Marketing Mix and CSR for Microsoft corporation.
Microsoft is a multinational technological corporation with headquarters in America known for developing computer programs, applications, and software. The company was founded on the 4th of April 1975 by a school dropout bill gate. The company is owned by a billionaire Bill Gates with his friend since childhood Paul Allen. He has transformed the company into the most valuable business globally as they are the chief producers and developers of computer-related programs. The company is known for producing software in a computer like widows among other computer brands under the brand Microsoft starting from word to other software. The transformation of the business into a multinational corporation with its products worldwide has led to the development of the corporation to venturing into new business. Microsoft has launched into the mobile and phone market where the produce's programs and games are being used by various companies producing phones like techno and Samsung that use mobile OS a Microsoft product. The venture and the corporation's brand, and the production of the quality product have allowed the company to Merge the best in the gaming market. In its development, the company merged skype for $8.5 Billion in 2011, absorbing the company into their system; this was to enhance the competition from companies such as Google and apple. The company is associated with the achievement in computer software control with the market and their commodity used worldwide.
Target market
Microsoft's market target includes all the customers with different tastes and needs as the company is involved in producing various applications and software, increasing their market to all levels of the demographic. The corporation is engaged in a global market with their commodity worldwide where the demand of their item is dependent on the customer’s choice as they have programs and applications developed to take care of people of all age groups. (Murugan, 253). This enhances their market and limits their need to computer and phone users, thus demanding a literacy level to acquire and use their product. The company product is a choice of people from different demographics from the young age where people live at home, to an age bracket of after six years where the child has developed motor skills.
The company’s software, especially the computer software and application, is commonly used by students; employees are professionals in all fields in their careers. It has multiples used starting from word documented generation. The application installed in the computer users in the career fields includes the PowerPoint for document documentation through slides and publisher for data computation. (Saifuddin, and Anwar. 11) The application in excel is also used in computing data giving the computer multiple purposes in the office and documentation of data. The target market is all individuals who are user and non-users, determined and ambitious people, people seeking benefit from the system's efficiency and accuracy. People of different occupations depending on the uses they use the computer for from student to employees and employers, people of all social classes and lifestyle.
Products.
Microsoft products include various products where they deal with software development, licensing and support, and hardware essential to online activities. The company is well known for software and hardware production, but they are also critical products in the application and games for a wide range of age groups. Their products include operating systems for computers, the produce servers, mobiles and mobiles systems, and devices that possess artificial intelligence. (Dutta, and Dutta, 983). Despite this, they are the key server producers ranging from application servers to all computer servers and the development and selling of hardware, including entertainment consoles and other essential gaming hardware. The company provides services in the consultation of business in the software and hardware market venture and includes training on the developers.
The company development is due to the employees' continuous research and the research team to ensure the growth and upgrade of the product they offer. The company is a critical provider in the skype network's products and services where they provide both [the hardware and software as the skype network owners. The company is known for providing services essential for developing the cloud base in computing services—the Maintenance of the high services offered through the research and development of high-quality software and hardware. Hardware products include laptops and other computer models under the production of the Microsoft Corporation.
Place.
The dominance of the Microsoft corporation in the market has caused the company to monopolize the market, thus controlling its products. The company has set up retail shops where the products and services on the training are offered to their customers. The company has opened a retail shop operated by a retail team from the company’s facilities (Mora, Daniel, et al. 102). The change in technology affects the sales on the retail shop and forces the company to adopt online marketing to sell their products. The company was reported to close all the retail shops worldwide to reduce the revenue and change the market to the online market. The process is said to save more than four hundred and fifty million dollars on the shares. This activity will transform the business from having a specific location to be everywhere in the market.
The transformation of the market to online will help the company serve many customers worldwide, helping them increase their revenue. The online market is supported as the company has trained marketing personnel to operate online effectively. Software development provides the company with adequate resources to enable the company to have the best platform for the products' sales. Sale in the online market offers more effortless channels in advertisement and availing goods to all customers worldwide.
Promotion.
The Microsoft market's monopolistic nature allows the corporation to do their advertisement and promotion in their store and use the media channels. The advertising done in the company is aimed to reach the population that has the least usage of their commodities, thus creating awareness to them on the benefits of having them using their products. The company uses various channels to reach the target population where they use their main website and the national website where the product is promoted through discounts and offers on certain commodities to attract customers (Helmold, 53). The company uses ads and social media for advertising the products where they give procedures on how to use their item. In these media, the company uses attractive videos advertising or showing the offers available to the customer on purchasing the product from the firm.
Price.
In determining the price, the company considers the accessibility of the product to the customers, thus helping in pricing the commodity according to the consumer's ability. In this case, the company may provide some of the products for free to the users, and others may need the user to have experience with them before paying for the product's license. (Sheelapriya, and Murugesan, 192) The company's use of Microsoft's pricing strategy allows the company to make a significant effort to attract customers to use and pay for their products. The advantages are associated with the product's usefulness dictating the products' price and the number of customers willing to pay for the services. The strategy is the key to the cultivation of the business value and building of customer loyalty.
CSR.
The company's patriotic mission usually controls Microsoft corporate responsibility to serve the global needs of the community in the betterment of the community life. The company has been in the first line in environmental conservation. The company is making an effort to remove the company's carbon by using electrical consumption of the gases out of the environment (Sehgal, et al.64). the need to reduce the gap created by the broadband gap. The company has made an effort to reach the people in a rural area in an attempt to provide them writhe band where 2.2 million people were served. To accumulate the funds, the company allows the employees to donate to other facilities where more than seven hundred and fifty thousand hours were donated for free services translating to more than two hundred million US dollars. CSR is beneficial to the company as it is to the community by creating a better brand name for the company and the increase in the sales associated with the activity. The removal of the carbon in the environment by the company helps in reducing the gas level rising to toxic levels for the animals and plants life thus reducing pollution,
Work cited.
Dutta, Pranay, and Prashant Dutta. "Comparative Study of Cloud Services Offered by Amazon, Microsoft & Google." International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development 3.3 (2019): 981-985.
Helmold, Marc. "Pricing Strategies." Total Revenue Management (TRM). Springer, Cham, 2020. 43-59.
Mora, Daniel, et al. "An In-store Recommender System Leveraging the Microsoft HoloLens." International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Springer, Cham, 2020.
Murugan, M. Sakthivel. "EMPIRICAL STUDY ON FACTORS INFLUENCING CUSTOMER PURCHASE DECISION OF SOFTWARE SERVICES PERTAINING TO MICROSOFT PACKAGES."
Saifuddin, Mohammad, and Syed Farrukh Anwar. "Integrating Various Softwares for Planning Analysis and Design."
Sehgal, Gaurav, et al. "Corporate social responsibility: A case study of Microsoft Corporation." Asia Pacific Journal of Management and Education 3.1 (2020): 63-71.
Sheelapriya, G., and R. Murugesan. "Stock price trend prediction using Bayesian regularised radial basis function network model." Spanish Journal of Finance and Accounting/Revista Española de Financiación y Contabilidad 46.2 (2017): 189-211.
