Strayer University MKT 100: Assignment 2 - Situation Analysis

This assignment analyzes Google's marketing situation using the 5 Cs, 4 Ps, and STP frameworks. It examines Google's current customers, including their demographics, psychographics, and buying behavior, and anticipates future changes and opportunities for better customer service. The assignment identifies Google's strengths, such as its market share and loyal employees, and weaknesses, like high advertising costs and lack of physical presence. It defines the current business environment, considering political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors. The analysis also covers Google's key collaborators and main competitors, such as Bing and Yahoo. Finally, it provides three key recommendations for Google's future direction, including establishing a stronger physical presence, developing a social media platform, and devising strategies to expand into countries like Russia and China.

Assignment 2
Situation Analysis
Based on what you’ve learned so far in this course, regarding the 5 Cs, 4Ps, and STP, complete the
assessment questions below. Submit the completed template in the Week 10 assignment submission link.
Name: Alyson Szymanski
Professor’s Name: Theodore Gorczyca
Course Title: Principles of Marketing
Date: January 29, 2019
Company/Brand Selected (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Amazon, or Google):
1. Customers
Who are the current customers/users? Include information related to demographics,
psychographics and buying behavior, price sensitivity, customer satisfaction and loyalty.
The current customers of Google comprise 80% of people worldwide including of different age groups.
These include students, professionals, working-class individuals, social media users using search engine
of Google. Users prefer Google more over Bing which is also a Microsoft search engine. It is also
considered to be the biggest competitor of Google. Over the world, Google maintains high market share
except for few nations like China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. In addition, with latest analytics tools
and content of search Engine, Customers are more tend to use on daily basis.
What do the customers buy/use?
Google is being used by people as it offers benefits in terms of simplicity, relevant results and comfort
factor. Since late 1900, Google has not changed its overall design. This helps them to give more reliable
services to the user.
What changes can the company/brand expect in the future? How can the company/brand better
serve its customers? Include information about potential opportunities and threats.
With the advent of technology, individuals are promoting their products through various social media
sites and some of these sites are also trying to incorporate their own search engine. For Google, search
engine is considered to be their pinnacle point of business strategy. In addition, Google also offers
various products that are friendly associated with all smart and interconnected devices. Google has their
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MKT 100 Assignment 2 1156 (8-14-2015) Page 1 of 7

Assignment 2
Situation Analysis
own video channel i.e. Youtube where they are earning much higher revenue due to business and TV
advertising. Hence, it can be expected that Google may invest hugely in YouTube it attracts billion users
on their engine every day. IT was also predicted that Google can earn a $27.4 billion in 2020 from their
Youtube product portfolio (Weiss, 2016).
© 2015 Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document contains Strayer University confidential and proprietary information
and may not be copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of
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Assignment 2
Situation Analysis
2. Company
[This is what the brand is currently.]
Identify strengths and weaknesses of the company/brand as it exists today. What does the
company/brand do well and not so well at this very moment?
Strengths –
 Market share – 90.28 per cent (Statista.com, 2018).
 Android market share – 75.16 per cent.
 Loyal employees
 Strong reputation all over the world.
 Continuous evolvement
 Long lasting product portfolio.
Weakness –
 High advertising costs.
 Low physical presence.
 Their success is truly based on internet access.
 Lack of international control over the search engine.
However, the company has maintained top position in search engine and also succeeds in attracting the
younger generation to its side. On contradictory side, Google has failed to bring any social media sites
like Facebook and they still need to attract users from China and Russia to their search engine.
[This is what the company/brand needs to become.]
How can the company/brand improve its weaknesses and maintain or grow its strengths?
Suggest how the company/brand can improve upon the things it does well and not so well.
Google needs to focus on more intense diversification. Many nations are still not connected with the
internet. In addition, China and Russia are not users of Google (Newman, 2018). They also need to gain
internal control in these like countries who are not opting for their search engine. The company also
needs to acquire numbers of firms to increase its market share.
© 2015 Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document contains Strayer University confidential and proprietary information
and may not be copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of
Strayer University.
MKT 100 Assignment 2 1156 (8-14-2015) Page 3 of 7

Assignment 2
Situation Analysis
3. Context
Define the current business environment. Include information about political, legal, economic
technological and societal factors that may influence sales.
PESTLE factors that can influence Google considering sales –
 Political factors – Google is mainly an internet-based business however it also immune
to some political factors. For instance, EU is targeting US-based technological firms with
its laws and regulations. Google also became the target in relation to its Anti-trust issue.
Google also not able to expand into China as of problems with Chinese government
considering some personal privacy. This impact on all products portfolio of Google.
 Economic Factors – Thus factors generally bring prosperity for Google as the company
is not affected. There are wide varieties of products sold by Google all over the world and
some of these are consumed by businesses and large organisations. Considering
advertising business too, the profit will be more to Google when consumed by these
businesses.
 Social Factors – Social factors have a significant impact on sales of Google and people
are more tend towards their products due to millennial access considering wide range of
services. Most of the products of Google are Multilanguage and the services can easily be
translated into numerous languages and this fulfils the concept of Multilanguage society.
 Technological Factors – Google is gaining the market share all over the world due to
fast adaption of change in technology. The company invest a lot in Research and
Development department and thus produces rent less innovation in terms of products that
help in increasing their sales. Some of these innovations include, intense voice
recognition algorithms, AI, driverless cars, etc. (Marr, 2017).
 Legal Factors – To make their presence in every country, Google follows strict
guidelines related to privacy and user data related policies. The company has a separate
page with copyright information about what is legal and what is not. This helps them to
gain user trust and led to increase in indirect sales.
© 2015 Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document contains Strayer University confidential and proprietary information
and may not be copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of
Strayer University.
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Assignment 2
Situation Analysis
 Environmental factors – Google business model highly depends on data centres,
however, the company is using renewable sources in integration with infrastructure.
Google is also committed to reducing carbon footprints and thus protecting the
environment in one or other way. This gives them positive recognition in the public and
thus their users will automatically increase.
4. Collaborators
Define the business partnerships. Does the company/brand have any current partnerships? What
other company/brand may be a good partner for them?
A business partnership is referred to legal relationships created by an agreement between two or more
individuals to run a business as co-owners (Murray, 2017). Google has multi-sided business platform and
so the company forms key partners to lure new customers. They have a long lasting list of business
partners such as Audi, Hunyadi, Tesla, IBM, Huawei and many more. In future, Google can do
partnership with social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. so that to
gain number of users.
5. Competitors
Who are the main competitors?
The main competitors of Google are Bing, Yahoo, AOI, Verizon, Amazon, Alibaba, Facebook and
Microsoft who can easily invest into their R&D department to compete against Google (Elliot, 2017).
6. Recommendations
Based upon the analysis you just completed in this worksheet, what are three (3) key
recommendations that you could pass along to Management regarding the future direction of the
company you selected?
Recommendations –
 Google needs to establish its physical presence more so that user or countries who are not
connected with internet can use their products.
© 2015 Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document contains Strayer University confidential and proprietary information
and may not be copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of
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Assignment 2
Situation Analysis
 Google needs to build a social media platform like Facebook and other social media sites
as it can prove be to be threat for Google from future perspective.
 Google also needs to come up with some strategies with the help of government so that
they can expand into big countries like Russia and China and achieve economy of scale.
© 2015 Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document contains Strayer University confidential and proprietary information
and may not be copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of
Strayer University.
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Assignment 2
Situation Analysis
References
Elliot. (2017). 10 Of Google’s Biggest Competitors. Retrieved from http://eskify.com/10-googles-biggest-
competitors/
Marr, B. (2017). The Amazing Ways Google Uses Deep Learning AI. Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2017/08/08/the-amazing-ways-how-google-uses-
deep-learning-ai/#1af474932046
Murray, J. (2017). What Is a Partnership? How Does It Work?. Retrieved from
https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-a-business-partnership-398402
Newman, L. (2018). GOOGLE INTERNET TRAFFIC WASN'T HIJACKED, BUT IT WAS OUT OF CONTROL.
Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/google-internet-traffic-china-russia-rerouted/
Statista.com. (2018). Worldwide desktop market share of leading search engines from January 2010 to
October 2018. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/216573/worldwide-market-
share-of-search-engines/
Weiss, G. (2016). Analyst: The Top 1% Of All YouTube Videos Account For 93% Of The Platform’s 39
Trillion Views. Retrieved from https://www.tubefilter.com/2016/05/13/youtube-top-1-percent-
videos-account-for-93-percent-views/
© 2015 Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document contains Strayer University confidential and proprietary information
and may not be copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of
Strayer University.
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