Part 1

One of the most effective marketing strategies could be the advertisements and promotions of newspapers, magazines and the internet to serve a huge customer base and ensure enhancing the visibility of the organisation within the Australian market segments. The displays would also be visible to the traffic base to ensure that the objectives of marketing are achieved. The marketing strategy has helped to achieve the objectives through increase in repeat customers by 7 percent, reduce the costs of customer acquisition every year and furthermore maintain positive and steady growth every month consistently. The marketing strategy implemented by Amicus Hair and Beauty has been effective for accomplishing the financial goals and objectives too such as increase in sales of retail products, enhancement in profit margin along with better profitability ratio experienced every year (amicus-h-b.com 2017).

Marketing strategy 

The main goal or objective of the Hair & Beauty Industry Association in Australia is to position its services and products delivered as the premium, full services within the areas of Australia and ensure that awareness among the customers is created according the services delivered by the organisation. This can develop the customer base as well as develop a sense of loyalty and trust among customers, thereby influencing their buying behavior too with ease and effectiveness. The social media strategy can serve as an effective marketing strategy to identify the audiences with the help of social media as well as promote the services of the beauty salon through social media platforms with ease and effectiveness (Andrews and Shimp 2017). The social media marketing strategy can also make it easy for Amicus to optimize the social media profiles and encourage engagement of customers to drive the sales and profit generation.

Often it is seen that the buying behaviors of consumers are dependent upon the marketing strategy that has been implemented by the organisation within the beauty and salon industry. The marketing of products and services can not only help in making people aware of the products and services offered but also influences their buying behaviors. The marketing strategies are implemented to target specific market segments and increase the opportunities for enhancing the sales and gain competitive advantage in business too (Armstrong et al. 2015).

The focus group always helps in deriving robust outcomes that can help in clarifying certain major things related to the research topic. The focus group can allow for deriving good amounts of information related to the feelings of individuals, their opinions and perceptions regarding the kinds of services delivered by the organisation, i.e., Amicus Hair and Beauty in Australia. The focus group interviews are conducted with involvement of the service users of the organisation regarding their beliefs, attitudes and behaviors towards a particular product, service and even the concepts, ideas and packaging components used by the organisation to make its marketing strategy successful and noteworthy (Charts 2016).

Influences on consumer behavior to target marketing strategies

The minimum cost of treatment at Amicus hair and beauty is $99 and it increases with the complexity of services along with other benefits offered to the customers. The treatments include hair cut and style, nails, coloring of hair, spray tan, etc. The treatments also include botanical treatment, damage dry remedy and color seal. One of the major treatment procedure or service at Amicus hair and beauty salon is the botanical treatment, which helps in using the most natural ayurvedic and botanical treatment procedures for enhancing the fashion and beauty of service users. It costs around $40 while the prices of availing the treatments of color seal and damage remedy are $20 and $30 respectively (Eagleman 2013).  The marketing strategy also includes communicating with the service users with the use of email and telephonic conversations for conducting survey of clients and identifies options that demographics go for. The appointments are done at first and the service offered to the service users will take around 1.5 to 2 hours approximately.

The two most effective networking opportunities could be the conferences and events, management of business contacts and industry associations. The purpose of joining the network meetings is to generate more referrals and increased the business’ local and global reach. The referrals can be turned into clients who will enhance the customer base for the company and generate more sales revenue too (Fill and Turnbull 2016).

My personal contribution was to present the current condition of the business and how well has it fared in terms of the other competitors within the fashion and beauty industry. I also provided information to everyone regarding the satisfaction of customers and even positive messages related to the company.

 I obtained a lot of skills, knowledge and information, which could help me to make necessary improvements to the organisation and deliver better quality services, furthermore increase the customer base and influence their buying behavior too (Jefkins 2012).  

The advantages of attending these kinds of meetings include more connections with people, gain advice from everyone, create a positive influence, develop good brand image and reputation, increase self-confidence and create long lasting friendship with the referrals who can be the customers afterwards.

I would like to express my positive feelings about how the opinions and responses shared by others have helped me to improve the efficiency of services of Amicus Hair and beauty and create a string bonding with them as well (Wilson et al. 2012).

Outcomes of focus group

Networking enhances the ability to communicate with various stakeholders, develop good relationships with the referrals, and furthermore transform them into service users. The business networking can allow for sharing if ideas, opinions and knowledge and check out things from a different perspective and even prevent the negative outcomes that may be experienced in the future. Networking within the business environment can create newer scopes and opportunities and even provide partnerships for the particular product or service.  When a person knows that his needs match the business requirements, a referral can be obtained which will not only strengthen the relationship between stakeholders but will also share necessary business details to improve the current scenario of business (Andrews and Shimp 2017). The networking activities managed within the business environment can help to increase the self confidence as well as develop brand reputation and positive image, thereby creating enough scopes for the business to flourish and generate more profit.

There could be various situations when there might be personality clash among the team members and this would definitely hinder the successful accomplishment of business goals and objectives and decrease the production level of the organisation too. As a manger, I would like to listen to the matter that had been the cause of conflicts at first. To reduce chances of personality conflicts, it is important to be kind and remain understanding, which can not only create a calm situation but will also create good relationships among the team members. Professionalism is needed to be maintained without taking any things personally to promote effective communication and maintain peace and harmony within the organisational workplace (Armstrong et al. 2015). Setting up ground rules is essential for ensuring that a good culture is maintained within the workplace and compromising is done between the team members. As a manager, I would like to establish various laws, rules and regulations that are needed to be maintained by employees within the organisation to resolve conflicts and misunderstandings as well.

The networks within a business environment are the connections that are established between the resources that manages interaction in both formal and informal manner. The most important benefit of formal network is that it creates shared value between various individuals for individual benefits and due to the sharing of information and knowledge, it becomes easy for developing collective intelligence and develop information that can valuable for the successful accomplishment of business goals and objectives. Due to shared values and opinions, team members can coordinate and work as a team to bring positive results for the organisation.  It is though costly and need lots of financial investments (Charts 2016). The informal networks allow team members to move in any direction and skip supervision of authority to develop a socially structured presence. Due to lack of supervision, the team members often might commit mistakes that could deteriorate the business efficiency and cerate negative impact on the business outcomes as well.

Assessment 2

Though there are no such proper policies and procedures of developing workplace relationships within BD Corp, the assertive communication is one of the major styles of communication that can enhance the negotiation skills and encourage the members of the team to derive positive outcomes while managing the networks in an effective manner. The negotiation skills can allow the two staff members to communicate with each other and discuss the agreement that can be accepted by both of them (Fill and Turnbull 2016). It helps the team members to move in the right direction, interact with each other to analyze the issues and problems, prepare for a meeting to understand the trade activities, goals and objectives that are needed to be achieved and furthermore actively listen to each other’s opinions while managing a network.  

The three most important networking activities that the manager is involved within BD Corp are operational activity, personal activity and strategic activity. The operational networking activities are managed by the manager to maintain the abilities of team members to manage business functions, develop contacts internally based on the present demands of the organisation, develop strong bonding with team members within the workplace and enhance the network base. The personal networking activity helps in personal and professional development and provides the referrals to various important contacts and information and reach out for the contacts who have the abilities to make referrals (Jefkins 2012). The last networking activity managed by the manager is the strategic networking, which predicts the future priorities and gains the support of stakeholders to make a proper decision in business. The contacts are both internal and external and based on strategic objectives, the links with referrals and business partners are created to ensure successful networking and attract more customers towards the company (Wilson et al. 2012).

The providing of feedbacks to the employees can lift up their spirits and morale and create enough scopes for them to progress in their professional career with ease and effectiveness. This can also help in reducing the chances of personality conflicts and furthermore identify the areas that lacked certain aspects and finally improve those areas to bring enhanced organisational efficiency. Within BD Corp, as a manager, I would recommend providing the employees with feedback forms to improve and maintain the quality of performances and furthermore allow them to understand their areas of weaknesses that must be resolved as soon as possible. Obtaining feedbacks can also help in managing communication with others and make effective decisions in business (Andrews and Shimp 2017).  

Purpose of networking within a business environment

The implementation of communication and consultation policies within BD Corp can help to make proper decisions from the business perspective, create a more productive workforce, ensure more informed decision making, attract as well as retain the existing skilled and knowledgeable workers, minimize the employee turnover ratio and reduce the employee claims against the employer effectively. The Fair Work Act policy would need that consultation provisions had been set out within the organisational agreements and it would be essential for consulting with the employees and approve the agreements. The consultation policies within the organisation would be beneficial as well for maintaining health and safety at workplace, cerate flexible working arrangements and make necessary changes or improvements to enhance the production level and quality of workforce contribution (Armstrong et al. 2015). There are few other advantages as well such as the discussion about certain issues, which is possible through regular staff meetings and employee communications. This would further allow for monitoring the performances of team members within the organisation and obtain training reviews based on which their skills, knowledge and expertise level are dependent upon. Consultation policies and procedures could be beneficial for encouraging the feedbacks of employees on business as well as administrative decisions.

Conflict management action plan, as the name suggests, is an effective planning technique for resolving the conflicts and ensure that a good culture and workplace harmony is maintained at BD Corp. The various things that are needed to be included while developing the conflict management action plan are cross functional team development, assessment of present situation, identification of areas of improvement, development of actions and provide information about that to decision making individuals, implementation of improvements and lastly, evaluating the success of the conflict management intervention techniques. To form a proper conflict management action plan, it is necessary to establish ground rules and create a resolution framework (Charts 2016). Communication, compromise and respect are the important aspects of dealing with the conflicts within workplace along with shared vision and values. Communication can help in discussing about the conflicts and find relevant ways of resolving those with ease and effectiveness. The involvement of manager or leader of the team is essential for providing supervision, clarify any misconceptions and furthermore make the employees understand about how a negative impact may be created on business due to the emergence of conflicts. The moderator maintains a good corporate culture and manages the workflow to check the overall issues and develop solution to resolve those (Eagleman 2013).

Providing advice or direction to a staff member when he has a personality clash with another worker of the organisation

From the case study, it could be understood that BD Corp had no such policy or procedure for focus on the development of work relationships. The policies and procedures are implemented for creating a positive impact on the production, satisfaction of customers and finance. The CEO thinks that everything is alright and there is no need to implement any further policies and procedures to manage team efficiency. During the next 6 months, BD Corp may face extraordinary growth with the emergence of new clients. As I have been appointed as the new manager of the organisation, it is my responsibility to undertake various processes for managing the development and implementation of new policies and procedures efficiently. At first, a training and development program should be established by involving all the staff members and after the completion of the training, their opinions and responses should be collected as well (Fill and Turnbull 2016). A particular segment must be incorporated regarding the policies and procedures and how could those be accessible to them within the induction and orientation programs. Posters and process charts should be created as well for making people know about the policies and procedures and abide by the rules, regulations and standards set by the company. The policies must be promoted in internal newsletter and team meetings so that the employees could understand the benefits of implementing those within the workplace. The staffs and volunteers must also understand the purpose of implementing the policies and procedures, which would let them follow those and create a safe and healthy working environment (Jefkins 2012).

Five major points that are included while developing the policies are identifying the needs and requirements, identifying the individual who will take the major responsibility, collect information and data, draft a policy, consult with the most important stakeholders such as management committee members of BD Corp, supporters, staffs and volunteers and finally approve the policy (Wilson et al. 2012).

The Anti-discrimination Act 1991 outlines the various areas within the workplace where discrimination can be prevented at BD Corp in Australia. Based on this legislation, employers of the organisation provide equal opportunities of employment to individuals and treat them based on merits at the various levels of employment. This act could reduce issues like age discrimination, gender issues and even discrimination based on sex, religion, ethnicity, creed and color (Andrews and Shimp 2017).

The Equal Employment Opportunity legislation allows for enforcing various federal laws, rules and regulations to prevent any sort of discrimination and provide equal opportunities to each and every individuals within the workplace, thereby creating a workplace with good corporate culture that is free from any discrimination.

Based on the case study, the opinions of supervisor and team member differs and this has created conflicts within the workplace. The manager or leader’s role is to take action at the right time otherwise there may be cases when the outcomes tend to remain negative and this can make the leader regret for the cause of such conflicts. Rather than showing some aggressive behavior, it is important to guide the staff member in the right direction and make him understand where he may have been wrong (Armstrong et al. 2015). Knowing the boundaries is important along with respecting the differences in opinions of the team members. This can help to develop a more generous and culturally diverse workforce and influence the performances of staff members too. Praising the performance of workers and providing them with both monetary and non-monetary rewards can encourage the team members to resolve conflicts and perform to their potential too (Charts 2016).

Conclusion

The topic focused on the various concepts of marketing communication considering the business organisation Amicus Hair and Beauty in Australia. The outcomes of focus group are positive as the members of the focus group believe that the services provided by the company have fulfilled the quality standards of the organisation and fulfilled their needs and requirements too effectively. To appeal the focus groups, it is recommended to provide them proper assistance and even keep them aware of the new products and services delivered by the organisation within the beauty therapy industry. The ways of managing communication and management of networks within the organisation BD Corp had been illustrated in this report for deriving a proper conclusion.

References

amicus-h-b.com, (2017). [online] Available at: https://www.amicus-h-b.com [Accessed 8 Sep. 2017].

Andrews, J.C. and Shimp, T.A., 2017. Advertising, promotion, and other aspects of integrated marketing communications. Nelson Education.

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.

Charts, O., 2016. Marketing and Communications.

Eagleman, A.N., 2013. Acceptance, motivations, and usage of social media as a marketing communications tool amongst employees of sport national governing bodies. Sport Management Review, 16(4), pp.488-497.

Fill, C. and Turnbull, S.L., 2016. Marketing communications: brands, experiences and participation.

Jefkins, F., 2012. Modern marketing communications. Springer Science & Business Media.

Wilson, A., Zeithaml, V.A., Bitner, M.J. and Gremler, D.D., 2012. Services marketing: Integrating customer focus across the firm. McGraw Hill.