...| Company Write-up: Xbox 360 | Built for Fun | | Michele Herriman | Principles of MarketingDr. Dennis Pedrick | 4/18/2011 | | Company History The Microsoft Corporation, as many people know, is one of the world’s leading computer software manufacturers. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, the company is known for developing, manufacturing, licensing, and supporting a range of software products and services for various computing devices worldwide. Established in 1975 by Paul Allen and Bill Gates, Microsoft began developing interpreters for microcomputers. By 1980, Microsoft entered the operating system business after signing a contract with IBM, which resulted in the branding and ownership rights of MS-DOS. By 1984 Microsoft had developed its first version of the operating system Microsoft Windows, and by March of 1986, the company had gone public with its stock. Today Microsoft has expanded to much more than just the familiar Windows Operating Systems, such as Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The company also provides enterprise consulting and product support services, training and certification to developers and information technology professionals. The company offers online information products, such as Bing and MSN, and an online advertising platform for publishers and advertisers. More recent products include the Windows Phone and the Zune digital music and entertainment platform, and application software for Apple’s Macintosh computers...
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...Market Our target product chosen is the Xbox 360+Kinect gaming console. Launched in November 2010, it held the Guinness World Record for being the fastest selling consumer electronics device from 2010 to 2012 (BBC 2012). This is a good indicator of how the Xbox 360 + Kinect has captured its target market in a growing games industry which promotes family bonding through entertainment. 1.1 Market Share and size of market Currently, Xbox 360 holds 47% share of the overall current-generation console market, with Kinect sales accounting for 19 out of 67 million copies of Xbox consoles sold (Microsoft Corporation 2012). Enabling Microsoft to achieve 13.3% of the current market share in the gaming console industry with the Xbox 360+Kinect. Figure 1. Market share of Xbox 360 + Kinect in the industry. Source: (Microsoft 2012) 1.2 Market Position The following graph depicts year on year sales of the Xbox 360 console against competitors since its inception in 2005. Undoubtedly, the Xbox 360 has garnered the most sales in 2012, characterized by steady growth over the seven years (Microsoft 2012). Figure 2. Console Hardware sales in the US. Source: (Microsoft 2012) 1.3 Company’s principal product in terms of features and benefits Other than the Xbox 360, Microsoft has launched products, which were equal or even more representative of the company. Being the most popular platform, with a 10-year old history, Windows XP Operating System is thus considered to be the principal...
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...product/service. (Xbox and Apple iPhone) What is promotional mix: Promotional mix Using several different types of communication to support marketing goals which include Advertising, Personal selling, Publicity, and Sales promotions. Marketers to help choose these different types of marketing a firm reach its goals. Furthermore the promotional mix is a combination of methods that are used for a product or service in order to sell that specific product or service. Moreover the methods in the promotional mix are: * Advertising * Personal selling * Sales promotion * Public relations * Sponsorship * Direct mail Advertising: advertising is a way of displaying a product or service in a attractive way to a customer in a non-personal presentation. * Xbox use advertising on a regular basis on television, they show both genders and different age groups playing and using the Xbox as the want the console to appeal to as many people as possible. * Apple also use advertising on a regular basis on television. They recently have Justin Timberlake advertising there new IPhone 6 which will persuade viewers to buy the iPhone as if the phone is good enough for a well paid celebrity then it is good enough of them Personal selling: personal selling is where businesses use people to sell the product after meeting face-to-face with the customer. The sellers promote the product through their attitude, appearance and specialist product knowledge. * Xbox don’t use...
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...talk about how Microsoft’s Xbox One underwent two radical positioning shifts. Since there aren’t many gamers in this cohort, I’d like to preface this piece by talking about video game consoles, and how they have evolved. The Background Sony’s launch of the PlayStation in 1994 was a watershed event that helped solidify the presence of the video game console in households across the world. It was technologically superior to any other console at the time, eclipsing the offerings from Nintendo and Sega (the market leaders at the time). In order to capture the growing personal entertainment segment which Sony was now dominating, Microsoft developed and released the Xbox in 2001. It quickly established itself as Sony’s biggest competitor; with the Xbox selling 1.53 million in the USA alone 3 months after launch, far eclipsing the PlayStation 2. Initially, these consoles were focussed towards single-players, with multi-play being possible only by attaching multiple controllers to the console physically. Soon, video games started changing, with a lot of focus on online multi-player offerings in most bestselling titles. With PC gaming still offering the best solution for online multi-play requirements, consoles were losing out on this segment. With the introduction of the PlayStation Network on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox Live on the Xbox 360, consoles were now geared up for social, multi-player engagements. Microsoft’s New Direction With Xbox One Microsoft recently displayed...
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...recommendation…………………………………………………………..15 Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………………..17 Citations……………………………………………………………………………………………….21 Executive Summary 1.) The key marketing decisions involved with the Xbox one that need to be made in order to sell this product successfully include: the features that will set this product over the top from its older model the Xbox 360 and its direct competition the PS4. Another key decision to consider when producing the Xbox one is the release date of the product and the pricing of the product. Also producers need to consider what games are coming out for their console around that time and the popularity of them. 2.) The target market audience for the Xbox one ranges from 12-26 year old males. This choice is valid because starting in middle school through high school teenage boys are the main users of these console products. At these ages most likely their parents will be the ones buying the products for them, so they normally have the top of the line consoles once they come out. As they reach 18-26 they hit the young adult age, they still use these consoles all through university and even into the real world. That age might be a little behind in the up to date consoles just for price purposes. 3.) The positioning Xbox is going for is high quality, but with...
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...The proceeding marketing research will analyze and describe in debt the XBOX 721X video gaming and system. The marketing team will be conducting its research and assessment on Microsoft Global Corporation and will be focusing on one of its most popular products, the XBOX and its arrival of the XBOX 721X. The Microsoft XBOX721X will be the next greatest game system upgrade to arrive on the market in 2015. It will allow everyone the opportunity to enjoy Microsoft’s XBOX in new dimensions. The team has evaluated many concepts and ideas in the creation of this product. The product will give those that felt video games were only for those that play games a chance to experience gaming, listening to music, and watching television in high quality, high definition viewing. The original XBOX was released in 2001 and was marketed as one of the top gaming systems at that time. As technology developed, so did the XBOX. The XBOX360 was introduced in the mid 2000’s. A new century calls for new things, in 2015, the Microsoft Corporation will introduce the new XBOX721X. Microsoft Corporation Microsoft started as a small project in 1975. Elite members of the project that later became one of the most successful companies in the world were: Steve Wood, Bill Gates, Bob Greenberg, Gordon Letwin, Paul Allen, Marc McDonald, Jim Lane, and Andrea Lewis. Microsoft took advantage of a software need that was created in those years and computer manufacturers also contributed to the success of Microsoft...
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...markets, market segment, global marketing mix, etc. Many people believe that the key to Xbox 360’s success is the fact that there is not a lot of competition right now where it comes to gaming consoles, basically their only competitor in the gaming industry is the PlayStation 3 and people’s laptops, but it is not only that there is not much competition, Xbox 360’s marketing strategy is quite extensive. Firstly, Xbox 360’s main target audience is the large population of hard-core gamers that the main company, Microsoft, has attained from providing the most powerful computer ever sold specifically for gaming. On top of that large target audience of ‘Hard-core Gamers’, Xbox 360 has tried to broaden the appeal of consoles to new audiences by adding certain multimedia features to the Xbox 360 system. More specifically, Microsoft is targeting women who live with male gamers by incorporating these new multimedia changes to the gaming community. Not only can it play DVDs and CDs, but it can also play any kind of media stored on its own hard disk, the hard disk of another computer accessible over a network, or an iPod or iPad when it is plugged in. Xbox 360’s “Business to Business” segmentation is based on ‘Geographic Segmentation’ because Microsoft has to produce and distribute these Xbox 360 systems globally and the fact that there are gamers all over the world that Xbox 360 has to provide for, Xbox 360 had to divide their market based on the concentration of their customers. Whereas...
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...Marketing Plan For Sonic [pic] [pic] [pic] [pic] INTRODUCTION Marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others. Perhaps the most important factor in successful marketing is marketing plan. A marketing plan is a written document that details the necessary actions to achieve one or more marketing objectives. It can be for a product or service, a brand, or a product line. The purpose of this marketing plan is to clearly identify the direction that we have decided to take in order to MARKET our business - to promote our business, attract and retain customers and exploit identified marketplace opportunities. The marketing planning process forces us to assess what is going on in your marketplace and how it affects our business. Based on the above analysis we are going to identify and analyze marketing plan to our new product “ The Sonic 1000” through its information. [pic] I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY According to the latest industry research, the sells of personal digital assistants (PDAs) are growing as well as turning out to be more popular among educated people. Consequently, Sonic, a hypothetical start-up business is preparing to launch “The Sonic 1000 PDA product” with exclusive features at a value-added price for consumer and business market in order to compete with the existing PDA makers...
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...Microsoft’s XBOX 365 Portable Gaming Device Marketing Plan Jason Hudson MKTG522 / Herbig 10/19/2012 1.0 Executive Summary Are you tired of playing “Angry Birds, Words with Friends, or Song Tune on your mobile phone…bored with your iPad? Are your kids fed up with beating Mario in races and his 3D worlds? Ever wanted to take the live-action first-person shooter, “Call of Duty” or “Madden” on the road and play against friends during a road trip or a long flight? Well guess what? Us…good folks here at Microsoft have been working day and night to on some monumental news!!! Microsoft’s ambitions have been nothing short of amazing and being a huge pioneer in the IT industry, dating back to its inception in the early 1980’s. Microsoft is the world’s number one leading in software development and has controlled an overwhelming share of the personal computer operating system market. Microsoft’s products, do not stop at the development of software, nor operating systems; the company supplies the world with a number and variety of different types of products, including their office software, Zune (digital music player), CRM applications, sever and storage software, and last but not least XBOX as well as, the XBOX 360 video gaming consoles. Now that we are entering 2013, XBOX has stood by idle, in the portable gaming device market as we watched Sony & Nintendo dominate their way through this particular gaming market. Well now!! Microsoft has been absence for far...
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...Sony PS4 – 100 Summer Day Challenge Executive Summary 3 Introduction 4 Project Aim 5 Project Objectives 5 Market Analysis 6 SWOT Analysis 10 Practical Point of View 11 Financial Projection 13 Conclusion 14 References 15 Appendices 16-18 Executive Summary The PlayStation is and has been a dominating force in the area of gaming consoles ever since its debut in 1995. Sony has created the ultimate entertainment magic box for young people, and the number of people who own a PlayStation 4 is close to 20 million as of January 2015, just over a year since its release. Our project focuses on one certain aspect: the health of people aged 13-21 who owns a PS4. Our proposal is that we include a Sony SWR10 fitness smart band in the PS4 box, launch a marketing campaign before Christmas and on Boxing Day in Australia the console plus smart band will go on sale together with a game from EA games. Then we introduce the 100-summer days challenge. This is the core of our project, we will offer rewards to people who use their smart band in healthy activities, and based on walking distances or calories burnt that will be recorded in the smart band, and after implementing the software to synchronize this data to the PS4, users will be able to claim their rewards on the rewards website that Sony has. We are giving gamers the incentive and encouragement to get out there and live a healthy lifestyle...
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...Effectiveness of an Advertisement Name Institution Date of submission Introduction The effectiveness of an advertisement or a promotion program depends on quit a number of factors. Different marketing experts adopt a wide range of approaches towards achieving the desired outcome of an advertisement. Lamb, 2008 explains outlines that the crucial goal of every promotion is to get clients buying whichever the product or service (p. 407). He further suggests that there must be a systematic order in which a prospective consumer is carried through the promotional message. The AIDA concept Though several approaches exist, the most common and effective formulas are the acronym AIDA. This acronym stands for Attention; Interest; Desire; and Action. The AIDA concept was first introduced by a scholar named Elias Lewis in 1898 (Janoschka, 2004, p. 06). This concept best describes the ultimate goal of every advertisement; that the client gets to buy a product. This model posits the buying process as a cognitive, feeling and a conative sequence of things. In this regard, the model illustrates that the marketer must develop a thought in the mind of a consumer, develop a need, and finally an action through purchasing the product. The four steps of the AIDA process clearly explain the promotional approach. The first step is attention, this posits that an advertisement must gather the attention of the consumer; create an awareness that the product...
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...Consumer Behavior Trends Faith Popcorn identified 17 trends that drove the business and people’s life in her book “Clicking” ten years ago. According to BrainReserve, trends are not fads. They endure, evolve and represent underlying forces, first causes, basic human needs, attitudes and aspirations. They help us navigate the world, understand what's happening and why, and prepare for what is yet to come. This paper will investigate one of the trends Popcorn has identified – Fantasy Adventure – particularly focus on its development in the last ten years. I will examine related evidence observed in various industries and make the claim that this trend has not declined but further developed. Fantasy Adventure refers to the behavior that consumer crave excitement and stimulation as an escape from stress and boredom in essentially risk-free adventures.(Popcorn, 1998) The excitement are taken in small doses, and allow us to return to our “normal” life at the end of the day. They make us feel courageous, open to new exotic experience, and most important of all, they give us the sense of transforming to a better person. There are three underlying forces in creating this trend: the increasing stress brought to us by our routine yet increasingly competitive life, the rising number of cases of the unsafe, uncertain events happening around our environment and the advancement of technologies. In the 1990s only 40% percentage Canadians reported stress in workplace but the statistic...
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...XBOX 360 Marketing Plan Marketing February 20th, 2010 Mark Lundberg Table of Contents: Part 1: Executive Summary Part 2: Company Description * I: History of the Company * II: Current Objectives Part 3: Situation Analysis * Internal Analysis * Environmental Analysis * Customer Analysis * Competitive analysis Part 4: SWOT Analysis * SWOT Analysis * Porter’s Five Forces Model Part 5: Marketing Objectives & Strategies Part 6: Marketing Strategies * Primary target market & Marketing Mix * Secondary markets Part 7: Marketing Implementation Part 8: Summary & Conclusions Part 1: Executive Summary: The Xbox 360 is a gaming console made by Microsoft, Inc. It is in the middle of its product life, being 4 ½ years old at the time of this marketing plan. The success of the original Xbox made the Xbox 360 a likely success for Microsoft, and it has paid off. With millions of units sold around the world, it has become a huge success. This marketing plan will go over where Microsoft currently is in its marketing efforts with the Xbox 360, and what they plan to do to conquer new markets, reach out to new customers, and expand their product line. Part 2: Company Description I: Brief history of the Company Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. They started off with selling BASIC, which was one of the first computer language programs. Their first customer was MITS Computer. From there...
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...XBOX & MICROSOFT’S BATTLE FOR THE LIVING ROOM Teaching Note Case Overview Microsoft, a renowned software company found in 1975, is one of the largest corporations in the world. Since its inception, Microsoft not only established itself as a leader in the software industry, but also succeeded in diversifying into various software related businesses. Today, Microsoft is an eminent name in computer applications, multimedia, Internet service, and movie products. At the turn of the century, Microsoft decided to enter a new market – the videogame industry, and introduced its videogame console – the Xbox. The Xbox business venture presents several challenges to Microsoft. First, Microsoft needs to sell enough units of consoles and videogames to consumers to make its videogames division profitable. Second, as with most its other businesses, Microsoft hopes to attain leadership position in videogames industry. Despite the fact that videogames are a primary form of modern entertainment, hence, presents significant business opportunities, only very few vendors have had the chances of achieving dominance in the industry. Third, through Xbox, Microsoft wishes to evolve from a PC software company into a home entertainment company. The Xbox is an intermediary for Microsoft to sell its thousands of entertainment products and services through both direct and indirect methods. For Microsoft, the battle for the living room is not just a war over a console; it is a war of Microsoft’s...
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...The Wii: Nintendo’s Video Game Revolution Marketing Plan Date: October 14, 2011 “Get-off-the-couch fun whether you're 5 or 95. This is what Wii™ is all about.” Executive Summary Since its inception in 1952, the video gaming industry has grown tremendously in terms of game development, game complexity, and how the graphics look today, compared to the early years. In those early days of gaming, up until just a few years ago, there was really only one dominant market segment, comprised of young people (Males 19-24 years of age). These gamers up until Nintendo entered the console market were exposed to excessive violence, and over simplistic gameplay. Nintendo saw an incredible opportunity to offer gamers something more. They brought in captivating story lines, and complex characters in which gamers could get into, and relate with, all while playing Nintendo games. In November 2006, Nintendo emerged in the market with a home video gaming console of its own that created innovative enjoyable playing experiences for all, regardless of their age, gender or cultural background. Nintendo’s goal of expanding the gaming population by launching the Nintendo Wii video game console was a phenomenal success, and expectations vastly surpassed the company’s most optimistic sales projections. Due to its popularity, uniqueness and fun, playing video games was an enjoyable experience for all members of the household, and the Wii became incredibly popular and suffered...
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