Electronic Arts - Marketing Concept

TO: Susan Campbell, Course Co-ordinator REP/2/2007

FROM: Bartosz Walkiewicz DATE: 5 October 2007

MARKETING CONCEPT IN ELECTRONIC ARTS

1.0 TERMS OF REFERENCE

The report will present an implementation of the marketing concept into business strategy of Electronic Arts. The report will evaluate the benefits and cost of the marketing approach in Electronic Arts. All information has to be submitted to Mrs. Susan Campbell, the HNC course co-ordinator on 25th October 2007.

2.0 PROCEDURE

In order to analyse how the marketing concept elements are incorporated into Electronic Arts (EA) overall business plan the following steps has to be taken:

2.1 Electronic Arts main web site has to accessed in order to obtain company business information.

2.2 Internet and book resources have to be scrutinized to collect all relevant data about the Marketing

Concept implementation.

2.3 All aspects of marketing concept has to be assessed against EA policies and analysed

company production, sales and promotion activities.

3.0 FINDINGS

3.1 Satisfying Needs As the Key Business Element

Electronic Arts started creating electronic entrainment software in 1982 and from that day the company grew rapidly becoming the one of world leaders in the industry. The number of employees increased from two people to 7,900 worldwide in the beginning of 2007. Marketing concept is based on analysing and satisfying customer's needs and the management team in EA knows well that the business would not survived if those needs where not meet. Commitment to the customer is expressed in the company Code of Conduct as one of the "Action Values" which are the principles on which the entire business idea is based (see App. 1).

3.1.1 Products for All

Electronic Arts driven by marketing principle of meeting customer needs has created games which relate to nearly all aspects of human life. Sport, strategy, action games and even simulators of everyday life (Sims) are all in the company games portfolio. EA is not leaving any users without the access to their products and the company titles are available on all gaming platforms like Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo and PC.

3.1.2 Software Developers

Many of existing staff in the company used to play the EA games when they started creating their own pieces of work, so back in the days they where the customers - gamers who used to buy the company products. Nowadays as they are shaping new titles themselves and they know how important is to adapt to what the new generating of game fans is looking for.

3.1.3 Games Testers

The company has a big number of professional - salary paid and amateur, game testers. These are the people who are giving non-biased opinion and guidelines on how the future products will be developed. The amateur testers are the selected from the gamers who take part in game tournaments all around the world, members of computer games conventions, players with best score and performance in over-internet competitions as well randomly selected game buyers.

3.2 Research - Assessing Change in Customer Needs

The world of electronic entertainment is evolving very fast and to keep with the competitors EA marketing team needs to have access to customer feedback and "fresh" data on daily bases.

The company uses primary and secondary research as well as the quantitative and qualitative research. Researches are used to identify market opportunities, improve marketing efficiency, quality of the software and service provided by the company. Electronic Arts uses surveys and questioners to gather data and feedback from the customers. Advice from testers is also very useful tool in developing products. All of the gathered information's are used to prepare prognosis and sales simulations for completely new games and new editions of existing titles. Marketing team analyse competitors moves by attending all industry expositions and conventions.

3.3 Integrated Marketing

3.3.1 Product.

As emphasised by Jobber and Fahy (2002)

"The core element of the marketing mix is the company's product or service because this provides the functional requirements sought by the customers"

Electronic Arts products are offered to worldwide customers. All of the age groups are targeted and most of the titles are available in the country of sale with appropriate language version. All sorts of game types are manufactured by the company: sport games (branded EA Sports) this include famous FIFA and race game Need for Speed, strategy games like Command & Conquer series, action games like newly issued Crisis and all types of fun-family games i.e. Simms - a simulator of everyday life. Product range was recently extended by purchasing leading mobile phones game manufacturer JAMDAT Inc and currently EA group is the largest manufacturer of games for mobile phones. Software is extensively tested to ensure great playability and quality.

3.3.2 Place

Games are sold by many different channels of distribution from big supermarket chains like "Tesco" or "Wal-Mart" to specialised software retailers including "Game" or "PC World" and directly through Internet shop on main company web site. For the future EA is planning to increase sales on-line by creating internet megastore which will be available in different language versions.

3.3.3 Price

To ensure that the products are competitive on the market EA have to offered games