#4. Google, Inc. Commercial Synopsis and Brand

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Running head: GOOGLE INC.

COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND 1

Executive Summary

Every market involved buyers and sellers, and there are many factors that determine

customers demand of Google products. Google products are not a conventional product ruled

by price. To drive demand, Google search uses Computer Science for data mining, which is a

process of machine learning algorithms through artificial intelligence, statistics, and database

systems. Accordingly, Google algorithm finds, ranks, and returns only relevant results in

every users’ search. Above and beyond searching academic, and nonacademic information

efficiently, Google's search engine market power is the bridge that interconnects supply and

demand to generate transactions throughout the digital supply chain. It is believed that

Google main concern in organizing e-economic activities is to promote and maximize

society's economic well-being. This paper covers

Introduction

Google is the global search engine founded in 1996 by two Stanford's student,

LarryPage and Sergey Brin, a Ph. D. Google allocates resources worldwide through

decentralized decisions of many households, firms, governments, etc. Google's search engine

and its colossal number of users are directly related to Google's core competencies. Since its

foundation, Google search engine has been a free and open web. However, Google is an

advertising company, and there is no such thing as ‘free.' Taking a critical approach, many

are skeptical about Google approach offer service. There is always a trade-off involved in any

Google users' decision-making.

According to Thompson (2017) Google business profile and mission statement is "to

organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". Google

search engine social media promo has a hybrid element of the promotion mix combining

multiple communication tools used to inform, persuade, or remind prospective buyers.


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GOOGLE INC. COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND
Google does not operate in the traditional Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

where the control is with a message focused on the customer. To add on, Google search

engine social media magnifies traditional word of mouth advertising between a few friends;

passing on information to hundreds and even thousands of people. Google has one of the best

and affordable social media promotion tools as follows:

o The buffer is a super simple and easy tool to queue and schedule social media updates

across various platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and App.Net).

o Circloscope helps you find and follow the big Google+ influencers in your niche.

Find those users that engage, get your Google+ content in front of them, and

Circleoscope promises big improvements. [Price: $47/year]

o If you're looking to use shortened links in your email newsletters, we'd recommend

using Google's version, goo.gl (also free and trackable) the less comprehensive

alternative, consider Google Alerts, which will aggregate keyword and brand

mentions across the web.

Market Analysis

According to Net Market Share (as of April 2017) the global marketing share

percentage, in terms of the use of Search Engines heavily favors Google, with over 77%.
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GOOGLE INC. COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND
gle Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in February with 64 percent market share

(up 0.2 percentage points), followed by Microsoft Sites with 21.4 percent (up 0.1 percentage

points) and Yahoo Sites with 12.2 percent. Ask Network accounted for 1.6 percent of explicit

core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 0.9 percent.

What’s the growth rate?

Include the general outlook and trends for this market.

According to Net Market Share (as of April 2017), Google has the biggest search

engine market share worldwide. Last Google has a 67%, accordingly, Google has taken

another 10% of the market from its main competitors (see above) in just the past twelve

months. The general outlook and trends for this Google Search Engine market, to put it into

perspective there are on average around 6,586,013,574 searches a day worldwide. (Smart

Insights).

Who are your main competitors?

Google Search Engine main competitors are Baidu, Bing, Yahoo Global, Ask Global,

AOL Global, and Excite Global.

Are there any secondary competitors who could impact your business?

There are numerous and inexpensive resources for checking up ondirect and indirect

competitors online and offline. It is always recommended regularly track thedirect and

indirectcompetitors at least once per month. In Berlin in 2014, Google's Executive Chairman,

Eric Schmidt, had this to say: "Many people think our main competition is Bing or Yahoo.

But really, our biggest search competitor is Amazon." The main area of competition for

Google and Amazon is product searches.

5) Competitor strengths and weaknesses: What is your competition good at? Where do

they fall behind? Get imaginative to spot opportunities to excel where others are falling short.
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GOOGLE INC. COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND
Baidu is the dominant search engine and online advertising service provider in China;

where google has fail. Will Baidu be able to maintain their market share lead over Google

and the other search engine and online advertising players, and for how long.

A SWOT analysis to understand Baidu's strengths and weaknesses as follows:

Baidu's Strengths (Internal Strategic Factors)

o First-mover advantage, and dominant market share (please explain)

o Knowledge of Chinese culture and language (please explain)

o Better penetration with distributors (please explain)

o Direct sales force(please explain)

Baidu's Weaknesses (Internal Strategic Factors)

o Differentiation between sponsored and unsponsored search results. (please explain)

o Weak on piracy, strong on censorship. (please explain)

o Lack of presence outside of China. (please explain)

o Reliance on advertising as the primary revenue source in the economic downturn.

Target Market of Google Inc.

Marketing is an exchange procedure between producer and consumer. Within the

entire marketplace,every business could identify their customers, and their external

environments using market segmentation to select their target markets. Then reaching the

exclusive target market through developing a marketing mix, which is the four Ps, Product,

Price, Place (Distribution), and Promotion. Market segmentationis the opportunity for

entrepreneurial or an established business to find who are going to buy their products, what

they want, and where are they located. Indeed, market segmentationhelp in measuring and

delivering what customers really want.Market-geographic, demographic and psychographic

arethe three fundamental methods identifying the business's target market. Google Inc.

products have its own demographic details and target market.


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GOOGLE INC. COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND
Joshua Spanier, Google's marketing director for global media, has declared that

everybody on the planet is their target audience. So, Google marketing strategy is not bound

within a group of people or not location specific. It is really very tough to get an idea to

whom Google is actually focusing to get a profitable return and competitive advantage. The

most popular Google product is the search engine. It is designed as a clean simple and

interference-free search page, which attracts everybody to search their queries. The simple

interface provides an ease of search to the most Internet illiterate people as well irrespective

of age group, location or gender. Google has incorporated its new privacy policy, which can

limit the data collection about the users, with their consent.

According to Research Gate, the Google, Inc. customers' profiles elements are as

follows:

Geographic dimensions

o Highly diverse users, as the internet is a highly diverse tool.

o More than half of the Google search results are delivered outside of the United States.

o Google search results can be delivered in 80 different languages.

Demographic dimensions

Google is having highly diversified markets and users. In certain countries and

regions such as China, Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria Google has

restricted its access.

Except for these areas, according to surveys, it has been found:

o Maximum popular users are under age 35

o 55% of users are male.

o Majority Google users are upper-middle-class income structure.

o Users are generally of higher educated or technologically competitive.

o Most Google users are business minded professionals.


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GOOGLE INC. COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND
Psychographic Dimensions

It has been found Google users are people who are intelligent and educated need

access to information from any internet enabled devices anytime quickly. They mostly have

a busy lifestyle from varying domains like residential family to students group or military

personnel. It also found 20% of Google users use Mac computers which denotes mostly

middle-upper or upper-income groups are associated in the Google customer base. Also,

Google users have highest (80%) smartphone penetration which is far more than its

competitors like Yahoo (58%) and Bing (65%). From the data about typical Google users, it

can be assumed they prefer more innovative customizable and privacy-oriented internet

experiences.

Organizational Customers

Google earns the revenue from its advertisers based on how many users click on those

advertisements in one word AdWords. Google also allow other website publishers to display

Google related ads using AdSense which generates revenue for the publishers and Google,

both. Google has taken part in Internet-based businesses as well. Google business solution

applications are less expensive than other similar applications like Lotus Notes. From an

overview of Google annual report, it earns 89.86% of its total revenue from advertising and

70.08% from its website (CSIMarket.). We can also divide Google Market into Different

Segments where a different group of customers is having distinctly similar needs for

particular services.

Student Segment

Undergraduate (18-25) and graduate (23-30) students who are relatively young are

tended to find more information fast and efficiently in a more technological way, in which

they are accustomed to. This segment is more comfortable to social media, networking sites

etc. This is a bigger group who engages their time in YouTube or Google+. I think Google
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GOOGLE INC. COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND
needs to improve its social networking site Google+ as Facebook one of its nearest

competitor in the zone of social networking. Google+ is having 2.5 billion user accounts

which are almost double of Facebook users. But if we count the frequency of visiting their

profile, Facebook is far before than Google+. This segment uses the internet for leisure as

well as for education. This segment has a need for easily accessible documents like Google

Docs to share, edit or submit documents and other scholar works.

Entrepreneurial Enterprise Segment

Several of new business may be entrepreneurial or corporations want an internet

based, hassle-free way to conduct its operations that is cost-effective. This segment needs to

reach their customers through personalized internet-based advertisements (AdWords). This

segment understands the technological lifestyle and truly value efficiency. They need the

speed of information sharing and real-time functionality. This is the most lucrative customer

segment for Google as; businesses tend to target Google due to its various types of users in

different segments and user traffic in different applications.

Income Group.

We can also find two different segments in Google's target market according to

income group. One is upper-middle or middle-class families, usually of white collar, blue

collar or hold service industry jobs and having small families. They use Google products

usually for leisure purpose, communication or entertainment. They are the frequent internet

users. This is a technologically proficient segment and tends to more internet shopping and

desire to have nice products. It can be assumed this segment has the ability to keep up with

the latest technology and new products. It seems fruitless to concentrate making efforts

towards this segment given their propensity to keep up with the hottest and newest trend.

The second is the low-income group middle-aged family and live within a calculated amount

of money. They are having less leisure, and use internet especially for communications and
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GOOGLE INC. COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND
sometimes for financial purposes. They have less ability to frequently update technological

devices. So, when they make a big purchase usually strive for quality. This is a small

segment in Google internet traffic. They are usually not loyal to brand. Marketing in this

segment may not be an efficient use of Google resources as; the revenue depends on internet

traffic. However, when this segment makes a choice of Google products or services

depending on widespread availability, it may be infrequent and less impact on the company

revenue.

Target Market Insight

According to research and survey, overall views of search engine performance are

very positive. Also, most internet users say they do not know how to control the information

that is collected about them by a website. Only 65% of users change their browser settings to

limit the information that is collected. Whereas Google has implemented a new privacy

policy in which information about user's behavior can be collected while they are connected

in search engine, Google+, Gmail, and YouTube. This may have a negative impact on

Google's marketing as this may be a case of violation of individual's privacy. Google needs

more focus on its market segments those have the ability to grow with the company as it

continues to develop products for more technologically sound future. I think the student

segment is the ideal market segment for Google to focus in. This segment is exposed to vast

technological advancement and able to update them with new technology, digital products,

and services. Students are continuously plugged-in through the internet, mobile phones or

other digital devices, which can be capitalized to create more Internet traffic for Google. By

providing fast information, speed and technological improvements in different applications,

Google can gain brand recognition and can ensure this segment will be loyal to the brand in

future as well. Thus, the student market segment has the ability to become a gold mine for

Google.
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GOOGLE INC. COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND
Complete a SWOT analysis on the brand/company

Google Strengths (Internal Environment)

SWOT analysis have help Google’sbranding and marketing to become the market

leader in search engines. Google-branded their products and services memorable, easily

recognizable and superior in quality and reliability.

Google has the ability to generate user traffic. They were able to distinguish their

services from those of its competitors, and it has made their website the most used website in

the world receiving 34,000 searches per second, 2 million searches per minute, 121 million

searches per hour, and 2 billion searches per day.

Google has some strongest and target-driven leaders: (1) Eric Schmidt is the

Chairman of the Board and CEO responsible for the external matters of Google building

partnerships and broader business relationships. (2) Larry Page is the president of products,

and Google's day-to-day-operations, as well as leading the company's product development

and technology strategy. (3) Sergey Brin is the president of technology who directs special

projects. Another major strength that "Google" has become a generic word. Google

possesses is that the words "Google" and "Search" are used synonymously.

A third strength is the power of Google to generate revenue from Advertising. Their

two main advertising products, AdWords and AdSense are the main reason for this. Which

accounts for about 97% of Google's revenue. If any of the advertisements are clicked on, then

businesses are required to pay Google. Therefore, Advertising growth is directly related to

revenue growth. As far as these devices, and operating systems are concerned. Google

adoption of Android and Mobile technologies resulted in Google becoming a direct

competitor of Apple.

Google Weaknesses (Internal Environment)


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GOOGLE INC. COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND
Google exploits users' personal information for advertising purposes, thus, for

revenue growth. Google has been hiding and does not reveal its algorithm for searches and

how is Google exploits users' personal information.

One major weakness Google possesses is they unavailability to customize their

services to satisfy foreign countries. For certain applications, Google needs information that

foreign countries do not want to provide. If Google wants to expand their services globally,

they have to customize their services based on the cultures of each country.For example,

when Google began to expand their search engine into China, the Chinese government was

upset with the information that is displayed when using the Google search engine. Due to

this, in 2003, "China announced that foreign media companies must seek prior approval

before distributing pictures, graphics, and news" (Case 11).

Google’s business model relies heavily on advertising. Since Advertising growth is

directly related to Google's revenue growth, Advertising could also be one of its biggest

weaknesses. So, the main question to answer is, how long will the trend of advertising on the

Internet last? It does not seem as though it will fade anytime soon, but as times continue to

change, so can the advertising industry.

Another weakness is privacy. "Google's search engine saves personal information

surrounding the user's areas of interests using a system of tracking cookies" (Case 11). When

the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved

by the website to notify the website of the user's previous activity. Cookies remind websites

of the activity the user had taken in the past. Things like Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube,

Google Docs, Google Buzz, and integration of social networking and email. It enabled users

to choose whether or not they wanted to publicly share photos, videos, conversations, etc.

(similar to Facebook). The problem, though, was that Google publicly disclosed this

information by default. Users who did not disable this feature (mainly because they did not
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GOOGLE INC. COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND
realize they had to) could have very important information revealed. Google Buzz was

discontinued on December 15, 2011

Google Opportunities (External Environment)

Google Books is a service that searches for textbooks and magazines that Google has

stored in its digital database. The recent surge of online books is growing, and they're taking

steps to alter the way consumers access books. In the future, Google has the opportunity to

expand this service to offer all online textbooks for sale. At the moment, they only have

certain books and magazines for sale. However, they could position themselves to take a big

market share in the electronic book industry. Also, Google+ gives Google the opportunity to

combine all of its services to create one major powerhouse. Like other social networks such

as Facebook, the content is accessed through a single website. Google Plus, however, consists

of not just a single site, but rather an overarching "layer" which covers many of its online

properties.

Google Latitude allows a mobile phone user to allow certain people to view their

current location. The user must activate the Latitude application. The user's cell phone

location is mapped on Google Maps. From Google+, friends can potentially see exactly

where their friends are at all times, and parents could also see where their children. Another

opportunity is Google TV could potentially make Google a profitable leader in the

broadcasting industry. It brings everything you love about the Internet to your television. It's

as though you're hooking up your laptop to your television, but now you can use both

simultaneously. The reason it could make Google a profitable leader is because you don't

need a Cable TV subscription to access Google TV. The only thing you need to have is a Wi-

Fi connection. Most of the shows we watch are showing up online, so this would make it

much more convenient to watch, especially on bigger screen. Americans pay a lot of money
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GOOGLE INC. COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND
to get access to television shows and movies. Accessing these things via the Internet is the

future, and they have the tools to make it happen.

Google Threats (External Environment)

Competition is the major threat for almost all companies. Google competition in their search

business, social networking, and application business are Apple, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

During the economic crisis, consumers spend less money, which begins to threat Google ads,

and in return threatens Google's revenues due to decreasing business. Increase in Cellular

device purchases –an increase in cellular phones, paired with a decrease computer purchases,

will have a negative effect on Google's advertising revenues. Smaller screens with cell

phones create problems in viewing advertisements. If Google cannot figure out a way to

make advertisements more visible, then their revenues will decline.

References

Awais, M., & Samin, T. (2012). Advanced SWOT Analysis of E-Commerce. International

Journal of Computer Science Issues(IJCSI), 9(2), 569-574.


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google-marketing-boss’

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Gallagher, F. How many users does Google+ really have’. Tech times. Retrieved

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GOOGLE INC. COMMERCIAL SYNOPSIS AND BRAND
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