| With the development of reform and opening for many years , China's economy has achieved world–famous achievements. Especially ever since the 21st century, China's economy has joined world economy with the progress of globalization after entering WTO and China's industrial construction has also come to an upsurge . LEMO corporation and its products just came to China under this circumstance.In 1994, Guangzhou JinHong Electronic Ltd. acted as the general agency of LEMO Corp. selling LEMO connectors . In the year 2004, in order to serve customers better and respond to competitive pressure more effectively, LEMO Trade Ltd.(the company) was set up in Shanghai by LEMO Corp. Acting as the solely-invested subsidiary in China which has the right to supply products and service directly to China domestic market. LEMO Trade Ltd. took a series of measures to effectively restrict the rapid and violent development of competitors in time and made a full set of marketing programs which were suitable for China domestic market and carried out them successfully. All these helped consolidate the leading position of LEMO connectors in China.In the second half of the year 2008, LEMO Trade Ltd was influenced drastically by worldwide financial crisis, so was China's economy. The total volume of imports and exports declined greatly. Under this circumstance, LEMO Trade Ltd connector market was also in a narrow escape. The amount of orders received in the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 reduced by 21% and 28% respectively compared with the past year. This brought a new test to the company and required it to adjust its current marketing strategies to adapt to new market environment. This paper aims at finding out such operable and scientific references for decision-making in sales of its products and supplies these domestic connector enterprises with more practical thoughts for marketing management.Chapter one starts from basic knowledge of connectors. Firstly, it expounds the definition of connector. It generally means electric connector, i.e., a device that is able to connect two active devices to transit electric current or signals, as well as a kind of appliance which is often used by electrical engineering technicians. Secondly,It introduces the means of classification, structure features and the benefits of applying connectors in equipment design and development in order to let us get to know about connectors. Then, the paper talks about LEMO Corp. and LEMO connectors from many aspects including the general introduction of LEMO Corp. and its productions, its mission, its milestones during every developing stages, its systematic connecting theory of push and pull, its connectors'main advantages, its plants and global production, its entire series of productions and its global distribution net-work. At last, it analyzes the company's present marketing situation, the global connector industry's current situation and China domestic market's position in the world; it introduces the company's business conduct structure and discusses its position in the world market, in addition, it reveals LEMO Corp.'s actual state of marketing and the main marketing strategies it has taken.Chapter two analyzes LEMO connectors'marketing environment and actual state in China domestic market. The paper describes the overall macro-environment from the aspects of politics, economics, and technology and indicates that the domestic connector market environment has been improving continuously and the market order has been more standardized. From the angle of business competition, the paper analyzes the main competitors by applying the five-competitive-force model theory proposed by Michael Porter.These competitors includes ODU, Amphenol, Maotong Shenzhen, Kenaite Shenzhen. Their company strengths, product characteristics and research and developing abilities are described. For the threshold of entering connector market is low, the threat from potential entrants is comparatively big. Connectors have a long history of more than 100 years and they are basic devices for industrial production, yet there is no obvious substitute for it, therefore, the threat from substituting is comparatively small. As for negotiating price, a large-scale purchaser has strong power while s small-scaled one is much weaker. Because the cost of switching sellers is a little small, the suppliers are a little weak in negotiating price. At the end of this chapter, the paper does a SWOT analysis on LEMO connectors in China domestic market. The strong points of the company lie in long-term standing credit, differentiation in product combination,high quality market promise, perfect global distribution net-work, powerful technology research and developing group, and successful experience accumulated in China domestic market operation. The present weaknesses are as following: selling and delivery can't go smoothly with each other, the supply period is too long, complaint from customers is often received, the technical support service is still imperfect, the price is excessively high. Thanks to hard efforts of several years, the company has also created many market opportunities for its products. The company has begun to produce its goods in China bit by bit and developed more powerful functional product lines. Its device producing plants is able to offer customers with systematic connecting programs. At the same time, it faces huge market competition threats. On the one hand, international rivals have intensified their struggle for China domestic market, on the other hand, imitated products from domestic connector manufacturers are developing rapidly and they are sold at far lower prices.Chapter three puts forward the overall marketing concepts the company should have in competition. The company should carry out a complete set of marketing strategies including relationship marketing , internal marketing , integrated marketing and social compliance marketing. This paper mainly focuses on relationship marketing and internal marketing. Connectors belong to industrial products. The main characteristics of industrial products marketing consist of mutual dependence between functional departments, complexity of industrial products, high dependence between seller and buyer, and the complexity of purchasing. Thanks to these characteristics, the company should implement relationship marketing, digging out potential value of customers, paying more attention to creating and developing a long-term relationship with customers. Internal marketing is not only a matter of selling personnel and marketing department, but also related to the cooperation of other departments and voluntary service to customers. The company can't serve customers better and fulfill its promise to customers without appropriate marketing maxims of all the staff. In a sense, internal marketing is essential for the company. Market segmentation is a customer-selecting strategy which is crucial for the company to further expand market and decide marketing direction. According to market segmentation theory and customers'interests and requirements for LEMO connectors, China domestic market can be classified as Test machine(TM), Medicine(ME), Audio and video(AV), Military industry(MI), Petroleum(PE) , Industrial control(IC) , Nuclear industry(NU) , Scientific research(RE), Aerospace flight(AT) and so on. In accordance with differentiation in product combination,the company chooses Test machine(TM), Medicine(ME), Audio and video(AV), and Military industry(MI) as the main markets that it will explore. LEMO Corp. is engaged in supplying high quality push-pulling connectors to top-of-the-line equipment and instruments manufacturers in China. Besides, it also creates value for customers. These two points have become the company's market positioning in China domestic market. This will certainly raise its products'strong brand position in China domestic market.Chapter four mainly discusses the marketing strategies that the company should take in China domestic market. These strategies are product strategy, brand strategy, price strategy, distribution channels strategy and promotion strategy. Product development and combination programs are an essential part in marketing strategies. LEMO Corp. uses Boston Advisory Group's growth-share matrix to analyze its product combination, eliminating outmoded products and supporting the ones those are growing well. In the meanwhile, the company is going to increase investment in researching and developing new products, and improve market supply of the new products. The company also needs to manage products with differentiation, massy producing those product models those are in large demand and reducing the stock of products which are in small demand. For the latter models, they are managed by a customized rule—produced when ordered. The company has already occupied an advantageous position in China, but it still needs more efforts to combine brand construction with sales channels construction, sales promotion, customer service, market competition and so forth. The company should also create new marketing models on the basis of its product characteristics, do more propaganda and carry out cultural marketing. In addition, the company should expand regions in sales channels construction or propose cultural marketing programs to be well prepared for a protracted war to increase brand quality and appreciation as a countermeasure. Price is a crucial factor in connector marketing strategies. It interacts with all other major factors in marketing mix and decides every factor and the total effect of the mix. Based on the general rules of pricing, the company chooses"skimming fat"and"penetrating"as pricing objectives. The company also adopts perceived value pricing according to products'characteristics and customers'product cost, carrying out price discrimination policy to some extent. For sales channels construction, the company takes direct selling as the main method and distribution as the supplementary way. It pays more attention to dealing with the relationships between each sales region to avoid internal competition, including dealing with the relationship with agents so as not to take them as rivals instead. There are various means of promotion for high-tech connectors, but they have their own unique features in specific operations. Product propaganda, meetings, public relation, personal selling and training are the main means of promotion taken by the company to increase sales.Chapter five talks about the guarantee measures on the above marketing strategies. In the respect of system guarantee, the company figures out selling personnel management system and daily sales procedure system. About internal communication mechanism, the company requires every region to share typical cases with each other, setting up a public information releasing platform for sharing information and feeding back problems when all the members discuss certain problems. As to region management, each business office sets up its own evaluation system. Besides, cross-regional sales must be avoided. Regional price protection system is established to prevent messy quotation which may disturb the company's internal price order. Regarding customer service management, on the one hand, the company demands all the staff to increase product value and customer satisfaction with good service, on the other hand, the company organizes professional training team to offer relative clerks some useful training service. The company has also applied advanced software to supply person-to-person service for customers and added a column to the website of the company to offer necessary knowledge about connectors as well. Moreover, a 24-hour free telephone service for customers has been launched. |
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