SMU MBA ASSIGNMENTS

Answer :                             THE PERFECT BRIDE

OVERVIEW OF THE SERVICE

“Perfect Bride” is a service firm which helps the would-be brides or girls who are about to get married to learn and train themselves to better adapt to the change that they are about to witness in their lives. We conduct sessions where in girls are trained in various aspects of married life like:

• Inter personal relationship handling

 

• Time management

 

• Personal grooming

 

• Fund management

 

• Inter cultural training

 

 

House hold learning We also provide services of wedding planner which will take care of althea activities of the wedding including decorations, various rituals planning, guests handling, caterers, venue handling, wedding couture, bridal make up, etc.One of the striking features of our service is that we give inter cultural training to girls having inter caste marriages where in we train them in various aspects of the new cultural that they are being married into like dress, food type, rituals, language, etc.

 

STAGES OF NEW SERVICE DEVELOPMENT

IDEA GENERATION

The new service development process starts with the search for ideas. New service ideas can come from customers, competitors, employees, interacting with various groups or top management. There was a brain storming session conducted by the company with the top management discussing about various customer requirements. Various informal sessions were also conducted where customers talked about their needs and wants. Thus various ideas were generated.

IDEA SCREENING

The basic need for idea screening is to eliminate poor ideas as early as possible because with each service development step, the cost of development rises. All the ides were submitted to the idea manager which was then reviewed by the idea committee. The ideas were then divided into groups of promising ideas, marginal ideas and rejects. The idea in the group of promising ideas was then researched by the committee. The committee reviewed the idea against set criteria like: a)

 

a)      Will the service meet a need)

 

b)      Can the service be appropriately advertised)

 

c)      Does the company have enough capital for the service?

 

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

In this stage the service had to be described in detail. The company needed to develop a concept about the service to describe it to its customers

To develop a concept for this service the company had to think about many questions like- who will use this service?? Teenage girls or would be brides. Second, what benefit will it provide them? Better adjustment after marriage or experience sharing about married life. Third, when will people use this service? After being engaged, after graduation or after marriage. After considering various questions for developing a concept for the service, our company finally formed the concept of an opportunity for would be brides who want overall knowledge and experience sharing about marriage life for leading happy married life.

CONCEPT TESTING

Concept testing involves presenting the service concept to appropriate target customers and getting their reactions. The more the tested service resembles the final service, the better it is. Concept testing involved elaborating the customers upon the concept of the service and getting their reactions and acceptability of the service. We elaborated on the concept as providing services that will help girls who are about to get married to learn about the various aspects of being married and leading a happy married life by training them on handling relationships, time management, personal grooming, adapting to new cultures in case of inter caste marriages, wedding planner and many more.

BUSINESS ANALYSIS

After the management developed the service concept and tested the feasibility of the service, it prepared a sales, cost and profits projections to analyze the entire service.

Estimating total sales: Sales in term of this service would mean as to how many people avail this service and enrol for such programs. This is a repeated purchase service i.e. people keep getting married and thus customers demanding such a service will not go down torero. So sales are estimated to be favourably good in this kind of a service. Estimating costs and profits: The initial cost of this service would include the cost of advertising and marketing the service, hiring teachers and experienced work staff to train the people whoenroll and collaborating with various people who will be needed to ultimately plan the wedding for their clients. Profits are expected to be fairly good because as in a country like India where people spend lavishly for weddings, profits are expected to be good over a period of some time.

MARKET TESTING

After the management was satisfied with the concept of the service and the business aspect of it, they decided to go for market testing where the consumers are offered the product and its acceptability can be checked. We went in for alpha testing where we tested our service within our organization. We went to few of our friends and one of our relative who were about to get married and explained them about our concept. The customers we approached towered quite excited about this service and wanted to enrol for it.

COMMERCIALISATION

Now is the time to finally launch the service in the market. Before the service is launched in the market, several decisions are to be taken like:

 

WHEN: This involved deciding upon the market entry timing. As this is a very new service concept which does not exists, we will surely enjoy the first mover advantage by way of grabbing key distributors and customers.

Secondly, we have decided to come out with this service in the month of September, as this is the time when the wedding season which is considered auspicious in our country is about to start. Thus it will be a good time to start this service.

WHOM: Our target customers will be upper middle class and upper class society people who can afford to and will be willing to spend lavishly at weddings.

WHERE: During our initial launch, we will be starting up with our service in Delhi and Mumbai which are big metropolitan cities and have population who might be willing to avail such a service.

HOW: this decision basically includes how the service will be launched. It requires deciding upon the marketing strategy and promotional techniques of launching the service in the market. The marketing strategy has been explained in terms of the following:

PRODUCT:

Our product is basically a service that provides would-be brides withal detailed learning experience about the new life they are about to enter. It provides services like relationship handling, fund management, time management, personal grooming and wedding planner.

PLACE:

We have decided to start our service in metropolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai where the population will be willing to spend on wedding planning and learning courses.

PRICE:

The price list for our services is as below: We have courses in:

Relationship handling: Rs. 6000 for 15 classes twice a week

Time management: Rs.4000 for 10 classes twice a week

Fund management: Rs. 4000 for 10 classes twice a week

Personal grooming: Rs.7000 for 15 classes twice a week

Wedding planner: as per requirement

Household learning: Rs.5000 for 10 classes twice a week

Cross cultural training: Rs.4000 for 19 classes twice a week

Entire package cost without wedding planner: Rs.25000 + taxes as applicable

Entire package cost with wedding planner: Rs.25000 + cost as per wedding requirement+ taxes as applicable

PROMOTION:

The various promotion techniques that will be used for promoting the service willbe:1)

 

1)      Newspaper advertisement in matrimonial section of the newspaper2)

 

2)      Online marketing on matrimonial sites like shaadi.com and vivaah.com3)

 

3)      Promotion by setting up stalls at wedding exhibitions like Vivian, bridalasia,bride and groom,etc4)

 

4)      Printing ads in wedding magazines5)

 

5)      Radio jingles6)

 

6)      Printing brochures and pamphlets7)

 

7)      Advertising at various popular beauty salons

PEOPLE:

Our services will be provided by people who have been specially trained to provide relationship counselling, cross cultural training incise of inter caste marriages, time and fund managers who will train clients, interior decorators and planners for wedding planning.

 

 

PHYSICAL EVIDENCE:

All the members who enrol for our service will be given an automated i-cardwhich will serve as an identity proof for them and which can be used for entering personal data on our website, any personal queries and will also be used to track class records and take back up classes.

PROCESS

The entire course will be conducted by experienced trainers who would create real life situations for clients and then teach them and help them deal withsituations.Practical learning sessions will also be conducted for personal grooming sessions which would include cooking classes, personal make up sessions, etc.For the purpose of relationship handling, counselling sessions and open discussions will be conducted where personal queries can also be taken.

 

 

 

 

 

Q.2               What is service differentiation? Explain service differentiation strategies

Q.3              What are the different stages in which organisations choose innovative operational methods?

Q.4               What are the various levels of customer satisfaction? How important is a plan or methodology to initiate customer responses?

 

Q.5            Categorise the marketing mix in insurance sector & airline industry .

 

Q.6  Define the elements of strategic management. Mention the technical options in the service marketing.