Virgin - Corporate responsability

Richard Branson clearly cares about Virgin's customers and the impact his companies have on people and the planet. That's why he recently made corporate responsibility and sustainable development a Key priority for every one of his companies. Each must act to be more socially responsible through reducing its carbon footprint. From a marketing perspective Virgin categorises its businesses into eight socially responsible groups. Flying high, We're on a summer holiday, Staying in touch, Watching the pennies, Getting from A to B, My body is a temple, Out of this world, and just get out and relax. Each is to do good things for its industry and help to alleviate the bad things that come with the category.

For example: Virgin Wines aims to purchase only from small farms and pay fair prices. It also encourages responsible drinking practices.

Virgin Aviation represents 7 million of the 8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide that Virgin emits each year. From a marketing perspective Branson has turned this challenge into an opportunity. In 2006 he announced that all dividends from rail and and airline businesses will be invested into renewable energy initiatives to tackle emissions related to global warming. Virgin has also launched its green fund which invests in solar energy, and water purification opportunities.

Further to this, Branson has also established the earth Challenge, to award $25 Million to any person who creates a way to safely remove greenhouse gases from the planet.

This insight helps me to understand that in the future and working as a marketing manager, I believe that there is a valuable lesson to be learnt from Virgin, and the degree to which it uses a corporate responsible message to deliver a green message to customers. On the flip side of this, Virgin avails free publicity through media coverage of these green marketing initiatives which are all very cool ideas.

McDonald's

McDonald's is the worlds leading Hamburger fast-food franchise, with over 32,000 restaurants in over 118 countries worldwide. McDonald's serves over 58 Million people daily, and offers them a simple, easy and enjoyable food experience for customers. McDonald's pushes the importance of its main core values quality, service, cleanliness, and value and its target market includes families and children. Accordingly, marketing efforts are targeted at these groups, through Ronald McDonald and other characters including:

• Grimace
• the Hamburgler
• Mayor McCheese

McDonald's exhibits socially responsible attributes that customer relate well with through the creation of Ronald McDonald's house charities helping children with leukemia and strives to improve children's lives. Its value proposition is to offer customers hot, high quality food at a great value at the speed and convenience its customers require. Although, McDonald's offers its customers a high quality consumer experience rather than a quick and cheap fast food option.

It has recently changed its menu to a include healthier options and worked towards training staff better eradicating poor customer service and dirtier restaurants.

This insight helps me to understand that in the future if I was a manager there is great value in spending time to craft and execute a marketing plan that considers strategic insight on how to improve on the company's 5 P's - people, products,promotions, price and place. Especially to allow local stores to adapt to local preferences and cultures. For example: McDonald's introduced a premium M burger in France, and a pepper McPuff in China. Some food changes recently helped to turn the company around. These included offering more chicken options as beef consumption started to decline and removing super size options after the documentary "Super Size Me" which targeted McDonald's and its link to Obesity. While many of the healthier options targeted Mums, McDonald's introduced a snack menu which targeted the lower-income bracket and teenagers.

Further more in the future there is a great lesson to be taken from McDonald's ability to re market the brand, and adapt the company to its marketing challenges. I think that it has successfully used marketing to re establish its "second wave" McDonald's brand, achieved through refurbishments, McCafe transformations to restaurants , and its current campaign jingle "I'm loving it".

GE

In terms of its approach to pricing aircraft engines, GE Aircraft engines knows that purchasing an aircraft engine is multimillion dollar expenditure for their customers (airlines), and one that does not end at the point of purchase. Customers face continued maintenance costs to meet certain international safety regulations to ensure reliability of their engines. Within this context, in 1999, GE launched a marketing campaign titled : "Power by the hour" which provided their customers to pay a fixed fee for every hour they run their engine. On the flip side, GE performs all the maintenance and guarantees the engines reliability. When demand for air travel is uncertain, "Power by the hour" provides GE Aircraft Engine's customers with a lower ownership cost, that is, valued by them, this also creates a degree of stickiness..

This insight helps me to understand that in the future if I was a manager and I wanted to know the degree to which it is important to exhibit an understanding of business markets in this manner and adapt your way of doing business to connect with what customers want and value especially within an ever changing marketing and business environment. Its also a very good example of getting customers to stick to the products on offer and remain loyal to my company.