MARKETING PLANNING

Marketing Planning

Marketing Planning

Task 1: Marketing Audits

Changing Perspectives in Marketing Planning

RIM started off as a market led company which developed products showing that it knows its target market better than others. The BlackBerry phones became the absolute choice of business professionals and were treated as a must have for business professionals. The company due to complacency and active inertia lost focus of its competitive edge, i.e. market led strategy and failed to assess the changing preferences of its consumers (Sharp, 2012). RIM could not keep up with tough competition given by Apple Inc. and Android based cell phones. Competitor's came out with better and more productive smart phones and eroded the market share significantly (Pema & Samuel, 2011). RIM not only met decline in its market share but also saw its share prices and profits declining quarter after quarter. We can assess the capability of future marketing and organizational external factors which affect the marketing by conducting a SWOT analysis of the company (Blythe, 2009).

Strengths

Weaknesses

Target segment of Enterprise and Corporate sector is still very competitive

Strong Brand positioning and recognition

Financial Strength gained in previous years

Loss of market share

Product Launch delays

Patent breach lawsuits

Opportunities

Threats

Growth in Enterprise segment of market

Growth in tablet computers market

Growth in the use of cloud computing

Intense competition challenging RIM's competitive advantage

Decline of prices of smart devices

Short life cycle of technology and rapid changes

PESTLE Analysis

Political

It is a fact that the external political factor influenced the business very much. The impact or influence of the political activities on the business operations varies from location to location. The affect of political factor mostly result in shift in corporate tax rate. The corporate tax rate in United States of America is highest as compare to any other industrialized nation. The corporate tax rate of America is 39.3 percent while Ireland taxed its corporations by 11 percent. It is also a fact that the percentage of corporate tax is relatively low in developing nation as the corporate tax rate in china is 15 percent. The primary reason behind that is to provide a lucrative market to foreign companies. The current financial crisis creates certain type of hurdle for respective governments and force government to increase the tax rate (Sharp, 2012).

Economic

There are certain economic factors which affect the communication service industry such as foreign tax rates, trade barriers and interest rates. The developed nations are taking certain measures to remove the barriers in entering into developing nations market which is positive sign for the companies like RIM.

Sociological

In today's world, the communication service is widely connected to the sociological factors of every society. The mobile devices have become a basic requirement of today's mankind. It can also be said that the mobile devices are now taken as fashion statement with the primary purpose of communication. This enables the company to have a ready market which is very beneficial for the communication service industry. However, there are certain negative impacts too such as rumors that the mobile devices cause serious diseases like brain ...