Marketing Management Report: IT Strategies for Cut Short Hair Salon

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of IT management issues and marketing strategies for the 'Cut Short' hair salon. It begins with an introduction outlining the business operations of 'Cut Short,' including its vision, mission, and business overview. The report then delves into product strategies, market analysis, and the challenges faced, such as long customer wait times. Three key recommendations from current journal literature are presented, focusing on streamlining business operations, implementing low-cost marketing strategies, and leveraging a business website for service promotion. The report also includes two marketing management strategies: opening an education and training center and customer service training. The conclusion summarizes the effective use of IT management systems and processes to enhance business operations and increase profits for the hair salon. The report also emphasizes the importance of integrating technology, smart business intelligence, and social media platforms to achieve effective marketing management and sustainable business growth. The paper highlights the viability and effectiveness of the embarked marketing strategies, considering both the current scenario and future business opportunities.

Running Head: MARKETING
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IT Management Issues
Marketing Management
(Student details :)
4/21/2019

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Contents
IT Management Issues...............................................................................................................2
Part A: Report............................................................................................................................2
Introduction............................................................................................................................2
Business operation of ‘Cut Short’..........................................................................................2
Vision and Mission............................................................................................................2
Company Business Overview............................................................................................3
Product Strategy.................................................................................................................3
Market Analysis.................................................................................................................3
3 Recommendations from Current Journal Literature.......................................................4
Conclusion..............................................................................................................................5
Part B: two strategies for Marketing Management....................................................................6
Opening an Education and Training centre for the students..................................................6
Customer service training......................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................7

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IT Management Issues
Part A: Report
Introduction
This report is based on marketing management focused on IT (information
technology) of a budget hair dressing chain business ‘Cut Short’. This report is going to
outline the business operations to the CEO of Cut Short hair dressing salon. Besides, three
important recommendations which can effectively support the business services and
marketing of the Cut Short will be provided. In this context, this famous budget hair dressing
chain, ‘Cut Short, offers basic hair dressing services and it has acknowledged a report which
is revealing that salon consumers take a minimum of 15 minutes time to be checked-in, get
settled as well as request their hair styling preferences. Hence, their valuable time is getting
lost because every salon is having a substantial queue of consumers on each day (Buckley &
Ghauri, 2015). In this way, for improving their profitability this paper is going to present
effective ways of marketing management while using information technology.
Business operation of ‘Cut Short’
This business operation plan for Cut Short hair salon is supporting its operational
commitment to a cutting-edge and dynamic hair care establishment while utilising an
energetic as well as lively marketing strategies (Cateora, Gilly, & Graham, 2011).
Vision and Mission
Present situation: being a popular hair dressing chain, the ‘Cut Short’ (CS) is
managing numerous hair salons all over the nation. Besides, the CS is doing well in the
market of hair dressing salons and hence it has received a report from market analysts. The
report has revealed that there is an issue related to IT management for the marketing of the
salon and its sustainable future (Lee & Carter, 2011). Thus, now we are working in the
direction of bringing revolution in the field of marketing management segment so that profits,
image and revenues of the CS can be developed more from a sustainable future point of view.

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Vision: CS’s vision is to establish a productive, harmonious as well as profitable hair
salon atmosphere while contributing the social community with a retail center containing hair
products like shampoo, conditioner and other hair styling products (Gao, Li, & Clarke, 2015).
Mission: pleasing customers with quality hair dressing services while combining
information technology, art, as well as science (Hollensen, 2010).
Company Business Overview
The CS hair salon is doing business in the field of hair styling and dressing at a large
extent with the help of its long chains. Moreover, the company is having its win website
which enables its users to get the info about the CS before visiting it for their hair services. In
addition, after receiving the recent report over the contemporary marketing management
issues CS’s management has decided to adopt a pre-booking appointment system based on
online information technologies (Cateora, Gilly, & Graham, 2011). The aim and objective of
this pre-booking online appointment system contains the following:
 To save the valuable time of their customers
 To promote company’s hair products and services with the help of IT management
 To demonstrate a benchmark for the rest of the hair dressing businesses
 To ensure a sustainable future for the CS within potential market of the hair saloons
 To attract the customers towards the CS’s best quality services
 To make services availing procedure easy for the customers in order to use mouth-
publicity tactic for an effective marketing (Burn & Barnett, 2000).
Product Strategy
Following product and services marketing strategies are getting utilized by the
management of the CS so as to promote their products and services:
 There are separate portions for men and women hair services
 The prices of the products and services are average as it is a budget chain of hair
dressing saloon
 Salon is offering variety of hair services such as hair designing, hair colorization, hair
chemical reconstruction, deep scalp massage as well as hair nourishment through
different ways and technologies.
 The CS offers considerable discount and offers while customer uses the services as
well as buys hair products from the saloon together during the visit ( Bagshaw, 2019).

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Market Analysis
Recent market analysis of the hair dressing salon services in the form of report
suggested that CS’s customers spend up to 15 minutes for checking-in the saloon, get settled
and request the hair styling preferences of them. In this way, this process is long-time taking
which consumers their valuable time unnecessary (Sim Sheng & Wahidah, 2012). In
addition, recently every salon is having a significant queue of consumers per day which again
consumes customer’s valuable time. In this way, in order to resolve this IT management
issue from the customer’s viewpoint, CS decided to have an online pre booking system for
offering appointments against online reservations (Shenkar, Luo, & Chi, 2014). Moreover, in
order to improve CS’s profitability, the company has embarked over the following:
 CS has started utilising pre-booking appointment strategy by using the saloon website.
With the help of this IT management tactic CS’s customers can easily choose their
desired and needed services such as trimming, re-styling, blow wave and many more
along with the date and time of suitable day as per their schedules.
 Apart from this, after the completion of the pre-booking, customers can comfortably
select to pay for the booked services through any payment gateway such as credit
card, PayPal, Paytm and many more.
 CS also introduced an online booking system where those who have not paid 24hrs
before their pre-scheduled appointment, will have the pre-bookings cancelled.
 In addition, in order to encourage this new pre-booking system, the appointments
made by the customers and booked online will gain a minimum of 10 per cent
discount so that more and more customers will be encouraged to book their hair
services visit online and in-advance.
 Besides, in this new booking system customers who are not arriving on allotted time
for the checked-in for the appointment will be imposed an extra charge for their
unavailability and inconvenience caused to the CS hair salon.
 Apart from all of the above discussed changes, CS’s management system is now
having a hair products’ purchasing option over its website. In this context, CS’s
customers who come for the hair services can now order hair products such as hair
styling products, shampoo and conditioner online. Besides, they can also pay as well
as pick up their products’ purchases at the time of their visits at the CS.

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3 Recommendations from Current Journal Literature
In this context, three major recommendations extracted from current journal literature
in order to suggest a better IT management at CS are as follows:
I: Generating cash flow over an on-going basis through streamlining business operations.
 Plan purchases: from planning your purchases on regular schedule operations of the
CS can be developed for a good change (Zott & Amit, 2010).
 Conduct daily inventory assessments
 Monitoring manufacturers during promotional periods: by planning CS’s purchases
when their required items are at a comparatively less cost (Buckley & Ghauri, 2015).
 Planning CS’s purchases from those manufacturers who provide program incentives
like a reward points system for earning free products from the company (Osterwalder
& Pigneur, 2010).
II: CS can promote their hair dressing business with ‘no cost’ and ‘low cost’ marketing
strategies
By promoting CS’s clients for recommending CS to their friends as well as family
members CS can enhance their business opportunities. In addition, CS should practice
offering three business cards to each client as well as asking them for sharing with their
friends and family members or anyone else who wants to have quality and budget hair
dressing services (Tiago & Verissimo, 2014). Apart from this, by using social media platform
for CS’s business advantage while sharing CS’s quality work over Facebook, Twitter and
Linked-in low cost marketing strategies can be implemented ( Bagshaw, 2019).
III: Own a CS business website to post quality of the services there
CS should get their regular as well as premium clients to their websites in a way to
post positive feedback comments about the services they receive (Cavusgil, Knight,
Riesenberger, Rammal, & Rose, 2014). In this way, by taking this feedback approach clients
of the CS will recommend people around them to visit the salon. Thus, by using CS’s web
platform IT management can be utilised for encouraging people for visiting the hair dressing
salon for availing best hair services (Gao, Li, & Clarke, 2015).
Conclusion
In whole, this paper has utilised IT management systems as well as processes for
streamlining CS’s business operations in order to increase CS’s profits. In this way, with the

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help of integrating technology, smart business intelligence, ICT and social media platforms,
the paper has successfully demonstrated an effective marketing management for the CS hair
salon. The business operational analysis covered within this paper has analysed the current
market strategy of the CS while suggesting many useful recommendations for its sustainable
future. In addition, viability and effectiveness of the embarked marketing strategies has been
evaluated from the perspective of current scenario as well as future business opportunities.
Part B: two strategies for Marketing Management
This discussion is focused on providing important suggestions in order to improve
business service or operation offerings substantiated from the current literature.
Opening an Education and Training centre for the students
As we know that there are numerous people who are not able to access the enough
resources for the professional skills development (Fill & Turnbull, 2016). In this context, if
the CS hair salon will introduce a platform for the relevant field students and fresher trainees
in order to upgrade their knowledge from the professional and career development viewpoint
then no other strategy can beat this one for a successful marketing management through IT.
In addition, innovative thinking can be utilised while using IT for resolving marketing
management issues like wastage of users’ time through offering distance learning via online
portals of CS hair salon.
In this context, CS hair salon can expand their business operations through opening an
education and training centre in the field of hair dressing services and techniques (Ismail,
2016). Besides, the training centre should be opened offline as well as online so that
accessibility for the students and trainees can be well managed. While the CS hair salon is
already a famous as well as budget hair dressing hub, introducing an education centre for the
millennial minds will add to its market value and prestige with the help of learning and
development for students’ careers (Leeflang, Verhoef, & Dahlstrom, 2014).
Customer service training
The second important suggestion for improving business operations offerings by the
CS hair lounge is about customer service training (Welsh, 2018). In this context, well-
managed and well-directed customer service training can be utilised for ensuring a
sustainable future of the CS hair salon within the area of hair and beauty products and

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services (Lindgreen, Hingley, Grant, & Morgan, 2012). As we know that there are countless
reasons why we customers play an important role over anything else while doing any
business. One of the reasons can be explained as they are the generator of the changed
demands hence by interacting with the customers in an effective way; a business manager can
get the exact needs of their customers which ultimately enables business providers to grow
their business to its utmost heights (McKenna, 2012).
In this way, customer service training should be provided to all of the CS’s employees
in order to please their customers with providing best quality service in following ways:
 Teaching employees to care more about people including customers and their
relatives who are visiting the CS
 To tell employees for having more energy while attending the clients at CS.
 To teach the employees for being happy, meaningful as well as funny while talking to
and interacting with the customers and their peers.
 To teach the employees of the CS to be are more motivated at all the time while they
work (Sassi & Goaied, 2013).
In this way, with the help of report and suggestions based on current as well as
upcoming journal literature, this paper has successfully demonstrated a detailed
understanding over how to integrate IT while managing marketing issues at a budget hair
dressing salon like CS.
References
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advertise on Facebook, Instagram:
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/businesses-to-get-60-million-marketing-
boost-in-budget-20190328-p518iv.html
Buckley, P., & Ghauri, P. (2015). International business strategy: theory and practice.
London: Routledge.
Burn, J., & Barnett, M. (2000). Emerging Virtual Models for Global e-commerce-world wide
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Cateora, P., Gilly, C., & Graham, J. (2011). International Marketing. New York:
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