Cognizant Marketing Strategy & Marketing Mix (4Ps)

Marketing Strategy of Cognizant analyzes the brand with the marketing mix framework which covers the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). These business strategies, based on Cognizant marketing mix, help the brand succeed in the market. Let us start the Cognizant Marketing Strategy & Mix to understand its product, pricing, advertising & distribution strategies:

Cognizant Product Strategy:

The product strategy and mix in Cognizant marketing strategy can be explained as follows:

Cognizant is global IT company providing solutions to enterprises across the world. The products offered by Cognizant are mainly software related services. These service offerings in its marketing mix can be categorized as below:

IT consulting: Information technology, and related software. These also encompass security with the data, and various IT solutions needed by the company. Most solutions are required for day to day activities and hence products are customized from company to company.

IT infrastructure: Any requirement of hardware, new technology, gadgets or even synchronization between machines, are included in IT infrastructure.

These advices for maintaining the infrastructure according to company’s requirement and affordability are provided by Cognizant.

BPO: Business Process Outsourcing. Many a times, companies like to outsource some IT services, if the training cost of employees are high, or the work is required for limited time. BPO services are also managed by Cognizant.

Application development and maintenance: A specific application, software or tool required by the company is provided by Cognizant. The tools are designed and customized according to the requirement.

Image: Wikimedia

Cognizant Price/Pricing Strategy:

Below is the pricing strategy in Cognizant marketing strategy:

Cognizant has got a dynamic pricing based on the service of solution required by clients. For similar and common services, that do not require much expertise, Cognizant charges a price depending on the market.

This is important, as with growing IT requirements, the competition in this sector is also growing and clients obviously want to save their money, if task is not very demanding. Hence competitive pricing marketing mix strategy is an essential element for Cognizant. For specific tasks, when company has to show more dedication in terms of research and employee engagement, the pricing strategy adopted is such that it benefits both the client and the company. As the cost saved by the software, is huge thus, for better services, Cognizant can charge also a good amount of fees. Hence it charges a customized fee. For offering better prices to customer, cost saving is done through offshoring the employees, where salaries are significantly low. Thus, depending on the talent pool of the company, it can offer a lot lesser price than its competitors.

Cognizant Place & Distribution Strategy:

Following is the distribution strategy in the Cognizant marketing mix:

Cognizant is a global brand and has a worldwide presence. Sales and marketing offices look after to acquire new clients, by constantly being in touch with the market trends and following and assessing the requirement of targeted companies. The clients are managed through pool of employees who are sitting in different regions of the world, giving a cost advantage to the firm. India is one great place for hiring new employees by the firm. More than half the employees are from India. Cognizant maintains a widespread global footprint, across the world. Main clients are based out of US, UK, India and China.

The headquarter of the company is in New Jersey, US, with additional 21 delivery centers in US itself.

The clients are based out of countries round the world, which require services either on day to day basis or periodically.

Cognizant Promotion & Advertising Strategy:

The promotional and advertising strategy in the Cognizant marketing strategy is as follows:

Being in b2b sector, most branding and promotional activities include, developing a positive trustworthy image amongst the client. For this company has many initiatives, Cognizant community, CSR activities, positive word of mouth and reference to past deals are some. ‘Cognizant community’ is the leading self-promotional program of the company. It is basically a customer conference, a modern event for IT sector industries, which is surrounded by the belief of developing strong bonds with customers. This is done through sharing common interests. The annually held summit, which is carried on in different places as UK, US or India, Singapore, is attended by significant speakers in the field of business and technology. Even adventure sports are made part of this summit. Positive relations, successful deals and the revenues the company is trusted with, manages the positive branding of company through word of mouth. Cognizant portrays itself as a concerned and responsible organization, involved in philanthropic works. ‘Cognizant foundation’ has been working for many altruistic works like education, health care, positive effect on environment.

Since this is a service marketing brand, here are the other three Ps to make it the 7Ps marketing mix of Cognizant.

Physical Evidence:

Being in service industry, the main evidence for Cognizant is not just the number of products it sells, but also positive relations with the clients. Both these aspects, of products sold, and customer satisfaction can be gauged through following tools. Financial income of the Cognizant, to sustain its daily operations, serve its client and manages the employees is significant evidence for IT firms. Cognizant itself is in excellent financial health with net income of more than $1.5 billion. Number of new clients coming up, is also an important aspect. For the huge variety and number of deals trained professional, from all around the world are employed by the company, manages the international deals, sitting in their own offices. A positive trust and relation amongst its old clients, give IT firms, a loyal customer base. Not only this, they also affect the coming deals for Cognizant.

People:

Cognizant is an employee driven organization. The huge advantage of IT firms is their ability to employee from offshore, as physical interaction with client is not very significant, with technologies coming up. This reduces the cost of hiring, and it also helps the company to recruit from a vast talent pool, rather than a fixed one.

App developers: These are some initial profiles offered to employees, which is only related to developing the application according to requirement. The assessment of client’s requirement is carried by the team lead.

Tester: The tester profile, is to test the software according to client’s demand. Various tests are run, before presenting the final drafts.

Post services: Company’s vast talent pool, is engaged in offering quality post sale services, to help the client understand and adjust with the new software and applications.

BPO: Company also offers its employees to work for another client according to their business demands. Many Indian IT professionals work for different offshore clients in BPO.

They are even considered the largest employers of MBAs, across the world, specifically India.

Process:

Cognizant works on a ‘Global delivery Model’. This means the R&D, and also employees are managed, offshore. In India also, the clients of Indian employees are offshore based people, reason mainly being the cheap labor in developing countries, which significantly reduces the cost of whole deal.

Signage of deals: Cognizant employees manage the initial deals with the firms, when either the firm access them or when they hear requirement of such services by the firm. In later case a tender is made and when passed by the firm, the initiation is started.

Research: The initial research about the client, and their requirement is also carried on offshore. The basic reason is that the services offered require very less physical interaction with the client. The research is done by taking the client in loop

Offerings: After proper research, suggestions are made to clients. One team might be responsible for the deal as a whole. The tasks are divided, and an initial case is presented to the clients.

Implementation: The tech solutions provided by Cognizant are also implemented by the firm. Various helps in terms of software requirements, initial trainings of employees of clients are done.

Post service: Maintaining a strong client base, also means effective post-deal services. For any problems, company has dedicated set of employees for the after services for understanding or glitches or new requirements in the software. Hence this gives an insight in the marketing mix of Cognizant.

About Cognizant:

Cognizant is a tech company that provides, technology solutions dealing specifically with IT, to its clients. This is an American IT consultancy, MNC. It is also in the big 4 for the IT service providing companies. Cognizant started offering services to external clients in mid 1990s, when the internet was just booming up. From there it went on to be listen in Fortune 500.

TCS and Accenture are faster growing companies that give competition to Cognizant Tech. With growing IT sector, internet of things, and increased requirements of IT services, the market is expanding, although the competition is also expanding at more or less the same rate, as most companies can now see it as the great investment for future.

This article has been researched & authored by the Content & Research Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

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