Strategic Marketing Planning and Management

Question: Discuss about the Strategic Marketing Planning and Management. Answer: Introduction As per Ward and Peppard, (2016), strategic management refers to the formulation and implementation of major goals and objectives of an organization. Only setting up of the goals cannot be defined as strategic management. In the brooder since, Strategic management means the adoption of various initiatives which is needed to successfully achieve the long term goals and objectives of the company. It is essential to have an effective strategic management for the smooth running of an organization. On the other hand, Value Chain Analysis is another important concept in strategic management as it is an important strategic tool. Value chain is used to analyze the internal activities of a firm. Value chain helps to recognize the most valuable activities and provide the scope of improvement for the weak activities (Hollensen, 2015). The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the strategic management of the company, Google. Google is one of the largest corporations in the world (www.google.c o.in 2016 ). The first part of the study explains Porters five forces model in relation to Google. A values chain analysis is done on Google in the next step of the study. The last part of the study shows that how Google has utilized their capabilities to become one of the best multinational companies in the world. Porters Five Forces Model As per Porter, there are five forces or five factors that decide the competitiveness among the peer organizations (Dobbs, 2014). The barriers are discussed below in details: Porters Five Forces (Source: created by author) The Entry of New Competitors: In the era of the changing digital business, the entrance of new firms is always a potential threat for the existing organizations. Now companies are coming with better digital business plans that have bright future growth potential (Magretta, 2013). Google also had to face some major difficulties at the time to enter in the market of digital business. As per the case study, Google had to face a lot of competitions from various renowned companies. An existing company always has to face a lot of competitions from existing as well as new companies (Tauman, Weiss Zhao, 2015). This is called the threat of new entrants. There were some companies that gave a tough competition at the initial stage of entry. The companies are Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo. Yahoo was invented in the year 1994 to give competition to Google. Its a search engine and at the time of the launch, the aim of the company was to deliver a smooth and effective internet experience to the common people. However, within 5 years of the launch, Google easily outperformed Yahoo (Hirt Willmott, 2014). Another tough competitor was Microsoft. Bill Gates incorporated Microsoft in the year of 1974. From that time, Microsoft has been giving a tough competition to Google. Microsoft offers a large variety of computer and internet services that has changed the way people think about internet and computer (Ward Peppard, 2016). The entry of Apple in this market gave a strong competition to Google. The business strategies from the leaders of Apple changed the mode of business at that time. Apple actually changed the business scenario at the time of economic recession. These are three main competitors whose entrance gave Google a tough competition (Christensen, 2013). Value Chain Analysis Value chain refers to the process of a firms identification of its primary and support activities as these activities add value to the final product of the company (Fearne et al., 2012). As per Porters values chain analysis model, there are five activities that Google follows. These value chain activities are discussed below: Inbound Logistics: Inbound logistics refers to the delivery, transportation and storage of the goods that are coming in a business for the various business activities. As per the company policy of the business, the inbound supply chain management details are not disclosed by Google to anyone. It has been reported that Google is planning to introduce digital transformation in supply chain management by automated drones. There is a dedicated supplier site maintained by Google where the supplier can get all supply related information (Zamora, 2016). Operations: There are 40 countries in the world where Google operates through more than 70 offices. Google is reputed by the creative designs in the offices. There are various features in these offices like pianos, cafes, pool tables, sharing cubs, video games and many others. All the operations of Google are based on the Googles organizational culture which is working in a challenging environment and to adopt unorthodox ways to get things done. As per different views, due to the increase in size in the business operations, the company needs to develop more rules, regulations and policies for the smooth running of the business operations of the company. Sales and Marketing: Google has adopted both online and offline communication channels for the purpose of communicating the marketing message. The communication mixes adopted by Google are advertisement, various events, various public relation campaigns, various events and many others. Google sales are done in the form of online. They have recently started offline sales. Services: There is a forum called the Google forum that is used to give live support to the various issues caused to the Google users. This forum is always available to any kind of technical as well as other issues faced by the user of the company. Google always gives first priority to their customers. From the above analysis, it can be understood that there are some key areas from where Google is creating value for the company. These areas are Human Resource and Technology. Technology is the most important driving force behind the success of Google as Google has been using technology in every aspect of their business. On the other hand, their unique human resource strategy to tackle the employees of the organization has given the company a competitive edge over their competitors. The company is using their technological advantage to solve the various issues of the customers (George, 2013). Core competencies (CC) are the combination of skills and resources that make an organization different and unique from the other organizations. After conducting the value chain analysis on Google, it can be said that this company has some competencies that differentiate it from the other companies. The first CC is the technological advantage that Google uses in every aspect of their business. Ranking algorithm which is used in the Google search engine is another CC. Google has a significant awareness about the change management of the company where necessary. One of the most important CC of Google is their strategic leadership. They have some excellent leaders and an effective management team that ensures the smooth running of the organization. Based on the above discussion it can be said that the software engineering and the infrastructure of the hardware is the major core competencies of the company. On the other hand, the culture of the company and the technological innovation are continuously supporting these above discussed core competencies. These are considered as the core competencies as they are hard to imitate, impossible for the competitors to observe, unique to the customers and satisfy the need if the customers. Ansoffs Matrix Google has been known as one of the fastest growing multinational companies in the world as they have been successful to use their core competencies in an effective manner to grow their business. The Ansoffs Matrix is considered in case of Google. There are four components in the Ansoffs matrix (Darroch, 2014). Three of them are discussed below to analyze how Google has used their core competencies to grow their business. Ansoff Matrix (Source: created by author) Market Penetration: Market penetration refers to the selling of the existing products of the company to the existing customers in order to increase the market share (McDONALD, 2016). As it has been discussed earlier, Google is famous for their innovation in the products. It has been seen that Google has been continuously developed their products to cater to the increasing demands of the customers. For example, todays Google search engine is better and far more improved than the one when it was first launched. This indicates that that Google is always ready to tap the market. There are other instances of improved products by Google like Google advertisements, other Google search engines and many more. Market Development: Market development as per Ansoffs matrix refers to those strategies that help to identify and develop new markets for the current products or the new products. Having change management as one of the core competencies, Google has been successful to develop new markets for its current as well as new products. Search engine used to be the main area of focus for Google one time. However, Google has introduced new products as online advertising, various applications and mobile phones to tap the new market of technology. Here, technological innovation plays an important part with the change management. A lot of people all over the world are using various products of Google and it can be said that the company has become successful to develop new markets for its various products (Thijsen, Tong Leer, 2014). Product Development: Product development strategies are used to develop new products in the market to ensure more growth of the company (Holahan, Sullivan Markham, 2014). Various core competencies are needed for the development of new products. At first, Google came up with the search engine by using one of its core competencies that is raking algorithm. After that, Google has come up with more innovative technological products like Google advertisements, various Google applications, Google mail, mobile phones and many others. As per Google, this progress would not be possible without the help of the leaders of the company like the board of directors and many others. On the other hand, technological improvements and business culture helps them to earn the faith of the customers all around the world. Conclusion As per the above discussion, it can be said that strategic management has an important role to play in the growth of Google. Now-a-days, Google is one of the best multinational corporations all over the world and the core competencies of the organizations have been playing a significant part behind this success. As per the Porters five forces model, it can be seen that a new entrants in the digital industry has to face a lot of difficulties while entering into the market. It can be seen from the above study, there were mainly three companies whose entrance in the market gave a tough challenge to Google. The companies are Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft. Among them, Google easily surpassed Yahoo among five years of launch. However, Microsoft and Apple have been two leading companies along with Google in recent years. As per the above study, the core competencies of Google are identified and they are technological innovation, change management, ranking algorithm, improved hardware and many others. They are the core competencies of the company as they are unique by nature, hard to follow for the competitors, helps to satisfy the needs of the customers and many others. One of the reasons behind the success of Google is that the company has been successful to effectively use the core competencies of them. They have been successful to develop new markets by launching new products by using the core competencies of them. However, there are some areas where Google need improvement. Thus some recommendations are given below: The privacy system of various products of Google has been an emerging issue. Thus, this issue needs to be resolved. There are still a lot of people and places where Google has not reached yet like the areas where there is no development in the digital technology. 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