Marketing Plan: Product, Competitive Advantage (Coursework Sample)

Product
1 Introduction
According to Peter E. Drucker (1985), as a product evolves from an idea to a commercial reality, it passes through a series of stages. This process involves three questions that must be considered in sequence: Is there a market for the idea? Can the idea be transformed into a physical product? Can the physical product be manufactured and marketed profitably? Each of these questions gives rise to a set of criteria that must be weighed to arrive at a final decision. The first question involves market criteria, the second product or technology criteria, and the third, financial criteria.
Bigpoint.com is a web 2.0 game portal with a community of more than 300 million players; through the years it has developed its brand to be the most desired throughout the world.
2 Product lines
The strength and value of any fast-moving consumer goods company are its brands. Big Point has several product lines. Their product lines include; Icefighter, SpeedCars, ZooMumba, Gangs of Crime (formerly known as Mafia 1930), Seafight, War of Titans, DarkOrbit, among others.
3 Quality
Big Point's broad portfolio allows them to adopt a differentiated brand strategy, reflecting the tastes and characteristics of individual markets. Product offerings are designed to satisfy customer needs. Thus any change in customer needs must ultimately result in changes in the firm's product offering if the firm is to continue to satisfy its customer base. The degree of innovation at Big Point is exceptional that has made consumers all over the world to like their products. They developed a micropayment system that was complex and hard to duplicate by other institutions. This system could monetize everybody in the world. This proves that the product is unique and gave them an advantage over others.
Bigpoint have really tried to diversify their games to suit all users' needs and cover all market segments. One has a wide variety of games to chose from ranging from soccer, hockey, farming, seafight, car speeding.
4 Packaging
The extreme flexibility of browser games sets them apart due to the fact that they can be played wherever Internet is available. PCs, notebooks, Tablet PCs and smartphones make playing possible virtually anywhere. They have also packaged their products in the sense that the games are offered in more than 17 languages.
5 Big Point's business model
Industrial marketing can cross the border into consumer marketing. Nonetheless, manufactures and service providers frequently maintain separate industrial and consumer marketing operations to reflect the different needs of the two channels.
Big Point's products are majorly considered to be Business to Consumer (B2C). This is because the games are directly played online by consumers whereby they pay subscription fees or one time payment.
6 Branding
When a consumer is making up their mind whether or not to buy a product they are not guided by its taste alone. A number of extrinsic factors also vie for their attention, such as awareness of the brand, labeling, the price and origin.
For a marketer, it is vital to understand how the different triggers that can lead target consumers towards the check out. Authors of the new study Simone Mueller and Gergely Szolnoki said that little is known about the relative impact of the various extrinsic cues on informed product evaluation.
By the end of 2008 Bigpoint was fully accessible in 17 languages, this enabled more users to access the products.
7 Product positioning
Positioning is a fundamental element of the marketing planning process, since any decision on positioning has direct and immediate implications for the whole of the marketing mix.
To penetrate the market easily using price, they came up with a model called ‘free to play' where users would purchase the best players at a cost of US$0.50 per game for each soccer player a user purchased that had so many users that in-turn caused their server to crash.
Hubertz formed partnerships with big companies in ASIA license games in their network; Advertising – Users of games who didn't purchase in-game virtual goods were converted into paid users by running adverts on their games.
Competitive advantage
1 Strong market position
They have a large and loyal user base and more than one billion people per month-much more than Facebook. Moreover with the introduction of Farmerama, it instantly become a third major hit.
2 Customer loyalty
They had a loyal user base of more than one billion people per month. In 2011 over 227 million people were using Bigpoint's free to play model
3 Diversification of products and the market
Bigpoint have really tried to diversify their games to suit all users' needs and cover all market segments. One has a wide variety of games to chose from ranging from soccer, hockey, farming, seafight, car speeding.
They have also been able to penetrate the market by going to other countries