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Executive summary
The paper will reflect the marketing plan of Voyage Auto, which was established in 2017. The paper covers the background and history of the firm. It also analyzed the market demographics, and consumer needs to develop a proper marketing plan. Further, it covers competitor analysis, SWOT analysis and marketing strategy to improve the plan. The key issues and success factors will also be examined. Later, a strategic marketing plan and marketing mix will be discussed along with an estimated budget. The paper also covers the implementation plan which is defined with contingency planning.
Table of Contents
- Situational Analysis 5
History 5
2.0 Market Analysis 5
2.1 Market Demographics 6
2.2. Market Needs 7
2.3 Market Growth and Trends 7
- Competition Analysis 8
- Marketing Research 10
- SWOT Analysis 11
5.1 Strengths 12
5.2 Weaknesses 12
5.3 Opportunities 13
5.4 Threats 13
6.1 Keys to Success 14
6.2 Critical Issues 14
7.0 Strategic Marketing (STP) 14
7.1 Mission 15
7.2 Marketing objectives 15
7.3 Financial Goals 16
7.4 Segmentation and Target market 16
7.5 Positioning of the Voyage Auto Inc Company 17
8.0 Marketing Mix or operational marketing 18
8.1 Price: 19
8.2 Promotion: 20
8.3 Products or Service: 20
8.4 Place: 20
3.8 Market Research 20
- Marketing Financials 21
9.1 Break-even Analysis 22
9.2 Sales Forecast 23
9.2.1 Sales Breakdown by Segment 24
9.2.2 Sales Breakdown by Associates 25
9.2.3 Regional Sales Breakdown 26
9.3 Expenditure Forecast 27
9.3.1 Expenditure Breakdown by segment 28
9.3.2 Expenditure Breakdown by Partners 29
9.3.3 Expenditures Breakdown by Region 29
9.3 Expenses linked to strategy 30
9.5 Margin of Contribution 30
10.0 Implementation 30
10.1 Timeline 31
10.2 Marketing Organization 31
10.3 Contingency Planning 32
- Conclusion 33
References 34
- Situational Analysis
History
Voyage Auto was founded in 2017 in Santa Clara, California. The company gives self-driving taxi and car services to people of Florida and California. The five key executives and co-founder of the company are Mr. Warren Ouyang, Mr. Oliver Cameron, Mr. Eric Gonzalez, Mr. Tarin Ziyaee and Mr. MacCallister Higgins. The company allows people to get a self-directed vehicle to their home and to reach their desired place safely. They struggle to become a trusted company of each community they serve.
Voyage is widening its business across the country, and with every growth, they target the communities where the number of residents are more and have better and more roads. The company runs a car in Florida where people prefer self-driving. The vehicle of the company includes high technological features that helped them to gain attention (Sadirgh et al., 2016).
2.0 Market Analysis
The automotive industry has made a powerful impact on the entire economy and customers as their demands are increasing day by day. The company runs a number of self-driving cars in Florida villages which have one of the most prominent retirement societies in the United States. The autonomous vehicles of Voyage Auto have Lidar sensors which allow the car steer by making a 3-D plan of the road for recognizing various objects like cyclists, cars, and walkers. It also has wheel encoder, RADAR and camera to track the vehicle and decrease the chances of an accident.
The Financial Corp. of Toronto has invested $3 million in the company as it seeks to change the upcoming days of driverless-car assurance. Being a start-up company, Voyage Auto have eleven to fifty employees who work to manage their brand value by fulfilling the dreams of their customers (Bonnefon, Shariff and Rahwan, 2019).
Fig: Structure of automated car
Source: (Kazarian et al. 2017)
2.1 Market Demographics
Voyage Auto offers transportation services to every group of people who desire to have an independent vehicle to reach somewhere. The company focuses mainly on the retirement community who prefers self-driving. It provides driverless taxis and cars to transform the transportation business as trip-sharing services like the Uber Company, alphabet Inc.’s and other established taxi rental industries. It could lead to less accident, thus threatening present auto insurance forms, where profits from premiums increased to $230 billion by 2017.
Voyage Auto can improve its business opportunity and growth by developing a mobile app through which customers can book their car before time. Moreover, the demands of the market sections must be examined efficiently (Tian, 2018).
2.2. Market Needs
Many adult citizens find themselves uncomfortable to travel with traditional cars or cab services, as the drivers might argue with them regarding directions or travel costs. To overcome such scratchy situation, they search for driverless cars. Therefore, the AI-driven automotive industries have huge scope for growth in the future. The automobile industries always look for new and innovative ideas to satisfy the interest of their customers. Voyage Auto needs to set up distribution, assess distributors’, merits and demerits, choose and undo new channels. The clients of the company go to them for temporary, scalable expertise. These clients understand that company’s kind of proficiency would be expensive and difficult to obtain from permanent, full-time workers. On the other hand, the customers from the village location do not have complex traffic condition which can cause accidents. Thus, those customers feel safe to travel with automated cars. The Voyage Auto uses GPS and LIDER sensors to operate cars in a safe environment.
The market needs are to be fulfilled to provide a good experience to customers who book their vehicles. The advanced technology cars have facilities that help the managers to track their vehicle when required and also reduces the risk of an accident. Clients are happy with the self-driving facilities that are getting from autonomous taxis and cars (Le Vine, Zolfaghari and Polak, 2015).
2.3 Market Growth and Trends
Voyage Auto has been growing in the market since it was launched. Customers like their autonomous vehicle as it allows them to drive themselves. The company focuses on the villages as it will solve the problem of transportation and traffic patterns. Voyage has achieved its target of transporting autonomous vehicles to a large section of people. In a concise period, the industry has made a huge market growth by contributing to foremost engineering proposals at places such as Cruise, Tesla, Uber ATG and Otto.
The company stands to profit from some particular market trends that need to be developed.
Nationalization: This trend helped the company to build and develop their business relationship with the manufacturers. The Internet has the power to change the business effectively by bringing people together to share new ideas. The Voyages is gradually expanding its business from the retirement community of Florida to other parts of the United States (Glancy, 2015).
Communicational technologies: Due to the internet the expansion in communications technology things is volatile. Advanced technologies and a modern network have helped Voyage to learn industry trends. In addition, it helped the company to gather innovative ideas from the nationwide market. The employees developed more sophisticated designs with lower costs of software and hardware. Besides, it also helped the company to expand its service from village to city.
Partnership: Voyage has merged with some companies like Uber, Cruise, Baidu, Velodyne, Tesla, and Otto to expand its business in the market. It has allowed the company to connect with several producers and business owners (Barazandeh et al. 2016). Moreover, the partnership with other companies has helped it to increase their customers and quality standards. Suggestions from these transportation leaders have helped the company to correct various errors in their GPS software and machine learning activities.
- Competition Analysis
Market competition allows companies to accept challenges and motivate themselves to increase their sales volume. Voyage Auto should deal with its rivals properly so that they can avoid unnecessary clashes and focus on their product. A number of competitors are available in the US market, which has established a brand portfolio and a huge loyal customer base. Therefore, attracting the customers of those companies can be quite challenging for the newly emerged automotive industry. The competitor list includes Nura Inc, Drive AI, Flux auto, Gatik AI and Optimus Ride, which contain a significant amount of market shares and customer base in the US market. All these firms offer automated robotic cars which are driven by AI and machine learning process. Most of these technologies are quite similar and therefore encouraging the customer to move to their company is a major challenge for the firm.
The company has various competitors in the market that follows planned marketing policies to extend a customer base (Kasperski, 2018). The competition among the rivalries can be analyzed in the given ways:
It is the responsibility of marketing executives and managers to do surveys and researches to identify the company’s issues and weaknesses. By doing this, Voyage can make a proper strategy to overcome the challenges. It will help the company to maintain a relationship with the manufacturers who are doing business from an extended period.
The manager does market research, channel development, and business development in-house. They maintain confidentiality so that other competitors cannot recognize their strategies.
The voyage can expand its business globally to enlarge their customers. It will help the company to develop its business internationally, and the maximum number of people will come to know about the company (Tussyadiah, Zach and Wang, 2017).
Voyage Auto has emerged to be a well recognized autonomous transportation company since it was founded. The company has established a good position in the market due to the facilities that they assure to its customers. However, there emerged a number of companies in the market that have challenged their business. They have 40-48 % of similar facilities with that of Voyage Auto Inc. The five major competitors of Voyage Auto are Flux Auto with 43% similarity, Nuro Inc/CA with 48% similarity, Drive.ai Inc with 44% similarity, Optimus Ride and Gatik AI with 42% similarity.
- Marketing Research
The marketing research process helps the company to make analysis, systematic collection and elucidation of data relating to marketing conditions. Voyage Auto has carried out marketing researches to figure out the changes in their customer behavior because of change in the aspect of marketing components. Marketing research helps the company to identify the changing choices in the market (Brett, 2016). The following steps have to be followed to do market research:
Defining problem: At first it is important to know the issue for which research is to be performed. The company should define the problem effectively if it is unclear. Voyage Auto has made proper market research by describing the problem to its employees so that they get a clear picture of how and what to include in the research.
Developing the research program: This process collects the relevant information of the research objective like data sources, sampling plan, research approaches, and contact methods. The problem includes various reasons of a road accident, which is driving people to adapt driverless cars (Wilson, 2018).
Collecting Information: This is the most expansive process of marketing research where the researcher has to accept the process to gather information. This method has helped Voyage to collect significant information that helped its business to grow. Various technologies and innovative ideas are studied to improve the car deign
Analyzing Information: The fourth step of market research is to organize the information so that proper analysis can be attained. The researchers of the company apply various statistical techniques and advanced decision forms to execute the analysis. Moreover, some additionally advanced decision approaches are also used to analyze the facts (Bansal and Kockelman, 2017).
Presenting research: After analyzing, the findings of the research are to be submitted to the management level. The CEO of Voyage Auto receives the findings on which they have to make decisions.
Making Decision: The last step is to decide by the top management authorities. After the marketing research gets over, the CEO of Voyage decides whether to depend on the findings or to reject the findings as inappropriate for the business.
Figure: Market Research Process
Source: (Royo-Vela and Hünermund, 2016)
- SWOT Analysis
A SWOT analysis helps a company to make strategic planning techniques to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
5.1 Strengths
Brand potency: Voyage Auto is a recognized company in the United States, and the performances of it have a considerable effect on the growth of the economy. Even though the company was established in 2017, it has gained a strong root among the people of the United States. The company is widely known as it ensures contentment to the customers who are its priority. This fact makes it the most trustable autonomous transportation company (Harper et al., 2016).
Strong Partnership: The Company is partnered with famous companies such as Tesla, Uber, Otto and Cruise which helps it to increase the number of clients. Moreover, Voyage is getting a huge investment from the Financial Corp. This helps the company to flourish its business in the market.
5.2 Weaknesses
Dependent on certain models of vehicles: Voyage Auto includes very limited models of cars. Sometimes customers do not wish to pay for cars and taxis that they do not like or feel comfortable to ride. Besides, software technology and AI is very complex to operate if the server fails or bug occurs in the software.
Marketing: The Company fails to do general marketing as they lack resources. They depend on their partnered companies to get generating leads which affect their business. Also, the researchers gathered customer review from various social sites and analytic blogs to advance the marketing campaign.
Price: Voyage cars are not affordable to lower sections of people. The cost of every ride is too high which can be afforded only by middle or higher groups of people. This increases the risk of decline in their business and the entire organization (Pereirinha et al., 2018). The automated cars are more expensive compared to general cars, which is a major threat to attract customers
5.3 Opportunities
Internet Development: Nowadays, customers are more attracted to companies that have advanced technologies and provide them unique experiences. The growth rate is increasing, so it is obvious for the Voyage to get new opportunities to expand its business by implementing better and innovative techniques to attract its customers.
Market Growth: Voyage is expanding its business in the United States. If it provides better facilities to the nationwide customers, then their chances to grow internationally will automatically develop.
5.4 Threats
Competition: Auto Industry is one of the most competitive industries in the market. There are numerous autonomous cars in the market that provide high quality and similar features. Those competitors try to prove them superior by convincing clients. So, it is a threat to the Voyage as they need to overcome the challenges effectively.
Internet issue: The internet is an opportunity as well as a threat to Voyage Auto. The company’s expertise is mainly to run multiple markets in the United States, and the issue they solve are being lessened due to the rising accessibility of information on the internet. Customers prefer to search for other available prices and thus book cars over the internet.
Potential product difficulties: Voyage Auto relies more on other brands of the automobile manufacturers which means that potential difficulties related to those brands will create an issue for Voyage. It will make a negative effect on the business (Lavasani, Jin and Du, 2016).
6.1 Keys to Success
Providing autonomous cars and taxis with excellent facilities.
Expanding visibility to produce more business leads.
Developing a relationship with partners enlarges clients.
Quality of fulfilling the assurance has helped Voyage to widen its business in the country.
6.2 Critical Issues
The person who drives the autonomous car requires several intricate social interactions that are not possible for technology to perform yet.
Bad weather is another critical issue for self-driving cars as sensors stop working in case of snow or rain
Self-driving cars have a political issue as some customers do not know to drive properly and can get into serious accidents.
These are expensive as it requires thousands of dollars for the specialized and maintenance mapping services. This in turn access anxiety of being unable to arrive at their desired location.
Cybersecurity is one more critical issue for autonomous cars as these vehicles might get hacked which might be difficult for the company to fix it.
7.0 Strategic Marketing (STP)
Voyage Auto Inc, which manufacture a self-automated car, is facing challenges in their marketing and business strategy, due to which they require an effective plan through which they can enhance their business in the market. The company also provide car service facility in association with Otto and Uber. The company facilitates its service to California, Florida, Texas and many more (Fan, Lau and Zhao, 2015).
7.1 Mission
The mission of the Voyage auto Inc is to improve their company’s sale by manufacturing better-automated self-driven car and by providing car service to their customers with an affordable charge. The company believes and wants to integrate quality service, innovation, and new technology marketing plan strategies. Therefore, the company is trying to retain its existing customers and to attract more number of customers. The senior retired communities are no longer in a mood or have the capacity to drive themselves long nor can enjoy their ride. Thus, the company wants to provide them the self-driving car, which will not be a tiresome and annoying ride
7.2 Marketing objectives
The marketing objectives of Voyage Auto are
Steadily increase in market share
The Voyage Auto Company is a new one, which is trying their hard to retain in the business that is why they are continuously targeting to increase their market share and associating with different taxi service providing companies. However, the global market share of the self-automated car is expected to rise by 174million dollar in the financial year 2024. The company has to recognize its target market and customers so they can gain maximum profit as much as possible (Sulaiman and Syahrivar, 2018).
Retaining the existing customer
The company must try to maintain their current customers by facilitating them with unique and overwhelming service. This is very important for the company to focus on innovation, and mostly they target the retired communities. They proved an automated self-driving car to their customers, which is relaxing, comfortable and pleasuring to them. The self-driven should comprise of a good resting facility so that the senior customers can make themselves restful throughout their ride. The GPS facility, which is provided by the company in ts car, helps the customers to detect the route way to avoid traffic and car accidents.
Reduce customer acquisition cost
Decreasing the unnecessary expenses from the production cost, marketing cost will be much more beneficial for the Voyage auto company because they can focus and spend on the essential operational areas where it is mostly required (Armstrong et al. 2018).
7.3 Financial Goals
The Voyage Auto Inc comprises of the following financial objectives
The total annual turnover of the voyage automated car company is 20.2 million dollars in the year 2018, and it is expecting to increase more in the forthcoming years.
The company is likely to increase their business by 40% by the financial year 2022.
The company is required to cut down their additional expenses to maintain their company’s financial condition.
7.4 Segmentation and Target market
The Voyage Auto Inc is focussing on enhancing their business in the states like Florida, California, Washington, Santa Clara and other states of the United States of America. Most of the customers of the company are the retired individuals who want a comforting, restful and securing riding car. Thus, the company is trying their best to make more advancement in their service so they can meet their customers’ expectations (Neuts et al., 2016). The company is also searching for more trusted taxi-car service companies and to associate with them to enhance their business and to provide additional service to their customers.
7.5 Positioning of the Voyage Auto Inc Company
The marketing strategy of the voyage-automated company is to focus on their working performance development. The company is required to pay more attention to the safety of their customers. They should concentrate to improvise their car and taxi service facility and to implement some strategies so that the incidence of the car accident, car damage can be avoided. Through this, they can enhance their market value, customer’s attention and can maintain a good position in the market.
7.6 Strategy Pyramids
The company presently is facing competition due to numerous rivalry automated car companies like Nuro Inc, Drive.ai Inc, Flux Auto, Gatik Al, Optimus Ride and many more. That is why the company requires an exceptional marketing plan structure to give fierce competition to its competitors.
Figure: Strategy Pyramids of Voyage automated company
Source: (Syafii and Andre, 2017)
The strategy pyramid of the Automated Voyage Inc depends upon the three crucial, influential steps. At first, the company should focus on their most important target market, the market needs and the areas, which needs prime focus. Tactics tag along with the market strategies and set some policies through which the procedure can be accomplished. In the base of the pyramid, which is the programming part here, the implementation of the marketing plan takes place. It consists of the budget, sales, and other essential features.
8.0 Marketing Mix or operational marketing
Voyage Auto Inc in a short period gain tremendous popularity and doing great business in the transportation services. The company offers its customers comfortable and securing self-driving taxi services due to which they have achieved lots of good response from their customers. The company is about to launch new technology-oriented cars through which customers can enjoy their company’s comfortable service. Therefore, it is essential for the company to involve the 4ps of marketing through which they can determine their target customers, their expectations that will be helpful to enhance their quality service and business.
The marketing mix comprised of the following four elements.
Figure: 4Ps of the marketing mix
Source: (Liu and Tomsovic, 2016)
8.1 Price: The Company is going to introduce the latest models of their automated cars and decided to sell them in a market, which can be easily affordable to its target customers. They believe in comfort rather than luxury, and that is why they focus mostly on the safety and protection of their customers along with their manufactured cars. The company has introduced its new latest model Voyage G2 on June 14, 2018, which comprise of new improved technology and navigation facility. The price of their manufacturing cars is mostly ranged between 70 dollars and their taxi service charge ranges 60 dollar per hour, which is somehow affordable to their target customers (Dolnicar and Leisch, 2017).
8.2 Promotion: The Company uses various means of media for endorsement or advertising their company service facilities. In spite of its official website, the company also hold their official pages on social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Print media also do the marketing of their band, which can be accessible to that customer who does not involve with the social media applications.
8.3 Products or Service: The Voyage auto can include the latest feature in designing their automated self-driving cars. The company should target to introduce good quality and comfortable service to its customers. However, most of their customers are retired residential of different states in the USA. Therefore, it is vital for the company to think and to modify their services according to their customers’ needs. It will not only enhance their service demand but will also make a good reputation for their company’s brand in the market. The company is trying to manufacture the latest designed, comfortable cars, which comprise of various configuration features and mobile app for rout control and navigation.
8.4 Place: The Company is expecting to address more than 125,000 residents’ villages in Florida and other states nearby Santa Carla. The services provided by the company are famous among the retired communities, and that is why they are trying to make their target customers happy for retaining them for an extended period (Aghdaie and Alimardani, 2015). The company is making their service available t those areas where the transportation facility is quite complicated and challenging.
3.8 Market Research
The company requires understanding the needs and expectation of their target customers. The primary customers of their company are the retired communities. The target customers mostly want an effortless and relaxing taxi service so they can enjoy their road trip or journey. The company requires to develop its self-driving facility to reduce the incidence of risk accidents and to avoid other technical problems
Channel Marketing Research:
The company has to identify and progress the channel marketing process through which its customers can easily enjoy their service and facilities. The Voyage Auto Inc have associated with different taxi Service Company is to make their transportation system more effortless and more viable to their target customers which are mainly the senior citizens. The company after tying with Uber, Otto are sharing equal profits through their transportation service.
Technological Research:
During the initial year, the company has developed software by using Udacity, which takes the input of the camera and guides the AI (Artificial Intelligence) to design the desired road map to the destination. The company is trying to incorporate innovative and advanced technologies in their car services (Wang et al. 2016). The company has newly appointed Drew gray as the chief technology officer who looks after the technological facilities which have been created using Udacity. They have developed a voyage apple app, which facilitates their customer’s automated navigation and route control facility inside the car. However, these facilities resulted in being very beneficial for the customers. The company is also going to add a new facility by providing autonomous taxi summon with an affordable price by using its mobile application.
- Marketing Financials
Voyage Auto Inc. intended to enhance its sales by 25% by 2019-2020. The enterprise has the vision to surpass 30 million US dollars. At the end of the economic year 2017-18, they registered total revenue of 20.2 million US dollars. As a start-up, the success rate is beyond imagination. However, the marketing expense is also quite high (35%), as they needed to create awareness in the US market. Voyage Auto planned to reduce the expenditure to 20% in 2019.
The financial analysis is carried out with varieties of analytical components namely balance sheet, cash flow statement and trend analysis. The financial plan focuses on two trends to meet the expected goal (Bellos, Ferguson and Toktay, 2017).
The foremost step is enhancing the production of automated cars along with decrement in operational costs. Voyage Auto is offering self-driven taxi services in the countryside of Florida and California. The partners such as Uber Otto, Baidu, Velodyne, and Enterprise are rented the manufactured car and using them for transportation. It can help the company to increase the overall revenue.
Secondly, the company must reduce its promotional expenditures to magnify revenue. Last year 35% of business capital was used for advertising, which is very high. Thus, Voyage Auto has planned to reduce the maximum of 20 percent capital for rapport building.
9.1 Break-even Analysis
It is a popular technique for the estimation of sales and revenues. Mostly accountants and production management use the tool for determining the cross point of revenue or sales and expenses. The break-even analysis also reflects the annual budget of a company, which includes fixed as well as variable costs and resources.
Figure: Break-even Analysis
Source: (Krishna, Pandey and Thimmalapura, 2017)
Voyage Auto’s break-even analysis is portrayed below:
Break-Even Analysis
Monthly Break-even of Units
2
Monthly Break-even of Sales
$130,000
Prediction
Average revenue per unit
$ 65,00
Average variable cost (per unit)
$ 45,000
Estimated fixed cost
$ 20,000
Sales Forecast
Voyage is offering it driverless cars to numerous senior citizens, which helped to enhance public relations. It also directed to increase sales. For increasing revenue, the sales rate must be increased by 20-30 percent, which is almost 52000 dollars. The company is relatively new in the US market, and thus employees and the founders of the company must act proactively to amplify marketing and sales in the targeted segments. Besides, the prominent focus should be given on marketing or distribution partners. Thus, they can meet the forecasted revenue increment.
Figure: Monthly forecast of revenues (in thousand dollars)
9.2.1 Sales Breakdown by Segment
Voyage Inc is manufacturing the self driven cars and selling them with good price. Besides, the company is also offering taxi services in the countryside roadways. The services are primarily given to senior citizens and local communities of California, Florida and nearby states. The activities help them to gain a significant amount of revenue and also developing the brand of the company is US market
Figure: Sales Breakdown of by segments
Source: (Stocker and Shaheen, 2018)
9.2.2 Sales Breakdown by Associates
The enterprise is expected to grow in the various states of US such as Arizona, New Mexico, and Washington to expand its sales. The global market of AI-driven car has increased drastically in the past few years. Similarly, the domestic market of the US has also faced a positive impact from it. The senior citizens and other sophisticated people like to use auto-driven cars to increase their comfort level. With Voyage app, these consumers can book cars and enjoy travel services. Besides, Otto, Uber, Enterprise, Velodyne, and Baidu rent the manufactured cars of Voyage Auto to offer various kinds of cab services as per market or consumer demand.
The rented services are more profitable than one time sales. Thus, the company is making significant profits with this idea. The breakdown analysis is shown in the below pie chart.
Figure: Partner based Breakdown of sales
Source: (Camerer and Yoon, 2015)
9.2.3 Regional Sales Breakdown
The automobile company is getting sales from various villages and roadways near Florida. More than 1.25 million residents are being benefited with the taxi services of Voyage. Around 40 square miles of the area is served along with 750 miles of roadways which are situated in Central Florida (The Villages Florida, 2018). The senior citizens are getting special services named as a retirement plan. Such lucrative promotional activities made them popular in the market segment. Besides, other parts of Florida, California and nearby states also enjoyed the cab services. The region-oriented breakdown chart is shown below:
Figure: Region wise Sales Breakdown
Source: (Camerer and Yoon, 2015)
9.3 Expenditure Forecast
The forecast of expenditure indicates the predicted operational cost within a certain period. The expenses can involve various aspects such as advertisements, employee wages, legal bills, and accounting costs. Majority of the business capital is allocated for advertisements and promoting the brand. A small amount is also allocated in print media so that the citizens not using digital media can become aware of the campaign initiated by Voyage. The various features like automated driving, AI roadmaps, LIDER sensors, GPS navigation systems is highlighted through such campaigns. The promotional step also includes highlighting the front camera, which is used to capture the upcoming interferences in the road, so that the AI of the car can design certain roadmaps. Such vivid promotion requires graphical videos and designs that require a high amount of expenses. The marketing budget of the company is described below in the following table.
Marketing Budget
2017
2018
2019 (expected)
Advertising
40,000
45,000
43,000
Print media
45,000
47,000
42,000
Public relations
50,000
49,000
45,000
Social media or other digital platforms
70,000
75,000
60,000
Others
10,000
15,000
16,000
The table indicates that a large sum of business capital has been used in the past two years for promotional activities. However, such an enormous investment can reduce profitability. Therefore, 2019 projection shows the decrement in expenditures for enhancement of the revenue.
9.3.1 Expenditure Breakdown by segment
Voyage Inc has invested a good amount in conquering the domestic market of the USA. The marketing partners, as well as the company, contribute regular efforts to improve the marketing operations and relevant activities (Vasilyeva, 2016). Various strategic marketing plans are used to increase the profit ratio of Voyage Auto. The segment wise forecast is depicted below:
Figure: Segment-based Expenditure Breakdown
Source: (Delogu et al. 2017)
9.3.2 Expenditure Breakdown by Partners
It is identified that Voyage Auto is using a good amount of cost in marketing the products and services. The partners are taking a certain amount of commission while building rapport and developing a customer base of the company. Most of the expenses are used for communication and drawing the attention of consumers from different market segments. However, the CEO and other founders should review the marketing strategies regularly to avoid deficits in expenditure.
9.3.3 Expenditures Breakdown by Region
In various geographical segments, different expenditures are influenced. According to market research, the marketing plan should be enforced adequately. Moreover, the allocation of expenses also needs to be done precisely to achieve the ultimate goal. All the communities and citizens should be targeted to expand the business market of Voyage Auto (Gee, 2018).
Expenses linked to strategy
The marketing strategies or plans should be renovated according to marketing trends or demands. Besides, software technologies must be updated to offer effective result. On the other hand, Voyage should develop an attractive social media account and pages with attractive photos and videos to highlight various features of the cars (Hill, 2017). The hoardings, banners, and newspapers also can e used to highlight the features of these cars. The partnered agencies also can highlight the services of these cars with their mobile applications.
9.5 Margin of Contribution
The contribution margin needs to be increased in the domestic market to conquer the regional and national market of USA. The margin is dependent on some crucial factors:
The sales of Voyage Auto have gone downwards in the past few months due to improper or ineffective efforts. Therefore, the firm has planned to decrease the operational cost in the entire system (Ward et al. 2017). Besides, the company should also reduce the commission to the partners
The expenses of marketing have to be decreased. Furthermore, experienced individuals can be hired to increase the quality of marketing as well as the features of the automated car. Besides, a certain opinion can also be taken from external experts and customers to boost revenue from the market.
10.0 Implementation
The marketing department of the Voyage Inc is about to implement new innovative and effective marketing strategies through which they can improve their business and can achieve the company’s goals and objectives. The management team of the company with the guidance and assistance of their manager is trying to input most advanced and most natural technologies, which can make their service more comfortable and uncomplicated. As the company is new in this field, they have to take each step with more care. Therefore, it is required for the company to revise its sales, marketing implementation programmes annually so that they can assess their company’s profits and other essential criteria. Further, it is necessary for the marketing panel to discuss and review their marketing sales, annual expenditure, and benefits with other departments for the company so they can make equitable changes, which is required (Lutz and Newlands, 2018).
10.1 Timeline
The marketing period requires 2-3 weeks.
Latest offers, discounts and other offers are mostly endorsed through social media and print media.
The marketing panel decides its marketing expenditure with the assistance of their company’s senior leaders.
In the month of Christmas, the company mostly offers discounts on its transportation charges.
10.2 Marketing Organization
The CEO of the Voyage Auto Inc Oliver Cameron has initiated different steps with the support of their board members to implement strategic marketing planning through which they can monitor the marketing development of the company. They have organized a practice where the marketing sales of the company have to be presented by the marketing department in the monthly board meeting (Chen, Tu and Wang, 2016). This implementation programme will be beneficial for the company, as it will provide a monthly chart for each marketing expenses and profit. By this strategy, they can also evaluate the pros and cons of their marketing campaign.
10.3 Contingency Planning
Contingency planning is backup planning which is regularly developed by different organization to deal with unwanted future risks and business failures. Contingency planning is very important for the company to protect its business from the crisis. The company has to make a good effort to reduce their additional expenses during the marketing period. They have to focus on the main areas of designing and advertising their company’s brand in the market. As the car service indulged with Udacity technology, it might face technological problems, which can cause trouble in the artificial intelligence Qin, Yuan and Wang, 2017). That is why it is important for them to check their network regularly with bandwidth. The marketing panel of the company should keep an additional fund to deal with any promotional failures. An additional fund can be used for backup marketing.
- Conclusion
Based on the study, it is apparent that marketing plans are an essential tool for drawing the attention of consumers. The marketing manager and CEO of Voyage auto must define the prime objectives of marketing along with desired expectations. Thus, the marketing team and associated partners can devise effective tactical plans to meet the objective. Besides, the pricing, promotion or positioning strategies must be developed after examining the competitor products. The Voyage Auto should make a budget forecast to allocate funds adequately in various marketing activities. The control or implementation procedure should be defined to accomplish the marketing plan. The contingency plan is also defined to deal with probable issues that can appear during execution. It is recommended to improve the marketing mix strategy for better sales. The combination of digital marketing, public relation campaign, and print media marketing will contribute more fruitful result. The leaders must evaluate the effectiveness of the plan before enforcing it in the real market.
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