The Marketing Communication Mix Of Huawei
Question
Task: Critically examine the current marketing communication mix of Huawei by considering how it targets consumers’ attitudes, group influences, culture, social class, consumer learning processes, and personal buying decision-making processes.
Answer
Executive Summary
The marketing communication mix of the company involves promotion of its products through advertising, direct selling, personal selling, and events and sponsorships. Huawei fitness band is a user friendly and attractive fitness band which is available in the market at a competitive price range. It is performing well in the market as it provides all the features needed by the health conscious customers. It can be argued that the communication mix adopted by Huawei for the promotion of bands clearly demonstrates its alignment with the findings of Assessment 1 and 2. Huawei is further recommended to focus on it personal selling and public relations in order to grab a larger market share. Moreover, it should also offer discounts from time to time for making the bands more affordable for the middle income group customers.
Overview of the Product and Its Market Performance
Huawei fitness band is a user friendly and attractive fitness band which is available in the market at a competitive price range. It offers a number of features to the user such as sleep monitoring facility and heart rate monitoring. Furthermore, it calculates total steps and calories burnt in a day and easily gets connected with the smartphone of the user. Moreover, the product is water resistant and therefore, it can even be wore by the user while swimming. It has sensors that allows it to provide statistics regarding distance, stroke style detection, laps, number of strokes and calories burnt. Furthermore, the product has a built- in GPS which is capable of tracking the workouts of the user without the use of their smartphone. The most important feature of the product is that it is light weight and offers a battery life of 5 days with all the functions enabled (Kaewkannate & Kim, 2016).
Huawei is an already established brand in the market as it is operating in the industry from the year 1987. The fitness bands of the brand are performing well in the market as they offer the features needed by the customers these days such as sleek design and long battery life. The brand name has further provided competitive edge to the product over the products offered by the competitors in the market. These bands offer a way to the health conscious people to stay healthy through the use of the product. However, there are number of brands such as Fitbit, Apple, Samsung, etc. which are giving tough competition to Huawei bands. The health monitoring functions are the USP of Huawei fitness brands and therefore, these bands are given preference by the customers irrespective of its prices. The customers are willing to pay a premium price for these bands due to their increasing concern about health and fitness, and the quality of product (Canhoto & Arp, 2017).
Current Marketing Communication Mix of the Company
Communication mix can be defined as the use of specific methods by the companies or organizations for the promotion of their products or brand to the targeted customers (Todorova, 2015). A number of elements of marketing communication mix are adopted by Huawei for the promotion of its products.
Advertising- Huawei is mainly dependent on the advertisements for the promotion of its products. The company advertises its products over different channels such as television, radio, social media and newspapers. Lionel Messi is the global brand ambassador of Huawei and is often seen in the advertisements of the brand over different mediums. Moreover, Lionel Messi has millions of followers over social media and the promotion of products over this medium offers a great advantage to the brand and its products. It is further argued that there is a great influence of the celebrities in the buying decision making process of the customers. This is due to the fact that celebrities are recognized by human brain just as they recognize the people actually known by them. A higher value is placed by the consumers on the products endorsed by the celebrities followed by them as if an advice is being received by them from a valued friend (Ramya & Mohamed Ali, 2016). Therefore, it is a psychological effect that the consumers start feeling sympathetic towards Huawei as it is promoted by Messi who is admired by millions.
Personal Selling- Huawei currently does not have its own stores for selling the products. Therefore, it relies heavily on the resellers for encouraging the customers for trying their products. It can be argued that it will have a great impact on the consumer learning processes. It can be defined as the process through which knowledge and experience is acquired by the consumers which is applied by them in future purchase behaviour. However, the resellers are also performing their jobs by properly explaining the features of the products to the users and persuading them for purchasing the products. Moreover, when a single consumer purchases a product, it automatically creates an informational influence on the group by acting as a knowledge source in the decision making process of other buyers (Bode & Askegaard, 2017).
Sales Promotion- The company also offers coupons and discount cards on its products as a part of its sales promotion. However, such discounts are offered rarely for increasing the sales. In this way, it targets a specific social class that consist of their target customers. The social class is targeted on the basis of the income of the consumers. Since the fitness bands of Huawei are available within an affordable price range, it basically targets middle income consumer group. The middle class consumers easily gets attracted towards a product when it is offered on a discount (Bals, Kirchoff & Foerstl, 2016).
Direct Marketing- Huawei adopts the marketing communication mix and is engaged in the customer relationship management program for the purpose of staying in touch with the customers through its website and receiving their feedbacks from time to time. E- mails are used by Huawei as its direct marketing tools for sending promotional messages to the existing customers or potential customers. Consumer attitudes can be defined as the combination of an individual’s behavioural intentions, feelings or beliefs regarding a business (Pieters & Wedel, 2017). Here, the company targets the attitudes of the consumers towards their own health. In simple words, the target market of the company comprise of the health conscious consumers who are looking for a way to monitor their health on daily basis. Promotional messages allows these health conscious consumers to come across latest bands and purchase them for their benefit (Ashley & Tuten, 2015).
Events and Sponsorships- Huawei sponsors a number of sports teams and events such as Norwegian Ski federation, La Liga. However, the company should engage in more sponsorships and events for the promotion of its products especially in context of sports as the product promotes fitness (Parsons, Maclaran & Chatzidakis, 2017).
Alignment of Communication Mix to the Findings
It can be argued that the marketing communication mix adopted by Huawei for the promotion of bands clearly demonstrates its alignment with the findings of Assessment 1 and 2. The findings of Assessment 1 provides that while making the purchase of a fitness band, various internal sources of information are used by the consumers such as word of mouth, friends, active users and close associates. Moreover, the external information sources are further referred to gain more information about the product and its performance. The external sources of information used by the prospective consumers involve online reviews, social media platforms, etc. The communication mix of Huawei is designed in a way such that it influences the buying decision making of the individual buyer. The engagement of a celebrity for endorsing the brand has brought a number of advantages to the product. The fans of the celebrity are easily able to relate themselves with the brand. Moreover, whoever purchases the product automatically promotes it within their social groups through word of mouth (Manser Payne, Peltier & Barger, 2017). Therefore, it can be concluded that the purchases of fitness brands are made by the customers only after making due research about its features and performance. The online reviews of the product are also up to the mark. Moreover, the company provides a chance to the customers to have direct communication with the customer care agents through its websites and social media account. The customer can provide their feedback and can ask questions about the product. It is very helpful for the prospective customers of the brand as they can knowledge about the product and can be assured of the service quality (Stephen, 2016).
The findings of Assessment 2 provides that brand demonstration plays an important in the buying decision making by the customers. The demonstration of the features of Huawei bands are given by the resellers which plays an important role in persuading the customers to try the product. However, Huawei does not have its own outlet where it can personally sell the bands to the customers and understand the needs of the users such that further amendments can be made by the brand in its products. Moreover, another finding of Assessment 2 provides that the health conscious people are continuously looking for innovative products from a reliable brand that offers a sleek and light weight device with all the health monitoring features at an affordable price range. Huawei establishes effective communication with its users through e- mails where it sends promotional mails regarding its latest products and its innovative features. Assessment 2 also provided that the purchase decision making of the customers are based on the feedback of the current customers of the product on website and social media. The company provides response to every feedback and query for ensuring the satisfaction of the existing customers. In this way it further ensures that new customers are attracted towards the brand and its products. The bands are promoted in a manner such that it can easily influence any fitness freak customer. Moreover, it offers various coupons and discounts in order to persuade the middle class customers to purchase the product (De Mooij, 2019).
Strategic Recommendations
Following are some of the strategic recommendations for Huawei which should be taken into consideration by the brand for the promotion of its fitness bands.
Focus on Personal Selling- Huawei is recommended to look for different ways for personally selling the products to the customers. This can be undertaken by the brand through opening of its stores in the prime locations of the town. The individuals who will be employed for the marketing of the bands in the stores should be especially trained for this purpose. Proper training will help the employees in persuading the customers who are unable to make purchase decision. Moreover, a feedback should be obtained from each customer of the store, irrespective of whether they make a purchase or not. This will assist the brand in knowing the reason why the customer made the purchase (factors liked about the product), or why no purchase was made (what features are being looked upon by the customer). In this way, Huawei will be able to bring updated version of the products that fulfil every requirement of the customer (Calder, Isaac & Malthouse, 2016).
Focusing on Public Relations- For the purpose of strengthening the alignment of communication mix of the company with the needs of the customers, Huawei should focus on its public relations as well. Public relations is also an important element of marketing communication mix. It will assist the brand in improving its image in the eyes of prospective customers. Furthermore, it will have a positive impact on the goodwill of the customers. Since the customers give due importance to the brand name while making the purchase decision, public relations team of company will play an important role in persuading them to make a decision in the favour of the brand (Fill & Turnbull, 2016).
Providing Discounts- It is recommended in this report on marketing communication mix that discounts should be offered by Huawei on its fitness brands from time to time for making it more affordable for the middle class customers. It will also increase the number of customers who are attracted towards the product. Discounts play an important role in grabbing the attention of the customers even if they have no need of such a product. It will further benefit the brand in having a competitive edge over the products of Apple, Fitbit and Samsung. Moreover, it will serve as an effective tool for creating awareness regarding this health monitoring product and will increase the sales of the company (Bruhn & Schnebelen, 2017).
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