...Customer Acquisition Customer acquisition is a broad term that is used to identify the processes and procedures used to locate, qualify and ultimately secure the business of new customers. There are many different strategies used as part of the acquisition process, with some methods being more effective with specific types of potential clients. In spite of the many and sometimes contradictory ideas that surround the central idea of how to earn a customer, there are a few essentials that are included in just about any type of customer acquisition plan. One of the basics of any customer acquisition effort is to identify and quality potential customers. This is sometimes accomplished with the use of telemarketing as a means of locating individuals and businesses who either express interest in or already use products similar to those produced by the business. From this initial list, these leads are then qualified a little further, using various research methods to determine if there is any solid chance of making a sale with a given lead. If there is a good chance, and the contact is interested in learning more about the products offered, his or her status is usually upgraded to that of prospect, and assigned to a salesperson for further interaction. Establishing rapport with the prospect is essential to any successful customer acquisition effort. Here, the salesperson finds ways to identify with the stated wants and needs of the prospect, and how the products offered can relate...
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...Customer Acquisition for Facebook We all need to acquire new customers to make our products and businesses work. Whether there are a few users paying big bucks or thousands visiting your platform for free, how you get and retain customers is what is important. But ask yourself: are you really ready for more customers? Is your team set up to handle an influx of users? What’s your promotion strategy – inbound marketing or traditional PR? This extensive guide will walk you through what user acquisition is and how to execute a plan. Is Your Product Ready for User Acquisition? While Mark Zuckerberg’s famous “move fast and break things” motto might be useful advice in many startup situations, it may not be the best advice when it comes to customer acquisition. The decision to take your product to market and begin onboarding customers should be given the weight it deserves. You have spent months (if not years) developing your product, so the execution of your user acquisition strategy must be thought out very carefully. First of all, is your product even ready for some/many users? Are there still bugs that will render the customer experience completely flawed? While Zuck’ s “done is better than perfect” philosophy is wise, it would be a mistake to launch a broken product. Why Being Prepared Matters ? The customer acquisition process for startups is hardly linear or predictable, but that doesn’t mean that thoughtful planning is not useful or necessary. Even software giants...
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...Internet Customer Acquisition Strategy at Bankinter Bankinter is a small independent national Spanish bank founded in 1965 and operating through various customer acquisition networks and distribution channels. Among their competitors, which are traditional brick-and-mortar banks and Internet-only banks, Bankinter positions itself as innovative, multichannel and low-cost provider of financial services. In 1992, Bankinter started to change its strategy by closing some of its branches and focusing more on product and channel-oriented marketing. In line with its innovative positioning, Bankinter was the first Spanish bank to offer telephone, electronic and internet banking. In 1999, as part of their polarization strategy, Bankinter launched its e-collaborator program aiming to attract new Internet customers at low cost. Branch 8700, Bankinter’s Internet branch, experienced rapid growth leading to decreases customer acquisition costs and increases in costumer acquisitions. After its alliance strategy with highly trafficked dominant online portals that proved to be cost-intensive and didn’t lead to new customer acquisitions, Bankinter launched its e-collaborator program in 2001. E-collaborator is a low-cost acquisition tool placing banners on Websites that link the user directly to ebankinter.com, Bankinter’s online site launched in 1997. As it is a very cost-effective program, it resulted in lowering per customer acquisition costs while increasing new customer acquisitions. Apart...
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...E-Guard: Customer Acquisition Plan Target Segmentation and Fraud Risk Analysis Considering the past cases of insider trading viz. Rajaratnam case (Galleon Group), Rajat Gupta case (Goldman Sachs) and accounting fraud like that of Satyam Computer Services or Enron Group, the target sectors to be aimed are Financial (hedge fund, mutual fund, trading, investment banking firms, etc.) and big corporate houses like Energy and Steel. * Market study of amount of Data handled in respective sectors and their Fraud Risk Analysis * Information assimilation of similar competitive products and their customers * Segmentation on the basis of scale, new or old, if already using similar products, price vs quality sensitivity parameters. Cost of Acquisition vs Customer Retention It is one most important Business Metric which would help in deciding how much to be spent on the respective targets in the acquisition process. * The various heads to be included Marketing, Meetings, Infrastructural, Promotional and Miscellaneous costs * Customer Life Time Value (LTV) to be calculated using Subscription period and Pricing * Marketing Budget to be prepared and if needed share of Retention budgets of the Retail & Educational Suits to be used Customer Engagement The communication is to be done in the following sequential manner: * Key Opinion Leaders (KOL), Stakeholders in each target company to be recognized and approached * Frequency and Message...
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...Riordan Manufacturing Strategy FIN/370 University of Phoenix Riordan Manufacturing Strategy Determining the best approach for Riordan Manufacturing is vital to being prepared for expansion and future growth. Examining the potential of Initial Public Offerings, acquisition of another company, and a merger will assist with the decision making process. Initial Public Offering Initial Public offerings (IPOs) occur when a company first introduces their stock to the public. Upon selling the stock the company will receive money, which it can distribute internally. The stocks will then go on to the secondary market where the market price for the stock will be set through the buying and selling of the stock. The only time the company “ever receives money from the sale of one of its securities is when it is sold in the primary market” (Titman, Keown, & Martin, 2011, p. 322). Strengths IPOs carry little risk, which make them attractive to companies as a viable option for raising funds. Companies do not have to pay investors back after they by shares and a company who properly balances their debt and equity ratio can sell more stock with little or no flotation cost. By not having to incur debt as they would with a bank and not having to pay required interest or dividends, which would be the case with preferred stock or bonds, a company could free itself from a real obligation to the investors. Weaknesses When a company decides to go public it can be one of the most difficult...
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...Mergers and Acquisitions Student’s Name Subject Title Lecturer’s Name Due Date Introduction Mergers and acquisitions are frequently used words in the world of business. They are both an aspect of corporate finance, finance and corporate strategy dealing with the selling, buying, dividing and bringing different companies together that can help the corporation to expand its operations. A merger can be explained as a legal process that involves consolidation of two companies into a single entity (Ernst & Young, 1994) .An acquisition occurs when a corporation acquires more than 50% of the stock shares of another company. The company holding company takes over and assumes ownership of the target company. In the United States, Mergers and acquisitions have been a popular occurrence due to the number of large companies with huge amounts of resources. Companies are also engaging in M&A activities in order to take advantage of the gaps in the market and also to increase their market share. In the United States, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Volp Company Skype at a cost of $8.56 billion in cash. This was after Skype announced its operating profit of $264 million. Technically, this was a loss of up to $7 million as it also had debts that amounted to $686 million. This was the second time Skype had been bought having been established in 2003. Initially the company had been purchased by eBay for $3.1 billion Microsoft has not been able to make profit online .Skype...
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...Trident University Module 5- SLP FIN501 Dr. Glenn Tenney Jeremy Stack Net present Value, Mergers and acquisitions When brainstorming on the possible ideas of mergers or acquisitions it was easy at first to automatically think similar corporations within the same market either small or big or even in direct competition. Upon researching and reviewing the required readings I realized there are numerous types of mergers and acquisitions that could and should be considered in the terms of better business for my company (Target), for the market, and for the consumers in general. The Target Corporation is an American retailing company. It is the second largest discount retailer behind Walmart. With that being said it would at first be a natural thought maybe to think of a merger with Walmart, but as Target being second to them it wouldn’t necessarily be a merger as it would be an acquisition by Walmart and probably wouldn’t make the most business sense even if both were allowed to remain as separate entities. Beyond that certain regulatory bodies would probably find a merger or acquisition to constitute a monopoly and threaten competition within the respective industry. So what would be a company worth merging with or acquiring? One such company that comes to mind which I believe would be considered a Horizontal merger would be the Kmart Corporation as they are in direct competition. Kmart is listed as the 3rd largest discount retail chain behind Walmart and Target...
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...Mergers and Acquisitions Dr. Daniel Goldsmith BUS -508 Contemporary Business Strayer University February17, 2014 Mergers and Acquisitions Use the Internet to research a publicly traded company in the United States that has undergone a merger or acquisition within the last three years. Take notes on the circumstance surrounding the merger or acquisition. Question1. Examine the circumstances that resulted in the merger or acquisition for the selected company. Speculate on two reasons why the resulting decision to merge or to acquire/ be acquired was made. The bigger is often better in the world of corporate, which may encourage merger and acquisition in general. In fact the result is not always good, some of newly created companies go bankrupt and in some cases, mergers companies disband in a sort of corporate divorce. There are no guaranties in corporate mergers, it is inherently risky and without proper strategy, intuition, and knowledge mergers can easily fail. For instance I will examine the merger of Sears and Kmart and evaluate the merger circumstances and the result of the merger. The merger of the two corporates came as a result of the failing of the legend store Sears in the end of the twentieth century. Sears found itself slowly failing as its competitor’s success of low-end big stores likes Target and Walmart, and high- end department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue. On the other hand Kmart itself was struggling and field chapter 11 bankruptcy...
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...Mergers and Acquisitions Dr. Daniel Goldsmith BUS -508 Contemporary Business Strayer University February17, 2014 Mergers and Acquisitions Use the Internet to research a publicly traded company in the United States that has undergone a merger or acquisition within the last three years. Take notes on the circumstance surrounding the merger or acquisition. Question1. Examine the circumstances that resulted in the merger or acquisition for the selected company. Speculate on two reasons why the resulting decision to merge or to acquire/ be acquired was made. The bigger is often better in the world of corporate, which may encourage merger and acquisition in general. In fact the result is not always good, some of newly created companies go bankrupt and in some cases, mergers companies disband in a sort of corporate divorce. There are no guaranties in corporate mergers, it is inherently risky and without proper strategy, intuition, and knowledge mergers can easily fail. For instance I will examine the merger of Sears and Kmart and evaluate the merger circumstances and the result of the merger. The merger of the two corporates came as a result of the failing of the legend store Sears in the end of the twentieth century. Sears found itself slowly failing as its competitor’s success of low-end big stores likes Target and Walmart, and high- end department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue. On the other hand Kmart itself was struggling and field chapter 11 bankruptcy...
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...Mergers and Acquisitions Contemporary Business May 18, 2014 Corporate ownership is a complex concept that many business deal with throughout the span of operating their businesses. Businesses frequently find themselves making hard decisions regarding whether mergers and/or acquisitions are needed and if so to what benefit will they have on the company. As in any decision that is made whether business or not, there are always benefits and disadvantages to the decision made. Businesses must understand both the benefits and disadvantages of potential mergers and/or acquisitions in order to ensure they are making responsible and effective decisions which impact not only the business, but also how stakeholders perceive the business. “In recent years, mergers and acquisitions among U.S. corporations have hit an all-time high” (Boone, 2014, p. 160. The deals that result from mergers and acquisitions are often talked about for months and years within the business sector and can be worth millions and in some cases billions of dollars. These two types of business transactions are not only important to those directly involved with a business, but mergers and acquisitions are equally important to consumers and investors of a business. There are vast reasons behind why companies decide to undergo mergers and acquisitions and when analyzing some mergers and acquisitions those reasons can sometimes be buried deep within the details of the merger and/or acquisition. The decision to...
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...Acquisition of ANZ Grindlays by Standard Chartered Bank Banking sector is one of the fastest growing areas in the developing economies like India. M&A is discussed as one of the most useful tool for growth, which has evoked the interest of researchers and scholars. Indian economy has witnessed fast pace of growth post liberalization era and banking is one of them. M&A in banking sector has provided evidences that it is the useful tool for survival of weak banks by merging into larger bank. It is found in our study that small and local banks face difficulty in bearing the impact of global economy therefore, they need support and it is one of the reasons for merger. Some private banks used mergers as a strategic tool for expanding their horizons. This report talks about the acquisition of ANZ Grindlays bank by the Standard Chartered bank. Standard Chartered PLC is a British multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in London. It operates a network of over 1,700 branches and outlets (including subsidiaries, associates and joint ventures) across more than 70 countries and employs around 87,000 people. It is a universal bank with operations in consumer, corporate and institutional banking, and treasury services. Despite its UK base, it does not conduct retail banking in the UK, and around 90% of its profits come from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In 2000, it completed the acquisition of ANZ Grindlays bank in a $1.34 Billion deal. The following...
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...reference to RBTT and Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) An acquisition is the act of purchase of one company by another. A merger occurs when two companies combine into a single business entity. Acquisitions and mergers have proven to be a significant and increasingly popular means for achieving corporate diversity and growth (Afsaneh and Ali, 1988). However, the effectiveness of the strategy depends upon extensive planning and careful implementation (Afsaneh and Ali, 1988). On June 16, 2008 Royal Bank of Canada announced its completed acquisition of the RBTT Financial Group (RBTT) for a purchase price of approximately TT$13.7 billion (US$2.2 billion). The acquisition is to bring about a greater market share for RBC by expanding its operations outside Canada spanning into the Caribbean. This historic transaction created one of the most expansive banking networks in the Caribbean, with a presence in 18 countries and territories across the region. With more than US$13.7 billion in assets, the combined operations will have 130 branches across the Caribbean, with 7,000 employees serving more than 1.6 million clients. This deal creates a significantly larger organization that is better positioned to serve all our customers, who will benefit from expanded market coverage, the increased lending capacity of the combined banks, and an expanded range of products. However, since the acquisition there have been numerous problems. Customers having access to their accounts via ATMs, longer waits...
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...International Journal of Management and International Business Studies. ISSN 2277-3177 Volume 4, Number 1 (2014), pp. 71-84 © Research India Publications http://www.ripublication.com Flipkart-Myntra; From a Merger to an Acquisition Farhat Fatima Periyar Management and Computer College, Jasola, New Delhi Abstract The Indian e-commerce market was worth 75,000 crore, in 2013, according to a joint report by KPMG and Internet and Mobile Association of India. India has the potential to double its economic contribution via Internet, from 1.6 percent GDP at present to 2.8 and 3.3 percent by 2015 [MCkensy’2012]. Indian E-commerce is most likely to generate employment for 1.45 million people in coming two years. Emergence of the new government and its innovative policies are developing hope to bring FDI in e-commerce for local market players. Marking the biggest consolidation in the e-commerce space in India, this report puts light on India’s own Amazon; Flipkart and fashion e-tailer Myntra which jointly exposes their vision to capture more than 50% e-market share by strategic alliance. As Flipkart’s annualized sales crossed over 6,100 crore a year ahead of target. It had estimated to reach the billion dollar mark for gross merchandise value by 2015; on the other hand Myntra’s revenue was about 1,000 crore in the previous financial year. It aims to double its revenue in this financial year as it expands its seller base and adds products following China’s...
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...internal venture to develop the new business on its own, an acquisition, or a joint venture. a. Internal Ventures: In spite of the benefit of internal ventures, the risks of failure are high, and even successful ventured takes many years to become profitable. In fact, the slow speed of internal ventures often causes managers to think seriously about acquisition when they want to diversify their firms. If a firm acquires an existing business, it gains immediate entrance into the new business area. Furthermore, if the acquired firm has been successful, the acquiring firm managers may feel there is less risk of failure. b. Merger and Acquisitions: some organizations choose to buy diversification in the form of acquisitions. They are often considered a “substitute for innovation”. Mergers occur ant time two organizations combine into one. Acquisition, where one organization buys a controlling interest in the stock of another organization or buys it outright from its owners, are the most common type of merges. Acquisitions are relatively quick way to: i. Enter new markets ii. Acquire new products or services iii. Learn new resource conversion process iv. Acquire needed knowledge and skills v. Vertically integrate vi. Broaden market geographically vii. Fill need in the corporate portfolio. A Few of Many Potential Problems with Mergers and Acquisitions High Financial Costs I. High premium typically...
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...Mergers and Acquisitions Student’s Name Subject Title Lecturer’s Name Due Date Introduction Mergers and acquisitions are frequently used words in the world of business. They are both an aspect of corporate finance, finance and corporate strategy dealing with the selling, buying, dividing and bringing different companies together that can help the corporation to expand its operations. A merger can be explained as a legal process that involves consolidation of two companies into a single entity (Ernst & Young, 1994) .An acquisition occurs when a corporation acquires more than 50% of the stock shares of another company. The company holding company takes over and assumes ownership of the target company. In the United States, Mergers and acquisitions have been a popular occurrence due to the number of large companies with huge amounts of resources. Companies are also engaging in M&A activities in order to take advantage of the gaps in the market and also to increase their market share. In the United States, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Volp Company Skype at a cost of $8.56 billion in cash. This was after Skype announced its operating profit of $264 million. Technically, this was a loss of up to $7 million as it also had debts that amounted to $686 million. This was the second time Skype had been bought having been established in 2003. Initially the company had been purchased by eBay for $3.1 billion Microsoft has not been able to make profit online .Skype...
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