communication channel for companies that provide product or service information online. Actually there is full information about services, operating hour, address of branches, and etc. that are available in the WebPages or some PDF files.

Image Differentiation

Carrefour brand is already a unique experience brand that is known for most of the people in the world also for those who live in Malaysia. Through experience branding firm can better retain customers, target key segments, and enhance profitability. One of the main purposes of Carrefour website is that to make a competitive edge image of Carrefour in people mind. Actually Carrefour website is inviting users to upload content and comments for them to improve themselves.

Internet-Specific Differentiation Strategies

Site Environment/ Atmospherics

Trust

Efficiency and Timeliness

Look and feel of site.

User friendly.

Virtual to user.

Clearly state privacy policy.

Deliver what is promised to customer.

Deliver in a timely manner.

Pricing

CRM

User-Generated Content (UGC)

Be aware of competitor pricing.

Potential customer saving.

Seamless communication.

Greater relationship efficiency.

Allow site/blog visitor comments.

Provide images, videos for users.

Internet-Specific Differentiation Strategies

Site Environment/ Atmospherics:

Pricing:

CRM:

With browsing the website you can see the power of developer that design the Carrefour website because they have followed all the standards such user friendly.

In the Carrefour website there is a part which name is "nominate a product for price reduction", so the strategy in including for this website.

Throw the analysis that has done to Carrefour website, we can see the availability of CRM in the Carrefour Malaysia website.

User-Generated Content (UGC):

Positioning Strategies

Positioning is how your target market defines you to react with your competitors. A good positioning is identifying that what makes you unique and is this measured a benefit by your target market.

Products Attribute

Carrefour products and services are including features that make position for them in Malaysia. One of the main attribute that Carrefour products have is separating HALAL and Non-HALAL groceries from each other. As I maintained before there are different type of people with different religions living in Malaysia that cares about HALAL and Non-HALAL groceries. And it is a figure of Carrefour products that fasten the environment.

Benefit

Actually Carrefour is dealing directly with manufacturers and it is helping to Carrefour to decrease its prices. So with dealing directly with manufactures, Carrefour can implement low-price strategy on its products. And this low-price strategy is an important benefit that we can say only Carrefour is giving to its customer compare to the other competitors. As most type of the people in Malaysia is looking for the products with best prices Carrefour has a good situation in that.

Positioning Against Competitors

Positioning against competitors is based on the process of creating a desired image for Carrefour and its products in the minds of chosen user segment. Here Carrefour in giving some services that it's only belongs to it, like low-price strategy that is attracting people to itself. Of course one of the main points that users compare when they want to buy some things from a hypermarket is pricing and most types of people are interesting to hypermarkets that have low-price strategy with best quality. And we can see Carrefour is one the hypermarkets that is using low-price strategy to attract users.

Objective and E-marketing Strategies

Objectives

Increase the website's visitors

It can be a kind of online advertising, on other hands If Carrefour do the online advertising it will increase the website's visitors and even advertise for its brand without spending too much costs.

Increase offline sales impact

It defines how online communications through the web site and e-mail can influence sales offline i.e. by phone, mail-order or in-store.

Develop Online CRM

Can specify a focus on different aspects of the customer lifecycle for online customers in terms of:

Acquisition - It will gain new customers to the Carrefour hypermarket.

Retention - Using online channels to increase retention and value of customer to company.

Customer knowledge (intimacy) - learning more about the customer through profiling and monitoring of behavior.

http://www.davechaffey.com/Internet-Marketing/C4-Strategy/Online-marketing-strategy-options

E-marketing Strategies

Marketing Communication

Mobile Marketing

Mobile ads meant that using mobile devices to do the advertisement. Carrefour will send some of the promotion and discount offered so that more new customers can view the advertisement through mobile phone. Some of this advertisement suggests showing the SMS to the shopping and getting discount.

mobile_marketing.jpg

Figure3: Mobile Marketing

http://www.netmarketingcourse.net/mobile-marketing-webinar.php

Google ads

Google ads is advertising through networks and search engine where user searches using those keywords, the advertiser then has their ad placed in the "sponsored links" or sponsored ads" portion of the page and pays when the user clicks on the ads. Therefore when customers search using the keywords that relate to Carrefour and the ad will be appear next to the search results so that the customers can simply click the ad and use the website.

google ads.png

Figure4: Google Ads

http://www.google.com/

E-CRM & Virtual Communities

Immediately Feedback/ Interactivity

Immediately feedback maybe will be a thank you email or SMS or any massage that sends after the customers had made purchase. Sometimes it is possible for an organization to find the customers in the interactive places in the internet like social network, chat rooms, blogs and forums.

Customer Acquisition

Customer acquisition is the sales and marketing process of obtaining new customers. Customer acquisition also includes the process of converting existing prospects into new customers.

Customer Retention

Customer retention is a method that tries to keep a company's customers and to retain their revenue contribution. There are some techniques that we can use them to help to this strategy such as: rewards or free gift in special days.

The 7Cs of the customer interface of the Carrefour

Title

Current

Recommendation

Context:

The visual part of Carrefour website has both aesthetics and functionality, but it's not well complete. There are some things that should cover such as: additional pages, additional functional.

The Carrefour Malaysia website needs additional pages to complete informational. For example; Carrefour brands are not explained well. It also needs additional function to help users. For example they can use maps to show the exact place to customers.

Content:

The digital information in the Carrefour website is not covering all the goals of the website, because there are some defects on the files such as time sensitivity, language problem. There are some videos that they are only available in the local language.

The defects on the files should be solved to make a website that offers mix of products and services. Some of the contents are time sensitive that is they have an appeal only for a limited time. And all the digital information should be also available in English.

Commerce:

Carrefour Malaysia website is not as good as its competitors. Of course there are some types of commerce in the website such as catalog pricing or auction pricing, but with improving and adding some more tricks the result will be totally different and we can see the result of implementing these tricks.

Recommend for this part can be set up a new registration system. The new registration system will get the user's information and join them to the Carrefour Malaysia club. With register in this system the users will take a card that whenever they purchase some things, they get point in their card and when they get enough points they can change the points to cash as bonus.

Community:

This system is pretty poor in this website and there is no interactive way directly between the Carrefour Malaysia website users.

They can use social networks as an interactive way such as Face Book or twitter to create fan pages and share it with the websites users. They can even upload the important videos on the YouTube to show them to the world.

Connection:

As Carrefour Malaysia website is a hypermarket website, it needs to be connected to those websites that is supporting its business. Social networks websites are the best websites that can help it to achieve to its goals.

In the Carrefour Malaysia website there is nothing about social networks websites. But social networks websites are the best websites for supporting and marketing them.

Customization:

The Carrefour ability to self-tailor to different users or allow them to personalized the website is depended to the language that user select and there is only two language available for this website English and Bahasa Malaysia.

The recommend method for this part is to develop the layouts with different languages that is using in the Malaysia. They can make other differences like login system but this types of system is not that much important and cost effective

Communication:

Carrefour website has both one way and two way communication. The example of one way communication in the Carrefour Malaysia is email newsletters and broadcast events. And the example of the two way communication that is not that much strong, is customer services part in the website.

Actually there is a need of FAQ for this website. With implementing questioner research methods, we can see the most questions of the Carrefour's customers and with uploading them as FAQ the website will be completed. We can also implement one to many responding user for this website.

Interactive Marketing Tools

Events Driven Communication

This event driven communication where the company will sending an email to customers and inform them there are some occasion happen and provided with discount.

E-Newsletters

A newsletter is a regularly distributed publication generally about one main topic that is interest to its subscribers and it sends in a short period of time like: daily, weekly, monthly or yearly.

Implementation and Evaluation

Implementation plan

The figure 5 is explaining the current website screen but as the analysis is saying we should make some differences in the current one to get better feedback, so figure 6 is the implemented one that has been changed.

implementation.png

Figure5: the current page

http://www.carrefour.com.my/newc4w/en/index.php

Figure6 is the correct one that should implement base on the analysis and researches that have done.

final.png

Evaluation

Justification

1

Add language: base on the analysis the Carrefour Malaysia needs more language.

2

Member Login: applied new registration system for Carrefour Malaysia to attract customers to be a member of Carrefour and earn points and finally get bonus.

3

Social network: connect website to social network to make more communication and attract customers to the website.

4

Promotion: or special offers for special times like: Charismas, Hariraya.

5

FAQ: To answer customers questions about the company, its products and services.