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Blackberry Company’s Strategic Marketing

Introduction

Blackberry’s worldwide success in the Smartphone seems like a premier example in brand planning. Surveys indicate that it ranks second after Nokia. To achieve this tremendous success, Blackberry has integrated its marketing mixes to appeal to the market. According to Paul Kalbfleisch, VP of brand marketing at Research In Motion says it is really a story about Blackberry’s ability to shift when necessary to meet the market’s changing needs.

Most of the companies’ focus on this marketing mix develop access, control and maintain the markets Blackberry being no exceptional. A company that fails to utilize these 4Ps or the marketing mix incurs great losses resulting from poor sales (Bennett & Blythe, 2002). Blackberry has identified these elements of marketing mix as essential for the success of the business hence doing a lot to implement them. The fundamental principles of marketing recognize the need of the 4Ps in marketing any firm’s offer. Blackberry enjoys relatively a larger market and a strong customer base because it has realized the essence of capitalizing on the 4Ps.

Product

Products includes the characteristics or features and benefits it presents involving the way or manner of packaging, looks and even warranties and guarantees. The product defines the engagement of a firm since it identifies the operations and the objective of the firm. To change the market orientation, Blackberry has succeeded in modeling its products to suit the market preferences while building a strong company portfolio. Blackberry product and market strategies are in groups of product orientation strategy, market or consumer orientation strategy and competitor’s orientation strategy. The blackberry company is premier for it is quality products orientation based on the success of important factors or competencies (TSTT Trinidad, 2010).

The company has also the product development strategy, which is highly based on the constant, rapid and innovative factors. High incremental sales that the company has achieved are a comparison with the constant development, innovation and technology-centric products. The company’s strategic positioning of the product was so successful leading to high sales, new market capture and retaining the existing markets. The Blackberry has developed the best of breed products that appeal to the advanced technology witnessed in the mobile industry (wills, samli, & Jacobs, 1991). These phones have come with several and different features that have motivated the users making them dependent.

According to the surveys conducted by (Bennett & Blythe, 2002), Blackberry utilized the extensive marketing drives to turn around the product performance. Blackberry engaged mostly in brand shifting strategy. This reflected the change that take place in many technology and device companies that begin selling features and then become aware of the brand’s heart and the soul brand gains creditability.

Price

Before deciding on the price of a product or a service, many important factors are considered. These include the demand of the product, the price of other related product the cost of production etc. price is generally a significant factor considered by both the producers and the potential buyers of the same product or service. Some products and services may have double costs or the multiple tiers of costs. This implies that they have initial costs of acquisition and then further service charges plus maintenance costs which sensitive customers mostly considers. Blackberry will opt for ideal pricing strategy as the best way for penetrating the markets intensively.

Place

Place or distribution is essential element of market mix that firms consider most important. When looking at place as an element of market mix we actual examines the channel undertaken by the firm to ensure it is product reach the targeted market. The distribution channels taken should be reliable, efficient and accessible to ensure it provide timely delivering services to the targeted market. The company has invested much of its resources in product market segmentation in order to appeal to various customer groups in the market to develop brand image and customer loyalty.

However, blackberry has opened many stores in every branch for purpose of ensuring it is product is available to the potential buyer. Blackberry also invested much in the channel through provision of sales training, which targets to educate the retailers on how to sell the product and carry out the brand message. The company efficiently and effectively planned it is channels. They sold the devices through the larger carriers, AT$T, T-Mobile, Verizon who left to complete the marketing of the device. The budgets were with the carriers, thus blackberry leveraged against extensive costs elements (TSTT Trinidad, 2010).

Promotion

Promotion has an element of market mix has been enormously used by the blackberry company. Promotion represents all of the communication that a marketer may use in marketplace. Promotion constitutes four distinct elements, which includes advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion. The blackberry company focuses on customer care issues from a qualitative perspective to gain better knowledge of its market needs through target campaigns has yielded much success (Sweeny, 2009).

Blackberry shifted it is way of promotion to include concepts like emotional selling matters. This worked as the essence of the brand and blackberry became a status symbol. More so, the brand became a symbol of the customer with emotional selling being the key (Sweeny, 2009). This marketing strategy demonstrated status appeal and the company’s image gained a lot in the eyes of the customer. With this kind of product promotion, blackberry captured new markets for it is product.

How Black Berry uses the “four Cs” to Champion its products

Blackberry believes in the power of the key facets of the market mix in shaping the direction of the sales and creating strategic market position. Although the market has continued to offer challenges, blackberry has afforded to cushion itself through successful application of the fundamental “4 Cs” of marketing.

Customer value

The consumer or consumer models, which shifts focus to satisfying the consumer needs, replace the product part of the “four Ps.” Consumer education is significant for sourcing consumer wants and needs which is useful in developing product specification that meets customer’s desire. Focusing on customer emphasize on resetting perceptions around what the marketer produces to the customers’ specifications. This kind of perception, the marketer most considers the customers’ specification rather than what they can produce. Blackberry used this idea to market it brand in UK markets (Sweeny, 2009). It shifted the brand strategy to reflect the dynamic business environment demonstrated in other technology and device companies.

Costs

These try to shift price to reflect the total costs of ownership. Costs of the product is be revised before selling the product. This reverses the idea of marketer to think of costs as what customer pays rather imaging of price to implement. This substantial idea calls for low costs of production so that final price will low and fair to the customers. Blackberry executed high costs of production and established ways that were relatively fair in production. The motivation of a marketer should not be to maximize profits and gains but instead to maximize customer value (WordPress.com, 2008).

Convenience

Marketing has undergone enormous change. Many people are also changing from the old style of shopping rather the traditional ways of shopping to new trends (Dunmore, 2008). Today customers will think of convenience of place and availability of product. Blackberry shift it brand from one location to global markets to ensure the product is at the customer’s doorstep. This creates convenience as customers easily access the product. The availability of specialized product features such as messaging and push applications enables Blackberry to appeal to the global market.

Communication

Communication is one of the largest assets in an IT oriented firm and especially any corporate wishing to utilize this functionality to gain strategic advantage (Moyer, 1968). In a bid to capture the attention of its target market, Blackberry has incorporated strategic communication elements to yield multiple results (WordPress.com, 2008). The final new market mix definition replaces the traditional notion of promotion with communication. BlackBerry has successfully used this functionality in gaining market advantage over other competitors in the industry (Moyer, 1968).

The customers must be involved and have the meaningful interactions hence being part of the innovation ideas since they are the final consumer. Blackberry demonstrates this notion through shifting brand strategy (Dunmore, 2008). BlackBerry accomplished this through various activities, which included marketing features, then messages and campaign.

References

Bennett, R. & Blythe, J., 2002. International Marketing: Strategy Planning, Market Entry & Implementation, London: Kogan Page.

Dunmore, T., 2008. Can anyone stop the dominance of iTunes? The Great Debate UK.

Moyer, R., 1968. “International market analysis,” Journal of Marketing Research, 5, pp.353-60.

Sweeny, A., 2009, BlackBerry Planet: The Story of Research in Motion and the Little Device that Took the World by Storm, New Jersey: John Willey & Sons Inc.

TSTT Trinidad., 2010. An analysis of the promotional strategies for Blackberry phone services, [online]. Web.

Wills, J., Samli, A.C. & Jacobs, L., 1991. Developing Global Products and Marketing Strategies: A Construct and a Research Agenda, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 19, pp.1 –10.

WordPress.com., 2008. What Blackberry Teaches Us about Global Branding, Web.

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StudyKraken. "Blackberry Company’s Strategic Marketing." September 30, 2021. https://studykraken.com/blackberry-companys-strategic-marketing/.

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StudyKraken. 2021. "Blackberry Company’s Strategic Marketing." September 30, 2021. https://studykraken.com/blackberry-companys-strategic-marketing/.

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StudyKraken. (2021) 'Blackberry Company’s Strategic Marketing'. 30 September.

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