MBA 5501 CSU Microsoft Advanced Marketing Case Study Discussion

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ipybingb75

Business Finance

MBA 5501

Columbia Southern University

MBA

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Instructions
Microsoft Case Study

Case studies are an essential learning strategy in business classes as they provide an opportunity for you to critically analyze events that have taken place in real-life businesses. This develops your critical thinking and research skills as you research the competition and industry in which your business resides in order to formulate a recommendation for the challenges faced by the company.

For this unit, review the “Marketing Excellence: Microsoft” case study on pp. 94–95 (attached) of your textbook. This assignment will be comprised of two parts; one part will ask you to respond to questions, and the other will require you to complete a case analysis.

Part 1

Evaluate this case and respond to each of the following questions using both theory and practical managerial thinking.

  • Evaluate Microsoft’s product and marketing evolution over the years. What has the company done well, and where did it falter?
  • Evaluate Microsoft’s recent expansion into areas such as search engines and smartphones. Do you think these are good areas of growth for Microsoft? Why, or why not?
  • Review the potential ethical implications of Microsoft’s situation. How might they revise their strategies to align with good ethical practices?

Your Part 1 response must be at least two pages in length. Follow APA Style when creating citations and references for this assignment. Note that you will submit Part 1 and Part 2 in one document.

Part 2

Complete a case analysis of Microsoft. This requires that you conduct research on Microsoft beyond the case study material in the textbook. In the case analysis, you will look at the situational analysis, problem, and alternatives, and you will provide a recommendation. Refer to the instructions below as you construct your analysis.

  • Situational Analysis
    • Discuss the external environment through the compilation of a PEST (political, economic, sociocultural, and technology) analysis.
    • Discuss the internal and external environment through the compilation of a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis.
  • Problem
    • Identify at least one organizational problem that Microsoft is currently having or one that you project it will have in the future. Base this on your research and critical thinking.
  • Alternatives
    • Compile three or four potential marketing-related solutions to the problem above. Remember that these are potential alternatives; you will not select all of the alternatives to solve the problem.
  • Recommendation (Marketing Strategy)
    • Select one or two of the alternatives above to solve the problem that you identified in this case analysis.
    • Discuss your rationale for choosing these and not the others. Include supporting research that will increase the depth of your analysis.

In order to successfully complete Part 2 of this case study, you need to review the video and task learning guides (TLGs) below. The following resources will provide you with the skills to research industries/competitors.

Company and Industry Research video (transcript for Company and Industry Research video)

Part 2 must be at least four pages in length. Follow APA Style when creating citations and references for this assignment. Support Part 2 with at least three sources outside of the textbook. As aforementioned, keep in mind that Part 1 and Part 2 will be submitted in one document.

User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool's honor code & terms of service.

Explanation & Answer

Attached.

Running head: MARKETING EXCELLENCE: MICROSOFT

Marketing Excellence: Microsoft
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliations

1

MARKETING EXCELLENCE: MICROSOFT

2

Marketing Excellence: Microsoft
Part 1
Case Summary
Microsoft Corporation is a leading technology company that designs, manufactures,
supports, and sells personal computer software systems, consumer electronics, and related
services. The corporation is best known for the Microsoft Windows operating systems, Internet
Explorer, Microsoft Office Suite, and the Bing search engine (Kotler & Keller, 2016). Bill Gates
and Paul Allen founded the company in 1975, with a mission of having every computer on
offices and homes running on Microsoft products. Over the years, Microsoft Corporation's
innovative product development that ranges from the DOS operating system in 1986 to the
development of Windows 10 in 2015, as well as aggressive marketing strategies, have made it to
be the world's most successful software corporation. Along the line, however, the company has
made mistakes that have given competitors such as Apple Inc., to grab its market share.
Question 1:
The Ansoff matrix, also known as the product/market expansion grid is a tool for
organizational growth that best explain Microsoft's success. The model has four strategies that
businesses use to grow and examine the risk associated with each strategy (Dawes, 2018). These
strategies include market penetration, product development, market development, and
diversification. Microsoft developed the DOS operating system for IBM computers and
leveraged this first success to penetrate the market by selling software to manufacturers in the
industry (Kotler & Keller, 2016). Microsoft implemented the market penetration strategy in the
early 1980s by increasing promotional efforts through advertisement approaches that

MARKETING EXCELLENCE: MICROSOFT

3

communicated the corporation's range of products, including DOS, Windows, Excel, and by
unifying them under Microsoft brand.
The second strategy that Microsoft has achieved is product development. In 1986,
Microsoft went public and experienced tremendous growth, with the Windows operating system
and the Microsoft Office as flagship products. The product development strategy allows
Microsoft to develop new products to meet the needs of the existing market (Dawes, 2018). The
product development strategy that Microsoft has implemented is investing in R&D to design new
software programs for the growing demand. In 1990, the company introduced Windows 3.0 that
included applications such as the Program Manager and File Manager that are still in use up to
today (Kotler & Keller, 2016). Over the years, Microsoft has continued to develop new products
such as the Bing search engine, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Teams, Office 365, and Yammer.
Notably, the corporations have focused on team communication tools to meet the needs of the
modern evolving business world that requires employees to be connected to their work
irrespective of their actual location.
The market development strategy allows a company to penetrate a new market with
existing products. Microsoft has expanded into new markets: new geographies, customer
segments, and regions by expanding into the internet browser market and the gaming i...


Anonymous
Really helped me to better understand my coursework. Super recommended.

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