Failing owing to poor marketing strategies - Case Study Example

The paper “Psychological Principles of Marketing and Consumer Behavior, Failing Due to Poor Marketing" is a fascinating variant of a term paper on marketing. Marketing is among the most fundamental functions of management. Its basic objective is to determine the market for a product or service. This implies that marketing influences the profitability or failure of a product or service (Kotler & Armstrong, 2014). Successful companies with substantial market shares have effective marketing teams that ensure the profitability of the companies’ various brands.

Lack of effective marketing contributes to either the failure or success of a brand. Below is an analysis of three products that failed to owe to poor marketing strategies. The New Coke, 1985Coca-cola is arguably the largest soft drinks manufacturer and retailer in the world. The company enjoys immense profitability owing to the effectiveness of its marketing team. In 1985 however, the company introduced a new brand of coca-cola. In an attempt to diversify the taste of the popular drink, the company changed the formula of the new drink.

The new recipe introduced a new taste thus a new product altogether. The company branded the new taste coke as the previous one and introduced it in the market, the same market that liked the taste of the conventional coke. Reasons for failureThe new recipe was a marketing disaster. The market opposed the new product a feature that resulted in immense losses for the company as its major competitors like Pepsi that had retained their tastes enjoyed improved profitability. Coke has one of the world’s most loyal customers.

While some continued purchasing the new brand whose taste the company’s Chief Executive serving at the time described as a more harmonious flavor” a minority of the customers opposed the flavor thereby compelling the company to restore the previous recipe or risk losing the section of the market.Apple Newton, 1993Apple manufactured this Personal Digital Assistant, PDA and introduced in into the market in 1993. However, the product did not obtain the company’s desired level of profitability thereby compelling the company to withdraw the product from the market in 1998.

Reasons for failureApple Newton failed because of a myriad of reasons including its high price. The company sold a piece of the PDA sold $700 while other retailers throughout the world sold the product at higher prices. Price is a major element of the market mix that influences the profitability of a product. Another factor that contributed to the failure of the product was the poor reputation it enjoyed. The PDA was big and therefore remained a subject of ridicule by different people. Numerous talk show presenters and media comedians ridiculed the product a feature that enhanced its failure.

All the reasons for the failure of the product were failures by the company’s marketing team to position it strategically in the market (Britt, 1978). As such, the product enjoyed a poor reputation thus enhancing its failure. However, the product offered effective lessons to both the company and other competing companies’ marketing teams thereby influencing the creation of some of the most successful products. Such products included Blackberry, Palm Pilot and the modern-day iPhone among many other similar products.

The Zune, 2006Microsoft sought to compete with Apple’s iPod by introducing a unique portable music player. Just as with most products manufactured by Microsoft, the device operated on a Windows operating system. The Zune debuted in 2006 and the company introduced numerous other generations of the product in subsequent years. Despite such dedicated marketing, the product did not succeed in penetrating the market. By the end of 2008, the product’s revenue had reduced by more than 54%, one of the lowest in the company’s history a feature that compelled the company to withdraw the product from the market.

Reasons for failureThe idea was not original. The product’s design and functionality copied Apple’s iPod, which was enjoying immense success at the time. This implied that IPod had scooped the market thereby making it difficult for another product to enjoy similar profitability. Additionally, the product’s software limited the users to the Windows operating system and affiliate programs. Such was a major drawback that limited the freedom that other products such as the iPod offered its users (Paul & Kapoor, 2008).

Conclusion In retrospect, the above three products failed to enjoy profitability for their respective companies owing to weaknesses in their marketing. The marketing teams of the companies that manufactured the above products did not carry out effective market research and analyses in order to obtain vital market information before and after launching the products. This way, the market factors frustrated the products thereby resulting in their withdrawal from the market.