Microenvironment Customer Analysis Essay

Potential customers are the key to the success of our product. In this analysis, we divided our customers into two subcategories: Individual Customers: The new trend in the hygiene industry is naturally made products as we live in a more health concerned era. There are people who are against the negative effects of chemicals in products that we use in our everyday lives, therefore there has been an increase in demand for organic products. Because of this increasing demand; in newspaper articles, on television programs and on the internet people are trying to share their natural homemade remedies. In the news we read about people who explain why they would never use shampoos or soaps again for all the chemicals they put inside and how they affect the general health. They will be our target customers. Our product is all natural, just like they want. The only difference is that instead of people making it in their houses; we will mass produce it and make it easier to access due to diffe rent ingredients that are not really easy to be found. Other than the product being completely organic, our promotion will focus on the charity work we will do with this product regarding poor people. Thus, not only the health concerned people but also the people who care about the society will be targeted. People who would like to help the homeless can do so by buying this product. Our potential weakness here is that we may not be able to promote the product as fast as we want to. It may take some time for the target customers to know about this product. Another potential weakness can be that people may approach our product with suspicion. We plan to overcome that by medical reports regarding the product. Business Customers: We are planning to promote our product to non-profit organizations that help the poor people. As it is quick and relatively cheap, it can be used not only by the homeless  people but also really poor families and children. This will create a good image for our brand and actually help people in need. We know that i t is really painful and hard for people in our country after natural disasters such as earthquakes. They become in need of really simple things and hygiene can be a part of that. Therefore we plan on targeting organizations such as KÄ ±zÄ ±lay to help the people in need by using our product. The amount of refugees living in camps in the cities of Turkey is really high. They are also in need of basic hygiene products that can be used dry. Also out of our country borders, there are people who live in really poor countries and face with many diseases because of the lack of water and hygiene. Some Turkish organizations help the people in other countries but we plan on reaching the Turkish offices of well-known global organizations as well. After the agreements with the Turkish non-profit organizations, we can have an extension to foreign markets that can help the homeless people in other countries that are having problems finding clean water or hygiene related issues. One potential problem here is that we may not be able to profit from the sales to non-profit organizations. There are two possibilities: first, we may have the most of our profit from the sales to our individual target customers by selling them with higher prices. Second possibility is that the sales to organiz ations can be so high that we would not need to change prices much. Our main goal will be planning the prices accordingly for the individual customers and organizational customers in order not to have any issues regarding the continuation of production. Also the sales to non-profit organizations will be used as a tool of advertising to help the product gain recognition. This can lead to an increase in prices later on. COMPETITOR ANALYSIS: A General Overview of the Competitive Position in the Turkish Market for Hygiene and Personal Care Products Industry Currently, and as shown by internet websites about exporters and importers of waterless cleaning products in Turkey, the products in the Turkish market consists mainly of dry waterless washing of cars and carpets. There are no products for body and hair. Therefore, we can assume that there is room for a successful market penetration if we choose the right strategy. We are operating in the hygiene industry. Therefore, we can think that our direct competitors would be the other hygiene companies which are already producing the regular body and hair care products. Indeed, even though they do not  produce dry products such as the one we are offering, they are both the materials as well as the big size, which would enable them to produce it after its launch with cheap costs. When we look at the hygiene market in Turkey, we find the usual international players such as P&G, Unilever, the Body Shop, and so on. However, the market is characterized by a strong presence of Turkish companies as well such as Komili, which belongs to YÄ ±ldÄ ±z Holding, Dalan, which is one of the biggest producers and exporters of soap and personal care products in Turkey, as well as EczacÄ ±baÅŸÄ ±, which is one of Turkey’s biggest Holdings, among others. In addition, there are some multinational companies such as Colgate Palmolive who decided to invest in Turkey through an acquisition of HacÄ ± Åžakir, one of Turkey’s most famous soap producing companies. When we talk about competition, we also need to think about the ways of distributing the products. Very few companies produce and distribute their products on their own. Usually, those companies have their own shops and are international franchises such as the Body Shop, Body Care, Douglas, and Yves Roch er, among others. Most of the other companies prefer to sell their products through outlets such as Boyner and YKM, which are enabling customers to compare the products of many brands at the same time. Some other companies prefer to sell their products through super/hyper on the hygiene and personal care parts of some super/hyper markets such as P&G and Unilever. All of those companies are relatively big and established ones. They have a strong brand name and market positioning. They also have an existing customer base and distribution chains. Producing and distributing our products by our own would therefore be not only difficult, but very unsustainable as the big players in the market would soon take on the idea if they find it profitable. We believe that the best way to counter the big competition is to try to find the market leaders, negotiate with them, and persuade them to add our products to their product range and distribute it in their stores or through their regular distribution channels. MACROENVIRONMENT DEMOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT: Trends, Opportunities and Threats The demographic environment is of major interest to marketers because it involves people, and people are the customers of our product. The population is growing during these years and the large population poses both  opportunities and threats. Our major purpose is to identify the demographic trends and developments in order to exploit the opportunities the market offers and avoid or overcome the threats we face in the market environment. In order to build a customer-driven strategy we need to analyze the changes in age and family structures, geographic population shifts, educational characteristics and population diversity. The age structure of the population is changing and our product should exploit the new market trends. For example, the so called â€Å"baby boomers† (people who were born after the World War II) are still the wealthiest generation, but they are becoming more sensitive to environmental problems, preferring green and cheap products. This could be an opportu nity to exploit in order to face the severe competition. Another part of population is made up by the â€Å"Generation X†, which is becoming more careful about prices and quality of products. These people grew up in the Internet era, and they are highly connected by using smartphones and tablets. Our strategy should exploit this opportunity by advertising our product online and creating online pages and blogs through which customers can interact and share their opinions. We have to regard also the new generations which consider technology as a way of life and, because of unemployment and financial crisis, they are becoming more sensitive to prices. Another important trend is the geographical shifts and migratory movements between and within countries. People are moving from big cities and metropolitan areas to suburbs and micropolitan areas, away from congested places. Such population shifts are very important because people in different regions and areas buy different products. Now customers are more careful about regional and local products and their purchases are often influenced by this factor. Therefore our customer-driven strategy has to exploit this trend by differentiating our product from the others not only in term of natural ingredients, but also in term of local f eatures. Further during these years the population is becoming better educated in developed countries; therefore the rising number of high-educated people will affect what customers buy and how they buy. But in many emerging markets, like in the third-world countries and undeveloped nations, people continue to live in bad conditions, without sufficient education and hygiene. Our product could be viewed as an opportunity for this base of consumers, for example for homeless people, refugees all over the world and people who are not able  to take a shower because of lack of water. Lastly, countries are becoming more global and people from different nations and cultures are often mixing together into a single, more homogenous whole. However, many of these groups have maintained their diversity in term of ethnic and cultural differences. Therefore marketers need to keep in mind the features of the new global markets but at the same time valuing and respecting diversity between different cultures. For example, our strategy should include specially designed ads to one or more of these groups. We should also diversify our promotion programs in order to take advantage of these differences and make our customers more involved in our marketing plan. -ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT: Trends, Opportunities and Threats The economic environment is an important macro environmental force that has a strong impact on every industry, especially in developing countries such as turkey. After the global recession, which occurred in 2009, the Turkish government has been working hard in order to stabilize the economy of the country. By effect, the GDP grew by 4% since 2009, now measuring 820 billion dollar, making it the 17th country worldwide. The stabilization of the economy has raised confidence in investors, which are very much welcome from the government to make direct investments. Also Customers are more willing to spend money and this is leading to an increase in shopping, mainly in big cities such as Istanbul, Ankara and Ä °zmir. This trend is very positive for our prospective, since the retail industry is one of our main selling markets. Since the economy is more stable, we are able to make more accurate forecasts about the market, and making relevant decisions about the price and the other four Ps of Marketing (Promotion, Place, and Product). In fact we can make better decisions about the quantity of products we need to produce and how we are going to promote it, since more people are interested in going into shopping malls and shopping areas. Taking a look over the exchange rates we can observe they are quite unstable; this is leading to a positive trade balance of Turkey. This means that is easy to export rather than import, which we can take in consideration for a possible future expansion of our product in other countries. Income distribution in Turkey is still unfair, with basically few people owning the most of the money. We can take advantage of this situation, since our target market are the poor  and the needy, by competing with our low cost product and improving their life conditions. Overall Turkish economic environment is favorable to our purposes and we can expect the market of the hygiene industry to grow. Also, the increase of the economy can lead to untapped opportunities and to a growth of demand for ou r product. TECHNOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT: Trends, Opportunities and Threats The body hygiene products are not what they used to be. In the past, the cleansing agent was soap, which could dry out your scalp and leave a scum that doesn’t rinse away. Today technology for hair and body care products has changed, even though there is still a lot to be done. Which is exactly what we did by coming up with this product. For example, almost all shampoos and body hygiene products nowadays contain chemicals like silicones that give a hair and skin soft feel, and help it retain moisture. This is not healthy or natural and has negative effects. These days, people are more conscious about what goes on with their skin and hair because they know that using chemicals like silicones and alcohol has bad effects on skin, hair and general body health. Therefore, technological environment is also changing according to people’s demand more on healthier body hygiene products. Since technology for this industry is changing, and growing, we will use this opportunity and develop our healthy hair and body care product avoiding harmful chemicals.