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Essay about Maytag's Marketing Strategy Plan

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Maytag's Marketing Strategy Plan

If asked what you know about Maytag's marketing program, the first thing to come to mind would probably be its "lonely repairman" ad campaigns. For 35 years, those ads have helped position Maytag as a reliable brand for major appliances. Gordon Jump, an actor who really was a former Maytag repairman, played the lonely repairman role in ads for 14 years. In 2004, another veteran character actor, Hardy Rawls, took on that job. Although Maytag's basic positioning has been consistent over many years, marketing managers at Maytag are constantly developing new marketing strategies. So let's take a closer look at what they did in one innovative strategy-planning process that resulted in profitable growth for …show more content…

It tested well on cleaning, but Maytag thought it fell short in improving other customer benefits. GE was further behind in working on a front-loaders. But these were strong competitors, so if Maytag didn't move quickly they wouldn't get a lead. Maytag formed a cross-functional new product development team to quickly focus the effort. It screened various product ideas and strategies on criteria such as potential for superior customer value, initial costs, long-term growth, social responsibility, and profitability. Using nearly 40 pieces of consumer research, the team refined what the strategy might be and what it would cost. Marketers today have better marketing metrics for measuring the performance of marketing plans. They can use four tools to check on plan performance: sales analysis, market share analysis, marketing expense-to-sales analyss, and financial analysis. Sales analysis consists of measuring and evaluating actual sales in relation to goals. Market share can be measured in three ways. Overal market share is the company's sales expressed as a percentage of total market sales. Served market share is its sales expressed as a percentage of the total sales to its served market. Its served market is all the buyers who are able and willing to buy its product. And relative market share can be expressed as market share in relation to its largest competitor. Annual plan control requires making

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