Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Dinh Thi Thanh Thuy CURRENT SITUATION AND ACTION TO PLAN FOR ASCENDAS- PROTRADE SINGAPORE TECH PARK ID: 22130076 MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Supervisors: Dr. Tran Ha Minh Quan And Dr. Nguyen Thi Nguyet Que Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park Table of Contents Acknowledgements. 2 Chapter 1: Problem Identification.
3 Company Introduction and Background. 6 Verifying The Existence of The Problem. 8 The Importance of The Problem. 11 Cause and Effect Map.
15 Chapter 2: Alternative Solutions. 18 Establish relationship with strategic partners and retain customers’ relationship. 19 Applying technology to business. 19 Penetrate the market deeply.
21 Chapter 3: Selected Solutions and Implementation Plan. 24 Chapter 4: Supporting Information. 27 Transcript 1: Interview with Sales and Marketing Manager to get the symptoms of the problem. 27 Transcript 2: Interview sales and marketing staff to find obstacles they face up in their sale and marketing activities.
30 Transcript 3: Interview Mr. Han – General Director and Ms. Eriko – Head of Sales and Marketing Department to find out the central problem. 33 Questionnaire 1: Survey to confirm the central problem.
40 Questionnaire 2: Survey to confirm the root cause. 47 Questionnaire 3: Tenants Feedback. 47 Literature Reviews Summary. 53 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park Acknowledgements This study builds on reality of a joint venture Vietnam Singaporean real-estate company which I am working for.
I should therefore begin my acknowledgements to my colleagues and partners who supported and provided useful information so that I can analyze and find out the root cause of company problems to complete this paper. Acknowledgment for permission to use materials and data from Mr. Han, the general director of Ascendas-Protrade Co. It’s my grateful to Ms.
Thuy, sales and marketing manager, who spent her time to exchange information, joined the interview and help me realize problem symptoms, get the potential causes and find company problems. I am also indebted to my supervisors; Dr. Tran Ha Minh Quan and Dr. Nguyen Thi Nguyet Que, for their valuable comments, instructions and advices to help me understand the thesis structure more fully and complete this thesis.
I also express my appreciation to the members of the group and staff of ISB for their friendliness and enthusiastic. My thanks, too, to my family and friends for their motivation and supports. 1|Page LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park Abstract The existence of appropriate marketing strategies in industrial land lease is generally attributed to the successful of deal close and occupancy rate in industrial real estate field. This study is identifying the Ascendas-Protrade Co.’s core problem, finding and prioritizing capacities as well as examining the use of high value added strategies to allow firm get higher performance then enable pushing Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park occupancy rate.
Key members of the company have been selected to respond a questionnaire and their answers have been use as data for analyzing to figure out the company’s problem. From the point of view of experts, Board of Director and managers of the firm, the results of the interview inclines toward strategic marketing and integrated customer solutions. Therefore, they deserve special attention in relation to brand, marketing campaign and image deal with market communication that aims to strengthen the brand, the image and the reputation, to increase the company's awareness and to promote the customer's emotional engagement. In this study, raising solutions reflect various capacities of understanding customers’ needs, product differentiation, and competitive advantage so that such solutions can associate and align to corporate strategies to meet the firm’s challenges and goals in upcoming years.
The study provides practitioner insights into the practices and trends in the use of valuable strategies in industrial land market. In determining appropriate marketing plan for industrial land- lease, many factors need to be weighed as to the influence on a particular subject properly. 2|Page LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park Chapter 1: Problem Identification Company Introduction and Background As an Asia's leading provider of total business space solutions with more than 30 years of experience. Ascendas specializes in master planning, developing, managing and marketing IT parks, industrial & logistics parks, business parks, science parks, hi- specs facilities, office and retail spaces.
Leveraging on its track record and experience, Ascendas has introduced new business space concepts such as integrated communities and solutions which seamlessly combine high-quality business, lifestyle, retail and hospitality spaces to create conducive human-centric work-live-play-learn environments. Ascendas has established a strong regional presence, settle up Ascendas Vietnam Co. in Vietnam and cooperated with a Vietnamese state-own company, Protrade, to invest and develop an industrial park in Southern Vietnam, named Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park (APSTP), primarily serving multi-national companies, leading local companies and research institutions. The project is set within 500 ha and consists of 6 phases in which the area of phase 1 and phase 2 is 150 ha, fully completed infrastructure and launched into market to sell.
It offers a vibrant work-live-play-learn industrial hub that blends high quality business space and reliable solutions with a conducive business lifestyle and provides customers with excellent range of options for industries in electronics, precision engineering, IT, pharmaceutical, food and beverage and general industries. There are plenty of competitors running their businesses in this industry in Vietnam. Some of them are successful and assessed as mature industrial parks such as 3|Page LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park VSIP, Amata, Long Duc, Nhon Trach, Kizuna, etc. while some other parks operated for long time but their positions in the market really matter.
The most appeared failure is low growth rate. APSTP is one of them and is a perfect case to study on this kind of failure. Problem Symptoms According to sales reports and financial statements from the date the project opened for sale (2007 to 2016), it shown that company has spent a lot of money to run marketing campaigns for branding and attract prospects to push sales but it still couldn’t meet break-even point and the project can be sold to another development while it probably made profit in the first 5 years as planned. During 9 years, from 2007 until 2016, the occupancy rate of the first 2 phases of the project is about 36%.
They encountered an issue of pushing land sales though their team is skillful and worked extremely hard and enthusiastic. After interviewing financial controller, sales manager and staff, parameters were given as follows: Sales (ha) Before Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 2014 2014 2014 2014 2015 2015 2015 2015 2016 Project target sale (ha) 73.7 (ha) Table 1: Sales Target and Sales Actual from 2014 to 2016 of the project The actual sale compare with the plan is a big gap. In 2014, project target sale is 56.7 ha while actual sale is 12.5, equivalent to 22% of expected goal. The sales volume 4|Page LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park is very low despite of the team’s effort.
The value of contract is not big, below 3 ha. The project hardly finds a queen bee to attract other supplementary industries to build up a supply chain. Big customers often get aware of APSTP at the last minutes of their final decision. Normally, oversea investors get information of industrial parks in Vietnam through consultants or agents website or meeting and have them help in analysis before going further steps.
Ascendas-Protrade hasn’t built strong and close relationships with agents, consultants as well as advertised the project on their websites. Besides, working with marketing department (Head of Marketing Department, Marketing Manager and Marketers) to get more information, a collection of data was given hereunder: Items Budget (USD) Visual Branding 30,000 Collateral 15,000 Event 20,000 Advertising 30,000 Website 3,000 Digital 10,000 Sponsorship/Exhibition 80,000 Festive Gifts 12,000 Table 2: A&P Budget FY2016 (Provided by Marketing Department) Annually, the marketing department spends USD 200,000 on marketing campaigns for investment promotion activities and hosting. However, the outcome obtained is not satisfactory and the team doesn't have enough qualified leads. According to transcript 1, they stated that the team worked very hard with passion and enthusiasm, applied to many channels to market the products, on an average, there were about 14 prospects came to visit the project each month but the real buyer is just a few.
Asking of 5|Page LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park which channels to approach prospects, the Head of Marketing Department shared that, they signed contracts with International Property Companies (CBRE, Savills, Colliers, etc.) sub-brokers to get more chance to increase leads and customers. However, this channel is very week. Besides, the number of 14 prospects visiting APSTP each month derives from their relationship with associations, the real demand is nearly equal to zero and the name of the project is really not familiar with them. Each year, company set up balance-scored-card to monitor their activities and target.
The prospects they expect to come to their site is 175 per year. They spent a lot of money to host groups of investors from consulates and associations to reach the site visit target but the contracts signed is just 2-3 each year and the land plot sold is not big. Compare with other competitors in the same industry like VSIP, Long Hau, the sales volume of APSTP is much lower and slower. Besides, there isn’t any local investor locates in APSTP.
Although there’s a budget for marketing activities, they don’t get high achievements of sales and awareness, for instance, when a consultant or partner of them take prospects to APSTP, the prospects know Amata, VSIP, ect. but do not know this project. Each year, they tried to find more channels to approach more prospects but they were still caught in a vicious circle. Problem Identification Entering Vietnam market at the end of 2007, one year later, they faced the difficulty of economic recession.
At that time, Ascendas-Protrade was a young company without strong relationships with relative partners, agents and government; they couldn’t 6|Page LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park find their first customers. Moreover, they were lack of knowledge of nation culture and local market to catch up with other strong competitors in industry. Asking more about company marketing activities, a fact is that the firm has budget to do marketing but they break the plan. They have an amount of money for visual branding and advertising but they didn’t use it, they take it to events, exhibition.
This leads to serious consequences; no one knows what APSTP is and what its offerings. Marketing supports a lot for sales. According to Paswan, Blankson, & Guzman (2011), the key marketing objective is to meet prospects’ needs and aspirations; therefore, the firm should have appropriate strategies to enhance products and organization value. For events, exhibitions the company hosted, each year they organized six to ten investment promotions in many countries which the investment rate is high.
However, the result is not as expectation, the team spent a huge amount to obtain only one or two prospects. The direct consequence is waste money low outcome; the indirect consequence is it makes the team frustrated.