Marketing case study for Sonance Company

Marketing case study

Question one: what are the current strategic situations and options available for Sonance? Please evaluate each option

A firm has to position itself to achieve strategic benefits. Failure to this, the organization will not only face stiff competition but will perform below average in the market place (Kaufman, 2003). If this occurs, the firm will not be able to meet its operational costs and this means that the future of the organization is doomed. Sonance is no exception. The first initial step in evaluating the strategy of a firm using strategy evaluation principles. Effective evaluation of a strategy involves understanding of what is a strategy. From definition, a strategy is a set of policies, plans and objectives that when pulled together define the performance and scope of an organization and its efforts in survival and gaining competitive advantage(Kaufman, 2003). An effective strategy provides the business with a way of performing fairly and competing in a complex competitive environment. The applicable business principles fit in the criteria given below.

Consistency-an effective business strategy must not provide inconsistent goals and policies ( Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2002). Evaluating the initial goals and mission of Sonance Company; the focus of the company has changed and a mutually inconsistent goals and strategy is present. The initial mission of the company has changed to a great extent. Currently, the custom installation dealers have been eliminated in the distribution of the company products. This in effect does not augur well with the end users who are accustomed to a brand name of Sonance and the accompanying services.

Consonance- a business strategy must have an adaptive response to changes both internally and externally. Several aspects constantly go changes in a business environment. This include both internal and external stakeholders. In the case of Sonance, there lacked a responsive strategy that would be implemented once some market changes were experienced. This lack of long term planning has cost the business large amount of income and revenue. As a salvation route, the company resulted into external hiring in an effort to salvage the declining sales of the company and regain market dominance.

Advantage- for a business to continually enjoy unrivaled performance in the market, it must adopt a strategy that provides for competitive advantage in its area of operation (Cui and Choudhury, 2002). Several areas exist from which a firm can benefit from in terms of competitive advantage. An effective strategy should outline where and how the business would acquire the materials needed for production. When a firm acquires materials at a reduced cost, then the cost of production reduces and the firm has better chances of success as compared to its competitors. The other factor that leads a firm to enjoy competitive advantage is cost of labor (Cui and Choudhury, 2002). If the labor cost is low, then the firm can enjoy better performance. This is a factor that was not included in the initial performance strategy of Sonance Company. The production company that the firm initially utilized had the power of producing its own similar products that resulted in the firm losing its monopolistic advantage. The firm realized when it’s too late the need to subsidize its production cost through acquiring manufacturers in Australia. If this plan was included in the initial plan, the designs of production would have remained within the company and would have been enjoyed the benefits of a copyright.

Feasibility- an effective strategy should work within the available resources of the firm and should not create situations that cannot be resolved. This means that a balance should be achieve between the projections of the organization and the available resources ( Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2002). This is a situation that Sonance Company did not take into account. There lacked a feasible long term plan that would address challenges if the line of production that the organization dealt with became outdated. This is the strategic situation for Sonance Company. The company focus has shifted.

The greatest asset of an organization is the market. When a firm takes control of the existing market, it is assured that the customers will be loyal to the goods and services offered by the company (Grünig, Kühn and Kühn, 2005). Different ways exists of ensuring that the products of a company reaches the consumer. It should be noted that the channel of distribution plays a critical role in increasing the sales of a company. Considering how customers collaborate, the exhibit below shows the distribution structure.

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The channel members had different characteristics as illustrated below

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Sonance strategic options

With only one year to the CEDIA EXPO, Sonance has to adopt the most appealing option that will guarantee success. Analyzing the performance of the company as presented in exhibit 3. Evaluating the customer lifetime value (CLV) of the company is critical and can be developed from the information given.

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