Communicating in Health and Social Care Organisations

Introduction

Communication is a crucial component both for an organization and our everyday life. It is a demonstration through which individuals exchange data with one then onto the next and one place to another. communication procedure could be possible through verbal, talked, composed, non-verbal, for example, utilizing sign, non-verbal communication, motions thus on and visualization such graphs and charts (Fielding, 2006). The most imperative matter of communication is that it must be justifiable to others. In health and social care understanding needs of service, the receiver is very important. If the needs of individuals cannot communicate properly, they are deprived of proper service. So, it is very important for healthcare staffs understanding the ways of communication with service receiver. In other words, removing communication barriers will facilitate better communication with individuals in health and social care service. This report will discuss various theories of communication-related to health and social care contexts and mention inappropriate methods in interpersonal communication in health and social care.  And, describe the appropriate process of communication to meet individual specific needs. In addition, this report will briefly describe the ways that communication process is influenced by values and cultural factors. Moreover, this report will analyze the benefits of using ICT in health and social care with various stakeholders.

                                      

Task One: Demonstration the skills of communication are used and various factors of communication process in health and social care

It is not possible to provide good service to individual, if health and social care staffs are not aware about communication skills and process of communication with individuals. And, there has arisen conflict between individual and health and social care specialist when inappropriate communication processes are used. This section will discuss about communication skills and process of communication in health and social care.

1 (a) Various theories of communication to health and social care contexts

Communication gaps between team members will affect negatively in providing service to the individuals. Moreover, communication gaps between healthcare staffs and service users also deprive service users from getting good services. As a result, there has conflict arise among the parties which hampers in health and social care service. Health and social care staffs should follow humanistic approach when serving a client. Wagner (2014) mentioned that health care staffs should remember that each client possesses unique problems and they require psychological treatment for curing. Humanistic communication approach is psychologically motivated the audiences and collect respect from the audience. Working with a team often conflict arises between colleagues. In addition, often staffs are not cooperating properly with the client. As a result, proper service cannot possible to client and team performance will decrease. This conflict is arising when the perception of others does not match. Moreover, individual outlook to other people also influences in communication. Many people humiliate other because they feel fun by humiliating others. Many people undermine intentionally other person because of jealousy or enmity. This approach is taken place when individual has psychological problems because it is not normal that a person humiliate others. From overcoming this negative approach humanistic theory of communication works better.

John was criticized bone of his colleague and his team members often humiliate health and social care service user by calling them in derogatory names. This approach is not acceptable from health and social care staffs. Disable people come health and social care organization for treatment from curing the problems. So, the client always expects better behavior from health care specialist. John can apply the humanistic theory of communication to pursue his colleagues and the local community to increase a more positive behavior to people with learning disabilities. Pursuing colleagues is always challenging if he/she become someone. To get respect from that colleague's John should check the background of the colleague and need to find out why the person humiliating him. John should approach politely with the colleague though he behaves badly. This positive behaviour of John will impact psychologically on that person. If John reacts negatively the person will continue non-cooperation with John. So, John should have patience and communicate with the colleagues with a smile. With the passage of time psychologically he/she become weak and develop positive behaviour with John and clients of health and social care service.

Many people dislike disable people and neglect them. This approach is bad because any well-fitted people become disable any time through accident or illness. John should explain to the community that disables people are the part of society and they are our father, brother or son. So, we should treat them as a member of our family. Disable people does not need compassion rather they need cooperation. This humanistic communication practice will help John to resolve problems.

1 (b) Communication process influenced by values and cultural factors in health and social care context

The person-centered communication process is very effective in health and social care service. According to Fisher (2005) person-centered communication approach is communicating with individual’s considering personal wants, needs, goals, and desires so that individual become a central part of communication process. For health and social care employees, this person-centered communication approach helps both clients and health specialist in communication. There have different frameworks that are applied in person-centered communication. it is very important to listen to the opinion of client s carefully. When a client expresses his/her opinion then health care specialist can understand the reality of the clients. In addition, the client will feel comfort and satisfaction when health care specialist carefully listens to individual’s opinion. There have some advantages of listening techniques such as more information about clients can be possible to know and clients feel relax mentally by expressing his/her problems. It will help client psychologically because they are feeling inferiority for their disabilities.

Healthcare specialist should show empathy to the client and never humiliate them. Clients are coming health care specialist with hope for better service. They are not able to live freely like a capable person. This issue gives them pain mentally. Reid (2013) mentioned that client feels more mental strength and satisfaction when any person shows empathy towards them. It is important to get respect from the client because advice of healthcare specialist will be abided by the client.

Body language also helps to communicate with clients in the person-centered communication process. Adams (2007) argued that health care specialist should carefully use body language because service taker follows the body expression and try to reach a decision himself. Healthcare specialist never shows bad facial expression and body language that gives a negative message to the client which hurt the client.

Individual’s age, values, cultural belief, social culture, education levels influences in communication with others (Robb, 2004). People do not come in same background and culture. In the UK, there have various religion, race and countries people. The belief, cultures are not same of all. As a result, this influences in communication with others. Similarly, clients and health care specialist communication also influenced by these factors. To serving young disabilities, age, education of health care specialist helps for example; the age of John is 21 years and higher educated. Young disable learners can easily share information with John without feeling shy that will not be with adult health care specialist.

1 (c) Reviewing inappropriate interpersonal communication, analysing effectiveness of organizational system, policies and suggestions ways of improving communication 

Communicating with other is always challenging because there are many barriers such interpersonal, organizational, team effects in proper communication. Communicating with team members are very critical because all members are not holding same culture, belief or outlook towards a thing. So, conflict among team members and client is an inevitable scenario. Root (2015) has described some barriers in team communication such as:

Ø  Ego:  Many employees in team contain a high level of ego that’s why they undermine others. This ego problem creates barriers in teamwork.

Ø  Linguistic barrier: When different countries people work within team often it has seen linguistic problems affects in the communication process.

Ø  Poor role of team leader: The poor role of team leader also negatively affects team communication. If team leader neglects solving conflicting issues affects team communication.

Ø  Lack of respect: If team members do not respect each other then naturally team communication hampers.

Zaineb (2014) has explained some barriers that affect a carer-client relationship. These are as follows:

Ø  Neglect: Many healthcare assistant neglects lower class people and shows an unwillingness to communicate and giving proper healthcare advice.

Ø  Language barrier: Language barriers creates a problem in transferring information properly from both side. The client also failed to share his/her problem and health care consultant also failed to advise properly.

Ø  Gender barrier: Female client often feeling shy to communicate with male health care consultant and vice versa.

Ø  Cultural barrier: Different ethnic people often avoid consulting with other ethnic health care specialist. This cultural barrier effects in the communication process.

There are many strategies that can be adopted by line manager to remove communication barriers and promote good practices within the team members. Pujari (2013) suggested some strategies for overcoming communication barriers.

Ø  Develop interpersonal communication: The line manager should carefully analyze the relationship among employees. He/she should individually sit down with both employees those do not cooperate each other. Line manager should sincerely listen to the speech of both employees. It is to be noted that, line manager should not state that he/she is observing the opinion of employees. Then line manager makes a small sub-team and select those conflicting employees for the team member and assigned them for a specific task for doing. When conflicting individuals work each other there will create an interpersonal relationship that removes the barriers to communication and the conflicting situation will resolve.

Ø  Motivating staffs: Motivation is an important to increase the enthusiasm of staffs. Line manager can motivate staffs those have lack of knowledge in English and insist them to learn English and practice the language within the groups. Line manager should sit down regularly in team meeting and encourage staffs sharing their opinion. Thus way communication barrier will be removed and effective social care service can be possible to provide.

1 (d) Analysing the use of strategies to support users of health and social care services with specific communication needs

Makaton is a language system utilizing signs and symbols to help individuals to communicate (Pollard, 2010). It is developed to support in spoken language and symbols and signs are used speech according to spoken word order. Children and adults can communicate through sign and symbols by using Makaton. It is very effective ways communication and Makaton vocabulary contains 450 words, symbols and signs. According to Zangari (2014) Taking Mats is communication tools uses three sets of picture symbols named top scale, topics and options. Talking mats and Makaton are modern tools of communication where people can share information through symbols, pictures and signs. Makaton and talking mats support person with unclear speech, no speech or those who are not interested to communicate. Some individuals use these for certain period of time whereas some take it as lifetime communication system. This modern information technology facilitates in improving communication between clients and caseworkers in numbers of ways. Client who not capable to verbal communication or has language barrier can communicate with caseworkers and remove communication barriers. On the hand, caseworkers also transfer information to those clients has language barriers or autistics. These modern communication systems removes barrier in proving proper health and social to clients.

1 (e) The impact of legislation, charts and codes of practices in communication process in health and social care

UK government establishes Equality Act-2010, Health and Social Care Act-2012 for proving better health and social care to the people. These acts clearly stated the roles and responsibilities of health and social care service providers. On the other hand, the rights of service users also clearly states. As a result, this legislation, codes removes the ambiguity about the right and responsibilities both clients and carer. It is essential to present six key points of social workers codes and practices outlined by General Social Care Council in training session named “Respect for Diversity”. These are mentioned below:

Ø  The rights and interest of service user and carers  must be protected

Ø   Should develop confidence and trust between service users and carers.

Ø  Encourage the independence of service users during protect them from harm and danger

Ø  Showing proper respect to the rights of service users and making sure that harmful behaviour does not happen

Ø  Increase confidence and public trust in social care services; finally

Ø  Accountability should be done for their quality of works and take responsibility for improving and maintain their skills and knowledge.

The social care workers must abide by these code of conducts in their service.

  

Conclusion

Communication process is an important operational function of every organization. Communication process plays a vital role at every level of organization’s operation. It cannot imagine that without communication process an organization can run. Developing organization communication process is not easy jobs for the management. Many issues such as language, organizational culture, employee’s perception, client’s nature and so on require considering in establishing communication strategies for health and social care organization. Health and social care service develop its communication process considering various types of client. It is important to understand the problems of clients. If carer does not understand the specific need of clients cannot give proper advice. Various communication technologies such as Makaton, Talking Mats successfully reduce communication gaps between carer and service users. it is important to provide training to care about these communication technologies for removing communication gaps. Moreover, for better performance of carer, line manager must be very careful to remove any kind of conflict within the team members.

References

Adams, R. (2007) Foundations of Health and Social Care, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan

Fielding, M. (2006) Effective Communication in Organization, 3rd Edition, Cape Town: Juta and Company Ltd.

Fisher, A. (2005) Health and Social Care, Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers.

Pollard, T. (2010) My First Makaton Symbols and Signs, Yorkshire: Tipi Publishing Limited.

Pujari, S. (2013) Important Measures to Overcome the Barriers of Communication, www.yourarticlelibrary.com, [available at http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/business-communication/9-important-measures-to-overcome-the-barriers-of-communication/1006/], [accessed at April 20, 2015]

Reid, L. S. (2013) Promote Person-Centred approaches in Health and Social Care, www.academia.edu, [available at http://www.academia.edu/9762986/Unit_7_Promote_Person-Centred_Approaches_in_Health_and_Social_Care], [accessed at April 20, 2015]

Robb, M. (2004) Communication, Relationship and Care, New York: Psychological Press.

Root, G. N. (2015) Examples of Barriers to Effective Teamwork, smallbusiness.chron.com, [available at http://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-barriers-effective-teamwork-10394.html], [accessed at April 20, 2015].

Wagner, K. (2014) Theories of Communication in Counseling, www.ehow.com, [available at http://www.ehow.com/info_8562916_theories-communication-counseling.html], [accessed at April 20, 2015]

Zaineb, A. (2014) Barriers to Effective Communication in an Organization and Overcoming It, bcommlabindia.com, [available at http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-design/barriers-to-communication], [accessed at April 20, 2015]

Zangari, C. (2014) Talking Mats: A Practical Tool, praacticalaac.org, [available at http://praacticalaac.org/praactical/talking-mats-a-praactical-tool/], [accessed at April 20, 2015]

An Assignment on Organizational Culture

           

Introduction

An organisation is a place where different demographic people work together. Today, the world is considered as a global village so that there has few boundaries to establish an organisation local; and abroad. The culture, norms, values, belief are different that affect in establishing organisational culture. Culture is the characteristics of particular group of people that includes language, cuisine, arts, music, social habits and religion (Zimmermann, 2015). In other words, culture is shared values. According to Robbins and Coulter (2007, p.52) ‘Organisational culture is a system of shared meaning and beliefs held by organisational members that determines in large degree, how they act toward each other and outsiders.’ A successful organisaiton like Coca Cola requires considering the culture of various countries in its every plant. `It is globally recognised that managing culture is very important in achieving and retaining organisational success. Different class, demographic, religious people works in an organisation and their attitude, behaviour is not identical. Every organisation established a unique organisational culture to retain workplace harmony. The duty of a good manager is to develop common organisational culture considering the culture of the country, beliefs etc and must be very careful that this culture does not humiliate others beliefs, emotions. Racism is a disease which destroys the workplace harmony and affects negatively in the operations. This write up will describe the organisational culture of Coca Cola both internally and externally. In addition, this report will focus on creating and maintaining culture by managers and people within the organisation. Moreover, this report will evaluate the context of national and global cultures may impact on the organisational output and performance. This report will end by providing some recommendation about the best practice approaches of managers to enable an effective cultural climate.

Organisational Culture of Coca Cola

Organisational culture represents an identical perception which is held by members of the organisation that affects their behaviour, attitude. In an organisation like Coca Cola, various characteristics and cultural people work. And, every organisation is affected both internal and external culture. A main role of culture is to separate the organisation from others and create a sense of identity for its workers. Jacques (1951)       claimed that organisational culture shapes the customary and traditional way of thinking things that new members should learn to adapt them perfectly to achieve acceptance in the organisation. Culture is not consistent and not always logical and it also influenced by other culture. A strong culture is internally consistent, shared widely and become clear in its expectations and influence people in their behaviour.

Characteristics of organisational culture

Kreitner and Kinicki (2007) sorted out three main characteristics of organisational culture these are as follows:

Ø  Organisational culture is transfer onto new members through the socialisation. 

Ø  It influences the workers' behaviour at workplace.

Ø  Organisational culture operates at various level of the organisation.

Internal organisational culture at Coca Cola

Coca Cola is a multinational organisation so that the organisation needs to develop an identical and unique organisation’s culture for creating better workplace. Four types of organisation culture can be seen in Coca Cola.

Ø  Power culture: The ray of power at Coca Cola is practiced centrally. The headquarter of the organisation gives order to its different plant. The operational plans come from the central.

Ø  Role culture: The role culture in Coca Cola is logical and rational. Departmental functions are empowered with their role. Each department has supervised by a senior executive and an overall organisation is monitored by a manager at every plant. Employees are appointed based on role according to their ability to carry out the functions.

Ø  Task culture: Coca Cola has developed some small teams and these teams are responsible for completer assigned tasks. For example; the organisaiton creates various small marketing teams and these teams are involved in promoting the brand value and product of Coca Cola to consumers. These teams can make decision to implement their assigned tasks.

Ø  Person culture: Each plant of the organisation recruits and selects local employees on its various levels because it removes the linguistic and cultural barriers.

However, Coca Cola provides training to new entry employees and training and development department arranges different training for different levels of employees. The organistion evaluate the performance of each employee and on the basis of their performance promotion, reward etc. are provided. In addition, Coca Cola does not allow any labor union in the organisation.

External organisation culture at Coca Cola

Every organisation is influenced by external culture. This external culture influences in marketing strategies and other. The consumers of Coca Cola located across the world and every country possess different culture. For example, when Coca Cola begins its business in Middle East region they was given billboard advertisement where showed three picture consecutively. First picture showed a person who was in exhausted; second picture showed that he was drunk a bottle of Coca Cola and in third picture showed that after drunken Coca Cola he was refreshed.

This advertisement significantly reduces the sale of Coca Cola products in Dubai. The main reason was that people in Middle East is accustomed to reading right to left but advertisement was left to right. So, it is very important to figure out the culture of the nation where an organisation operating its business.

The advertisement style in Muslim courtiers is different than other countries. Customer buying behaviour is an important part of an external culture. In third world countries, people are not habituated with outside lunch or dinner and. In developing countries, people are habituated with taking their food outside. And, this culture also influences in purchasing Coca Cola drinks. It is very clear that beliefs, linguistic, customs and other external culture affect on the strategy of business. And, the success of an organisation depends on how quickly the organisation adopted the culture. Coca Cola considers the local cultural factors in its marketing strategies and becomes successful to gain and maintain good market share.

Creating and maintaining culture by a manager in Coca Cola

Creating and maintain organisational culture is always challenging for every manager. It requires considering numbers of factors. Riley (2014) mentioned some key factors that are affecting in creating organisational culture. These are as follows:

Ø  Values, belief, norms, administrative practices and personality of founder

Ø  Leadership and management style

Ø  Size and development  stage of the organisation

Ø  Organisational policies, and practices

Ø  The gender of employees

Ø  Nature of the business, for example, profit oriented or charitable

Ø  Location of the organisation such as Middle East, Europe or Asia.

Ø  External environment such as economic, legal or social

The organisation culture leads the goals and objectives of an organisaiton. The strategies and implementation procedures are designed to gain the targets of the organisation also avail to its culture.

Creating organisational culture at Coca Cola

Coca Cola is world best selling soft drinks company operating more than 100 countries. So, that it is inevitable that the organisational culture is greatly affected by the local culture. The organisational culture of Coca cola is influenced by headquarters’ but the organisation also considers the local cultural factors. Coca Cola creates its organisational culture in following ways:

Ø  The organisation appointed and keeps those employees who think and feel the way that management do.

Ø  The management body instructs and socializes these workers to their way of thinking and feeling.

Ø  The managers of different plant act as a role model that encourages workers to identify with them and shape their values, beliefs and assumptions.

Implementing and managing the culture at Coca Cola

Coca Cola culture is defined by seven fundamental values such as passion, leadership, collaboration, integrity, quality, diversity and accountability (Coca-Cola, 2015). As a global business, the organisation’s ability to understand, adopt and operate in a multicultural world both in the workplace and in the marketplace is challenging for its sustainability. The management of the organisation promotes and retains the organisational culture in following ways:

Ø  Describe formal statements of Coca Cola’s philosophy, vision, values, mission and material used in employee recruitment, selection and socialisation within the organisation.

Ø  Coca Cola created physical space and energetic working environment.

Ø  The organisation does not allow any racism, gender discrimination and physical harassment.

Ø  The organisation arranges deliberate training programs, role modeling and coaching by manager and supervisors.

Ø  Slogan is a part of organisational culture. The company changes its slogan many times from 1886 to 2009. It is because the organisation energizes its employees and customers through different slogans. The present slogan is ‘Open Happiness’.

Ø  The company provides rewards, promotion, status symbols and this culture is identical at all plants.

Ø  Coca Cola celebrates various national cultures in its every plant according to the culture of the countries.

Ø  The management body carefully gives attention to the activities, process, and outcome of workers and organisational operations.

Ø  Coca Cola provides open culture focuses on safety and common facilities such as identical canteen, car parking, building trust at all levels.

The organisation develops an externally friendly atmosphere where employees are treated well. The company resolves conflict quickly and stops every chance of conflict at the initial stage.  The organisation is very careful about the health safety and follows the law of countries. Coca Cola reached at this organisational culture after passing various turmoil situations. Now, the company is a role model to other organisations.

Conclusion

Every organisation’s goal is to achieve good market share and without better organisational culture it cannot possible to achieve. Culture is shared values that shape the behaviour, attitude of people and different cultural people work together in an organistion. For better workplace harmony, organisation outputs and high employee performance, it is essential for the manager to create a suitable organisational culture. Globalisation process has reduced cultural differences than previous and it brings the opportunity to diversified business to others.  A successful manger is able to coordinate national and global culture along with organisation culture and leads the organistion to achieve the target.

  

References

Coca-Cola (2015) Our Company-Workplace Culture. [Online]. Available at: http://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/diversity/workplace-culture [Accessed: 9 July 2015]

Handler, R. (1988) Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec. London: University of Wisconsin Press.

Harcourt, H. (2014) Toward a Global Culture. [Online]. Available at: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/sciences/sociology/culture-and-societies/toward-a-global-culture [Accessed: 9 July 2015].

Hofstede, G. (1983) The cultural relativity of organizational practices and theories. Journal of International Business Studies, 14(2): 75-89.

Jaques, E. (1951) The Changing Culture of a Factory. New York: Psychological Press

Kreitner, R. and Kinicki, A. (2007) Fundamentals of Organizational Behaviour. Whitby: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.

Riley, J. (2014) Organisational Culture: Factors influencing the Culture of an Organisation and Cultural Differences. [Online]. Available at: http://beta.tutor2u.net/business/blog/organisational-culture-factors-influencing-the-culture-of-an-organisation-a [Accessed: 9 July 2015]

Robbins, S. and Coulter, M. (2007) Management. London: Pearson Prentice Hall

Zimmermann, K. (2015) What is Culture?. [Online]. Available at: http://www.livescience.com/21478-what-is-culture-definition-of-culture.html [Accessed: 8 July 2015].

Differences between Supermarkets and Departmental Stores

Issue of comparison	Departmental store	Supermarket
Amount of service	A departmental store is a large store selling, under one roof but in physically separate departments (Cox, 2006). Departmental stores offer four or more various types of consumer goods. A departmental store is full-service retailer. Each department carrying out its own buying, merchandising and stock control.	Supermarket is a self-service shop that offers people to purchase a wide range of different foods and household products. Customers can select their necessary foods in a shopping cart, bring to the payment counter and pay for each item. Supermarket is not only offering tinned goods and processed or semi-processed foods but also fresh meat, fresh fruit, and fresh vegetables.
Relative prices	Departmental stores set different price considering different market segment. After increasing the competition, most of the departmental stores are turned into discount stores. Though departmental stores use discount price, there are different price segment for different products. Some departmental stores are high fashion specialty store (e.g. Nordstrom, Barney’s etc.) offering upscale and exclusive products, some are mid-level (e.g. Dillard’s, Boscov’s etc.) offering moderately priced products and some are price sensitive (e.g. Target, JC Penny etc.) offering discount price products (Petro, 2013).	Supermarket generally operates discount stores. This supermarket keeps their products price comparatively low compared to the typical market value.   The competition in the supermarket retail business is very high. So that supermarket stores are keeping their products price at discount rate. Aldi, Wal-mart Tesco etc. are operating discount stores globally. Supermarket offers relatively low price to the customers to pick more customers and stay in the competition.
Product lines	The product lines of departmental stores are wide. Except for grocery items, all sorts of products are founded in departmental stores. The product lines cover clothing, housewares, furniture, toiletries, home appliances, books, jewelry, toys, cosmetics, baby products, sporting goods, electronics, and products for pets, stationery and photographic equipment.	Supermarkets are generally involved with selling a wide variety of grocery items, foods, and household’s products into aisles. The product lines of supermarket typically comprise baked goods, dairy foods, fresh vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, canned and packaged goods and household products such as kitchenware, pharmacy/medicine goods, household cleaners, festival items etc.

References 

Cox, R. (2006) Retailing-An Introduction. 5^th Edition. New Delhi: Pearson Education India.

Petro, G. (2013) Department store pricing-no easy task. [Online]. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregpetro/2013/01/10/department-store-pricing-no-easy-task-part-4-of-4/#7b9c935d103a (Accessed: 10 July 2017). 

Application of Marketing Mix on 'K-Beauty'

Culture is one of the most important factors that influence the consumer behavior and marketing environment. Business organization concerns deeply on the culture while researching the target market of a country.

Country profile

Name of the country	South Korea
Capital	Seoul
Population	50,924,172 (as of 2016)
Population growth	0.53%
GDP (official exchange rate)	$1.377 trillion (2015 est.)
GDP (purchasing power parity)	$1.849 trillion (2015 est.)
GDP growth	2.6% (2015 est.)
GDP (per capita)	$36,500 (2015 est.)

Unique characteristic of South Korea

“K-beauty” holds a very significant characteristic of South Korean culture (Teng, 2015). South Korean culture is too much looks oriented. Most Koreans are giving their first attention to external looks and skincare issues. As a result, both men and women are spending huge amount to purchase cosmetics. South Korean women spend in beauty products twice of their income and men spend more on skincare compared to other countries (BBC, 2016).

South Korean job market is so competitive so that wearing makeup is an important issue in the game. Koreans’ are trying to show good facial impression in the job interviews by hiding their original looks. South Korean men are spending $900 million in purchasing cosmetics a year that makes the country most growing men cosmetics market (Fujjita, 2013). 

Product

“BB cream” takes the special attention in the cosmetics industry of South Korea. Cosmetics manufacturing companies of South Korea are innovating new types of BB cream for men and women with a different skin.

Features of BB cream

BB creams are having the following features:

·         Offer different skin BB cream for men like as dry, oily skin and normal.

·         Light and easy-to-apply texture at any time at any place.

·         BB creams emphasize on conditioning skin that South Korean men and women prefer.

Price

Price is the amount at which a certain product or service is exchanged (Conkling, 2011). In other words, price denotes the money value of a product or service. It reflects the worth of a product or service and the amount of money for which it can be exchanged. Price is an important determiner in the marketing mix. South Korea is very much price and quality sensitive (Teng, 2015). South Korean people pay attention to low priced product. As a result, they purchase low price Korean products instead of high price France or US brands.

Considering these factors the price of BB cream will set the penetration pricing strategy. It refers setting prices low to attract new customers and win in the price wars to lead over competitors (Hurd, Barcelona and Meldrum, 2008). South Korean beauty industry is very much competitive so that penetration pricing strategy appropriate for BB cream product.

Promotions

Promotion is the marketing communication package used to make the offer known to potential customers and persuade them to investigate it further (Blythe, 2009). For BB cream the following promotion strategies will apply:

·         Social media campaign

·         Celebrity shows

·         Advertisement on TV, billboard

·         Face-to-face

·         Promotional gifts

·         Advertisement on the internet

Place

It refers the location where the exchange takes place (Blythe, 2009). South Korean people are tech-savvy so that online shopping is very popular in the country. BB cream will be sold in retail stores, face-to-face sales, and online shopping stores. 

References 

Blythe, J. (2009) Key Concept in Marketing. London: SAGE 

Hurd, A., Barcelona, R. and Meldrum, J. (2008) Leisure Services Management. Leeds: Human Kinetics Inc.

Conkling, R. (2011) Energy Pricing-Economics and Principles. Oregon: Springer Science and Business Media.

Teng, A. (2015) The invasion of Korean culture. [Online]. Available at: https://tengzeming.wordpress.com/category/cosmetics/ (Accessed: 9 July 2017).

BBC (2016) The key ingredients of South Korea’s skincare success. [Online]. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35408764 (Accessed: 9 July 2017).

Fujjita, A. (2013) South Korean men cosmetics-crazed. [Online]. Available at: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2013/05/south-korean-men-cosmetics-crazed/ (Accessed: 9 July 2017).