Freereturn.com offers e-commerce activities because of its online operations. The organization provides return of goods services to its online shops clients. Online stores are increasing in number as more people across the world opt to purchase their products using these stores. As such, some do not the goods in the state that they anticipated leading to returns. Freereturns.com facilitates the return of such goods to the original online stores from clients that make online purchase.
Primary Target Market
The main target market for Freereturn.com includes the demographics that are served by its activities. Therefore, the firm should create promotion and pricing strategies targeted at this population. Imperatively, the firm’s main target market includes online clients and online shops or stores. Increased online marketing and shops demonstrate that more and more people are opting to make purchases on the Internet using the existing online stores. Therefore, online clients are the first target market for the firm. As such, the organization must understand the type of online client segments so that it can make effective promotional and marketing strategies to attract these customers.
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Most of the online clients are tech savvy, young, and mainly female clients that seek unique shopping experiences using online stores (Lim, 2017). Online stores are the second most important target market for Freereturn.com, especially those stores that guarantee return of goods under certain period or due to unmet expectations. Therefore, the organization needs to identify major online stores or organizations like Amazon, Ali Baba, and all business organizations in the retail sector that have online stores for their merchandise like Wal-Mart among others.
Methods to Research Customer Needs and Wants
Innovation in product and service offering comes from the ability of an organization to identify customer needs and wants and providing effective solutions that meets those wants and needs. In this case, Freereturn.com must use methods that will allow it to identify customer needs and wants in its target market; especially the online clients and stores that are increasing using the web to complete business transactions. Imperatively, the organization must start by using the existing data by reviewing past surveys on online clients, their numbers and trends (Linton, 2018). Using the existing data from organizations and research institutions and publications, the firm will not need to conduct an expensive and extensive research campaign. Secondly, the firm can hold interviews with stakeholders so that it collects information about feature requests, reports, and enhancements that customers may want.
The firm should hold interviews with major representatives of online stores and shops so that it collects effective data that it will use to generate solutions after identifying customer needs and wants. Thirdly, the firm needs to map both the customer process and journey. The firm needs to understand how online customer make returns, the process of making those returns and the journey that it takes them to finally get feedback or replacement of goods purchased upon return. Based on this information, the organization can enhance its business model to develop effective solutions. Further, the firm can gather data from social media by scanning the online company’s social sites, carry out market research, and welcome customer feedback to identify their needs and wants (Sauro, n.d).
Marketing Mix: Four P’s
The four Ps of marketing include product, place, price, and promotion. Through understanding the marketing dynamics, Freereturn.com will develop strategies that meet the needs of its customers, and reach an audience that is responsive in the right place.
Product
The firm must consider the type of services that it be offering to its target market based on its design, features, quality, packaging and customer service. Therefore, the kind of products that it develops will be based on the customer needs and wants. The firm needs to define the type of return services that it will provide. In this case, the product it provides is a return of goods purchased online. Therefore, it must identify the features of this service/product and package it well.
Pricing strategy
Pricing is important because it will persuade customers to either use or not use the product developed by the organization. For instance, the firm will provide free returns to consumers for a period of three months that it will call trial period upon which consumers can subscribe to its rates and prices. Further, setting the price for product will require the firm to use attractive discounts, and credit facilities for its customers.
Place
As an online firm, the place of the business will be the virtual space and that requires developing a brand image that is associated with trust, quality, and better service provision. By addressing these aspects, the firm will position itself as the best alternative to returns for clients making online purchases or visiting online stores.
Promotion
Promotion is about communicating the benefits of the business to clients and the target market using a host of methods that include advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing and social media among others. In this case, the firm will use Internet-based promotional strategies that include social media marketing, content marketing, and integrated marketing communication approach.
One-year advertising Budget
The firm will run several advertising approaches from the traditional media to the more Internet-based that include the use of social media. The advertising of the firm’s products will run for one year and cost the organization $ 5,000 as highlighted below.
Public relations Management: $ 1,000
Print Media; Newspapers, Magazines $ 500
Electronic; television and radio $ 1,000
Outdoor advertising $ 700
Web based advertising
Social Media $ 800
Web ads $ 300
Road Caravans $ 500
References
Linton, I. (2018). Strategies for Identifying Customer Needs. Retrieved from
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/strategies-identifying-customer-needs-54317.html
Lim, W. M. (2017). Online group buying: Some insights from the business-to-business
perspective. Industrial marketing Management, Vol.65, pp.182-193.
Sauro, J. (n.d). 10 Methods for Identifying Customer Needs. Retrieved from
https://www.dummies.com/business/customers/10-methods-for-identifying-customer-needs/
