Managers have implemented a new marketing plan to increase sales at Direc TV, but it does not seem to be working. Explain what the marketing manager and his employees can do to respond effectively, providing specific suggestions.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

If the plan is not working, some possibilities are as follows: (1) Give it more time. You need to make sure employees, customers, and so on have enough time to get used to the new action. (2) Change it slightly. Maybe the action was correct, but it just needs "tweaking"—a small change of some sort. (3) Try another alternative. If Plan A doesn't seem to be working, maybe you want to scrap it for another alternative. (4) Start over. If no alternative seems workable, you need to go back to the drawing board—to stage 1 of the decision-making process.
The managers at Direc TV may decide to give their plan more time. Perhaps word of mouth is not yet strong, but sales will increase as more people learn about Direc TV's special marketing offer. Managers might also decide to tweak their plan slightly. For example, they may be focusing their efforts on television commercials (because TV watchers are a natural audience for satellite TV), but they may decide to switch their marketing mix to allow for much more Web advertising (for example, on YouTube, where many people watch videos).
If the managers at Direc TV try another alternative, they might decide to focus on another aspect of the business besides marketing. For example, they might try offering different types of packages at different price points, so that possible customers have more options to choose from. If managers want to start over from scratch, they will return to the first stage of the decision-making process: "Identify the problem or opportunity." Perhaps they identified the original problem as "Not enough people know about Direc TV and its services"; with market research, they may decide that the true problem is that "The average level of income in the areas we are targeting make Direc TV seem like a luxury that the average person cannot afford"—in which case, managers should work on changing that perception in the marketplace or offering a less expensive bundle of satellite TV services.