Assignment: Peer Assessment: Module 1

Client/Brand Analysis
Task 1
Client Analysis: The Client is Grainger. Submit a write-up to discuss the history of the firm, the
business model, its strategy for growth, its online presence (website traffic trends, social platforms),
and its customers (with numbers, segments, demographics, etc). Your write-up should not exceed 500
words.

Founded in 1927, Grainger is a leading distributor of maintenance, repair and operating (MRO) supplies
and other related products and services for business. Operating in North America, Europe and Asia, the
Grainger’s portfolio includes product categories like motors, safety, power transmission, test
instruments, lab supplies, power tools, outdoor equipment and janitorial supplies. Grainger’s continuous
growth resulted with revenues of $10 billion in 2014 and 1.2 million active users in the USA.

The business model(s) of Grainger is an multichannel and online single channel combination in order to
provide customers with a range of options for finding and purchasing products, utilizing sales
representatives, contact centers, direct marketing materials, catalogs and e-commerce. Grainger's
centralized business support functions provide coordination and guidance in the areas of accounting and
finance, business development, communications and investor relations, compensation and benefits,
information systems, health and safety, global supply chain functions, human resources, risk
management, internal audit, legal, real estate, security, tax and treasury.

Grainger’s strategy for growth is in the three segments of customers and the potential of the market
growth. Therefore, from a customer’s sales point of view, the highest potential for growth Grainer’s has
in its large scale customers, followed by the small and medium customers. The strategic opportunity for
growth is based on customization of the product line, competitive and relevant pricing, effective seller
coverage, onsite inventory management, embedded e-commerce solutions and technical support
especially for the large scale customers. Another growth opportunity is the single online channel with
expectations of $468 millions.

Having the online channel as a strategic opportunity, makes Grainger’s online presence well established
too. First, Grainger has a reseller partnership with online retailers like Zoro (in Germany, US and Canada,
Cromwell and MontaRO with who grows the online market share. Second, Grainer’s social media
presence is on a good level, being active on 5 social networks as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn
and G+, sharing high quality content on a regular basis. Grainger also has a well designed and optimized
website and a whole unit for digital marketing. That means active search and display advertising, SEO
and SEM, blogging and E-mail marketing. Moreover, Grainger is following the latest trends when it
comes to online presence. They have a fully mobile optimized website and mobile applications available
for the Android and iOS operating systems.
As for the Grainger’s customers, they represent a broad collection of industries including healthcare,
manufacturing, government and hospitality. They place orders over the phone,at local branches, online
and using mobile devices. However, they are distinguished in three main categories, large, medium and
small. Together they drive sales of $130 billion that makes around 5-6% of the Grainger’s market share.
The two main segments for targeting are, existing and non-existing users. Apart from North American
customers in USA and Canada, also serves customers from its other international subsidiaries in Latin
America, Europe, Africa, Middle East and Australia.

file:///C:/Users/Misko/Downloads/Snapshot2015.pdf

http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/76/76754/reports/GRFB1_glance.pdf

file:///C:/Users/Misko/Downloads/November%2019%20Standard%20Preso.pdf

http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyProfile#qVI2sffKSUwkjjME.99

Task 2
Brand Analysis: The Brand is Bosch, and the power tools category is the only focus. Submit an analysis
of the brand, with specific focus on the category of power tools. This will inform your marketing and
content strategy. The analysis should include the following key points, and your write-up should not
exceed 750 words.

 Customers: Who is the primary/secondary audience and what are their needs? Are there any
trends you can report? Existing perceptions of the brand and specifically the power tools from
Bosch would be useful. Keep in mind that Bosch power tools are available across many
channels, but Grainger(your client) is focused at middle to large businesses. You need to focus
on identifying those customers (or personas) who will buy Bosch products from Grainger.
 The brand and its competitors: Brand position with respect to competitors, brand personality,
and SWOT analysis of the brand

The primary audience for Bosch Power Tools are (online) wholesale retailers. The reason for having the
wholesale retailers as a primary target is because they are the most important part of the supply chain.
They drive the biggest amount of sales because they operate with large number of subsidiaries and
order large quantities of products. Thus they are one of the key accounts. Grainger is such an example.

On the other hand, the secondary audience to which Grainger is mostly interested in is the actual end
users who drive the demand. Therefore, Bosch Power Tools identifies 5 segments for the portfolio of
products: Trade and Industry, Do-it-yourselfers, Garden Tools, Accessories for Professional Power Tools
and Bosch Mini.

As analyzed in the previous task, Grainger locates the highest in large to medium sized businesses and
according to the trade segmentation of Bosch Power Tools. Thus, several industries can be identified:
Building Trade, Electricians, Gardeners and Landscapers, Metal Construction, Plumbers and Heating
Engineers, and Joiners and Carpenters. Of course there are the individuals that buy some of these
products for household purposes.
Having identified the primary and the secondary audience it is easier to make the persona profile who
will buy from Grainger. Although the product sub-categories allow having multiple personas, there are
three broadly identified persona profiles:

Associate from the trade and industry: Purchasing associate that is responsible to enable the service
providers with as best technology as possible ie. power tools. In the same time he/she is responsible to
do that in an affordable and timely manner. He/she is tech savvy, uses the Internet on a regular basis, on
desktop and mobile as well, to get news feed about the latest trends in the industry.

Single business owner and service provider: Provides household services as a professional orientation.
For the purposes of the business he/she doesn’t own many power tools, but only the ones for the
service he/she is specialized for. He/she buys new equipment once in several years, hence spare parts or
accessories more often. Usually knows where to look for new models, and uses the Internet for that.
However, he/she has difficulty to do an extensive research and to find a reliable vendor.

Household individual: The household individual owns several power tools for basic household purposes.
He/she doesn’t have so much skills and knowledge for this work and is interested to get the household
job done in an effective and timely manner. Doesn’t pay attention to the latest technology trends
because it doesn’t make significant difference for his/hers purposes. Usually buys when renewal is
required and very often recalls on the brand that already has or buys on a sales promotion or special
deals. He/she does the research on the internet and is familiar with online buying. Gets newsfeed from
the social media, blogs and forums, both on desktop and mobile.

http://www.bosch-pt.com/za/en/company/the-bosch-power-tools-division/the-bosch-power-tools-
division.html

http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/casestudies/2014/09/social_crm_case_study_how_bosch_lear
ned_to_target_select_trades_on_facebook.php

Task 2
The brand and its competitors: Brand position with respect to competitors, brand personality, and
SWOT analysis of the brand

Bosch has a long established reputation for quality and innovation but is keen to appeal and identify
with younger tradespeople. The Power Tools Division of the Bosch Group, compared to its competitors,
positions itself as the world market leader for power tools and power tool accessories. The core success
factors are the brand personality and their innovative strength and pace of innovation. As for the brand
personality, as a manufacturing pioneer with more than a century’s worth of experience, Bosch name
has become synonymous with engineering excellence. The Robert Bosch Tool Corporation is a world
leader in the design, manufacture and sale of power tools, rotary and oscillating tools, accessories, laser
and optical leveling and range finding tools, and garden and watering equipment.
However, the trends and market analysis show that the professional power tools market has become
very competitive, with buyers becoming more price sensitive and established market leaders coming
under pressure from new brands.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

S1: World market leader for power tools and power tool accessories
S2: Long and established reputation for quality and innovation.

Weaknesses

W1: Product categories that require more effort to be sold online

W1: Digital marketing is given less importance

Opportunities

O1: More than 100 new power tools onto the market launched every year.
O2: Customer purchasing behavior shifting

Threads

T1: The professional power tools market has become very competitive, with buyers becoming more
price sensitive
T2: Pressure from the entrance of the new brands in the market

See more at: http://www.clearb2b.com/ourwork/Bosch-Professional-Power-

Tools#sthash.JQlreyQ9.dpuf
Assignment: Peer Assessment: Module 2
Consumer Decision Journey
Task 2
 Identify and list the stage(s) in the Consumer Decision Journey that should be the focus for the
client for the scenarios described in the Problem Statement.
 What are the specific concerns that customers have at the stages you have listed as a response to
the previous question?
 What analysis can the firm perform to seek insights at the identified stages that will address the
above concerns?

Scenario 1:

Stage: In the first scenario we have audiences that visit Boshtools.com, search for a particular power
tool, but do not proceed to visiting Grainger.com. So according to the previous lectures and the
customer decision journey, the stage where the consumer is in the decision making process, is the Initial
consideration set.

Concern: In this scenario the only concern the customer might have is if he is going to find the needed
information about the power tool that he has seen on some advert. However, after visiting the
Boschtool.com, the customer is not enough motivated to make additional approach by going one step
further to Grainger.com

Insights: In order to seek insights in the stage of initial consideration set, a great insight that the firm can
perform is competitive intelligence analysis.

Scenario 2:

Stage: In the second scenario we have a situation where the customer initially visits Boshtools.com to
look for a power tool and then logs in to Grainger.com to the power tools category. This is the stage of
moment of purchase or so called the first moment of truth, when the customer has already done all the
evaluation and arrived at the product.

Concern: The concern that the customer has in the second scenario in the moment of purchase stage is
to be sure that he will make the best choice from the whole offer of similar products. That is the only
reason why the customer spends his time doing that.

Insights: In the second scenario where the customer is in the moment of purchase stage, the firm can
perform outcomes analysis to identify the factors that led to that moment and what are the factors that
caused the customer to go elsewhere.
Scenario 3:

Stage: Although the customer in the third scenario looks for a power tool on Boschtools.com and logs in
to Grainger.com, he visits a different category. Therefore, in this situation can be identified two different
aspects for discussing the reason of that and two possible stages in the CDJ where the customer is. At
the moment the customer logs in to Grainger.com starts the active evaluation because the reason for
logging in is to learn more about the product.

Concern: In this scenario although the customer is in the active evaluation stage he is still not sure if he
is in the right place for looking for the power tool he wants and for that reason switches to another
category. So, the uncertainty when doing the active evaluation and revision of the evaluation so far that
puts him one step back, appears to be the customer’s concern in this scenario.

Insights: The same analysis from the first and the second scenario may apply to the third one, because
two stages of CDJ can be identified and therefore the insights can be performed through
experimentation and testing.

Task 3
Identify a business objective for each of the scenarios in the Problem Statement based on the analysis
in the previous task.

Given the objectives, determine the key questions, the type of data needed, and the sources for those
data. You may list sources for which you may not have full access to data, besides free/open
resources.

Scenario 1:

Business Objectives Key Question Data Source(s)

Who is visiting these websites? Demographic data about the
visitors > Alexa
How did customers find out Websites that lead to our
about the brand? websites > Google
Analytics/Alexa
Build Awareness
What is the social media Popularity on social media >
interest? Facebook, Twitter, G+
How visitors come to website Keywords and queries that send
from organic search? traffic to this site > Google
Trends/Alexa
Scenario 2:

Business Objectives Key Question Data Source(s)

How else can the customer be
Mobile readiness > Nibbler
reached digitally?
What campaigns drive more Orders by different targeting
Improve Sales Process sales? tactics > Google Adwords
Conversion rates of campaigns
Which marketing programs
with different targeting tactics >
brought visitors to the website?
Google AdWords

Scenario 3:

Business Objectives Key Question Data Source(s)

What else is the customer Other visited product pages >
searching for on Grainger.com? Alexa/Google Analytics
What websites are visited before List of websites that are visited
Influence consideration Grainger.com and before Grainger.com and
Boschtools.com? Boschtools.com> Alexa
How engaged are the visitors on Bounce rate, Daily page views,
the website? Daily time on site > Alexa