The task of any business is to deliver customer value at a profit. In a hypercompetitive economy with increasingly informed buyers faced with abundant choices, a company can win only by fine-tuning

The task of any business is to deliver customer value at a profit. In a hypercompetitive economy with increasingly informed buyers faced with abundant choices, a company can win only by fine-tuning the value delivery process and choosing, providing, and communicating superior value.

The traditional view of marketing is that the firm makes something and then sells it, with marketing taking place in the selling process. Companies that subscribe to this view have the best chance of succeeding in economies marked by goods shortages where consumers are not fussy about quality, features, or style—for example, basic staple goods in developing markets.

1. We can divide the value creation and delivery sequence into three phases: choosing the value represents the “homework” marketing must do before any product exists. Marketers must segment the market, select the appropriate target, and develop the offering’s value positioning. The formula “segmentation, targeting, positioning (STP)” is the essence of strategic marketing.

2. The second phase is providing the value. Marketing must determine specific product features, prices, and distribution.

3. The task in the third phase is communicating the value by utilizing the sales force, Internet, advertising, and any other communication tools to announce and promote the product.

Therefore, the value delivery process begins before there is a product and continues through development and after launch.

The Value Chain: Harvard’s Michael Porter has proposed the value chain as a tool for identifying ways to create more customer value. The value chain identifies nine (9) strategically relevant activities — five primary and four support activities —that create value and cost in a specific business.

Primary activities:

(1) Inbound logistics: bringing materials into the business

(2)Operations: converting materials into final products;

(3) Outbound logistics: shipping out final products;

(4) Marketing: that includes sales;

(5) Service.

Support activities:

(1) Procurement (purchasing),

(2) Technology development,

(3) Human resource management,

(4) Firm infrastructure. (Infrastructure covers the costs of general management, planning, finance, accounting, legal, and government affairs).

According to case study:

M-business value chain is based on 5 key elements as:

· Infrastructure: an efficient infrastructure regarding to m-business can include device manufacturers and vendors, network service providers, software developers, system integrators, and wireless application providers.

· Operator/Carrier (Operations): network operators are essential as they are considered as touch point with customer. Sprint PCS, Voicestream, Verizon, and Cingular/AT&T as network operators can function as virtual operators purchasing network capacity from primary operators and selling it under their own brand name. Virgin Mobile USA, for instant, uses its Virgin consumer brand to provide service using network capacity from Sprint PCS that is a primary network operator.

· Content (Outbound logistics): provision of mobile content service is considered as synthesis of content from different application providers (like customizing the content for mobile phone, or PDAs), and the distribution of it in the form of a mobile gateway - the translation of Internet content into wireless content and sending it “on-air.”

· Application: Frequent applications as fourth elements of m-business value chain, are advertisements, entertainment, news, financial services, information, and the function to execute payments, which in turn allows/facilitates wireless shopping.

· Portal (service): a portal is a service designed as central starting point for the use of wireless devices. A portal can provide a portfolio of mobile applications from different providers, which has the potential to generate value to users given the difficulties to navigate through wireless-web pages.

The customer creation of mobile technology is where the inherent compromises are broken. For instance, when making flight reservations offline, customers need to contact the airline’s reservation center, often put on hold for the next available service agent. In this case, 7 features of mobile technology towards to customer creation have been hired as:

• Ubiquity: Mobile technology has the potential to break this set of compromises by allowing processes to be executed regardless of location.

• Context: Similarly, when arriving at a destination airport, a traveler’s mobile device could receive availability updates and flight schedules for the return flight.

• Data pro-activity: Seamlessly, relevant information could be sent to the traveler’s device avoiding the necessity of having to explicitly request the information.

• Payment function: By using a biometric application, travelers could identify themselves and execute a payment wirelessly, similar to the functionality of a credit card.

• Entertainment function: entertainment can be seen as a function of media use.

• Interaction: Using a wireless application, customers could for example interact with the airline’s inventory and reservations system, change reservations, request upgrades, etc..

• Remote control: Once a flight is selected and the payment is authorized, travelers could finalize the booking, which initiates a process in the backbone of the airline’s computer reservations system (CRS). Hence, travelers are in charge of initiating a remote process.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04