SLP: The Strategic Management Process, Vision, Mission, Goals, and Objectives

Review of the Products 

The tablet model W1 has been in existence in the market for the last three years. The customers in the target market do not give much attention to the performance of the tablet but care about its price. The customers have bargained continuously for the reduction in the costs of the tablet model at the various occasions. Discounts have been given on the product as a way of attracting the customers to purchase the tablet model form the company. That has made the company channel its attention to adjusting the costs of the tablet rather than the actual value it gives to the consumers in the long run. That was one of the errors of Joe Thomas, the former VP of marketing. It was essential to understand the customer value of the tablet model W1 that should have been communicated to the prospective customers before they buy the tablet. 

The tablet model W2 has been in existence at the company for the last two years. The tablet is more sophisticated than its W1 predecessor is. For this tablet by Wonder Co., the customers in the market care about its performance and not the price. The performance of the tablet has continuously been improved to provide better quality and value to the target customers of Wonder Co. Therefore, there are no limits to the price range of the tablet model. The product is in the growth phase, and consequently, many potential customers have not bought the tablet. As Wonder Co. would be marketing the tablet, it would have been better for the company to use the extra costs collected from the customers to improve on the overall performance of the tablet. That would attract more customers for the product in the industry. The former VP of marketing, Mr. Thomas would have taken into consideration that to ensure that the performance of the tablet is focused on to attract more customers. 

The tablet model W3 has been in existence in the consumer market for the last one year. The customers consider both its price and performance. The tablet is the latest developed in the series and focuses on a deeper insight into the customer value model than either W1 or W2. W3 would also require better marketing strategies that would involve the use of technology. Being in the market for only a year, the marketing department at Wonder Co. needs to have an elaborate strategy to ensure that the tablet appeals to the target market. This is because the consumers have been watchful of both the price and the performance of the tablet. The former VP of marketing, Mr. Thomas needed to ensure that the marketing department is involved in the active education of the customers on the quality of the tablet and the value it would give to them upon purchase. That would have been more instrumental to the successful marketing and market sustainability of the tablet. 

Financial Review of the Products 

In the fiscal year 2012, the following was the financial information of the tablets at Wonder Co. The tablet model W1 had revenue of $ 276,159,075. Concerning profit, the tablet stood at $ 45,812,194. That represented 17% profitability in the sales of the tablet. W1 generally performed better than W2 while W3 was not yet in the market. The revenue for the W2 was $ 247,139,848. The product accrued $ 40,825,593 as profits for Wonder Co. that also represented 17% profitability. 

Generally, Wonder Co. had revenue of $ 523,298,924. The profits made by the company for the year were $ 86,637,786. That was 17% profitability. 

The following is a graphical representation of the revenues collected from both W1 and W2. 

In the financial year 2013, the revenue for the tablet model W1 increased to $ 456,956,682 compared to 2012. The profits of the tablet also rose to $ 134,253,165. The profitability of the tablet shot to 29%. Generally, the product was doing better than in 2012. The revenue from W2 increased to $ 628,466,922 in 2013. The profits accrued from the tablet increased to $ 187,200,354. That was a sharp increase from 2012. The profitability of the tablet rose to 30%. The tablet W3 made revenue of $ 30,633,325. The losses incurred stood at $ 22,693,879. The profitability of the product was -74%. The best performing product at this point was W2. 

In the overall, the revenues of the company rose to $ 1,116,056,930 in the financial year 2013. The profits made by the company in 2013 totaled to $ 298,759,639. The profitability of the company shot to 27%. 

The following is the graphical representation of the revenues collected from the three products in 2013. 

The following is the graphical representation of the change in the profitability of the products. 

In the financial year 2014, the revenues of W1 further rose to $ 589,567,507. The profits of the product rose to $ 197,068,819 compared to 2013. The profitability of W1 rose to 33%. In 2014, the revenue of W2 was recorded as $ 1,167,638,165. The profits of the product totaled to $ 388,621,957. The profitability of the company rose to 33%. The revenue collected from W3 in the same financial year was $ 43,036,295. The product incurred a loss of $ 13,978,279. The profitability of the product stood at -32%. 

The total revenue at Wonder Co. totaled to $ 1,800,241,966, which was a rise from the financial year 2013. The profits of the company rose to $ 571,712,497 in 2014. The profitability of the company was 32% in 2014. 

The following is the graphical representation of the revenues for W1, W2, and W3 for 2014. 

The following is the graphical representation of the profitability of the products from 2012 through to 2014. 

In the financial year 2015, the revenue of W1 dropped to $ 519,191,126 compared to 2014. The profits also dropped to $ 163,732,639 from those of 2015. The profitability of the product also dropped to 32%. In 2015, the revenue of W2 dropped to $ 1,085,838,538. The profits also dropped in the year to $ 358,063,554. The profitability of the product remained 33%. In the case of W3, the revenue stood at $ 60,137,489 in 2015. The losses incurred were $ 1,961,224. The profitability was -3%. 

The company had revenues of $ 1,665,167,153 in 2015. That was a drop from that of 2014. The profits made by the company accrued to $ 519,834,969. The profitability was 31%. 

The following is the graphical representation of the revenues of the three products in 2015. 

The following is the profitability of the products from 2012 to 2015. 

Market Review 

In the fiscal year 2012, W1 had sales of 968,979 tablets. W2 had considerably lower sales compared to W1 and stood at 562,961 tablets. W3 was not yet introduced to the market and therefore did not have any sales. The unit price of W1 was set at $ 285 while that of W2 was set at $ 439. Both W1 and W2 had a performance rating of 1.02 in the market. The first time customers of W1 were 882,729 while the repeat sales totaled to 86,250. The tablets market saturation was 15%. The first time customers of W2 were 516,018 while the repeat sales were 46,943. The market saturation was 8%. Mr. Thomas would have increased the marketability of the tablets to attract more repeat sales and increase the profits and revenues collected from the tablets. 

The following is the graphical representation of the sales of both W1 and W2 in 2012.

In the fiscal year 2013, W1 had sales of 1,603,357 tablets. That was an increase from 2012. The first time customers were 1,438,552, and the repeat sales were 164,805. The market saturation of W1 was 27% in 2013. Its performance was recorded as 1.03. In the same year 2013, 1,431,588 W2 tablets had already been sold. The first time customers were 1,301,997 while the repeat sales were 129,591. The number of W2 tablets sold was slightly higher than that of W1. The market saturation of W2 was 16%. Its performance was 1.46. In 2013, 165,568 W3 tablets had been sold. The first time customers were 141,538 while the repeat sales were 24,048. The market saturation of the model was 2%. Its performance was 0.85. 

The following is the graphical representation of the number of sales of the three tablets in 2012 and 2013. 

In the financial year 2014, 2,068,658 models of W1 were sold. First-time customers bought 1,784,306 models of W1 while the repeat sales were 284,352. The market saturation for W1 was 48%. Its performance slightly dropped to 1.02. In the year 2014, the customers bought 2,659,768 models of W2. First-time sales amounted to 2,352,694 while the repeat sales were 307,074. The market saturation was 36%, and its performance rose to 1.56. In 2014, the number of handsets of W3 bought by the customers was 232,629. The first time sales were 198,609 while the repeat sales were 34,020. The market saturation was 3%, and its performance remained at 0.85. 

The following is a graphical representation of the number of sales of the three products. 

In the financial year 2015, 1,821,723 handsets of W1 were sold to the customers. The first time customers were 1,391,199, and the repeat sales were 430,524. The market saturation was 73%. Its performance was 1.00. In the financial year 2015, 2,473,436 models of W2 were sold. The first time sales were 1,829,291 while the repeat sales were 644,145. The market saturation was 72%. Its performance was 1.64. In the same year, 325,068 handsets were sold. The first time sales were 277,060, and the repeat sales were 48,007. The market saturation was 4%. Its performance stood at 0.85. 

The following is the graphical representation of the sales in 2015. 

Alternative Strategy 

The former VP of marketing, Mr. Thomas has been an impediment to the marketing processes at the company. To begin with, he has primarily been uninvolved in the marketing of the products and has let the company drive itself. Such negligence has affected the sales of the products, their development, and profitability. Joe Thomas has also spearheaded the poor marketing strategies for the products such as W1, which has already matured, and it has been on the market for only three years. W1 needed to have its product lifecycle extended to attract more customers. W3 has also been poorly marketed, and the result is the losses it has been incurring over the years. 

The alternative strategy to the nosediving marketing strategies at Wonder Co. is to extend the lifecycle of the products (Stark, 2015). Notably, this strategy will focus on the growth phase of the tablets. According to Bocken et al. (2016), one of the methods of extending the lifecycles of the products will be to refine the product offers to maximize profitability. In the case of wonder co, it was necessary to keep adjusting the prices of the tablets rather than keep them fixed for the four years. That is an indicator of the poor decisions in marketing made by Joe Thomas. Mr. Thomas would also have looked for the new and unexplored markets to increase the new customers for the tablets. Regular advertisements and promotion would also have been necessary to increase the number of repeat sales (Lerch & Gotsch, 2015). 

The other method of extending the product lifecycle that would work in the case of wonder co is the constant innovation and improvement of the products at the company (Fisher, Kotha & Lahiri, 2016). The idea of Mr. Thomas, which included just watching the sales with little or no supervision, would not have worked in this case, as stated by Gmelin & Seuring (2014). There is a need to add more features to the existing tablets to appeal to the customers more (den Hollander, Bakker, & Hultink, 2017). That will increase the strength of the customer relationships, which will increase their satisfaction levels. In that case, the sales would grow exponentially from time to time with more customers buying the tablets not to miss the amazing features they have for them. 

References 

Bocken, N. M., de Pauw, I., Bakker, C., & van der Grinten, B. (2016). Product design and 

Business model strategies for a circular economy. Journal of Industrial and Production Engineering , 33 (5), 308-320. 

Den Hollander, M. C., Bakker, C. A., & Hultink, E. J. (2017). Product design in a circular 

Economy: Development of a typology of key concepts and terms. Journal of Industrial Ecology , 21 (3), 517-525. 

Fisher, G., Kotha, S., & Lahiri, A. (2016). Changing with the times: An integrated view of 

Identity, legitimacy, and new venture life cycles. Academy of Management Review , 41 (3), 383-409. 

Gmelin, H., & Seuring, S. (2014). Achieving sustainable new product development by 

Integrating product life-cycle management capabilities. International Journal of Production Economics , 154 , 166-177. 

Lerch, C., & Gotsch, M. (2015). Digitalized product-service systems in manufacturing firms: A 

Case study analysis. Research-Technology Management , 58 (5), 45-52. 

Stark, J. (2015). Product lifecycle management. In Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 1) 

(pp. 1-29). Springer, Cham.