CHAPTER 3: THE COUNTERMEASURE AND SOLUTION TO COMPLET AND IMPROVE THE MARKETING MIX OF GATEXCO 20 FOR
3.2. The countermeasure and solution to complete and improve Marketing Mix of Gatexco 20 for boosting the sales and expanding the market
3.2.4. Strengthen the promotion activities
To get highest effective of the promotion activities, it is necessary for Gatexco 20 to realize the importance of this work. Now a day, trade promotion in business play very important role as this is useful and effective communication means to advertise and send the message about the product and company to the customers to persuade them to buy products.
To avoid the spread and scattering investment without concentration, Gatexco 20 must prepare and do week following job:
- Market segmentation -Selection of target market
-Completely re-positioning of the goods to the target markets
- To improve and complete the policies on bonus, commission, discount ratios for dealers, supermarkets and sales staff.
-Develop a marketing specialized department
- Every year, Gatexco must define and fix the budget for promotion activities to promote and expand the business. With the current sales result of Gatexco 20 , the annual budget for promotion activities must be not lower than 2 - 3 billion vnd.
- Continuously improve the quality of the products, saving production costs, improve the qualification and skill of the import and export staff, sales staffs to meet the requirements of customers and the market. To do so, Gatexco 20 must have training plans as well as coaching the work force. Gatexco 20 should organize the foreign language training courses for the staffs in Gatexco 20, especially the sales team who carry out the foreign trade business. Under suitable conditions, Gatexco 20 may invite economic experts in foreign trade and economy to teach and coaching the staff via short term training courses concerning the knowledge’s and skilled of marketing, foreign trade, art in sales, negotiation in international trade
b. The particular and specific solution
Currently, the budget and investment for advertising actives of Gatexco 20 to their product in domestic and abroad markets are still very simple and draft. Al most Gatexco 20's products are usually ordered by military force and traditional customers.
In order to attract more attention of the consumers to their products, Gatexco 20 shall promptly conduct advertising and branding campaign about the reputation, quality, the diversity of styles, designs and sizes of the products. Through advertising and propaganda, customers will understand well the features of the product and business capacity of Gatexco 20. They can implement a number of the following measures for promotion:
(*) Promoting Gatexco 20's product advertisement on mass media such as:
- At first, Gatexco 20 can advertise their products through the internet. For now, the internet is becoming more popular around the world and every day, millions of people are accessing to the internet. Therefore, for using this method, Gatexco 20 can attract the attention of customers as well as foreign importers who are interested in
Gatexco 20's apparel products. Meanwhile the cost of this advertising method is relatively low. The company can process as following steps:
(+) Gatexco 20 must upgrade their website with beautiful Interface, full of useful information concerning the history formation and development of Gatexco 20, the type of product range and production capacity that company can supply, existing distribution network with detail information, lists of customer and projects, the potential and strong point of the company for cooperation and the development of the projects in the future.
Through the website, customers can access and online discussion with sales staffs to consult the advice about products, business and send the feedback to Gatexco 20 so they can better understand about the needs customer and market.
(+) In the future, Gatexco should upgrade their website so their customers can order products online through listing price on the network
(+) Gatexco 20 can advertise their brands and products on the website, social networking sites in Vietnam that have many daily visitors accessing like a: Vietnamnet, Vnexpress, Vnmedia
- Television (TV) advertisement: It is the most effective communication channels with the fastest speed, most effective way and can attract more attention of the audiences for identification of Gatexco 20's brands, products and its characteristics is very suitable and useful to the current strategy of Gatexco 20 for the current stage. It is rapidly expansion the market share and branding meanwhile Gatexco 20's products have not known well by the public community and number of Gatexco 20's stores and agent is very limited. However this method of advertising is very expensive so Gatexco 20 must calculate very carefully concerning issues to obtain highest efficiency and cost savings.
Gatexco 20 should consider the following issues:
(+) They should choosing the right TV company for cooperation of advertising.
Gatexco 20 should consider to give priority for advertisement on television station with wide coverage area so many people can watch like VTC company. Currently, VTC Broadcast Station has a wider coverage area than Vietnam Cable TV and price of advertising of VTC is also lower than Vietnam TV
(+) Choosing suitable TV channel: Give priority for selection the favorite channels that have more people to watch and their program content consistent with the audience with the ages from 20 to 55. They can consider the advertisment on some channels like: VTV3, VTV1, HTV, InfoTV.
(+) Beside it, They should consider carefully about time, frequency, number of hours of advertising with and prepare the plan for number of days will advertise to calculate and spend a reasonable budget. For example, They will advertise on TV with advertising frequency of 3 times/ week on the mass media channels of VTC and the program will last up to one month with different content for each season of the years
(+) Study and compile script and advertisement content carefully to have shortest advertising time but get highest effective and attract the attention of the audience.
- Erecting the large outdoor advertisement boards, poster panel with large image of the products and logo of Gatexco 20 at its production facilities so that people can easily identify and reconige the product and logo of Gatexco 20 without high cost for advertising. If Gatexco 20 has a budget, they can rent the large billboards that are placed in public places such as airports, railway stations, bus stations and along the Highway at the in and out gateway of the big cities.
- Advertising on the daily newspapers, journals of textile, fashion magazines, that many people often read, like Tien Phong, Lao Dong, Cong An Nhan Dan, The Thao newspaper.
(*) The other activities:
- Every year, Gatexco 20 will publish their calendars to present to customers, partners, officers and employees.
- Print and delivery the catalogue and leaflets to introduce all of the business mode and the new model products with detail annotations for each model including:
fabric materials, retail price, specification and code of products. The catalogue or leaflet must be nice designed to attract the curiosity of the consumers and they will consider the chance for purchasing the products soon
- In addition the promotion and introduce products to the international market, Gatexco 20 should try to participate in the international trade fairs held in Vietnam and abroad. For the domestic market and exhibition, Gatexco 20 can enlist for promotion, communication, implementation the P.R activities to attract more attention of the importers, brokers and consumers who visit and participate in the fair. Gatexco 20 can cooperate with the press to attract the attention to Gatexco 20. As for trade fairs in abroad, Gatexco 20 can display the sample products, catalogues to introduce directly their products to foreign customers.
- Gatexco 20 should also coordinate closely with the trade promotion agencies such as VCCI, Trade Promotion Department of Ministry of Trade and Industry, Textile and Apparel Association, Vietnam's commercial counselors based in the U.S, Japan, EU to get more information about the market, partners, looking for more business opportunities
- Gatexco 20 should consider about the opening of trade promotion offices in some countries such as U.S and Japan that are the traditional large and potential markets in the future to be able to collect information on the scale market, potential customers and the needs of consumers and deal with customers directly.