MNM4803 Assignment 3 (DETAILED ANSWERS) 2025 - DISTINCTION GUARANTEED

MNM4803 Assignment 3 (DETAILED ANSWERS) 2025 - DISTINCTION GUARANTEED - DISTINCTION GUARANTEED - DISTINCTION GUARANTEED Answers, guidelines, workings and references... .... SolarSons (Pty)Ltd SolarSons is a company that specialises in the sales and retrofitting of solar geysers in Pretoria. SolarSons have made a name for themselves selling only geysers and even though they have considered expanding into solar panels and inverters, they have found that specialising in flat panel solar collectors for geysers has given them a competitive advantage over other solar companies. When doing a competitive analysis in 2022 SolarSons identified the following competitors in Pretoria: Company name Product sold Unit sales # (2022) Rand sales (R) (2022) SolarSons Flat panel solar collector 1560 R 2 340 000 Panel Guru Vacuum tube collectors 600 R 1 080 000 Solar panels 345 R 862 500 Inverters 260 R 6 500 000 SunSpecials Vacuum tube collectors 400 R 2 000 000 Flat panel solar collector 850 R 1 700 000 Solar panels 400 R 1 000 000 Based on this information, SolarSons have reported to their major investor that they have a 35% unit market share in the flat panel market in Pretoria. They also claim to have a 15% market share in rand terms. In order to plan for and to hopefully improve their market share position, SolarSons’ management have devised a marketing strategy based on a social media campaign using Social media and their website to increase brand awareness and sales. Their advertising agency has provided the following strategic options: SolarSons#001 – Strategy to increase number of sales via website by 5% in first quarter of 2023. Option 001 will require investment in redesigning the website call-to-action which will cost R15 000 in development time. a. Using formulas for market share (in terms of units and rands) describe how SolarSons calculated the market share and discuss if you agree with their figures or not. If you disagree with their calculations, please provide your correct version thereof. (20 marks) b. Advise SolarSons on what market share metrics reveal about their business. Furthermore, advise them on what they can do to improve their market share. (10 marks) c. Considering strategic option SolarSons#001 – calculate the pageviews and the potential abandonment rate that SolarSons can expect form the newly designed website. Show all calculations please. (10 marks) d. Describe to SolarSons what the abandonment rate metric means, and how a company such as SolarSons can reduce the abandonment rate of online orders. (10 marks) e. Explain to SolarSons what the difference is between cost per impression and cost per order, and provide at least 2 suggestions as to how SolarSons can reduce their cost per order using the website. (10 marks) f. Calculate the return on advertising spend for SolarSons if they implement the advertising campaign outlined in SolarSons#002 and advise them if you think it is a good strategy or not. (10 marks) g. Discuss the pros and cons of both strategy options for SolarSons and make a recommendation as to their way forward for 2023. (10 marks) h. SolarSons have not done any research in terms of their customers (not only those that purchase via the web, but also those that visit the retail store in Pretoria East), they are in dire need of metrics that will determine the value of customers to the business. They need to track customers and their activities in order to develop a profile to help in allocating marketing activities such as acquisition or retention. Suggest four customer metrics that SolarSons can use to achieve this objective and explain how SolarSons can implement the metrics and interpret them. (20 marks) Deep Blue Sales in Cape Town produces sails for yachts. They produce two different qualities/products of sails, a standard sail and a deluxe sail – the table below provides an indication of the sales, selling price and costs of the two types of products. Standard Deluxe Sales in (in 1000 metres) per month 20 4 Selling price per metre R510 R1280 Cost per metre R323 R597 Calculate (providing the respective formulae): 1. The unit margin, in rands, of each product 2. The percentage margin of each product 3. Total sales, in rands, for both products 4. Total costs, in rands, for both products 5. The margin, in rands, for both products 6. The percentage margin for both products Unpack (i.e. discuss in detail) the results presented in the article of Melovic et al, in terms of the metrics that managers use in their decision-making process, especially their order of importance as highlighted by the research, and provide your justification for the importance of some metrics over others. Provide a brief comment about each of the marketing metrics examined in the study, in addition to your overall comments about the findings. Download the following article from the Unisa Library page - Hohenberg, S. and Homburg, C., 2016. Motivating sales reps for innovation selling in different cultures. Journal of Marketing, 80(2), pp.101-120. Remember that is illegal to download the article from another source or to share it between students. Evidence of supplying copyrighted material illegally is a serious offence that will result in severe disciplinary actions. Do not upload any articles that are from the Unisa library to an open AI model such as ChatGPT as you will be distributing protected material to a global language model. You will be held personally liable for copyright infringement. After reading the article, synthesise the authors’ ideas about sales team compensation and incentives and then provide your own insights into the South African context specifically. Consider, for example, such questions as the current situation with incentives and compensation in South African companies and how African culture and values impact on the effectiveness of incentives. Critically discuss the various variables identified in the study of Zahay and Griffin (the scale items in Table 1) and the grouping of these variables into the five clusters identified in the column headings of the table. Do you agree with the naming of these clusters (e.g. broad vs focused segmentation, customer based performance, differentiation, low cost, and business growth)? Discuss, in your own words, the managerial implications of these findings for marketing strategy selection and what the impact on firm performance might be (do not just copy from the article – we are seeking your critical reflection on the findings of the study). [40] Discuss three (3) ratios that can be used to measure sales team performance and effectiveness. For each ratio, describe the formula, what variables and measurements are required as input to the calculation, and how management can interpret the result. 6. Compare the results of the two articles, explaining what these results mean to you (i.e. what can you learn from them and how a firm could use these findings in in its future marketing endeavours), as well as how the results are similar or how they differ across the two studies. SolarSons#002 – Strategy to increase the number of visitors to the website by 15% during 2023 using online advertisements. Option 002 will require SolarSons to spend an additional R30 000 per month on online advertisements based on the advice of the social media agency. They anticipate that the number of advert impressions per month will be at least 15 000 resulting in 5000 clicks on the advert. Historically, due to loadshedding, SolarSons knows that 5000 clicks on an advert in a single month should lead to about 80 sales of the flat panel collectors. Assuming that SolarSons sells their flat panel solar collectors at R1 500 per unit, they can expect additional revenue of R 120 000 per month. SolarSons (Pty)Ltd SolarSons is a company that specialises in the sales and retrofitting of solar geysers in Pretoria. SolarSons have made a name for themselves selling only geysers and even though they have considered expanding into solar panels and inverters, they have found that specialising in flat panel solar collectors for geysers has given them a competitive advantage over other solar companies. When doing a competitive analysis in 2022 SolarSons identified the following competitors in Pretoria: Company name Product sold Unit sales # (2022) Rand sales (R) (2022) SolarSons Flat panel solar collector 1560 R 2 340 000 Panel Guru Vacuum tube collectors 600 R 1 080 000 Solar panels 345 R 862 500 Inverters 260 R 6 500 000 SunSpecials Vacuum tube collectors 400 R 2 000 000 Flat panel solar collector 850 R 1 700 000 Solar panels 400 R 1 000 000 Based on this information, SolarSons have reported to their major investor that they have a 35% unit market share in the flat panel market in Pretoria. They also claim to have a 15% market share in rand terms. In order to plan for and to hopefully improve their market share position, SolarSons’ management have devised a marketing strategy based on a social media campaign using Social media and their website to increase brand awareness and sales. Their advertising agency has provided the following strategic options: SolarSons#001 – Strategy to increase number of sales via website by 5% in first quarter of 2023. Option 001 will require investment in redesigning the website call-to-action which will cost R15 000 in development time.