Xerox Business Services, Strategy, and Market Analysis
Xerox Corporation: Business Services and Document Technology
Xerox Corporation is an American global corporation that sells business services and document technology products.
Campaign Objectives:
- Take a “human-centric view of the benefits made possible when work works better.”
- Focus on what makes Xerox authentic and differentiates them from competitors, highlighting their relevance to business and public sector leaders.
- Adopt an outside-in approach to understand the benefits from the customers’ perspective.
- Accurately portray the brand perception of Xerox today.
Strategy and Target Audience:
Xerox conducted qualitative and quantitative research to understand the target audience’s concerns and identify trends impacting businesses today and in the future.
- Through interviews with senior Xerox leadership, discussions with customers, industry and news reports, and conversations with visionaries, the goal to “understand what is happening in the world of business” was born, leading to the campaign slogan: “Work Can Work Better.”
- Target customers who want “to simplify their business processes and develop solutions that improve their operations and performance.”
- Target clients who need “practical solutions that address the way people, business processes, and technology intersect for real business outcomes” (according to John Kennedy, Xerox Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer).
Media Channels:
- Two 30-second television spots “describing how Xerox works behind the scenes to manage business processes and improve how work gets done.”
- Four new TV spots that delve deeper into specific industry issues and Xerox’s perspective on how customer care, human resources, healthcare, and transportation can work better.
- Print ads showcasing the human benefit of a particular business service with contextual relevance, such as helping over 35 million patients go home healthier.
- Social media sites, like Twitter and Facebook, with a focus on YouTube.
- Redesigned xerox.com to be content and social-driven, supported by any device, and including stories.
Decision-Making Process
B2B Procedure 1: Baltic Exchange
Market participants (e.g., Burberry) bid to ship cargo. This market, based in London, facilitates the contracting of ship cargos in a bid and offer environment. The Baltic Exchange market for physicals is comparable to the New York Stock Exchange, with numerous bidders and offers.
B2B Procedure 2: Brokerage Firm
A brokerage firm employs a sophisticated broker who is highly knowledgeable about the supply and demand of cargo to various ports and the appropriate prices.
Ship Owners/Shipping Lines
- Dry Bulk Carriers
- Wet Bulk Carriers (oil tanker owner)
- Car Carriers (e.g., Wilhelm Wilhelmsen)
- Forest Product Carriers (e.g., Westwood Shipping Lines)
What are Markets?
Mason suggested studying the price policies of corporations and introducing more empirical content through a classification of empirical material in terms of “market structures.” Mason claimed that “the market, and market structure, must be defined with reference to the position of a single seller or buyer (the structure of a seller’s market).” Once the market structure was known, it would be possible to determine the price response and, from there, the effect on the economy and on society as a whole.
Mason’s ideas quickly generated a great amount of empirical search and were soon referred to as the Structure Conduct-Performance paradigm. The market was seen as essentially identical to an industry. Market structure was usually understood to mean such things as barriers to entry and concentration of sellers; “market conduct” meant policies aimed at rivals and price-setting policies; and market performance referred to more evaluative political questions.
Basic conditions (technology, business attitudes, price elasticity) – market structure (number of buyers and sellers, product differentiation, vertical integration) – public policy (taxes and subsidies, regulation, antitrust) – conduct (pricing behavior, product strategy, research and innovation) – performance (progress, full employment, equity).