Improving Firm Environmental Performance Essay.

Discuss about the Improving Firm Environmental Performance.

Entrepreneurship is termed as a vital economic agent that plays a significant role in the development of an economy of a particular country (Naudé, 2013). An entrepreneur is an individual who is believed to have certain qualities like knowledge, expertise, initiatives, skills and urge to innovate some new things (Drucker, 2014). An entrepreneur seems to look for new opportunities to achieve economic benefits.  Many economists feel that entrepreneurship is force that causes creative destruction. Entrepreneurship helps in the economic growth as well as provide employment to a a lot of people (Benería, Berik and Floro, 2015). Entrepreneurship marketing has been increasing at a rapid pace. Evidence suggests that there is a significant relationship between entrepreneurship and marketing for the success of a corporate enterprise. Entrepreneurial marketing is quite different from the traditional marketing activities. On the other hand, the significance of marketing planning has been immense that provides a new direction to corporate planning and marketing management.

Entrepreneurship is having positive as well as negative effects. It becomes difficult for many entrepreneurs to accept the ways of doing things of a company and a good working atmosphere is not created. The three negative traits of entrepreneurship are need for control, sense of distrust and desire for applause.

There is a need for control for the entrepreneurs and this has been very significant in their life. In many situations, the preoccupation of the entrepreneurs often affects their abilities to take any specific direction and face serious problems in to get along with others. Many entrepreneurs tend to be ambivalent when a problem regarding control arises (Hallen and Pahnke, 2016). This is because they are highly filled with fantasies of grandiosity, authority, power and influence. Still they have the feeling of helplessness. They are also afraid of the fact that they will lose control of their grandiose desire and this will place them in a position of mercy from others.

Some studies have revealed that the entrepreneurs also have the the problems of dominance as well as submission and they even have the suspicion of authority. This is surely not in contrast with the behaviors and traits of a manager. While many managers are able to identify many things in positive ways, many of the entrepreneurs have the problems of flexibility in changing from a higher level to a subordinate level. Instead, they feel that the structure may be stifling. Entrepreneurs also have the problems of working with others in some structured situations unless they have not created the situation and the work has been performed with respect to their terms.        

Marketing and Strategic Planning

This is another common negative trait found in the entrepreneurs. Need for control is closely related to the sense of distrust. Many entrepreneurs have a strong sense of distrust of the people around them (Praszkier, Zab?ocka-Bursa and Józwik, 2014). They always have the fear of being victimized in the office or in other places. They strongly feel that when they get the success, this becomes envious to others. When a strong sense of distrust takes over with the help of a need for control, there have been very serious consequences for the enterprise. The entrepreneurs have always tried to keep their focus on specific troubled areas and and ignoring others (Byrne and Shepherd, 2015). They are alert every time about any untoward incidents to be happened in the workplace. For example, the vice-president of a company decided to install cameras in the front as well as in the backdoor as he was having the fear that the workers in the company were stealing from the plant. This is an act of distrust on the part of the manager.

People always have the desire of getting applause for the work done by them (Block, 2016). It is the same for the managers and the entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs, thus, have a great amount of tension about the thought that their success will not last long (Ward, 2016). Some entrepreneurs try to show that they need not be ignored and also show their power and prestige.

The case study showed that Nick Woodman was very much disciplined and focused in his life and achieved success for his company GoPro. He had always been on a strict routine and a brave boy according to his teachers. Woodman was never afraid of taking up challenges and was always a positive minded person. This is certainly not in-born and depends on the thoughts of an individual.

GoPro has become a popular and the fastest growing digital imaging company in the world due to its effective marketing strategy. Kids, these days have stopped filming their wave rides rather they have chosen to GoPro them. Thus the popularity of GoPro cameras have increased among the customers. The cameras were so much user-friendly that they used to strap them in their helmets, surfboards and handlebars. Woodman developed the cameras in such a way so that every section of the society gets benefitted out of it. Woodman also named the cameras as “life” cameras during promotion and even proved it by wearing it on his chest when his sons were delivered. The strategy of marketing of Woodman was such that many people including himself were involved in wave surfing but none of them could be able to record their whole journey. Woodman addressed this need and brought the GoPro in the market, which has been greatly accepted by the people. No other company earlier has manufactured this type of product.

Social Media Marketing as a Competitive Advantage

GoPro also transformed itself from a company of niche products to blockbuster ones. This has been explained by the friendliness of Woodman with the social sites. Woodman was not so much active in Facebook as well as in the Twitter. Yet he felt the importance of the social media in the marketing of products and services. The social media marketing is termed as a fad which is very powerful though temporary in nature. Social media marketing has many competitive advantages which are discussed below.

Social media acts as a good and popular platform for displaying the contents of the product and services of the company (Laroche, Habibi and Richard, 2013). It makes easier for the customers to access everything they want to know about a particular product. A customer gets acquainted with a particular brand after reading reviews in the websites (Brodie, Hollebeek and Conduit, 2016). For example, Twitter helps in getting acquainted with a brand.

It is strongly believed that the brands that remains engaged on the social media channels have a high degree of brand loyalty on the part of the customers (Zhang et al. 2017). A strategic plan regarding social media marketing helps a company in increasing the brand loyalty largely than any other platform (Peppers and Rogers, 2016).

There is always a chance of conversion of customers whenever a company make any posts in the social media (Tuten and Solomon, 2014). Each and every post, video, blog, or comment a person is sharing has a huge impact on the minds of the customers. Though the click-through rates of the customers are low, the opportunities that the companies have are significant.

Communication plays a very vital role in any type of business. Positive engagement helps to improve improve the reputation of an organization (Dangelico, 2015). Woodman spent a lot of money to make sure that the name of the company is hash tagged. Planning is very important among the functions of management. Planning has provided a direction as to how the mission and goals of the company can be achieved. Planning helps to achieve the sales target of the company as in the case study, the company GoPro has achieved.

The GoPro case study states that the company may have the threats from its competitors. Just like smart phones have reduced the need for camcorders, the same way the products of GoPro shall become obsolete. This product of GoPro is believed to be not one-size-fits-all. The biggest issue is that GoPro is a hardware manufacturing company and the world is moving rapidly towards the usage of smart phones. iPhone and Android operating systems have become very popular today. Sony, which is believed to be a strong competitor of GoPro, has started launching products with various features which the products of GoPro do not have. Sony has launched the cameras with features like image stabilization as well as stereo sound.

More Opportunities to Convert

Smart phones have become very popular in today’s competitive world. A company, having only one product, cannot survive for long in the market. Sony, which is a main competitor of GoPro, have unveiled cameras with more features and this has affected the sales of GoPro. A company needs to make a huge investment, the problem which Woodman faced and Sony, being a multinational, made huge benefits out of it.  Smartphones have several functionalities that helps in the connectivity of the people. Another threat for GoPro was that the company was a private company. If it would have been a public company, then there would have been a chance of public offering. Then, it would have helped in making further investments.  

A product with the same features as that of the competitors cannot give a competitive advantage to a company. A company needs to constantly upgrade its products and services to attain the competitive advantage (Porter and Heppelmann, 2014). Woodman should make process innovation, product innovation, marketing and organizational innovation to attain competitive advantage in the future. As GoPro is a hardware company, Woodman should look into making software products and diversify their market. GoPro may start manufacturing smartphones based on Android and iPhone operating systems. Woodman needs to shift his focus from the wave surfers and create a new target market. GoPro needs to make a big investment and increase their market share.

Conclusion

The report describes how planning is important in management. It takes into considerations the various traits of entrepreneurship and the negative aspects, which it is having. A detailed description of the three main negative traits gives an idea as why most of the entrepreneurs are not so much confident and often faced with many untoward incidents. The report clearly puts forward the darker side of an entrepreneur. The report has also inferred that entrepreneurship is not an in-born trait and it needs passion, dedication and discipline to become a successful entrepreneur. Another part of marketing and strategic planning has been described in the report. The different aspects of entrepreneurial planning have been introduced in the report and the role of marketing planning for proper corporate planning and marketing management. This report is an evidence as to how a marketing plan need to be made for the success of an organization. The case study can be an inspiration to many new entrepreneurs who have planned or are planning to enter into the business world. This report shall help the entrepreneurs in addressing their negative traits and make necessary rectifications in order to succeed in their business career for the betterment of themselves as well as for the company.

References

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Block, P., 2016. The empowered manager: Positive political skills at work. John Wiley & Sons.

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Dangelico, R.M., 2015. Improving firm environmental performance and reputation: the role of employee green teams. Business Strategy and the Environment, 24(8), pp.735-749.

Drucker, P., 2014. Innovation and entrepreneurship. Routledge.

Hallen, B.L. and Pahnke, E.C., 2016. When do entrepreneurs accurately evaluate venture capital firms’ track records? A bounded rationality perspective. Academy of Management Journal, 59(5), pp.1535-1560.

Laroche, M., Habibi, M.R. and Richard, M.O., 2013. To be or not to be in social media: How brand loyalty is affected by social media?. International Journal of Information Management, 33(1), pp.76-82.

Naudé, W., 2013. Entrepreneurship and economic development: Theory, evidence and policy. Browser Download This Paper.

Peppers, D. and Rogers, M., 2016. Managing Customer Experience and Relationships: A Strategic Framework. John Wiley & Sons.

Porter, M.E. and Heppelmann, J.E., 2014. How smart, connected products are transforming competition. Harvard Business Review, 92(11), pp.64-88.

Praszkier, R., Zab?ocka-Bursa, A. and Józwik, E., 2014. Social Enterprise, Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship in Poland: A National Report.

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Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2014. Social media marketing. Sage.

Ward, J., 2016. Keeping the family business healthy: How to plan for continuing growth, profitability, and family leadership. Springer.

Zhang, M., Guo, L., Hu, M. and Liu, W., 2017. Influence of customer engagement with company social networks on stickiness: Mediating effect of customer value creation. International Journal of Information Management, 37(3), pp.229-240.