JB Hi-Fi Limited - Company Overview, Marketing Strategies, And Future Opportunities

Introduction to JB Hi-Fi Limited

Question:

Write a Business Report on Jb Hi-Fi Private Limited.

JB Hi-fi Limited is a company based in Australia. It was established in 1974 at a Melbourne suburb. It is a company based on retailing. It is ranked 62^nd out of best 2000 companies based in Australia. The company is known for selling products like mobile phones, computers, audio devices, games, car music system, GPS and many more. It also has an online e-commerce store (Addis 2016) .In 2016, JB Hi-Fi made a deal with another similar organization The Good Guy, in which JB Hi Fi can acquire warehouses of The Good Guy which helped the organization become the largest electronic goods company in Australia. It is known for providing electronics devices to various education institutes and hospitality centers. It also provides different electronic goods like computers, digital cameras, air conditioners and televisions to private and public companies as well. Moreover, the company provides other services like information technology and consultancy. The aim of this report is to interpret and analyze the business of JB Hi-fi Limited Company. The limitations or loopholes in the functioning of the company will be analyzed further. The academic concepts of the company will be discussed. The details concept about the company will be established.

Academic theory/concept about JB Hi-Fi:

Every organization needs to understand the marketing demands and with that they need to develop necessary strategies to fulfill customer needs. JB Hi Fi is known for its effective marketing strategy and promotion methods. In a short time, the company has gained huge popularity in the Australian market and is now considered as one of the most influential organization in the market. They provide the best products to customer at a lower price than most of the similar organizations. The company recruits highly professional staffs and is equipped with enough funds to boost their business operations. The organization understands the need of the customers and prepares the rate of the products which can benefit them and the customers. They always engage in promotional activities with appropriate advertisements, which always help them stay in the frontier position. The biggest competitor of JB Hi Fi in this market is Harvey Norman. Both have tough competition with each other and they create highly attractive marketing strategy for the customers. However, JB Hi Fi remains ahead against Harvey Norman because of its new products and services. A longer presence in the market has also helped JB Hi Fi to gain trust among the customers.

JB Hi Fi follows 4ps in their marketing strategy. They are as follows:

Product: The organization always introduces new technological products in the market like blue ray players, home entertainments and other latest electronic products. These varieties of products always attract the customers specially the youths.

Price: JB Hi Fi sells the products at attractive low rates compared to other similar stores in the market. They also offer the customers some attractive offers such as cash back and loyalty cards. These offers attract the customers which helps them to increase their sale.

Overview of Products and Services

Place: The organization has stores in Australia and New Zealand.  The market in New Zealand is gaining popularity for electronics market as the competition is quite less. The attractive products and lower rates have already placed them higher among other similar organization in New Zealand. This helps the organization to gain a superior market position compared to other new organizations.

Promotion: Any organization requires adequate funds to improve their promotional activities and gain popularity in the market. JB Hi Fi implements tradition forms of marketing strategies like newspaper advertising. Newspaper advertising in considered being the most effective form of marketing, as most of the populations in Australia and New Zealand acquire information from newspapers. Other promotional activities like transit advertisements in trains and buses are also implemented by the organization, which help them gain maximum popularity in the market (Fu and Juan 2015).

Although, the company has so many advantages, yet in some recent surveys it has been seen that the business competition of the company is going downwards. This is mainly because many new organizations are emerging in the market and some new business strategies are implemented by them which are attracting customers towards them. JB Hi Fi should implement new business strategies and marketing methods to go ahead in the market competition and bring back their position in the market. Recently, JB Hi Fi has implemented e-commerce business for attracting more young customers. Most of the customers now prefer e-commerce market for buying products (Laudon and Traver 2013). To meet the changing demand of the market, implementing e-commerce business is an efficient strategy applied by JB Hi Fi. Customers nowadays are attracted to mobile technologies. Customers are inclined more towards using mobile market stores like Play store, Apple store and others. Many other organizations are entering in this business process to attract more customers. To cope up with the new business market, JB Hi Fi needs to change their strategy and implement newer and advanced technology to stay afloat in the market.

In order to increase the market value, some new business strategies can be followed by JB Hi Fi. They are discussed as follows:

Making App: Mobile application market has become the most popular entertainment platform for most of the youth of today. Organizations, which have not implemented mobile application platform, are lagging behind in the competitive market. It is highly necessary for all the retail organizations to have their own mobile app as a part of their online marketing strategy (Watson, McCarthy and Rowley 2013).

24*7 supports: JB Hi Fi should provide 24*7 assistance to their customers. Customers who purchase through retail shop may need tech support at any time. Implementing 24*7 assistance will ensure enhancement of their brand name and will attract more customers (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault 2015).

Social media advertising: Most of the organizations nowadays, use social media platform for their advertising strategy (Habibi, Laroche and Richard 2016). Social media platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, Instragram are extremely popular among youths (Van Dijck and Poell 2013). Advertising in these platforms, can help organizations to gain more popularity as the advertisement can be viewed by millions of people. JB Hi Fi is yet to implement this strategy. If they do not adopt themselves to these modern platforms, they will lack far behind other organizations.

Marketing Strategies of JB Hi-Fi

Product variations: Other similar organizations like Harvey Norman, The Good Guys are proving to be tough competitors for JB Hi Fi. They are implementing new strategies like selling different varieties and up to date products. JB Hi Fi needs to beat their competitors by introducing variety in their product catalogues (Aleksi? and Jankovi? 2017) .

Product innovation:  JB Hi Fi needs to constantly update their products like CD, Blue ray discs, video games and other home appliances. They can implement new technologies like Big data and artificial intelligence to make their business system customer friendly (O'Leary 2013).

Knowledge about JB Hi-Fi:

JB Hi-Fi, the famous Australian retail company known for selling electronic goods (Xiao 2016). The objective of JB Hi-Fi is about providing quality products at lowest possible price. It maintains better supply chain network than other similar firms. The motive of the company is to maintain their low cost pricing to give strong competition to other firms. The company focuses on home entertainment market to gain the maximum profit, as this market has began to flourish in Australian market. Looking at the popularity of Australian entertainment industry, home entertainment market will have a significant growth in the market in the near future (Cabeza et al 2014). JB Hi- Fi explores this market and sale the products at minimum cost to get more customers, thus gaining huge profit. The company depends on the import of their products from abroad. For this, it has appointed agents in all the countries from where goods are imported. The products imported are of best and high quality and thus it helps in eliminating all the local distributors which in return decreases the cost price of those products.

In JB Hi Fi, the supplies of goods are maintained by four main operating stores. The stores are namely, stock on floor, communications, customer service and store analyzer. These divisions in operation of goods management helps in keeping control on the available stocks for fast and timely addition of goods supplied from the store. The company stores their products at large storage rooms or warehouses, and then tags all the items and monitors travelling of the products from warehouses to the store. Real time tracking is done to avoid product handling (Kitchin 2014). The company maintains good reputation among workers, which helps in timely supply of products to their customers. They provide a secured supply of products to their customers. JB Hi Fi does not manufacture any goods rather they a secure supply of goods to their customers.

Despite of providing customer satisfaction and providing goods at low cost, there are some issues associated with JB Hi Fi Company. The company faces some unavoidable issues regarding timely import of goods and then fails to deliver them to the customers in proper time. JB Hi Fi has to submit a written format to Australian government for taking special permission regarding importing if goods from other countries (Rees, Smith and Hall 2016). This process takes a long time to implement. Importing electronic goods from other countries creates sometimes create violation of safety issues. Another problem is that although they have a large extent of products to sell, yet they do not have proper supply chain management (Swink 2014). This creates problem while maintaining records of supply of goods. This system is maintained by company staffs, which creates a lot of burdens in their work. Increasing competitions from other retail organizations are posing threats to JB Hi Fi’s brand value.

Competition Analysis

Interpretation and analysis about JB Hi Fi:

After acquiring business concepts about JB Hi Fi, it can be analyzed that the company has the capability to sustain a huge growth in coming years if the issues can be resolved. The company should ensure all their departments have the understandings of their full supply chain management (Fredendall and Hill 2016). The business models that the company follows are extremely cost effective for them. The exclusion of distributors in the middle cuts the cost of the imported products. The organization lacks behind some new similar companies in business strategy. They are yet to implement some modern business strategies to attract more customers and position their brand value firmly in the highly competitive market. Their financial growth has gone down due to extreme competitions. Old promotion methods may be not enough for them to stay ahead from other competitors like The Good Guy and Harvey Norman. They have not implemented new innovations for a long time, which might be a threat to their business growth.

Strength:

The retail stores of the organization are well positioned. The markets of Australia and New Zealand have potentiality to grow. There is not much competition in New Zealand, which the organization can make use of (Kelsey 2015). The present sales and distribution network of JB Hi Fi is quite strong. The organization imports the goods at a very low cost which help them decrease their sell price. JB Hi Fi has maintained its brand name since a long time which helps them attain customer reliability (Addis 2016) Customers have faith in their products and the organization has been a trusted brand since long time.

Weakness:

The organization mainly depends on outsourced brands (Pallegedara and Warren 2014). They do not hold strong distribution system of local brands which are gaining popularity day by day. In any situation, if those products become unavailable for importing, business of the organization will be greatly hampered. Moreover, JB Hi Fi has been facing tough competitions from other similar organizations, which has lowered their profit to some extent.

Opportunities:

There are many opportunities available for JB Hi Fi to cement their position in the market. There has been growing demand of imported goods in Australia and New Zealand. The emerging market of electronic products in Australia and New Zealand can be a huge platform for the organization to exploit. The organization should make strategy for bringing new and innovative products in the market according to present choices of customers, which can boost up their business with growing brand value.

Threats:

Every organization faces some threats while staying in the market. The organizations need to organize their marketing and business strategies in order to cope up with these threats. There have been constant changes in customer preferences of buying products (Mende, Bolton and Bitner 2013). People are preferring e-commerce or mobile apps for shopping. JB Hi Fi still lacks behind other new organizations in implementing this new strategies. Constant new technologies applied by other organizations can pose a big threat to JB HI Fi’s business strategy.

Future Opportunities and Strategies

Conclusions:

JB Hi Fi has become a popular organization in home entertainment retail market process. It has been a brand for long years. It is in process of increasing its brand value. Their range of electronic good and home appliances with a cheap rate has been attracting customers since long time. The first part of this report focuses on the introduction of the organization and what are its business methods. But, some factors have made the organization face threat from its competitors. To cope up with these issues, this business report has sketched out some techniques which can be implemented in the business strategy of the organization. Applying these strategies can help the organization boost up their business and continue keeping their brand value enact. There has been discussion on interpretation and analysis is on the business strategy of JB Hi Fi. This report has highlighted the S.W.O.T analysis of JB Hi Fi, which will help the organization understand their business position better.

References:

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