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Micromanagement in Indonesia First of all, micromanagement is the challenges that are faced from the inside of business. So, businesses can take control over all the influences and challenges in the micromanagement. Micromanagement can also be called as internal environment. It refers to the power that is close to the company and affects the ability to serve their customers. It includes the company, suppliers, marketing intermediaries, customer markets and also public. The company aspect of micromanagement refers to the internal environment of the company.
It includes al departments, such as management, finance, research and development, purchasing, operations, and accounting. Beats suppliers is the business partner who provide their system with materials, including cable, packaging and machinery, as well as the goods. The supplier of beats headphone is Monster Cable, where they started their partnership in 2006 when Beats entered strategic partnership with them. Luke Wood, the president and chief operating officer of California-based Beats said: “Monster did the original design manufacturer management, manufacturing, distribution and sales.
We did the marketing, as well as production design with US industrial design firm Ammunition,” (Perez, 2013). After their partnership end in 2012, Beats develop their product in-house which means that they supply their headphones on their own. Dry Dare who owns the company decided to manage the entire operation of the company, from manufacturing to R&D, and aimed to double their workers to around 300 employees. Then, after Apple acquire Beats Company in 2014, Apple becomes the new supplier of Beats headphone. In Indonesia, Beats has many marketing intermediaries.
They are mostly an electronic or music store such as Artery Electronic, Disc Tara, Electronic city, Refine, ‘box, etc. But not only that, they also wider their marketing in the book store such as Gardenia, factory outlet such as Sago and The Goods Dept, and even online store such as Bible and Lazed. As a company who’s the main production is a headphone, Beats has many competitors who also produce the same product. Companies such as Eisenhower, Bose, Herman Cordon, Mansion, Dared, and Genuine are also having a large number of customers. Beats competitors are now legion, and many have copied the Beats labors in marketing their headphones.
There are headphones from 50 Cent (SMS, which also has a collaboration with Localism), Bob Marble’s estate (House of Marled, which promotes an environ-friendly aesthetic), Quince Jones (manufactured by AKA) and Tony Bennett (by Kooks) (Leopold, 2014). In order to beat their competitors, Beats company has made the segment cool, Nap’s Ben Arnold said: “It is definitely about sound quality, but it is equally about the brand,” (Snider, 2012). According to the NYPD Group’s Retail Tracking Service, Beats is the number one brand in the total U. S. Headphones market, followed by Bose, Sony, Skullcap’s and C.V. (Colony, 2014).
Beats Company has many customers that internationally have spread worldwide. However, unlike other already existing headphones in the market, beats by Dry. Dare headphone was created for not Just music lovers, but for a particular kind of music lovers, in this case, hip-hop music lovers (Philips, n. D. ). It is because Dry. Dare is an icon in the hip-hop community producing great beats for artistes such as Snooping, 50 Cent, The Game, Kindlier Lamar, Mine and Mary J. Bilge. When it comes to USIA production, he is regarded as a perfectionist. The last micromanagement of Beats Company is the public.
Beats has a duty to satisfy the public. Any actions of the company must be considered from the angle of the general public and how they are affected, and Beats really have done that. President and former Interstice executive Luke Wood said: “When we look at marketing for our year ahead, we don’t look at what products have the best margin or which ones sell best, that’s detrimental to progress and innovation,” he also added, “We ask, What do we think the consumer should learn about? This year, they’re talking a lot about wireless speakers and headphones, so we want to teach people that Bluetooth can sound good,” (Helm, 2014).
So, they produce the headphones after considering what the public wants. C. Beats Branding Strategy Decisions and Branding Activities for its Products A branding strategy helps establish a product within the market and to build a brand that will grow in a saturated marketplace. Making smart branding decisions up front is crucial since a company may have to live with the decision for a long time. Beats is using their company’s name as their branding strategy. These recent years, Beats has been known worldwide as a world’s leading headphone selling. So, by selling the company’s name, they can gain a lot of buyers.
They also create a brand image for their company. A key parameter in Beats’ strategy is brand image, as Ernest Ditcher said in his “Strategy of Desire”, the choice to buy for the consumer depends completely on “how the mind of the consumer reacts to the whole complex personality of your product”, its image (Roger, n. D. ). Over the years, Beats has become a tremendously influential and popular brand thanks to Dry. Dare and co- founder, music producer Jimmy ‘bovine to strategically market the company’s signature headphones, Beats by Dare (Mambo, 2014).
Beats also developed several Joint venture co-branding. That occurs when brands develop a Joint venture but keep their own customers’ brand equity and are not competitive but complementary. So, Beats chose carefully these brands, make sure that they can fit together. The partnerships developed are mainly part of co-brands from HP laptops to Chrysler sass to ETC cell phones. In this case, the expertise and quality of Beats products is deed in the other branded product. Since 2009, the brand Beats tunes the audio drivers on almost 20% of HP computers.
Also with the partnership with Chrysler, the goal was to transfer the brand equity of Beats to Chrysler cars by revolutionize the expectations for audio quality in an automobile and establishing a new bar in sound that came closer than ever before to replicating the recording studio sound of professionals like Dry. Dare and Jimmy for drivers of the new Chrysler BOOS. Finally, after a few months of partnership with ETC, the 2 brands decided to put an end to it: nice a few years, ETC has been pretty weak on the market and didn’t bring to Beats the expected higher value and cash flows.
However, it seems that Beats did not suffer from this partnership; it didn’t alter its brand equity or its brand value. Beats Company also uses social media as their branding activities to promote their product. It’s on Twitter and other social media channels that Beats by Dare most undercuts Oboe’s ability to support its headphone brand (Macabre, 2014). Social media is the most effective activity in enhancing employer brand, at least for those ho have identified their metrics and track performance (Career, n. D. ). D.
Beats Product Mix Pricing Strategy Decisions and Price Adjustment Strategy Decisions First of all, Pricing is a crucial element of the marketing mix and companies must make strategic choices about how to price their products to achieve their business goals. The product mix is the collection of products and services that a company chooses to offer its market. Pricing strategies range from being the cost leader to being a high-value, luxury option for consumers (Richards, n. D. ). The pricing strategy for Beats Audio is high.
The products are exclusive especially because they are endorsed by celebrities, not only they are endorsed they are actually used by them as well. Since Beats Audio is the most desired headphones, the company keeps the price range high in order to maintain the ‘high quality’ image (Fibular, 2013). So, they use brand ambassador in order to attract more customers. Beats Company also uses price adjustment strategy in order to maximize their production. The examples of price adjustment strategies are discount and allowance pricing, segmented pricing, psychological pricing, promotional pricing, geographical arcing, and international pricing.
Beats give a promotional pricing during the holiday; they called it “Holiday Promotion”. This offer usually available at the end of the year during Christmas and New Year break. They also use international pricing because they launch their products internationally. They need to decide what price they will charge in different countries in which they operate, considering many factors such as economic conditions, laws, and regulation of the countries. Aside from that, they also use geographical pricing in which they decide the price of their products based on the geographical location of each country.