Question

Your answer should be in the form of an essay. The essay should be well organized, that is, it has an introduction (5 marks), body (90 marks) and conclusion (5 marks). The introduction should introduce the topic.

In the body paragraphs, the following points should be discussed:

1. Name the global brand/organization (MERCEDES) and briefly describe its products and activities. (10 marks)
2. Description of the consumer goods industry and the organization’s (MERCEDES) main competitors (10 marks).
3. What does it mean to be a global organization? Why is your chosen organization (MERCEDES) global? (10 marks)
4. Discuss the main success factors of MERCEDES Company. What is the marketing strategy, competitors and competitive advantage? (10 marks)
5. Discuss the concept of globalization vs. customization and the measures taken by MERCEDES to recognize that offerings and communication should be adapted to local preferences and conditions. Support your answer with solid examples. (20 marks)
6. Discuss the main challenges faced by MERCEDES in brand building such as positioning, communication, environmental change, product life cycle, brand equity, market share, consumer behavior, etc...(20 marks)
7. Discuss MERCEDES’s future plans, expansions and diversification. (10 marks)

Answer 1

Mercedes is a global company that is specialised in making luxury petrol engine and diesel engine cars through manufacturing activities in its plants that are located across the globe. The main value chain activities include procurement of raw material for making car, research and design of the car, scheduling the production process, assignment of tasks to the human resources, conducting production process as per the designed schedule, quality control and testing of the made car and finally launching the car in the market. The consumer goods industry of Mercedes includes the customers that have a passion to own the luxury and premium brands and the one who are characterised as the high class income earners. The main competitors of Mercedes are Audi and BMW who are also passenger car manufacturers of the premium quality. A global organisation is the one whose operation such as manufacturing and selling of the product are conducting in various countries of the world. Mercedes is a global brand as it has various production plant and distribution centres in different countries of the world. The main success factor of Mercedes is their positioning strategy as being the highly valued and premium brand that comes with all of the luxurious features and technology that is upgraded and latest in the market. The competitive advantage of the company is that, even though it is highly premium car, still it is less costlier than its competitors including Audi and BMW.

Instructions for writing an essay:

While writing an essay, you are required to follow the below stated steps:

1. Purpose or Main idea: You should have a central idea on which you want to formulate an essay. The idea is either given to you by your supervisor or otherwise; you may need to come up with the idea on your own. While thinking about the idea; identify what passionate you and select that idea for the essay.

2. After generating an idea for the essay, choose a title for your essay that expresses your primary idea. In order to make sure that your title is the effective one, review your title after you have completed writing of the essay.

3. Write the introduction of the essay. Your introduction should be simple which should express the summery of your idea to your readers.

4. Next is that you should now write the body of information of the essay. The body of your essay is where you develop your story or argument. After completing your research for your generated idea and collection of the data, analyse the data and convert the data into information highlighting the key points of the information. Choose the most relevant information and write each one at the top of a clean page. Now go through the information again and pull out supporting ideas for each of the relevant information.

5. Finally, after writing the body of your essay, you should now write your conclusion of the essay where you should summarize how your key points support your thesis.