Running head: FedEx Marketing Communication Channels Marketing Principles (busi 3313)

Data Analysis

Markets in Africa were the most unproductive, given the mushrooming of many other local and cheaper delivery systems, because of the people’s lower economical prowess. On the other hand, markets in Europe and North America continue to be the most promising for the company’s venture, and the company has plans underway to increase investment to enhance infrastructure in these markets to further increase their services.

Responses from the public expressed their optimism in the markets of emerging super economies of the Far East. Chine was one of the major countries that were mentioned by a number of countries, including Hong Kong and South Korea. Others suggested that the company enters the virgin markets of countries in the United Arab Emirates, especially Dubai. They recognized the increased importance of the business hub and its significance around the world.

The best manner in which these markets can be approached is through integrating extensive Promotional and advertising campaigns, using both the personal and non personal communication channels off marketing as we saw earlier. The company should first seek the support of opinion leaders and influential persons in these countries to spear head the campaign for the brands. It so happens that these countries of the Far East and South American and the UAE are still traditional in the manner in which they offer their loyalty. Using influential persons to spread the message will have a bigger impact on the people. People that the people regard as role models will give their testimonies about the effectiveness of the company’s services, and recommend the same services to the rest of the people.

After these efforts to send the message to the people, the company should then embark on extensive promotional campaigns using all channels to communicate to the people. The company should use mainstream media channels of newspaper, magazines, Television adverts and Radio. The adverts to be aired should be structured in varied ways, so that they reflect the cultural aspects heralded by the people in these countries. These countries are highly cultural specific, and any misrepresentation of the people’s culture can a go a long way in discrediting the company’s good image. This was the strategy that most of the company officials proposed, which had worked in the many other markets that the company had successfully penetrated.

The public gave divergent views about the best approach to use. Many of them were opposed to the use of the company’s already successful image if it was to succeed in its efforts. They proposed that the company uses a humble approach, which will relate more to the common citizens, who were the middle class persons. They complained of the company’s use of patronizing image when marketing their services, which was attributed to its success in the American market, which the people felt it owed to them for their loyalty.

The company needed to maintain its already existing competitive advantage if it was to continue being the market leader in parcel delivery, a status it has held for quite some time now in the US. The company holds competitive advantage on the culture of innovation. The company was built on innovation, and this has remained its core values, which has catapulted it to being the world’s leading parcel delivery services company. The company adopts a creative culture, which adopts an open and receptive culture in the way it carries out its operations and activities. This has been the company’s source of competitive advantage, which have enabled to company maintain its leadership position. One of the company’s advantages, which established a name for itself in the corporate world, was the provision of the next-business-day delivery service. This strategy enables customers to get their deliveries in good time, time enough to prepare the package for its use in the next course of action. This has been made possible by the company’s extensive investment in delivery infrastructure, which includes a large number of ground vehicles, shipment, and air services to ensure that they get their deliveries to the designated locations in good time.

Another advantage that the company has is its long time adoption of technology in its operations. The company observed the many merits accompanying the technological advancements in many areas, and took a first lead in adopting these strategies. As such, the company intensively invested in IT solutions, which saw it adopt the COSMOS and Powership 3. These are IT solutions, which helped the company develop better packaging control, which in return improved the quality of the services it offered, as well as of the goods it delivered to its customers. When economic conditions deteriorated in America and the entire global economy, the company was able to derive from its IT solutions to adopt a Just-In-Time delivery model, which ensured that in spite of the hardships in delivery, the customers still got their parcel in time.

When asked on the type of services that the respondents felt that the company should provide, which it did not provide then, the company respondents gave limited answers on this. They were optimistic that the company already provided quite a wide range of products for its customers. They cited services like FedEx Trade Networks, warehousing and customs services, and the FedEx Copy Centers (Ding, 2007). Some of them, however, expressed the need for the company to start a transport company for people. They said that it would cost the company little in additional investments, given that it already had a wide resource of transport facilities for air, road, and water transport. Transporting people would tremendously expand the business, thus increasing its revenue. The company would, however, specialize in rare forms of transport, where people who were incapacitated in a way could be transported. These could include children, the elderly, and other groups of special persons. The company would need to register the people, and charge higher for transporting them, and ensuring that they get to their destinations safely. This would save many people around the world additional costs of having to accompany these special groups of people when they travel abroad.

Customers felt that the company needed to start a money transfer service. This was because of the high trust that the people had in the company and its efficacy in offering the services. Such services would be transacted worldwide, and stood to benefit a lot of people.

The company has quite a number of desirable aspects about it. The employees as well as customers were able to identify two of its most outstanding aspects, which kept drawing them back to the company. Compared to other parcel delivery services like the American major competitor the UPS, FedEx had better rates compared to the quality of services it offered its customers. The pay rates for FedEx were found to be most favorable among customers, who at the same time expressed their satisfaction, that the quality of delivery services and that of the goods was not compromised by the lower pay rates. This attribute emerges from the fact that the company has a wide established market, enabling it to take advantage of economies of scale, thus offering its clients lower rates.

Another aspect about the company that many found to be quite desirable was the company’s customer service. Although the leading companies of FedEx, UPS, and DHL all had good shipping deals, most customers found favor with FedEx because of the superb customer service of the company employees. The company employees were always quite empathetic with the needs of the customers, and helped them with information that would facilitate good service delivery of their products.

In spite of these good attributes about the company, there was need for the company to improve on the number of employees. Compared to UPS, which has nearly half a million employees worldwide, FedEx only has a quarter a million, thus trailing UPS by half. This is a significant number, which makes all the difference when it comes to service delivery. A shortage of enough employees in every segment of the company is responsible for some of the major crises the company has had in the past, where stalemates have been experienced for deliveries. Besides the number of employees, the company needs to improve its fleet capacity from the current 70,000 vehicles to match up with UPS’ 94,000.

The company also needs to improve in its domestic delivery services, to reach the remote areas of the country. FedEx is more popular in the international world for its effectiveness than it is in the native America, especially in deliveries to remote areas. Companies like UPS have a competitive advantage in this area, because of its ability to reach these areas. Because of the company’s lack of proper plans for deliveries to the rural areas, it, at times, depends of independent contractors to deliver to these areas, an act which makes charges to deliveries to the rural areas high. The company needs to adopt an al round efficiency and effectiveness image in order to get customers from all parts of the world.

On the question as to whether the company’s charges are competitive, most customers were positive about it. They often compared the prices with other leading companies like the UPS and DHL, all of which charged similar rates for express and overnight services. The three also had charged the same on shipping services abroad. The difference, however, came with the quality of services that each company offered. FedEx was often found to be leading in the quality of its services, which included timely deliveries, door-to-door deliveries, and a good customer care attitude. Besides, the company’s culture of disseminating as much information about the services and the goods being delivered gave it an upper hand among other companies.

As such, most customers were satisfied that they got good value for the money that they spent at the company. This was reflected by 87% of the customers who responded to this. They had no major complaints about the company’s services, and said they would continue seeking the same services. A large number of those who were not satisfied were the people from rural and remote areas in the country, who complained late deliveries and high charges for the services.

Asked whether the employees and customers had experienced any problems with the company, a few of them responded positively to this. Some customers recounted some of the bad experiences they had had with the company’s customer care services. This, they largely attributed to the fact that the company lacks enough employees for all its segments, a problem that we identified earlier. Some customers told of how they were made to wait for hours before their parcels could be located. These problems were more pronounced on parcels that were ordered on line, indicating improper procedures in handling such services. During such stressing moments, customer services was found to have failed in offering the people proper customer services and assistance, and many customers were even forced to come back on subsequent days, only to discover that their parcels were in the right places all the time, only that customer care did not bother enough to locate them.

Employees also had their share of complaints. Most of them were dissatisfied by the amount of work they had to do, because they were understaffed. Their ratio to customers stood at 1:25, which was quite an overwhelming number, especially when anomalies arose that required specific and personalized attention. This was to blame for the many complaints that customers had raised in the previous times about insufficient customer care attention at times when they needed specialized attention. Employees often cited the ratio of employees to customers in other companies like UPS, which stood at 1:13. They, therefore, expressed their desire for the company to employ more employees to assist in the various departments.

Asked on whether they would use FedEx the next time customers were sending parcels majority of them said they would. They said that in spite of the few setbacks about the company, FedEx still offered them competitive rates, high quality services, and personalized care by the customer service department. At the same time, they cited the fact that the company had delivery locations in many countries in the world, and that they had learnt to trust the company over time to do the best it could to offer them the best of customer service.

The few who objected to this are the ones who had had bad experiences with the company. They said they though the company had poor customer relations, and that their employees were too overwhelmed by the big number of people they had to handle every day to offer them good services. Those living in remote areas also expressed their preference of UPS to FedEx because of the latter’s cheaper rates and efficiency in delivery.

Employees and customers both agreed that the company deserves the leadership title for being the best delivery company in the delivery market. The company had averaged its benefits and evenly spread them out across all segments of service. The company’s quality of services was good, its customer service was generally good, its reputation among customers was good, the value it offered its customers was good and a totality of the services was generally good. The company did not have major areas it was lacking in effectiveness and efficiency, and the single incidents that stood out were typical for every corporate organization.

Management and employees together recommended that the company adopts a technology tool called Signature Direct. This tool is a PBT Courier‘s Proof of Delivery system, which can electronically record signature confirmations of deliveries made right at the time of delivery. The company can use Vodafone’s GPRS network to provide instant and real time information about the movement of goods at any one time. This will save the company the hassles of trying to locate goods manually, which is responsible for the many complaints lounged by customers.