Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Discount or incentive
Reexamination Certificate
2000-02-18
2003-06-10
Hafiz, Tariq R. (Department: 3623)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Discount or incentive
C705S03600T, C705S001100
Reexamination Certificate
active
06578009
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a marketing strategy support system for supporting the determination of strategy for business service with regard to one's own company's product sold through a number of shops and the determination of a budget amount for each shop and the like. The present invention also relates to a program storage device for storing a program and a computer data signal embodied in a carrier wave, which enable a computer to function as such a marketing strategy support system.
2. Description of the Related Art
An analysis referred to as product portfolio management (in this specification, referred to as PPM) or business customer portfolio analysis with regard to each business customer, is carried out as a part of traditional marketing strategy.
Here, the “business customer” in the present application implies a retail store or shop, a retail trader or dealer, a business connection, a company or juridical person for those and the like, who typically retail, sell, trade or deal with products for the own company (who is to carry out this PPM or business customer portfolio analysis) to thereby retail or sell the products to individual purchasers or end users.
According to this PPM or business customer portfolio analysis, for example, at first, the business customers are ranked by using the manner of ABC analysis, in manual business customer analysis which does not use a personal computer and the like. For example, the most important business customer is ranked as an A rank, an ordinary business customer is ranked as a B rank, and an unimportant business customer is ranked as a C rank. Accordingly, the marketing strategy is carried out in which the business power is distributed depending on such a rank. However, there are objective information and subjective information in the rank. Thus, its reliability is poor, and a personal difference resulting from the ranker is large, which may lead to only a roughly analyzed result.
In recent years, a technique of drawing a business customer portfolio diagram or a scatter diagram has been developed as a technique for business customer analysis using a computer. For example, there is a technique of plotting “the gross sales of each business customer” and “the share of one's own company” as a point having an X-coordinate and a y-coordinate, on a two-dimensional scatter diagram such that the gross sales of the respective business customers are on a Y (vertical) axis and the shares of one's own company in the respective business customers are on an X (horizontal) axis. Actually, as for the X-coordinate, as a target share of one's own company X=0, if the share is greater than the target, it is plotted as a positive value. If the share is less than the target, it is plotted as a negative value. As for the Y-coordinate, as the average gross sales Y=0, if the sale is greater than the average, it is plotted as a positive value. If it is less than the average, it is plotted as a negative value. If the thus-obtained scatter diagram is analyzed or evaluated, great importance is attached to which quadrant the point (business customer) plotted on the scatter diagram is located at.
Especially in a displaying method of drawing this type of scatter diagram by using the computer and the like, a graph tool function, such as a spreadsheet software available from the market or the like, is used to draw a number of graphs similar to each other to then analyze while considering them, in many cases. Information data gathered by a salesman or a head office are collectively processed when the process is necessary. The data are updated or changed on the spreadsheet type worksheet if the gathered information data are graphed by changing its extraction condition.
On the other hand, as a part of traditional marketing strategy, a sales target in a next year (hereafter, referred to as a master budget) is determined for each year or each settlement term, and also a budget for each business customer is determined (namely, target sales of one's own company product in each business customer). For the sake of the determinations, the following manner is typically used in recent years. That is, a computer, an electronic calculating device or the like is used to firstly distribute an entire master budget to each department by using market data and previous achievements data. Then, the breakdown is applied to each department similarly. Actually, for example, the budget calculation in which a database software and a spreadsheet software available from the market are used is carried out by each department in a distribution pattern, such as from a head office to a branch, from a branch to a sub-branch, from a sub-branch to a person in charge and from a person in charge to a business customer. Finally, a budget amount for each business customer is determined by the person in charge for the business customer.
However, according to the conventional technique using the above mentioned scatter diagram, the X-coordinate (namely, the gross sales of each business customer and the like) is calculated from a calculation result of a predetermined item group in order to calculate the X-coordinate. Independently of this calculation, the Y-coordinate (namely, the share of one's own company for each business customer and the like) is calculated from a calculation result of a predetermined item group in order to calculate the Y-coordinate. That is, the Y-coordinate and the X-coordinate are mutually determined such that the numerals, such as their maximum values, their minimum values, dispersions and the like, have no evident relations or no evident linkages between them. For this reason, there is no index on the scatter diagram which quantitatively indicates to what degree the achievements corresponding to the target have been attained, in accordance with a position of each point plotted on the X-Y coordinates as a result. That is, even if viewing the scatter diagram, there is no index which objectively or quantitatively indicates what degree of business power enables the target to be attained for each business customer corresponding to each point. This results in a problem that such quantitative judgement involving the marketing strategy (for example, what degree of increase or decrease of business power is desirable for attaining the target, with a current condition as a standard) must be made relying on the salesman's experience and intuition.
Also, according to the conventional technique using the above mentioned scatter diagram, the display format is limited to a range of the graph tool function such as the spreadsheet software or the like. Thus, this results in a problem that its display content cannot be analyzed while the extraction condition and the set condition are changed on the same picture plane and then the scatter diagram is updated. Moreover, the information data gathered by the salesman and the head office are collectively processed when the process is necessary. Thus, a real time process cannot be carried out. For this reason, it is difficult to optionally provide the information or data with regard to markets or business customers, and it is impossible to provide a timely picture plane. Hence, this also results in a problem that it is difficult or impossible to plan the marketing strategy while following the sequentially changing product market.
On the other hand, according to the conventional method of determining the budget for each business customer by using the computer and the like, the budget distribution work is carried out by a plurality of departments, and their manners are also different, which may cause the efficiency to be poor and also disable the standardized distribution. Moreover, the evaluation of business largely depends on the attainment of budget, which results in a problem that the budget distribution lacks fairness. Especially, there is a strong tendency that an index when the budget is distributed depends on previous achievements. Thus
Bachner Rebecca M.
Hafiz Tariq R.
Young & Thompson
LandOfFree
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