BUSN20019 Professional Project For Brand Value of the Tech Companies

1. what extent does the sustainability reports available among 50 constituent stocks in Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (HSI)?
2. Any relationship between sustainability reporting and industry of the organisations?
3. Do correlations exist between sustainability reporting and market performance? 

Answer:

Introduction

Background of the study

Nagle and Müller (2017) stated that the impact as well as importance of marketing strategy has an important role on revenue as well as brand value of an organization. It is important for the organizations to develop effective strategy in making the process effective. Changes in the marketing strategy as well as performance would be helpful to ensure that the projects are effectively processed. On the other hand, it is important for an organization to develop effective procedure that can enhance revenue as well as brand value of technology based companies in Australia. When it comes to development, there is a bigger impact on the business success compared to the strategy (Kim et al. 2015). The marketing strategy offering   and success of the business. It is required to ensure that understanding the requirements of customers are important for the organizations as it is important to develop band awareness. Hence, emphasizing the marketing and revenue, it will require effective marketing for the organization.

Research aims and objectives 

The research aims to critically evaluate the impact of marketing on revenue as well as brand value of the technology based in Australia.  

The research has objectives as followed.

• To find out the factors responsible for revenue as well as brand value of the tech companies in Australia
• To critically evaluate the role of marketing on revenue as well as brand value of the tech companies in Australia
• To identify the issues involved with marketing strategy implementation in tech companies of Australia
• To recommend solutions to overcome the issues

Research questions

The research has questions as followed.

• What are the factors responsible for revenue and brand value of the tech companies in Australia?
• What is the role of marketing on revenue and brand value of the tech companies in Australia?
• What are the issues involved with marketing strategy implementation in tech companies of Australia?
• How the issues can be mitigated?

Problem statement

Although people agree in the significance of marketing to increase brand value and revenue of the company, there are some challenges faced by the organization in implying marketing strategy (De Vries et al. 2017). The tech based companies in Australia faces major challenges in marketing for the crucial impact of robotics as well as artificial intelligence in markets. IT organizations in Australia are resorting to current developments in the IT technology like robotics as well as artificial intelligence that lead employees losing their works. In addition, the specific tasks are performed through manual labor as well as replaced by current technologies to the lower risks of errors as well as increasing efficiency.

Research rationale

Maintaining innovation is one of the major issues found by the players of IT industry players. It requires keeping updated for surviving in the market. On the contrary, infinity research is considered as one of the leading intelligence organization providing smart solutions in order to address the business challenges (Greenland 2016). The markets in several countries to assist analyzing competitive activity that is beyond of market where specific number of big as well as small players is expanding continuously.

On the other hand, cyber security is one of the major challenges faced by the tech companies while marketing as it requires hiring an appropriate network of the partners as well as vendors and need to speed up finding (Roll 2015). In addition, the players of IT industry require keeping up updated as well as incorporate new technologies in order to survive in the highly competitive market where big as well as small players are expanding constantly.

Literature review

Overview of brand value and revenue

The Brand value of any tech companies depends upon many factors of the market. There is a lot of stress made of the market capitalization of the product along with the market share in the category of that tech companies. The various factors for the emergence and decline of any brand of tech companies in Australia are as follows:

1. Brand Loyalty: The loyalty of the brand is one of the top factors that can influence the brand value of any tech company (Sheth and Sinha 2015). It is the central theme of any brand, to construct every product and various updates keeping in mind the honest users of that brand. This could be understood with the practical example of Canva. An Australian tech company specializes in the making of digital design. This was made to the user to use the different types of templates and design that are in Canva, some of which are free while others are premium. Every product that Canva launches has to be synonymous with its core customer base and should not be changed to remain loyal to its customers.
2. Awareness: There should be awareness of the brand among the target audience in the market. The awareness drive can be carried out via various portals such as online as well as offline. It is very important for the brand value to be taken seriously by the customers and so proper time and management have to be given to this area for effectively increasing the brand value.
3. Quality: It is an ethical as well as financial aspect of any tech company in Australia. The customer base will only grow and its brand recognition will only grow if every product and device of these tech companies are of top quality and that the quality aspect of these products should never be compromised for the sake of gaining huge profit. This is a common mistake that has seen many companies go from fortune 500 companies to a shutdown case. Whenever, there is a surge and increasing value of brand, the qualities are compromised as the companies think that they could do away with these malpractices to attain a larger revenue.
4. Association: The brand should also be associated to some huge and credible companies in its initial years. This will help in enhancing the brand value of the company in its initial years. Association in local events of states in Australia can also help in building a strong brand value for these companies in local people. Association with certain NGOs can also enhance their credibility in the minds of the users and target audiences.
5. Social Investment: It is also a well-known fact that contribution through NGOs or direct investment in improving lives or certain community or donating capital intakes of emergencies can help to build awareness as well as credibility in the minds of the people of Australia. That is the main reason why most of the tech companies in Australia engage in a lot of philanthropy works.

The above stated directives are followed by many tech giants in Australia so as to gain popularity and success and add value to its present market share of its products. It is also to be seen that these methods have proved quite successful for many brands that had its genesis outside Australia. There is a famous story of Apple, when it was on the brink of its existence, Steve Jobs worked hard and smart to improve and drastically add new customer base (Dzenopoljac et al. 2017). He was able to transform the company’s future in such a way that even after years of its transformation, it remains as among some of the most successful companies in the world. Steve Jobs was able to use technology as well as brilliant marketing strategy to transform Apple and making a loyal customer base worldwide. The revenue of the companies has to be spent strategically to enhance its growth prospect and to improve the technical aspect of the company. There are many examples in Australian Tech space like the Houzz, Indeed, AirBnB, Nuex, and Accenture that has successfully implemented their share of revenue in building up for their market share and have taken huge innovative steps in their quest for becoming a market leader in their area. The relation of the revenue to its marketing finance is very much debatable as has been shown in the article that its relation vary from company of company according to the mantra of the management and marketing firm of that company (Payne and Frow 2014). There are tech companies in Australia that would be using the magic number of 10% i. they will not use more than 10% of their revenue in the marketing firm and then there are number of other company like AirBnB that are not hesitating to used more than 10% of their revenue in the company future prospect. It is also to be noted that while the risk factor is there on using the revenue percentage of more than 10%, but the growth factor outweigh it as we have seen in the impact section.

Impact of marketing on revenue and brand value 

The impact of the marketing strategy can be discussed from the fact that many of the companies in Australia are investing a huge percentage of their revenue in marketing and sales. The most noted reason for these investment model is that the companies are not trying to instantly get huge, but they are investing for their growth. Growth is the main reason why certain tech companies in Australia like Canva and Appdynamics are using huge percentage of their revenue in marketing. In addition, the results of such action in most of the cases if quite beneficial for these companies is considered. Though there are certain rules that the American companies used to invest in the marketing department of their companies, these rules are regularly challenged and modified.

One such rule that was used by most of the Australian tech companies in its initial year i.e before the bombardment of many social media platform was the rule of 10%. This was supposed to be a magic number for company to be used in the sales department. This 10% rule states that under no circumstances, the company would invest 10% of the total revenue that is generated in that fiscal year. This has to do with the fact that was not so much scope for marketing in the initial years of IT revolution in Australia (Davcik and Sharma 2016). This 10% rule was and is very much successful among many tech companies in Australia that would swear by its success for many years. Unlike the 10% rule, many companies have modified these rules for their benefits and have released that even if one invest more than the magic number, the most important issue that is to be kept in mind is the fact that how much it would affect the future of the company in Australia.

This means that the prospect of these companies are to be properly analyzed through various scientific research in the field of management. There are certain examples of tech companies like Salesforce and Myob, both of which have invested more 49% of their revenue in the marketing and sales division. Now, the number 49% might look like a staggering percentage to be invested in marketing, but the result have also been amazing. After their investment in marketing, there new customers rose to 23% in the corresponding fiscal year. This number might seems impossible for any tech companies in a year, but the investment of such a huge amount was well researched and properly executed by the management of the companies to generate such a huge number of new consumers of their product. 

Methodology

Introduction

Present chapter deals with selection of methodological tolls. It explains research philosophy, approach as well as research design. Moreover, data collection and analysis, sample as well as sampling process is described in the present chapter of the research. Ethical consideration for the particular research are also described in the present chapter of the study.

Research philosophy

Positivism, interpretivism as well as pragmatism are considered as the types of research used in the researches. The concept of positivism philosophy reflects on the scientific research in order to analyze the data. Hence, it ensures validity as well as accuracy of the data utilized in research. In the current research, positivism philosophy will be selected as the current research will analyze the significance of the research topic. Hence, it ensures validity as well as accuracy of the data utilized in the current research. On the other hand, positivism philosophy will be chosen in the research that will be helpful for the research.

Research approach

Research approach is important for a research as the format required for conducting the research can be revealed properly. A scientific research topic has been selected in the study. There are two types of research approaches utilized in researches like inductive approach as well as deductive approach (Choy 2014). Inductive approach deals with introduction of models as well as theories related to the topics after analysis of secondary data available associated with the topic of research. On the contrary, deductive approach deals with deducing the significance of research topic from the existing theory as well as models of research. Thus, deductive approach has been selected in the research.

Research design

In the current research, descriptive research is selected as the research has tendency to generate important as well as appropriate conclusion. The descriptive research design is justified in the current research that assists in addressing the research issues and significance associated the research topic.

Data collection and analysis process

Secondary data has been collected for the research regarding the research topic. The data has been gathered from annual reports and a data as well from companies like Atlassian, salesforce and mybo. On the other hand, quantitative analysis has been used to analyze the data gathered from secondary sources.

Research plan 

Data analysis and findings

Introduction:

In this section, data gathered from the revenue report of the companies are analyzed. There are certain strategies that is to be discussed in relation to the tech companies of Australia and as to why these methods have to be implemented by the companies in marketing. These methods are generic in nature i.e. they could be applied in any country and are not specific ti just Australia. The following strategy has to be made with the management of the tech companies and its useful have to be properly discussed by the managers.

Data analysis

Atlassian

SUMMARY OUTPUT
Regression Statistics
Multiple R	0.895337
R Square	0.801629
Adjusted R Square	0.752036
Standard Error	31660.81
Observations	6
ANOVA
	df	SS	MS	F	Significance F
Regression	1	1.62E+10	1.62E+10	16.16426	0.015858
Residual	4	4.01E+09	1E+09
Total	5	2.02E+10
	Coefficients	Standard Error	t Stat	P-value	Lower 95%	Upper 95%	Lower 95.0%	Upper 95.0%
Intercept	-95859.6	47923.01	-2.00028	0.116079	-228915	37195.97	-228915	37195.97
Revenue (in thousand)	0.335087	0.083345	4.02048	0.015858	0.103684	0.56649	0.103684	0.56649
PROBABILITY OUTPUT
Percentile	Marketing (in thousand)
8.333333	18795
25	34968
41.66667	67989
58.33333	93391
75	134908
91.66667	187990

Salesforce

SUMMARY OUTPUT
Regression Statistics
Multiple R	0.998074
R Square	0.996151
Adjusted R Square	0.995895
Standard Error	80060.78
Observations	17
ANOVA
	df	SS	MS	F	Significance F
Regression	1	2.49E+13	2.49E+13	3882.571	1.57E-19
Residual	15	9.61E+10	6.41E+09
Total	16	2.5E+13
	Coefficients	Standard Error	t Stat	P-value	Lower 95%	Upper 95%	Lower 95.0%	Upper 95.0%
Intercept	28667.71	25387.58	1.129202	0.276548	-25444.6	82780.05	-25444.6	82780.05
Revenue (in thousand)	0.484371	0.007774	62.31028	1.57E-19	0.467802	0.50094	0.467802	0.50094

Myob:

SUMMARY OUTPUT
Regression Statistics
Multiple R	0.990061
R Square	0.980221
Adjusted R Square	0.960442
Standard Error	8825.418
Observations	3
ANOVA
	df	SS	MS	F	Significance F
Regression	1	3.86E+09	3.86E+09	49.5585	0.089831
Residual	1	77887997	77887997
Total	2	3.94E+09
	Coefficients	Standard Error	t Stat	P-value	Lower 95%	Upper 95%	Lower 95.0%	Upper 95.0%
Intercept	42956.13	46955.28	0.914831	0.528297	-553667	639579.6	-553667	639579.6
Marketing	4.497302	0.638841	7.03978	0.089831	-3.61995	12.61455	-3.61995	12.61455
PROBABILITY OUTPUT
Percentile	Revenue
16.66667	327777
50	370400
83.33333	416500

Discussion

The public relation team is an important part of the marketing department of all the tech companies (Lardo et al. 2017). The strategy like writing an article about the product in a magazine to giving newspaper advertisement to promoting any events of these tech companies in News outlets, all are the part of strong skill of PR team in any tech company. There are numerous benefits too, regarding spending capital in hiring experiences and highly qualified PR professional. They could make the road to target audiences much narrow with their strategy and implementation.

Blogging will definitely help in making the target audiences understand the complex technology of these tech companies in a much more east and simpler manner. There could be provisions made by the companies to hire a blogger who has expertise in marketing techniques. These need not to be hired in the company on permanent basis but can be hired on contract basis or when the management decides that there is a need for such professional bloggers to be used to promote their recent product.  

Nowadays, the social media manager monitors even companies that are not related to the technology sectors hires a social media manager whose only job is to see if the engagement of the tech company with their audiences has increased and this. The weekly engagement of the account of tech companies in their Facebook profile is a strong indication of the market presence of that tech companies. These engagements are the result of interaction between the company and its target audiences and this interaction through various social media platform has become vital for the growth of any tech company in today’s world. Nowadays, there are many marketing strategy that are made just to engage with the target audiences and let them know about their new product that might have come in the market and needs to be delivered to its target audience (Zhou et al. 2016). The Email marketing is very efficient and easy way to deliver the product’s information to the audience and let them know about any special features. This email also has to be written in a very appealing manner so that it can immediately attract the attention of its readers.  It might seems very similar as to how many of the companies of other sector utilizes paid advertisement but it is to be noted that, paid advertisement from any news channel or commercials in a show or through some social media giants such as Facebook (through their paid sponsorship) and Google(through Ad- per click). These are some of the most effective ways to create a presence among an audience in the field. It's also a fact that these paid ads does require certain capital but if the product is strong and attractive, paid ads can greatly increase the revenue of the tech companies.

The process by which products and services are promoted as well as sold, which includes efficient market research and advertising is the main crux of marketing. As observed in this paper, there are various ways to market a product either by public relations or by new ways, which is possible in this tech-savvy world. Blogging, social media, e-mail marketing, paid advertisement etc. are the new age marketing strategies to invest in growth. There has been many remedies that has been suggested in the project to increase the social media presence of the company and a thorough impact has also been observed in that section that these strategy yield to the companies through their increase in revenue.

The companies of today are not following the traditional path but are going for investment in growth at first and later for profit as can be seen in many companies of Australia (Greenland 2016). This is the latest trend as has been observed through various analyses that has been done in the project. There is certainly a prospect for the companies that have understood the importance of the revenue model and its great implication if used for brand promotion and advertisement. This will not only increase the market share as have been seen but has also helped in building a brand for the company through its loyal customer base.

Conclusion

Due to the recent development in many social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the strategy of marketing a product has become a vital force in the development of any company in various sectors. The tech companies in Australia are have seen a dramatic and expected increase in the budget of their marketing finances and foe some, these have resulted a better public relation which yields in much better profit ratios from their competitors. Marketing is always a strategy to get to know the demand of the customers and by doing so, the sales increases. There have been cases in Australia in which small tech companies like the AgriDigital and Telestra, which have successfully increased their market share in a very short span of time through proper implementation of the marketing strategy.

There are some management concepts that has been laid down by successful business managers around the globe which are tried and tested like the 10% rule, and there are new concept that are emerging on daily basis due to huge number of entrepreneurs in Australia. Of Course, the already established tech giants like the Google, Oracle, Facebook or Apple are not spending that much amount of their revenue in marketing of their product because of certain specific reason, one of which has to do with the reach of these tech giants towards the tech savvy audiences in Australia. It has also to do with the fact that these companies have proven their credibility throughout the globe, because of which some of the new entrants of the related products of these companies instantly got famous around Australia like the Whatsapp and the Instagram. There are many Australia based tech companies also have approval of their audiences in a very short interval of time, like the Adobe and Canva. Their audience reach can also be analyzed because of the product they are marketing and the universal acceptance of these types of products.

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