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Q
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4
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You joined your present organization, a domestic white goods manufacturer,
as a sales officer trainee, and in fifteen years have risen to become the
company’s chief sales manager. At last, your have the power to influence
the direction of marketing, sales, publicity and promotion. However, your
management does not share your views and feels your are over-reacting to
competition from the clutch of foreign brands that have invaded the white
Goods sector. You, on the other hand, feel that an advertising, publicity
and promotions blitz is called for, to shore up your brand equity and
retain market share/customer loyalty. After all, its your head on the block
if sales fall lower and lower. Do you (TICK ONE):
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(a)
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Feel frustrated, and decide to circumvent management by instructing sales
and marketing to verbally feed information about forthcoming products/
processes to dealers, to retain their loyalty?
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(b)
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Go ahead anyway and proceed to hold Dealer Meetings where promises of
higher dealer margins, more product range, latest R&D inputs and future
marketing strategies are chalked out?
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(c)
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Conduct a market survey before deciding what to do next.
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(d)
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Realise that management may be right in not advising premature release of
product features/specifications in a market where highly organised,
technologically advanced and predatory global players have already
established a presence. You may think its better not to panic: market
shares shrink inevitably, as more and more players occupy the stage.
(It’s better to use brains to come up with better products, then
advertise /sell them better).
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Good! Your Answer is Right
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Correct Answer is (d)
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1. That’s not what they hired you for, though.
2. Now this sounds like an aggressive action plan to recover lost
ground. Tracing key ex-employees will enable you to study them and
(a) decide which ones have been ‘compromised’ – i.e. gone
over to the ‘enemy’, shifted loyalties (b) identify those who
had to leave to keep the wolf from the door, and follow up on them.
Reopening dialogue may only be useful if the foreign parties are
still not involved in India, and retain their positions of
dominance on the international scene. You plan to keep your
knowledge of foreign languages secret, so that you can listen to
their unguarded comments to each other in their native tongues –
a trump card. A review of past functioning will identify
vulnerabilities so your new-setup can plug information leaks
effectively from all angles – physical, oral, digital and visual.
3. Though operationally correct, the situation indicates outflow of
inside information to competitors, and it is this aspect which is
conspicuous by its absence.
4. While more water flows under the bridge and the company’s
position erodes further. Watch and wait is only a specific
strategy, inapplicable in such a vast enterprise.
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