Business Report Microsoft Xbox. Marketing concept and strategy

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: High Distinction, Deakin University (Faculty of Business and Law), course: Marketing Management, language: English, abstract: By launching the game console Xbox, Microsoft did not only introduce a newproduct but stepped into a totally new market where there company did not have anyexperience yet. Although they had a huge marketing budget, they focused onspending it as effective as possible. Therefore Microsofts marketing team had to findout, who their target customers are and with what marketing strategy they could reachtheir challenging goal to become leader in the game console market. But has theirway of segmenting the market and choosing a marketing mix for the Xbox really beensuccessful? The Marketing concept consists of three principles that hold that achievingorganizational objectives require determining needs and wants of targets markets anddelivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitorsdo (Hoffman et al 2003, pp.10-11). Microsoft took advantage of all three principles. Microsoft did put enormous effortin identifying potential customers needs. The research was concentrated on so calledhardcore gamers who spend more than 25 hours playing a week. This group wasseen as early adopters as well as opinion-leaders. Of high importance were anappealing design to young customers and performance like speed of the console andhigh quality of audio and graphics. [...]